Whats worse for the planet are governments, like those in Venezuela, that are causing so much human suffering that their population needs the existence of BTC to survive.
"What about..."
There are better solutions.
Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
311–320 of 862 posts
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#312Still no valid usecase found for Bitcoin, aside from being a number-is-green-and-goes-up currency. Lightning is unused. TX fees are stupidly high. We're dedicating ASICs powered by entire coal plants to mining bitcoin. And before you, commenter to this post, say anything, no, your Eth/Doge/Xrp/Monero/Tether/scam-ipo-of-the-day is not more valuable. NFTs are worthless. No, being distributed does not make your favorite…
I'm with you up until the last part. If people want to gamble with their money and get something out of it, that is their right. I just wish people with money had a little shame and didn't spread this fairytale of these crypto currencies being anything other than a lottery ticket. The question 'how much is enough' from the movie Wall Street often comes to mind every time I see some rich scumbag like Chamath promoting…
> If people want to gamble with their money and get something out of it, that is their right.
And if people want to ruin the air for everyone else by wasting energy on some libertarian wet dream, that's their right, too.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because he's a billionaire doesn't mean he has the time or interest to deep dive into all emerging technologies, or possible tech bubbles
No, just because he's a billionaire doesn't mean any of those things. It's just that Bill Gates is legendary for the amounts he reads and his recall ability, and his contributions to many topics outside of just managing MS (state of the art algorithms, erradictinc malaria, nuclear energy etc). I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not. So you can see how funny it is when a random guy on HN says "just because h…
Fair enough. But for every bill gates we can find a mark cuban, michael saylor etc who are extremely excited about bitcoin. So I still think it is uninteresting.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could anyone explain to me how proof of stake works (as opposed to proof of work), and how it is better? Has proof of stake been proven to be as robust as proof of work? EDIT: The wikipedia article is easy to find[1]. However it is really short, looks incomplete, and has a lot of “citation needed” after each point. So I would rather ask on HN. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake
No, it has in fact been proven many times over in many research white papers to be fatally flawed and that's why no serious cryptocurrency would implement proof of stake.
Still asking out of desire to learn: How has it been shown to be flawed? With what kind of experiments? Which are the flaws? How to they manifest them self (e.g. how could you exploit them with PoS but not with PoW)?
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. That's only true if you discount the US government as the third party (at least for USD$) who are involved in every transaction, by virtue of them needing to exist for the $ to have any value or for the seller to accept the $ in the first place i.e for them to know it will still be worth something in…
Eh, it's arguable how much the US Government is determining the worth of dollars rather than cultural consensus. I can guarantee that in the event of a zombie apocalypse where the government falls, USD would be used for a long time after.
the us government is a cultural consensus, just like the dollar. there's not much space between the two.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. What? This may be the worst false dichotomy I've ever seen.
How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.
I'm enjoying the idea that launching a violent invasion of the store still counts as "paying" in this scenario.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#317The irony is that the exact society destabilizing grand visions of the future billionaires advocate for are some of the main drivers behind people embracing Bitcoin. If you push a "you own nothing" WEF approved dystopian tech oligarch reality don't be surprised when people adopt an asset that cannot be confiscated by the government.
I find it really cute that people think that a fully transparent public ledger, where every transaction is written for all to see, is the way to escape government control.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's odd to me that people think Bitcoin can be free of "force" long term. Bad guys can point a gun at your head and demand you login into Coinbase to transfer coins to them. What happens if the government makes Microsoft give them admin accounts to the Bitcoin repo? What happens if there is a fork and China doesn't like it and prohibits miners from adopting it? BTC is way more susceptible to traditional military and…
I don't think it will eliminate the need for the military or police force entirely. I have seen a lot of bold bitcoin claims but I don't think anyone really does. My post was referring to how the US has killed lots of people to keep strong dollar. I think its feasible that a true global currency (possibly bitcoin) could prevent violence like this.
Keep in mind that the US government has an incentive to keep the US dollar as the currency used for most of the international trade.
If Bitcoin would become a risk to that status, would the US government just give up and admit defeat or would it outlaw usage of it?
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#319Bitcoin is a beautiful concept that has been bastardized by economies of scale. The mining concentration is decreasing its security over time. The centralized block structure and exorbitant fees will afflict it more and more as it grows. Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. I truly be…
>Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? The more remote the energy source, the higher the cost to deliver it to a centralized grid, meaning it will probab…
> If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy?
Well first of all you used a ton of energy to get it to space. But yes, I would definitely worry about it. There are a ton of other CPU intense jobs you could do with a rig like that that would be more beneficial to humanity. Medical research for example.
It doesn't matter where you do the computation, that energy could always be used to do something more meaningful.
The same is true about a lot of computation that is done now. But bitcoin is far more "wasteful" of compute than most other things.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#320There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.
You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone . Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. T…
cash is just a physical distributed ledger
there are many problems with bitcoin but this really isn't one of them. most dollars aren't real either. dollar transactions bounce all the time.
and there will always be some kind of cash counterpart to any electronic payment system. how else would people buy contraband or work under the table?