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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

digiconomist.net

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#271

Post by Taek »

rspeer wrote: post #234
Taek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the courts that enforce the contracts visa makes, the FBI that chases people who commit fraud, the police and jails who enforce the decisions of the court, etc etc. Blockchains can operate without all of those.

A society without contracts, police, or jails is a failed society where you will not be able to reliably power your computer, and where you will be too busy fending off looters to care about blockchain anymore. Bitcoin doesn't even try to replace contracts. Hard-line Ethereum Classic fans think they can replace contracts (they won't).

No that's that makes blockchain so fascinating. It operates well in countries with no infrastructure. Bitcoin is incredibly popular in Venezuela despite being completely illegal and actively hunted by the government, and despite the who country being very unstable.

You can't use a blockchain to protect your land rights, but you can use it to protect digital rights and that means you don't need external resources like courts to spend their time on digital rights. They can focus entirely on land conflicts and other physical matters, which will make them cheaper overall.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#272

Post by TomK32 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #267
grwthckrmstr wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should also look at this as % of merchants and users in the world. Is it 10%,50%,or 0.001%?

What percentage of merchants and users accept HKD?

100% in Hongkong, which is also where the most HKD are circulated.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#273

Post by rspeer »

Taek wrote: post #271
rspeer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A society without contracts, police, or jails is a failed society where you will not be able to reliably power your computer, and where you will be too busy fending off looters to care about blockchain anymore. Bitcoin doesn't even try to replace contracts. Hard-line Ethereum Classic fans think they can replace contracts (they won't).

No that's that makes blockchain so fascinating. It operates well in countries with no infrastructure. Bitcoin is incredibly popular in Venezuela despite being completely illegal and actively hunted by the government, and despite the who country being very unstable. You can't use a blockchain to protect your land rights, but you can use it to protect digital rights and that means you don't need external resources like…

So living off of Bitcoin and the black market in Venezuela is your idea of what we should aspire to?

Even if a few people in Venezuela manage to use Bitcoin (propped up by the US dollar, nobody's selling their Bitcoin for Venezuelan currency), that still easily meets my definition of a failed society.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#274

Post by honorable »

Virtually every human business activity is ultimately conversion of energy into money. Even if an entrepreneur purchases other goods than energy (in the manufacturing process), their price is eventually dependent on their energy consumption. The price of hiring a human worker is also dependent on overall that person's energy consumption. There is no difference between mining BTC, gold or any other business activity. What matters is how much provision one can make but it also converges (decreases) to some value set by the free market.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#275

Post by whateverman2 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #267
grwthckrmstr wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should also look at this as % of merchants and users in the world. Is it 10%,50%,or 0.001%?

What percentage of merchants and users accept HKD?

Or hamburgers? After all, you can trade them for the local currency. Hamburgers must be a currency!

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#276

Post by maxerickson »

Digiconomist wrote: post #269
jstanley wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in that case it's only ~2 houses rather than 5.58? Is this your website? Do you think the figure should be made more accurate?

Ah no, it's 5.58 for the current 22%. If it actually gets to 60% it would be much worse.

If you aren't going to disclose your actual assumptions and methodology you should probably delete all the text that purports to do that.

Will save people time.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#277

Post by alkonaut »

alister wrote: post #44

You can't compare Bitcoin to Visa. Visa is merely a payment sytem -- a means of transfer of money that already exists. Visa is not money. Bitcoin however is money. As well as being a payment system. The correct comparison would be to compare the cost of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars or gold. Gold requires hundreds of dollars per ounce and untold energy to extract. U.S. dollars require the existence of a powerful economy an…

> money that already exists

What does "exist" mean? The currency exists, but the amounts transfered over visa and other systems is not related to how much physical banknotes exist.

I haven't touched a banknote or coin in over a year. If they didn't exist I wouldn't have noticed.

You could argue that puts me in the hands of banks and visa/mc and you'd be correct. They know more about me than I'd like. But I hope the energy cost of my transactions are pretty low. More and more stores no longer accept cash, meaning they have no transports for cash.

The currency I use is not backed by a large gold reserve nor a huge military. Just a regular national bank of a small country.

So visa isn't money, but a central bank, commercial banks and visa can maintain a currency without the need for a lot of physical money, and hopefully with reasonable energy use.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#279

Post by alkonaut »

TekMol wrote: post #21
iaw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that justify wasting enough electricity to power Dallas, Texas in the mean time?

Obviously it generates enough value for some people that they are willing to pay for it. Watching television probably uses up even more energy. And I would argue it has a negative impact on life quality. But who am I to decide what people should value?

Incandescent bulbs provided light and people were happy to use them.

They were outlawed for the simple reason that the problem they solved wasn't efficient compared to other ways of solving the same problem.

The same thing will happen to cars with internal combustion engines.

People may value the sound of combustion engines or the warm glow of incandescent bulbs but as a society we don't care what they value since we share the effects of externalities.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#280

Post by alkonaut »

jstanley wrote: post #29
iaw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that justify wasting enough electricity to power Dallas, Texas in the mean time?

It's not "wasted". The miners wouldn't spend the energy if they weren't getting a good return on their investment. Just because you don't like bitcoin doesn't make it a "waste" of energy, any more than mining gold is a "waste" of energy if you don't like gold.

If gold could be found without excessive energy use then it would be a waste to spend a lot of energy digging for it.

If there was a good low energy alternative to PoW then it's a waste of energy to use that method of validation.

Like incandescent bulbs are a wasteful way of making light when there are more efficient ways.

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