Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

currentaffairs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 341 posts

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#301

Post by __B_B__ »

criddell wrote: post #70
__B_B__ wrote: post #2

Whining about proof of work. Check. Whining about ransomware. Check. Ponzi scheme. Check. What an organic article and opinion.

Low effort comments ripping on other people’s work contributes nothing to the discussion. You clearly have a different point of view so why not rebut the article or post your own laying out a counter opinion?

Well let me put it to you this way. He whines about proof of work, as is popular to do. Proof of work means to expend resources to produce a true statement such that the cost of lying is prohibitive, because producing an accurate record is better than producing nothing, given the same expenditure.

Cost of refutation is a related rhetorical concept. If this worthless article is going to can a few common critical tropes, all previously addressed, even by other technologies in the same space it aimed at, why should I do anything other than respond with equivalently low effort?

Because you want me to expend the resources? I thought wasted resources were bad? That's the premise of the whining after all, isn't it? Disingenuous, worthless article, preying upon stupidity, fear and moral outrage, which just happened to be filed within days of most cryptos dropping 25% in price, roughly, in the middle of a bear market.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#303

Post by wlll »

fartcannon wrote: post #263
wlll wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's things that use much more power than crypto. The regular banking system apparently uses twice as much as bitcoin, but it actually does something. It's actually useful. We can try to trim power from other things for sure, and we should, but you tell me what other system we could focus on that uses so much power for such little value.

Oh. Well the banks are basically the worst so that seems to favour crypto.

No, the banks use twice as much power for orders of magnitude more transactions per second.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#304

Post by wlll »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #275
wlll wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you honestly blaming cryptocurrencies for climate change, inflation and Russia‘s war against Ukraine? That’s crazy. No, I don't think you understood what I wrote. > Climate change is a long running issue that started waaay before Bitcoin even was invented. What's your point here? Climate change has been around for ages so it's OK to blow a load of electricity on something that's not particularly useful? > Still…

> What's your point here? Climate change has been around for ages so it's OK to blow a load of electricity on something that's not particularly useful? So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment? I mean Bitcoin isn’t consuming electricity just for fun. People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power. Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and…

> So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment?

That wasn't my argument. My argument was that Bitcoin etc. are bad because of the power they consume when as far as I can tell almost all of what happens on these blockchains can be done far more efficiently and faster on existing technology, or in the case of transactions, existing banking infrastructure.

> People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power.

I don't doubt it, it would be nice if they owned their externalities so I could stop being angry with them for it.

> Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and cars.

Things that we (realistically in modern society) need. The alternative to, for instance, washing machines would be to hand-wash clothes.

We don't need Bitcoin. It hasn't enabled anything that couldn't be done already using the banking system, or with existing non-power abusive technology.

> Furthermore, the raw KWh figure the Bitcoin network is consuming (which AFAIK currently is unknown because miners moved all around the globe in the last couple of years) is not a useful measure of its green house gas emissions as we don’t know how it’s energy is created. It could well be on renewables by large percentage as they are cheaper in some countries (e.g. hydroelectricity in Norway) and mining is expensive.

Worldwide power generation is a zero-sum game. There is limited power generation available each day. Right now even though we're trying to move to renewable or green energy, there is not enough of that to power what we need through renewables alone so we use fossil fuel.

If you removed the blockchain load from that system you could reduce the fossil fuel burn by approximately one whole country per day of load.

It doesn't matter where the generation comes from, using any of it to power what is effectively a pointless distrubuted heater is removing our ability to shift away from fossil fuels.

> I was referring to parent‘s blame of the Ukrainian war on cryptos.

Once again, that's not what I wrote. Ukraine is at war with Russia. Much of the rest of the world is at war with Russia by proxy, because most of the rest of the world is sick of Putin's bullshit.

Putin is making shit loads of money from selling Gas to Europe, especially Germany.

If we instead of running PoW blockchains, and used the far more efficient existing banking infrastructure, we could almost completely shut off all of Germany's gas from Russia (at least that portion used to generate electricity), significantly weakening his position.

It's a zero sum game. We're using renewable electricity to power bitcoin so we have to use fossil fuel for other stuff.

Plus, the whole "bitcoin runs on renewables" thing isn't entirely true https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...

> Government regulations to support the transition to renewable energy sources have been pushing prices up for electricity and gasoline already for years, at least in Europe.

I'm pretty sure renewables are actually cheaper to produce than fossil fuels.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#305

Post by wlll »

Havoc wrote: post #300
TimPC wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think it’s a bit disingenuous to call people out for legitimate anger. The appropriate reaction to endless Ponzi schemes is anger. The appropriate reaction to pointless environmental destruction is anger. So “be calm bro, why so angry?” no longer seems like a legitimate criticism. If you want people to not be angry don’t build technologies that are highly destructive and cause immense harm. Other argumen…

>I personally think it’s a bit disingenuous to call people out for legitimate anger. You misunderstand me. They can be angry all day long. My point isn't that they shouldn't be angry, but rather that it makes me doubt that their rationale is balanced. >Bitcoin is literally destroying the world That's true for damn near everything we do. Everything from cars, to space travel to computing to doing laundry. > firestorm…

> [their anger] makes me doubt that their rationale is balanced.

Yould be pretty angry with people who started taking dumps in your backyard, you wouldn't consider yourself unbalanced to feel anger at that right?

Bitcoin is taking a metaphorical dump in my backyard and I'm angry about it. We're likely to blow past the 1.5°C climate target soon, it was too high anyway, we'll probably blow past 2, and I've got two kids who I don't want to die due to food shortages caused by the bad weather, or wars caused by food shortages.

Why bitcoin and not ? Because Bitcoin etc. don't give us anything. Nothing. No-one can point at anything these things are good for. No-one in this thread, no-one before when I've asked.

Shit in your own backyard.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#306

Post by MildlySerious »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #141
MildlySerious wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing crypto does is to make these things available to regular people who aren't rich already. They're happening either way.

You think poor people don't already have a buffet of scams, MLMs and ponzis to chose from?

No, I don't think that. I do think there is still a lot of room left to level the playing field between institutionalized financial schemes, and personal ones. Crypto is a small step in the direction to level the field.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#307

Post by johnwheeler »

ephbit wrote: post #149

> WEAVER: Yes. So let’s take the cost of a transaction. The cost of a transaction in cryptocurrency systemically is the amount being used to protect it. I could build a system that would have the same throughput as Bitcoin, three to seven transactions per second, but with a centralized trusted entity. In fact, not even a centralized trusted entity. Ten trusted entities, only six of which need to be honest, because I…

It’s always “what they don’t understand”.

Here’s the facts: there are two types of people in this world, and which you are has nothing to do with intelligence.

You either participate in these types of activities, and you always have and always will, or you don’t, never have, and never will. It’s like it’s some weird quirk in human nature where God said, 50% of the people have to be this way and 50% have to be that way in order for this to play out.

The participants have an extra hurdle to cross though. They have to watch the zero sum gambling game play out where some people win and others lose and the winners paint themselves as financial geniuses. It’s hard to be around that type of company and not feel bad.

Again, I’m not saying anyone _is_ dumb. The crypto community have many fine people who add all sorts of value to society. But if you’re participating in this game, there’s nothing anyone can do to change your mind because you’ll always have counter examples to point to, and no one likes to admit when they’re wrong, especially to themselves.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#308

Post by shkkmo »

aww_dang wrote: post #284
shkkmo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, really. Those transactions are heavily regulated. You cannot send a 0.000001 USD Paypal transaction for example. How is that due to regulations? There simply isn't much demand for those types of transactions. > Observing that there is a high amount of regulated transactions doesn't account for the demand for unregulated transactions. The growth of demand for regulated online transactions has far out stripped t…

I think if anyone from the pro-economic freedom side of things structured an argument the way you have they would be flagged into oblivion here. >How is that due to regulations? There simply isn't much demand for those types of transactions. Perhaps there isn't demand because they have been regulated out of the realm of the possible with traditional instruments? There is demand, but you are not aware. Tips on Twitter…

To counter my argument that cryptocurrecies hasn't managed to do anything better in online payments and has been outgrown...you provide a list of things that are being done without crypto. I would love to see someone make a killer app for cryptocurrencies that isn't just breaking laws almost as much as I would love to see the credit card cartel get properly distrupted, but at this point cryptocurrency has had it's had it's chance and has almost exclusively caused damage rather than create value.

If you think you see a way to change that go do it rather than posturing to me on the internet about a failed technology.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#309

Post by abalone »

doomroot wrote: post #187
abalone wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What like a policy that bans extremely energy intensive things that offer no value other than to construct Ponzi schemes at rapid clip? Yeah we need that policy. (Happy to hear what value crypto offers that can’t be done with more energy efficient mechanisms.)

Sorry to break this too you but bitcoin would need to be banned by a serious amount of governments to have any real effect on energy consumption. This is by design. The wiser policy choice is to incentivize the large mining farms in your country to mine on renewables and let a digital gold exist. The point of (good) cryptocurrencies is that they require real energy to coerce. Because of this I’ve felt safe keeping sa…

So the question was “what value crypto offers that can’t be done with more energy efficient mechanisms,” and your answer is.. you can transact in crypto. This is trivially circular reasoning.

Re: Why All Cryptocurrency Should Die in a Fire

#310

Post by cuteboy19 »

MildlySerious wrote: post #306
cuteboy19 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think poor people don't already have a buffet of scams, MLMs and ponzis to chose from?

No, I don't think that. I do think there is still a lot of room left to level the playing field between institutionalized financial schemes, and personal ones. Crypto is a small step in the direction to level the field.

So do you think the average crypto holder can print billions of $ out of thin air like bitfinex and tether?

The crypto ecosystem is as far away from level as possible. You need to have major connections with the powers that be to be remotely successful

Post reply on HN