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Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

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Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#621

Post by foobarian »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #534
mancerayder wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you explain banks and hedge funds putting their money into it? Your explanation is that they want a digital currency, which you're saying is impossible. But it seems like the BTC advocates aren't arguing that, but instead that it's a store of value as a hedge against inflation?

No, I would argue hedge funds and banks are treating BTC like any other investment; They believe it will make money. Banks and hedge funds don't inherently care about currencies. They care about the currency that governs their lives but beyond that everything is an investment. Banks don't provide mortgages because homes provide a stable economy or a stable currency. They do so because they will make money back on wha…

I wonder if more mainstream investors waited a while to make sure BTC is liquid. I don't know the details of this - I guess there must be reliable enough exchanges now to serve customers of that caliber.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#622

Post by sigzero »

notum wrote: post #386
mrmanner wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but also the other way around: A less advanced civilization would have much more trouble with elephants, sea urchins, bacteria, and other natural factors than with humans.

Damn those sea urchins!

Sea urchins unite!

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#623

Post by justAnIdea »

The guy is pound for pound the worst polluter of all the billionaires, flies everywhere in a jet, has a completely ridiculous and wasteful $150M house, imports the sand on his beach from the Caribbean, hoards farm land (biggest farm land owner in the US... farm land which is generallly pretty bad for the environment)... and on top of that, he's not a climate scientist, he's not a medical doctor, he's a former computer engineer and a manager. He also likes burgers. THAT'S IT. Why on Earth would people listen to him on any topic other than how to manage an IT business is beyond me.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#627

Post by rspeele »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #444
mathlover2 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of energy required to rescue a single princess does not increase exponentially over time. In fact it pretty much stays constant. Furthermore, gaming energy expenditures are probably minor compared to the amount spent on Bitcoin these days (last I heard it had an energy footprint equivalent to the Netherlands.) There are also other cryptocurrencies that don't have the same problem as Bitcoin with being incr…

75twh/year only PC gaming and that was year 2015! And PC gaming is smaller market. Now add the whole industry or creating them and the servers running the online parts. And add consoles. And creating all the hardware, mining minerals for them, transportation. The industry is growing like crazy as well. Bitcoin was 122 twh/year I believe. Both gaming and bitcoin kill the planet and are not necessary until global warmi…

I didn't downvote you, but I suspect the reason people did is that for gaming, energy usage is a cost and for bitcoin energy usage is the point. They are completely different systems. Bitcoin's energy usage expands more and more as Bitcoin gets more valuable and/or energy gets cheaper.

If game consoles/PCs get more efficient, they use less power for the entertainment value delivered to the world. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, the fixed amount of energy gaming uses becomes less of a big deal.

If ASIC miners get more efficient, difficulty and hashrate goes up, and they use the same amount of power for the same amount of security delivered to the blockchain. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, miners will use more of it.

The "W" in PoW means work but it could equally mean "waste". The whole reason it's secure is that you look at the total hashrate of the network and go "wow, that is so expensive, nobody would ever burn so much energy just to double-spend some bitcoin". No matter how good hardware gets or how freely available energy gets, it must always be incredibly costly to operate the network, because that's the premise its security is built on.

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#628

Post by vntok »

UncleMeat wrote: post #271
vntok wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one here is arguing for replacement of military force, your brain got stuck by a common fallacy it seems. Notice how displacing some military force usage by changing the motivation or capability for intervention (for example to maintain a currency advantage) might be in itself a Good Thing (tm) and how it does not require replacing armed forces entirely.

"You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force" That was literally a quote from the post being responded to.

Not sure what you are going for here. Indeed, reading a single sentence without considering context typically leads one to faulty conclusions. Note that the previous sentence in the parent post is "Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free."

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#629

Post by Zamicol »

debbiedowner wrote: post #613
jetpackjoe wrote: post #9

There 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.

Why is proof of work so much more popular than proof of stake?

Because PoW is easier to implement correctly than PoS.

PoW can be as simple as checking a hash (in addition to the basic block rules). PoS has a lot more rules, for example Eth has a lot of PoS rules and includes features like slashing which improve economic securities. https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-o...

When rules aren't by implemented correctly it causes situations like Bitcoin's 2013 fork https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork

Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

#630

Post by kybernetikos »

dheera wrote: post #614
kitcar wrote: post #11

Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness). It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans.

Thought question here. What if we hyped up bitcoin to 10X its current value? Wouldn't that mean that per real-world transaction / per unit dollar value it would use 1/10th of its current amount of energy? For example something that would normally cost 0.1 BTC would now cost 0.01 BTC.

No actually, as bitcoins value increases there's more incentive to mine it, as more miners come online the power usage shoots up.
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