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Bitcoin as a Battery

nickgrossman.xyz

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Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#241

Post by atmosx »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #225
agumonkey wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would you quality VISA and Tesla accepting bitcoin ? does it qualify as asset tranfer or currency ? (open question)

Governments want you to think of crypto primarily as an asset and not a currency, because they don't want to give up control over currency creation. The fact that you have to file capital gains for every crypto will be the giant silent hurdle that stimies wide spread use. The only way to overcome this is if so many people ignore the law that it becomes unenforceable. Only time will tell.

> Governments want you to think of crypto primarily as an asset and not a currency, because they don't want to give up control over currency creation.

According to Adi Shamir[1] 98% of bitcoins belonged to 2% of portfolios in 2012. So... The government is "bad" because you can actually express your opinion in monetary policy, you know who's who, etc. and BTC (or any other crypto) is good because you have absolutely no idea who the 2% is? I'm not following...

Regarding the gov and BTC. The government will tax BTC the same will tax any other asset, so in reality, the gov doesn't care. You can choose to hide profits from BTC and you'd choose to hide profits from any other financial activity. I don't really see the US Gov fighting bitcoin, if anything the gov tries to put BTC into perspective.

If you are anti-gov because "gov is bad (by default)" I get the feeling but has little to do with BTC.

[1]: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#242

Post by danShumway »

bingbong70 wrote: post #224
plater wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All energy generation is bad for the environment, just more or less bad. Solar cells and wind power might be "renewable", but it requires a lot of metals and material to build (and also energy), they disturb natural habitat etc. They are much better than coal, oil and gas, but they are not harmless. It's better to avoid using energy if possible than using renewable energy.

Cavemen used very little energy before the discovery of fire. Are you prescribing a return to that state? >>>Response to Dan added here due to rate limit. > waste power Infinite energy in the universe and everything mankind has achieved has been in large part due to energy consumption. The idea that we should now stop that trend is antihuman/antihuman-progress at its core. Let the individual/market decide the best us…

No of course not, that reading isn't any more accurate than it would be to say that you're arguing that we should set up a Dyson sphere around our sun to black out the earth and mine Bitcoin in the vast dead emptiness of space for all eternity[0]. Be careful not to inflate arguments into completely separate positions.

What GP is saying is that switching to renewables doesn't make all of the negative externalities of wasting power go away.

You shouldn't extrapolate out on that to some grand view of the world that says we should never use technology. It just means we shouldn't waste power, and we shouldn't use "solar" as an excuse to waste power.

[0]: After all, Dyson spheres are powered by renewable energy.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#243

Post by bob1029 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #201
funkychicken wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could give this comment HackerNews Gold.

I'm actually surprised at the reception, I was expecting a -3, but I wanted to say it anyway.

Parody & sarcasm are very effective tools for illustrating how hyperbolic a situation has become.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#244

Post by Empact »

mattnewton wrote: post #218
Empact wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your definition is faulty: are you aware of shell money? This served as money enabling international trade for thousands of years[1], and can you say these shells have intrinsic uses?[2] These shells had value because of their properties: compact, scarce, unforgeable. In contrast, fiat value is held because an authoritative party says value is held, e.g. Chucky Cheese tokens, or the USD. Fiat requires this au…

Shell money began as commodity money according to most sources- shells were inherently valuable because of body ornamentation as you mention (similar to how gold was useful to easily work into soft metal jewelry). If Chucky cheese tokens are money at all, they are “representative money” because they can be readily exchanged for various commodities by the issuer (the prizes and games). A central authorities decree is…

I expect economics textbooks in the future will refer to this time as the time this question was settled: were shells and gold money because of their intrinsic ability to be used as jewelry etc., or was it jewelry because their other properties (particularly scarcity / unforgeable costliness) made them natural monies?

Hard money advocates have been arguing this point recently, and IMO it can only be settled by the market and observation. Only if the latter is true, does Bitcoin have a valid claim to become money.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#245

Post by user-the-name »

capableweb wrote: post #189
klyrs wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centers and cloud providers are optimizing flops per watt, not flops per second. Energy providers are finding that wind and solar have become incredibly cheap, and transitioning as fast as they can. It took us a while to overcome political hurdles erected by the carbon-burning industry, but it turns out this stuff just makes sense on an economic level.

Not sure it's happening as fast as you seem to indicate here. And if it is, what's the problem with Bitcoin and energy consumption, exactly the same thing will happen, but faster since Bitcoin is all about money?

It will not. Bitcoin is literally designed specifically to make sure this never happens.

Again, as soon as you manage to develop a way to mine bitcoin more efficiently, the difficulty of mining will automatically go up to make sure you are still wasting just as much energy.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#246

Post by user-the-name »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #132
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get more bitcoin for more electricity, you just get more security. Specifically, more security for the next block, only. Once that block is mined, the process starts all over again for the next block. The energy usage reset button is pressed as soon as each block is mined. No energy is "stored".

Bitcoin itself is energy or can be converted into energy. If I can buy wood to burn for energy with Bitcoin, I am converting mined Bitcoin into energy.

It's not. This statement is just plain dumb.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#247

Post by vletal »

bingbong70 wrote: post #223
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because BTC value never goes down.

NGU - "Number Go Up" technology is one of Bitcoin's most interesting & unique attributes. Few here understand.

> Few here understand.

Sounds like a catch phrase from an "alternative" news site or a thing a member of a religious cult would say.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#248

Post by klyrs »

klyrs wrote: post #198
capableweb wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it's happening as fast as you seem to indicate here. And if it is, what's the problem with Bitcoin and energy consumption, exactly the same thing will happen, but faster since Bitcoin is all about money?

Where did I indicate a timescale (outside of "it took us a while" -- wherein I said that progress is slow)? As many others have pointed out, energy efficiency is seen as a bug and bitcoin has repeatedly increased hashing difficulty in order to offset increasing efficiency. Likewise, if a locale is known to have cheap power, miners move in until the power isn't cheap anymore. Eventually we'll be on 90+% renewables, an…

On the topic of space heaters, though... if you replace your gas furnace with a bitcoin mining rig, and your electric is 100% renewable, then that's fine by me.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#249

Post by UncleMeat »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #132
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get more bitcoin for more electricity, you just get more security. Specifically, more security for the next block, only. Once that block is mined, the process starts all over again for the next block. The energy usage reset button is pressed as soon as each block is mined. No energy is "stored".

Bitcoin itself is energy or can be converted into energy. If I can buy wood to burn for energy with Bitcoin, I am converting mined Bitcoin into energy.

Because I can buy BTC with dollars, dollars are bitcoins!

Because I can buy fiat currency with BTC, BTC is a fiat currency!

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#250

Post by UncleMeat »

jgeerts wrote: post #77
PeterBarrett wrote: post #17

This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. If bitcoin was changed to require a fraction the amount of electricity all of these ideas would suddenly fall apart. Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power a bitcoin farm is just completely nonsensical and does noting to help with the shift to renewables.

> This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. It's not "required", it's only that high because it has so much success. Bitcoin would be working with only one miner running, the first blocks were minted on a private computer.

It would work in the sense that you've be able to add more transactions to the chain. But it'd also be very easy for somebody to double spend.
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