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Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.
In the future I hope we use this supply for something else but in the short term it solves the issue of no one wanting to invest in and improve renewables.
I'm a Bitcoin skeptic, but mentioning "fundamental value" when talking about currency seems incongruous. The "fundamental value" of bitcoin is whatever people think it's worth. Just like USD.
I think the problem, though, is with the concept of value itself.
To my knowledge, the value of something is necessarily a personal assessment that individuals 1) make for themselves and 2) by a process that they do not and can not fully comprehend.
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This would be a reasonable stance if Bitcoin were just another activity, but it’s unique in its energy profile. What other technology is designed so that energy efficiency improvements are absorbed and nullified (through the difficulty adjustment mechanism)?
No design needed. If the price of gold doubles, twice as much resources can be invested to dig up a ton of gold.
I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change (see block size debate).
Ethereum hasn't even migrated to "Ethereum technology". They have been claiming for years that they are planning to move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Maybe someday they will. My take on this: I remain unconvinced that any form of Proof of Stake can give the same security properties we easily get from Proof of Work. I won't say never, but getting Bitcoin to move would take a very convincing argument about the…
The merge from Eth1 to Eth2 is expected to happen this year or after. There shouldn’t be any significant delays now because Phase 0 was the biggest hurdle with research and technical dependencies that didn’t exist yet, like BLS signatures.
There’s no way Bitcoin will move to PoS without another contentious fork.
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> Watt-hour of hydro or solar that goes to mining Bitcoin could have been used to reduce demand for power generated from fossil fuels. No, that power would have gone to reducing the price of power and people would have found new uses for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
I love the Jevons paradox but it has limits. Per capita energy consumption in the US peaked in 1979 and has dropped 14% in the last 20 years. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...
Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.
Video gaming has more environmental impact than bitcoin. So do porn sites. Bitcoin just seems like an easy target because people are more directly profiting off of it.
Don't like something? Build something better. Opinions in news media are worthless.