231–240 of 470 posts
The world used about (12,000 Mtoe = ) 140,000 TWh [1], making this 0.1% of world consumption. OP claims 64 MtCO2e of associated GHG emissions, which is also about 0.1%. I'd call these figures under "troubling but not yet material to the climate." [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2020...
My personal opinion is that whilst Bitcoin is not the answer, many seem to miss the point of cryptocurrencies, which IMHO is, to enable a permissionless electronic cash system. Being decentralized is an important aspect of it, and TPS and time-to-finality etc are important metrics for any practical use, but the appeal of cryptocurrencies is that you don't need the permission of others to open an account nor have to p…
Generally, if your system can handle the vast majority of cases easily and most edge cases with some effort, you don't think about tearing it down to replace it with an entirely new one that's far less efficient and far more difficult for the end user. The appeal of cryptocurrencies for most buyers is that Bitcoin dectupled in a year and people seem to be getting fabulously rich off of them everywhere you look. No mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Blockchain is the single largest threat to banking, and that doesn’t come without a price. That's an interesting statement. The first question that occurred to me was: Why does banking have to be threatened? In other words, is this a solution looking for a problem?
> Why does banking have to be threatened? Is this a real question?
You seem to think the answer is obvious. Well, what is it then?
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Energy isn't scarce, its actually abundant. At this particular moment, clean renewable energy capacity is more scarce than fossil fuel, but there is simply far more potential energy in solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Remember, our planet is bombarded by solar rays 24/7 and will continue to receive this energy for billions of years. Human energy consumption has been exponential over time. We started by harvesting crops wit…
y'all need to accept that PoW is a terrible, ghastly thing. I've even heard a theory that Satoshi didn't like it but published Bitcoin as is because he couldn't find a suitable alternative. if you find a way to make PoS viable and secure, you'll have saved the planet. work on that.
With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…
The worst part is that according to Cambridge some 40% of that is coal power [1]. Frequently the dirtiest coal power in the world, between Xinjiang (no longer, probably...) and Kazakhstan. Coal power causes excess mortality of anywhere between 25 and 278 deaths per TWh generated depending on how you're counting it and (most importantly) where it's generated. [2,3,4] Bitcoin's addiction to dirty coal killed between 15…
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Sure, if you are serious, the Bitcoin Standard book is a worthy read. But what’s important is that Bitcoin solves the inflation problem, and proof of work is the only system that we have for getting rid of the Cantillon effect of modern banking: the closer people get to the top of the central banks, the richer they get and destroy life for those who don’t have access to the inner layers of central banking. With Bitco…
On a philosophical level, I think the flawed premise you’re presenting here is that inflation is a problem that needs to be solved. Inflation is unpopular because it’s effectively a tax on unproductive wealth. Inflation incentivizes investment because idle wealth will lose it’s value at the rate of inflation. On a technical level, Bitcoin is worse than a currency because it’s value can fluctuate wildly constantly and…
Regarding the transaction fees it’s not higher or lower than the current system, but very different. For me it’s actually much lower than my bank fees (sending a wire transfer from Europe to US is usually $20 charge for me, while Bitcoin fees are usually about $0.8, but it’s changing over time depending the usage of the system).
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Inflation might a problem but a world where countries would no longer be able to adjust the value of their money isn’t scarier? Wouldn’t we be giving up an essential lever to adjust to changing economical conditions?
> Wouldn’t we be giving up an essential lever to adjust to changing economical conditions? Who’s we? You, I, and most people have zero ability to move those levers. The question is should they have access to those levers and I firmly believe the answer is no. I’d rather have a world with sound money and no one in control than the people who have dominated the west for the last 100+ years.
If nations no longer control their money, does it mean they can go bankrupt? They can no longer adjust their money to influence their commercial balance? Would have the EU and the US been able to create stimulus packages? What about adjusting the inflation to the economic growth rate of a country?
(Genuinely asking)
My personal opinion is that whilst Bitcoin is not the answer, many seem to miss the point of cryptocurrencies, which IMHO is, to enable a permissionless electronic cash system. Being decentralized is an important aspect of it, and TPS and time-to-finality etc are important metrics for any practical use, but the appeal of cryptocurrencies is that you don't need the permission of others to open an account nor have to p…
Generally, if your system can handle the vast majority of cases easily and most edge cases with some effort, you don't think about tearing it down to replace it with an entirely new one that's far less efficient and far more difficult for the end user. The appeal of cryptocurrencies for most buyers is that Bitcoin dectupled in a year and people seem to be getting fabulously rich off of them everywhere you look. No mo…
With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there are lots of problems with banking. Cryptocurrency does have a reason to exist, though of course we went and fucked it all up. It can help ordinary people outmaneuver oppressive regimes. It can perform that same core functions that banks can (i.e. keeping track of and moving around money) in a public and distributed way. The banking industry (often metonymically known as "Wall Street") is literally the canon…
I saw a great, pithy tweet recently, and I won’t do it justice, but I’ll give it a shot. Crypto, and Blockchain, are like little fiefdoms that are being created, and the people who create them, and in the process mine the first couple million blocks, will be the Lords. As you say, the rich getting richer. And doing it all by hijacking this message of the “little guys” banding together against the establishment.
However that is an implementation decision for each individual project, mostly around how supply is distributed and redistributed, and the inflationary mechanics of the asset. These can be innovated on by forking the original. They are also changeable (technically even in bitcoin, though in reality it seems unlikely), with the risk of forks acting as pressure to make beneficial changes.
What I’m saying here is that it is possible and even desirable to design a cryptocurrency which doesn’t work that way, either from the start or perhaps via an “exit to the community” that over time devalues the stakes of founders and early investors and prioritises the users and value creators within the network.
There are lots of mechanics that can be used for this, and most experiments so far have been limited or naive but I expect to and we need to see more of this if cryptocurrencies etc. are to succeed.