Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated • Hacker News Board

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#291

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

nolantait wrote: post #268

zozbot234 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies do not exactly make it harder to enforce taxes on a landed citizenry. The government is what enforces land property in the first place, and if you're late on your taxes they'll just put a tax lien on your land and ultimately stop enforcing your property rights on it.

Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms. That's how the dynamics are changing. Peter Thiel and New Zealand are a small picture of the future to come. Countries will compete. How much of wealth is really tied up in land? If I can zap my wealth from one side of the world to another without anyone being able to stop me is it really easier to stop capital f…

> Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms.

Better terms are always very appealing, but the "terms" are about governance as a whole, not just paying taxes. That's what attracts assets from outside. Taxes are just a predictable cost of doing business, but bad governance can easily be a showstopper.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#292

Post by tehjoker » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #264

tehjoker wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracies can control the economy deliberately. Democracy without economic control is near anarchy and the democracy is debilitated, subject to the whims of the people that own production.

The US currently has a high degree of economic control AND is still subject to the whims of the people that own production.

That's true, and why the real answer is to depose the owners and have common democratic ownership.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#293

Post by lottin » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #278

lottin wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that a product (e.g. bitcoin) can be designed in such a way as to always increase in price has to be dismissed as crackpottery.

Everything that has a fixed quantity will always increase in price (assuming the Fed continues inflating the currency 1-5% /yr) Land, collectibles, natural resources, Bitcoin: as long as they are priced in USD and USD is constantly devalued year after year - prices will rise.

A fixed quantity only means that the supply is inelastic, it doesn't —by any stretch of the imagination— mean that the price will always increase. The only thing that is guaranteed to increase in price, assuming a positive rate of inflation, is a large basket of goods and services. Anything else is a gamble.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#294

Post by fleddr » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #7

Another industry in need of carbon taxes. Stuff like bitcoin would be a lot more palatable if its users paid for the externalities they saddle upon everyone else from their carbon usage.

Whilst I'm pro Bitcoin, I think a carbon tax is an excellent idea, and a fair idea.

Miners already are self regulating to a degree by increasingly mining using renewables and where possible, stranded renewables (excess remote energy). This isn't really seen by the media as they love to make a story out of a very dirty exception, like an old coal plant.

However, it's very hard to get a holistic view of this progress. I recently read a pretty credible article that completely undermines the conclusion of this HN article. It stated that Bitcoin's energy mix is 3 times greener than most other industries.

Whom to believe? I don't know. Back on point, a carbon tax makes the green incentive hard, instead an optional moral consideration.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

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Post by geysersam » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #128

foepys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that poor people will not be able to keep their fridge powered if energy became too expensive.

Western countries tend to subsidize the basic needs of the poor. I'm sure if it came to it and it became a big issue they would get some governmental aid just like with transit or foodstamps or housing or education or healthcare anything else that slips out of reach for the poor.

If we are going to decide some carbon emissions more essential than others. Why not just exclude them from the carbon taxation to begin with?

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#296

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #234

ARandumGuy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"State control on economic activity" is extremely broad, and can encompass everything from a USSR style planned economy, to the US government breaking up Standard Oil, to even food safety regulations. Given the context of the post, and the general user makeup of HN, I assumed you were discussing economic control based on places like the US or EU. I'm not entirely sure how North Korea or Cambodia fit into the previous…

Places like the DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela are especially relevant when discussing cryptocurrency because it's a technology that allows people in those locations to escape economic totalitarianism. What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

> What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It depends on whether the word "democracy" has any meaning. In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#297

Post by paulmd » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #116

rblion wrote: post #76

The carbon footprint is the bottleneck for crypto. How can it scale without accelerating further ecological collapse? New coins will come along with greenwash in their rhetoric but ultimately you have to trust the science. It's funny how everyone trusts the science when it supports their worldview and ignore it when it doesn't.

Do you realize that bitcoin doesn't require constantly increasing energy use to scale, right? There exists a natural equilibrium of the value of the miner reward, the cost of energy, and the amount of energy consumed.

As the amount of commerce on bitcoin increases, it becomes more desirable to reverse transactions, so there is indeed some ratio of "GDP to energy expenditure" that needs to be maintained for a sufficient level of network security.

So yeah it doesn't need constantly increasing energy expenditure as long as the amount of commerce using bitcoin stops increasing.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

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Post by pessimizer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

hackingforfun wrote: post #243

endisneigh wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a blockchain to do that, and there's a reason voting records for individuals are not made public. It's to protect against coercion, among other things.

Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity. It could be a public key that they generate from their private key. We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly, i.e. making sure people cannot vote twice, but that's possible to figure out. I don't think there's any way to do this without giving trust to some central entity without a public blockchain. The publi…

> We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly

Good luck with that.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#299

Post by geysersam » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #87

foepys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that poor people will not be able to keep their fridge powered if energy became too expensive.

Could the solution be graduated luxury carbon taxes on unnecessary consumption, like private jets, regular flights, non critical home AC, Christmas lights, PC gaming, etc?

Yes, please. Low tax on essentials. High tax on the overconsumption of carbon intensive economic activity in the rich world.

Market value says very little about true value of goods and services globally. Why should we let it decide how to prioritize the little carbon emission we can afford?

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#300

Post by hackingforfun » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #282

endisneigh wrote: post #3

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency. Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One wa…

Accountability could be even easier in cryptoassets in the form of smart contracts and public ledgers. Imagine if the wallet addresses of every politician were public and we could all see every donation -and- large donations would be automatically rejected by a smart contract unless they are signed and identified by the keys of a public notary they have disclosed their identity to. (There is already one public Notary…

I love this idea! But there's no way politicians are going to vote for it. This points to part of the problem, that politicians are first and foremost for themselves, not for their people.