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Bitcoin as a Battery

nickgrossman.xyz

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Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#261

Post by Kbelicius »

scotty79 wrote: post #206
Kbelicius wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human organisations don't run on energy and resources. They run on money. You are talking nonsense here. Money is just an abstraction of energy and resources used by a human organization. Remove the money and the organization can still function. Remove energy and resources and the organization can't function.

> You are talking nonsense here. Money is just an abstraction of energy and resources used by a human organization. Money is a separate system that often but not always flows hand in hand with the flow of energy and resources. > Remove the money and the organization can still function. Not every organisation. Remove money from the stock market and you have barely anything left. Large portion of money circulates in or…

> Money is a separate system that often but not always flows hand in hand with the flow of energy and resources.

It is an exception when money doesn't flow hand in hand with energy and/or resources not a rule as you are implying

> Not every organisation.

You are moving the goalpost here. Your claim wasn't that few organizations don't run on energy and resources. Your claim was that no organization runs on energy and resources.

> Remove money from the stock market and you have barely anything left. Large portion of money circulates in organisations that have very little to do with energy or resources.

Stock market is an organization which has everything to do with energy and resources. Money is just used as an abstraction of those. Remove energy and resources of companies whose stock is being traded and you have nothing left.

Considering that your claim was that human organizations run on money and not on energy and resources I'm sure you won't have a problem naming a few of those organization. Just pleas don't name those where money is just an abstraction of energy/resources because those organization do actually run on energy and resources.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#262

Post by jasonlaramburu »

toss1 wrote: post #213
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its price certainly can appreciate for many reasons but that’s not my point. The price of BTC price is backstopped by the sunk cost of mining. Every time the price has fallen below the cost of production miners deactivate and the price stabilizes. If a miner’s opex goes to zero (due to cheap or free renewable energy) in the future there will be no incentive to stop mining during a crash and prices will go to $0.

Then it is not the sunk cost of the mining that drives it in your model, but the cost of new mining. (the sunk cost is mere history). Also, it is not clear that having more or fewer miners on the network drives prices - it seems more likely that more miners reduce transaction/confirmation times, improving service levels and increasing value (to the extent that actual transactions drive value or price).

> Also, it is not clear that having more or fewer miners on the network drives prices

Of course it is. If it costs a miner $10k in electricity, rent etc to mine 1 BTC, they will need to sell at least $10k worth of BTC to cover their cost. If they stop mining, they will have less pressure to sell.

Miners hold over 2mm BTC so hard to see how their actions have no direct impact on price.

My point, is that when electricity costs approach zero, more people will mine which will impact prices.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#263

Post by ftlio »

audunw wrote: post #143

What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition), then it was also a store of value (despite it being a horrible store of value, a high-risk high-reward investment is more accurate). Now it's supposed to be a battery? When the energy being put into it is basically p…

Bitcoin is P2P software. Every model that doesn't start there is wrong. Certainly most hype pieces start somewhere else. All critiques do. It's easy to ignore them.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#264

Post by clomond »

notum wrote: post #6

A bit nonsensical imho. A battery by definition has to be able to produce the same type of energy that was put into it. While correlating crypto with something random every week (Easter bunnies next Sunday?) can be marginally interesting, this instance makes no sense. We can't extract electricity from aluminum or Satoshis, we can buy it though, but that's outside of the battery scope.

Agreed - calling it a battery is definitely a massive conflation with calling it an “energy sink”.

While you could call it (generously) a form of embedded energy, it fundamentally can not turned back into a form of energy directly, making the comparison very silly.

As others have mentioned, Aluminum can actually be turned into a battery to get the energy back. Bitcoin only if you traded it for energy....(still not a battery)

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#265

Post by Liron »

dmitriid wrote: post #257
Liron wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way to regain the energy that was turned into heat while mining bitcoins, so bitcoin is not a battery. You can regain the energy where it’s needed by using Bitcoin to purchase it

You don't regain energy this way. You're buying new energy. That's not how batteries work.

Someone else was going to use a unit of energy to mine Bitcoin, but you supplied it instead when you mined it. You don’t get “new” energy, you get “that energy”, the energy that the person somewhere else would have used to mine the Bitcoins that you mined. That’s the energy you stored.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#267

Post by kneel »

andrewshadura wrote: post #8

At first I thought the author makes fun of Bitcoin fanatics, but it appears he's actually serious? This is just insane.

Author is 100% correct with his assessment.

I don't see a single coherent argument against in this comment section, just incredulity trying to defend itself. Real dynamics at play here.

We're still a ways off from realizing what's going on but I'm happy to see others articulating what the code can only describe.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#269

Post by kneel »

This essay checks out.

Thermodynamics and its higher order effects have profound effects on our modern world. We've been fooled into thinking otherwise, but new forms of money are clearing the fog. This is very exciting.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#270

Post by bingbong70 »

danShumway wrote: post #242
bingbong70 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> waste power

> not a battery

What's a better way to losslessly and securely store human labor/time for future use? Almost everything else (fiat, gold, silver, real estate, etc...) that exists is debased/debasable, deteriorates, or loses value.

The above arguments completely hinge on energy being "wasted". Lossless labor/time storage isn't "waste" to market participants seeing a need for it and putting their hard earned money behind it.

Bitcoin basically turns one of the hardest to counterfeit things in the universe, energy, into money.

How else can you achieve lossless storage without a trustless secured environment (the bitcoin network)? Any multi-decade/multi-century solution that market participants should focus on instead?

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