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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#531

Post by webinvest »

random_kris wrote: post #415
webinvest wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One such trusted party does exist. It’s a non-profit and it’s called the Stellar Development Foundation. It’s cryptocurrency, the Stellar Lumens (XLM) is trusted well enough to be in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by marketcap. It has years of history to look back at. It doesn’t have a inflation rate (0% inflation rate now + occasional coin-burns). It uses orders of magnitude less electricity than bitcoin because it use…

Where are you seeing $250 tx fee on btc? Are you in any way related to stellar? Reported

My mistake, Bitcoin transaction fees are lower around $25 according to this chart[1]. Everything else in my comment still stands though. No I’m not related to Stellar, I’ve just known about Lumens and have used them for a few years now. I figured there might be some people here that didn’t already know about it.

[1] https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#532

Post by berdario »

Siira wrote: post #391
berdario wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nonce used as input of the mining hash function IS random (or rather, arbitrary). Comments like the above are a sad demonstration of the fact that, while Bitcoin was originally an interesting technical project... Discussion of it has now been completely taken over by shills that try to dismiss/refute/hide all of the problems with Bitcoin (or the cryptoasset du jour) to safeguard their bet

You’re just deflecting. Your argument is as invalid as “mutations are random so evolution is false.” Randomness in an algorithm does not mean the algorithm is non-converging.

I never said anything about converging or not. My GP's post simply points out that having repeated computations with arbitrary input is wasteful.

"Your argument is as invalid as..." ROTFL

Wake me up when Bitcoin moves to a PoS consensus

(Btw, I recommend whoever is reading to also steer clear of PoS coins... If you want to invest, look elsewhere)

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#533

Post by arcticbull »

webinvest wrote: post #530
arcticbull wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s cryptocurrency, the Stellar Lumens (XLM) is trusted well enough to be in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by marketcap. lol, Dogecoin is #6 and XLM is #14. Are you saying your currency is less trusted than one with a dog on it?

Possibly, yes? It’s not my cryptocurrency, it’s just one I’ve used and known about for a few years. Dogecoin is something else; I don’t know how that meme coin got so big. Also by your same logic, should we not trust the USDC stablecoin because it’s #18? Lol

Should definitely not trust the USDT stable coin in spite of its position at #5. I'm just saying market cap isn't a function of trust.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#534

Post by webinvest »

SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #514
webinvest wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could. But so far, no PoS coin has ever survived a bear market. Look at Peercoin and Novacoin as examples.

And that right there is probably why Bitcoin is going to persist. They can't afford to become poor themselves easily. So it was never about the technology and all about keeping an entrenched position at all costs.

Things could be different this time around. Polkadot and Cardano are leading the way in PoS and Ethereum might conservatively copy the parts that work. But they could turn out to be just like NavCoin and PIVX after a few years — much lower on the marketcap chart. I don’t know what the winner will be in the future but I do know quite a lot of the past.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#535

Post by webinvest »

arcticbull wrote: post #533
webinvest wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, yes? It’s not my cryptocurrency, it’s just one I’ve used and known about for a few years. Dogecoin is something else; I don’t know how that meme coin got so big. Also by your same logic, should we not trust the USDC stablecoin because it’s #18? Lol

Should definitely not trust the USDT stable coin in spite of its position at #5. I'm just saying market cap isn't a function of trust.

Right on USDT. But Marketcap is a function of overall value and what gives money value oftentimes (but not entirely) is trust.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#536

Post by arcticbull »

ISL wrote: post #372
jokethrowaway wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you on Bitcoin safety (your portfolio is safer because the only thing keeping BTC up is speculation), I don't think you can say the Austrian school is fantasy. It hasn't been attempted and I think deregulation / decentralization of the economy has good chances of getting rid of boom/bust cycles. Without a central bank playing with credit you wouldn't have boom / bust cycles: what's more likely is t…

Boom/bust cycles preceded central banks.

And they were a lot worse when no tools existed to mitigate.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#537

Post by jude- »

fouric wrote: post #505
ben_w wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calm down. FYI this is the worst thing one can say during a discussion. The effect, regardless of intent, is always to annoy the other.

> The effect, regardless of intent, is always to annoy the other. Combined with the further-down "Here, let me Google that for you.", it seems likely that that was the intended effect. It's pretty clear that negative value to the discussion was provided by both comments, in addition to the (subjective) dismissive attitude.

Perhaps this is just a difference in interpersonal communication styles, but if I were so chided in either case, I would have at least taken it to heart. Like, I don't ask questions whose answers can be Googled; I personally find it morally repugnant -- offensive even -- to ask a human to do a machine's job.

The problem at hand is that CO2 emissions exist and must be curtailed. This thread comes from a certain individual's repeated refusal to separate addressing electricity generation's CO2 emissions from moralistic opinions about the downstream use of that electricity. As if Mother Nature cared about our moralizing.

But thanks anyway for the tone-policing. Really adds to the discussion.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#538

Post by jude- »

curryst wrote: post #485
jude- wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you handwaving away my concerns? Calm down. > Speaking of which, can you quantify what things pollute more? You're all over the comments trying to pin the blame for CO2 emissions on the the existence of PoW cryptocurrencies. But if you stop and think about the problem for more than 5 seconds, you'll realize that it's the CO2 emissions , not cryptocurrencies, that are the problem. They were a problem before…

You're right, it is the CO2 emissions, but they're effectively unavoidable. We do not have enough renewable energy sources built right now to support even the current load. Additional load means dirty power plants stay online longer as we wait for enough green energy sources to come online. Even if all the miners were running on entirely green energy, there's an opportunity cost. That green energy could be used to po…

Sure, and this is all true even if cryptocurrencies didn't exist. I'm old enough to remember the days before Bitcoin, where there was similar pearl-clutching about cloud computing.

I'm calling for people to separate the problem of CO2 emissions from moral arguments about the nature of downstream electricity consumption. Mother Nature doesn't give a single flying f*ck about our moralizing; the CO2 emissions are just as bad either way.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#539

Post by HWR_14 »

DennisP wrote: post #420
arcticbull wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's fine, no legitimate businesses hold them. Seriously. Your suppliers are paid in dollars, your tax burden is in dollars based on the conversion price on receipt. To hold them on receipt is wildly irresponsible speculation, as a business.

I don't know whether you consider Tesla a legitimate business but they're holding bitcoins. https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/bitcoin/tesla-up-1-billion-...

Tesla (and Time) hold them as a speculative asset. Keeping a percentage of a corporate treasury in bitcoin is speculation, but possible a reasonable one. Allowing the mixture of funds that people opt to pay you in to determine your corporate allocation of assets seems a bit careless.
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