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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

#711

Post by moralsupply »

coinward wrote: post #692

Readers, you are discussing Bitcoin before the 4th of 32 halvenings. Things aren't so clear to most and dust has not settled. One thing is certain, it is not too late to read the whitepaper and learn what the emergence of the first new base layer money in 5000 years truly means and get your head around the significance. Now, to the article. This is a write up response to a comment one of the world's richest men said…

Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is.

They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion.

HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption.

Let them learn the hard way. If they get any clue on what Bitcoin is, there's the risk they may get rich and attain some power in the future, which will only make matters worse.

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

#712

Post by coinward »

moralsupply wrote: post #711
coinward wrote: post #692

Readers, you are discussing Bitcoin before the 4th of 32 halvenings. Things aren't so clear to most and dust has not settled. One thing is certain, it is not too late to read the whitepaper and learn what the emergence of the first new base layer money in 5000 years truly means and get your head around the significance. Now, to the article. This is a write up response to a comment one of the world's richest men said…

Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is. They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion. HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption. Let them learn the hard way. If they…

what a waste of intellect

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

#713

Post by imtringued »

zamalek wrote: post #608
saalweachter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. Many of the other comments have pointed out how money doesn't have this quality either. This comparison is a wash: buy gold if that's your goal (at least until we find/mine a gold-laden asteroid). The other comparison is who you have to trust to insure the value of that currency. In the case of cash, it is your government/Tr…

>I am originally from Zimbabwe and have much to say about trusting the government with insuring the value of cash...

Have you ever thought about how to boost the economy and thus the ability to exchange zimbabwean dollars for more services and goods? Because that is what is necessary to get the zimbabwean dollar back in order.

Anything whose price is going up is scare and its domestic production must be expanded.

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

#714

Post by anoncake »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #408
jedberg wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

The point is that without btc the energy wouldn’t have been captured anyway. In theory if all btc miners used only renewables, the price of renewables would drop, and become more affordable for others, and the net impact on the environment would be positive. Renewables are infinite, we are constrained by our ability to capture them efficiently enough to beat fossil fuels. There are probably other factors at play that…

> In theory if all btc miners used only renewables, the price of renewables would drop, and become more affordable for others, and the net impact on the environment would be positive.

No. If demand rises, so do prices. Not the other way round.

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

#715

Post by Dma54rhs »

rspeele wrote: post #627
Dma54rhs wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

Yeah I'm well aware. Despite not being a fan of bitcoin I'm sure many can claim entertainment value from it as well. Either tech or gambling. So I guess its a matter of taste and for me they are both useless industries.

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

#716

Post by capableweb »

Zamicol wrote: post #618
SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're spot on. The ETH fans love to wax poetic about PoS and how it's always around the corner and coming soon. It's been that way for ages. Lightning Network is similar. It's been perpetually 6 months away for years. Frankly, I'll be impressed if the current power structure within PoW cryptos doesn't find any way to hamstring PoS, mostly because they have a vested interest in keeping everything the way it is now.

Eth 2.0 is running right now. It is 100% PoS.

Well, yeah, the Beacon chain is running but shards is not live nor is the docking of Ethereum mainnet and Eth 2.0, so of course people are not really interested in building on it yet, it's barely in production. Once the two chains work together, I'm sure there will be an explosion of activity.

But until then, we can't really say that Ethereum is 100% PoS, although one pre-alpha project is.

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

#717

Post by qertoip »

GordonS wrote: post #599
yunvme wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. You don't understand Bitcoin. Proof of work is the only way to secure a decentralized system like Bitcoin's. Proof of stake requires trust in a group of validators. An oligopoly of sorts. A proof of stake system is unfit for a decentralized store of value. Alternatives to Bitcoin enriched a central group of people. Bitcoin's distribution was "fair". There is no replicating it. Picture bitcoin in its…

Surely proof of work also requires trust in a group of miners, trusting that 51% of them don't collude? As mining complexity grows, surely this problem is only exasperated, since you need a bigger investment to be able to mine effectively, which would presumably result in an even smaller group of more powerful miners?

So far Bitcoin mining is getting increasingly decentralized in practice - from China to Iran to US to Venezuela.

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

#718

Post by silentsea90 »

jcranmer wrote: post #657
silentsea90 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real power imbalance is the Central Bank's power to confiscate wealth by inflating it away aka money printing, and not to forget the confiscation of physical gold by the US in 1933 (thanks FDR). There is a reason why countries decoupled from the gold standard to fund WW1. They got near infinite access to the nation's wealth. The loser of WW1 ie Germany eventually suffered hyperinflation, as have countries like Zi…

And what stops the bitcoin miners from collectively deciding that their current bitcoin reward is too puny and changing the code to give them 1M bitcoin per block?

Miners access to change the code is the same as you and I. Bitcoin is open source and code changes are reviewed by layers and layers of developers and approvers. Take a look here: https://bitcoin.org/en/development#code-review

Not to mention, they literally have $ millions in vested interest in the success of BTC by virtue of setup and mining costs. Such a move, even hypothetically, unless it is justified somehow, will cause loss of faith in the value of BTC and the fall in the value of BTC will make them lose value in mining as they earn these in BTC as well.

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

#719

Post by capableweb »

jayd16 wrote: post #211
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of funny the goal of crypto was a total new, decentralized, democratic system, and what we end up (to solve the scale issue), is yet another class system where you can vote only in proportion to your wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification

Yes, with POS aren't we just back to a (now programatically enforced!) cabal of bankers that control the money system?

Nope, it's still distributed consensus rather than centralized. If one banker stops being nice, he'll loose all his funds. The current system either ignores people not-being-nice or ejects them, but they'll never lose what they made.

Compared to PoS where the biggest incentive is to be nice.

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

#720

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

hannasanarion wrote: post #671
thebean11 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH is backed by the distributed computer you can pay ETH to execute software on.

And what is the value of a distributed computer? Turns out, virtually nil, because it's been around for 8 years and nobody is using it, because there is no real-world use case for contracts written as software.

At least you could try a quick googling before you write a comment.
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