211–220 of 431 posts
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A nation state can’t ban it globally. A 51% attack undermines confidence globally.
“nation state” isn’t just a fancy word for country and has a specific meaning
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some nation states can - for example, the US can easily ban it globally. They don't because it does no harm to anyone.
What is the legal mechanism for a unilateral world ban on use of a technology? Closest thing to that I can think of is nuclear proliferation but you’d have to get countries to agree and play strong arm tactics. Possible I guess but not “easily”
Might makes right, aka USA foreign policy since its inception. US sanctions are applied for everyone - e.g. if the US sanctions Iran, a French company does business in Iran, the US fines them heavily. And considering the US market is more lucrative than the Iranian one, most companies would prefer to have the US one. For a recent-ish example, check BNP Paribas. The US has no legal right to forbid a French company with a US branch to not do business with another country from another branch besides when they say so. The same way they say so for crimes against humanity, or invading other countries.
So the US can absolutely ban cryptocurrencies on a global-ish scale.
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I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Coal and nuclear are fairly interchangeable. Since nuclear was shut down and some coal remains, it’s fairly clear Germany chose coal over nuclear for the medium term.
I'm guessing because it's an impossible counterfactual to suggest that an advanced industrial country could fully replace/de-carbonize 70% of their electricity production in the time span under discussion. Suggesting impossible counterfactuals doesn't advance the discussion in any way. And Germany did not "chose coal over nuclear". While they have reduced nuclear production by about 30 TWh in the last 7 years, they h…
This is actually good for bitcoin
If not by the old mining power coming back online, it will be solved either by the next difficulty change, after which the Bitcoin network will again operate at full speed but using less energy, or by market powers if there are miners standing by due to not being profitable, which they now may be due to fewer miners to share the rewards with.
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>we don’t live in a fictional world where infinite growth exists. we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. >Useless energy expenditure is useless and objectively bad. your comment cost some energy to be expended. Basically most of computer use by humans is a useless energy expenditure, yet somehow some people single out crypto.
> we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system. Also, is being globally connected to each ot…
as i already said - that is mainly because we fail to see the world beyond our planet.
>It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless.
you find something not important to you and declare it useless. Other people do seems to value the planetary-scale decentralized consensus at like a $1T.
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Maybe with the simplistic perspective that Bitcoin has a value that you can calculate. Energy usecases are worth what energy they use. Energy exists in a mostly free market and that's the best way to determine value. Everything else is conjecture.
Or, we don’t live in a fictional world where infinite growth exists. Useless energy expenditure is useless and objectively bad.
Is there really an objective definition of useless? Media consumption, games and movies are pretty close to useless in my opinion. That does not however give them any less of a right to consume energy.
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>we don’t live in a fictional world where infinite growth exists. we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. >Useless energy expenditure is useless and objectively bad. your comment cost some energy to be expended. Basically most of computer use by humans is a useless energy expenditure, yet somehow some people single out crypto.
> we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system. Also, is being globally connected to each ot…
Bitcoin exists because there is no alternative decentralised, self sovereign currency. PoW exists because there is no other method to achieve that. It is by no means useless. You are not the user.
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> we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system. Also, is being globally connected to each ot…
> It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless. Bitcoin exists because there is no alternative decentralised, self sovereign currency. PoW exists because there is no other method to achieve that. It is by no means useless. You are not the user.
I do question whether we need one. We choose our governments to create laws protecting our values. I do agree that they are pretty far from perfect, but I don’t see why should we circumvent said laws. If I got a failed product, how will I get it replaced, when the seller could have disappeared? Yeah, there are smart contracts, but it’s not like our entire financial system was made up on the spot. It has many many warts, but it does solve real world problems.
> PoW exists because there is no other method to achieve that.
And as others mentioned in the thread, there are cryptos not dependent on PoW
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> we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet. Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system. Also, is being globally connected to each ot…
>meaningful space travel is similarly so as i already said - that is mainly because we fail to see the world beyond our planet. >It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless. you find something not important to you and declare it useless. Other people do seems to value the planetary-scale decentralized consensus at like a $1T.
Well, closer to the Sun it is way too hot, further away it is way too cold. There are also tiny problems like not having an atmosphere, too great or too small gravity, or small details like not having a solid surface, but sure, which planet would you like to travel to?
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Yes, and it’s vastly less than Bitcoin. Simply because it’s centralized, and a centralized system is always more efficient than a decentralized one. It’s a well known trade off. A better comparison would be gold versus Bitcoin, as they’re both similarly decentralized. Just comparing energy consumption between the two probably wouldn’t make sense, though, as gold mining e.g. ruins vast areas of land.
> Yes, and it’s vastly less than Bitcoin. Ponder, for a moment, the way in which governments use the "printing" of fiat money to fund wars (for private sector profit, revolving back into that private sector's lobbying those governments for even more war and military spending). Ponder, for a moment, the amount of energy and Earth's resources expended to materialize these wars and military spending. Bitcoin (or, the pr…