301–310 of 361 posts
The crypto hate here is ridiculous. Every thread about crypto is the dropbox thread x 10. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where the government dictates what is and isn’t a useful use of energy, the constant bitcoin electricity usage hysteria is a waste of everyone’s energy. :-)
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Maybe it would make more sense to you, but not to most people I think. Electricity has much better uses than cryptocurrency.
If only we had an open, decentralised mechanism to figure out what's a better use of a limited resource is. Oh wait. That's exactly what "cost" is.
In this example it prioritizes made-up computer money for already rich people over a Kazakh citizen having heating or being able to refrigerate food.
It's a terrible mechanism for most things.
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>If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners, doesn't that make the country better off? How does that work?
If mining is profitable that means electricity is costing less than the proceeds of mining. If these miners are Kazakhstani, presumably they are spending the majority of these gains in-country, or are paying taxes on the proceeds. As such this should be a net gain for Kazakhstan, since I assume the majority of people buying the crypto the miners are generating are not in fact Kazakhstani. This doesn't seem complicate…
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If you're honestly looking for the best solution to plentiful, on-demand, cheap electricity, energy storage via batteries is a much better solution. Why burn up excess energy from a wind farm, rather than storing it to be reused during peak periods?
Batteries are actually terrible at storing large amount of energy for any significant period of time, otherwise this would be the solution everywhere
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Oh dear. I don't remember who said that crypto is Lululemon, Amway, multi-level marketing for tech guys, but it's amazing the similarities. In a discussion on Proof of work does not scale, cannot scale, will choke out production in the economy going forward because of its design, a person responds with say "you're right, that product is bad. Don't buy that one instead buy this one". Does this other one solve any of t…
Lululemon is a regular clothing retailer, with no MLM, membership or even loyalty program at this time. You can't earn any money by re-selling their clothes, you'd probably get sued if you tried. You probably mean LuLaRoe, a brand that is capitalizing on the name similarity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuLaRoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lululemon_Athletica
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Oh dear. I don't remember who said that crypto is Lululemon, Amway, multi-level marketing for tech guys, but it's amazing the similarities. In a discussion on Proof of work does not scale, cannot scale, will choke out production in the economy going forward because of its design, a person responds with say "you're right, that product is bad. Don't buy that one instead buy this one". Does this other one solve any of t…
So you think I'm a multi-level marketer? Is it even possible to prove otherwise? I just happen to believe in that project and like to talk about it. Am I supposed to not talk about this stuff? I don't particularly care that energy is being spent on cryptocurrency. What I hate is the fact that energy is being spent on bitcoin in particular. The energy is not supposed to be wasted, it's supposed to buy us something . N…
And do you own any Monero?
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An important distinction here, this really only applies to PoW (proof of work) tokens. The original philosophy for Bitcoin being proof of work is that you had to give up something (electricity) to produce it. Your comment is very true for Bitcoin and other PoW tokens but that will soon be in the rearview mirror as more and more coins either come out as PoS (proof of stake) or migrate to it (in the case of Ethereum),…
This has been a popular defense for several years now. For awhile I too bought into it. But there are real questions about whether it can ever work and won't in fact be vulnerable to attack. The best evidence for this is that PoS hasn't happened despite years of talk about it.
At this point PoS is quite prevalent among modern blockchains (Cosmos, Solana, NEAR, Algorand, Polygon, Cardano, ...). As far as I know, there have been no successful attacks based on PoS's theoretical weaknesses, like its reliance on weak subjectivity. Some PoS networks like NXT have been in production for nearly a decade now. Isn't that fairly strong evidence that PoS works fine in practice?
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I can't be that much since we've had long distance high voltage transmission lines for decades, even in relatively poor countries. Plus, if you really wanted to because there was no other use, you could, you know, shut down the hydro power plant and return the land to nature. Hydro power plants still have an environmental impact, no point in running them for what is practically, speculation.
In the US, the people who pay for those lines are the consumers and it isn't cheap to run. This translates to more expensive power bills. Shutting down the dam isn't going to happen. It is split by Canada and the US and does more than just power Coinmint.
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If you're honestly looking for the best solution to plentiful, on-demand, cheap electricity, energy storage via batteries is a much better solution. Why burn up excess energy from a wind farm, rather than storing it to be reused during peak periods?
Batteries are actually terrible at storing large amount of energy for any significant period of time, otherwise this would be the solution everywhere
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If you're using resistive heating, a computer is about as efficient as a space heater. I have not recently done the math, but I'm pretty sure in my area its still more economically efficient to heat my home with natural gas than resistive heat. Obviously, emissions are a concern, future price uncertainty of fossil fuels, etc. Not the best way forward. However, heat pumps in my area can make a ton of sense. They're fa…
I use NatGas to heat my house here in Alaska (in-floor radiant heat, quite efficient). But I also have wood burning stoves and am surrounded by forest. If the price of NatGas increases to the point it becomes unaffordable, trust me when I say my carbon footprint will go up dramatically. NOT heating my house is not an option in the winter here.