This is the new "blockchain not bitcoin". Why do VCs feel the need to post reductive grand statements like these?
Bitcoin as a Battery
81–90 of 319 posts
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#82Even if one accepts the underlying assumption that bitcoin "store" the energy wasted on "mining" them, the theory espoused in the article simply does not hold water. If a new energy source becomes available, so 10x as much energy as before gets put into aluminum smelting, you end up with 10x as much aluminum. Bitcoin "mining" does not work that way. The computations are an artificial hurdle erected to hit a predeterm…
What happens when you print 10x the money... let’s see shall we, they are doing it now!
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#83Batteries can release energy. Bitcoin cannot. Neither can aluminum.
Bitcoin consumes vast amounts of energy, far more than "traditional" payment systems (per transaction), and denying that reality helps nothing. Bitcoin is an energy-wasting system. Fix that problem if you want to see wider adoption; don't just pretend there is no problem.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#84Ah, I love how people love to paddle flawed ideas in order to protect their mindset.
This article goes into great depths to explain all the fallacies when it comes to energy and bitcoin: https://www.ofnumbers.com/2021/02/14/bitcoin-and-other-pow-c.... tl;dr is that bitcoin is just wasting energy and no amount of text will help improve that situation. It should be outright forbidden.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#85It's more like "embodied energy" than battery
If anything it’s a record of energy transformed from electricity to heat, little else.
The energy isn’t still present in the Bitcoin.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#86> crypto mining is driving the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
Why is waste a good thing if it's renewable? It's the argument I see brought up almost every time. It feels like people are conflating renewable with a infinite energy source.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#87 In a sense, the aluminum coming from Iceland is like a battery. What is a battery? A way of shifting both the location and the time-of-use of energy.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of the energy used by a processor is dissipated as heat? If it's a significant amount, perhaps it could be recovered in some way?
It can be utilized for heating human occupied spaces. Humans need a lot of heating.
Then the argument of "we will just stick the miners in Iceland where renewable energy is cheap" falls apart. If you want to mine where humans are then you need to mine with grid electricity.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#89This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. If bitcoin was changed to require a fraction the amount of electricity all of these ideas would suddenly fall apart. Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power a bitcoin farm is just completely nonsensical and does noting to help with the shift to renewables.
If bitcoin would be fully powered by renewables, do you still think its energy consumption would be a problem?
Yes. Energy spent on Bitcoin is energy not spent on something else, even in a world where everything is powered by renewable energy. We do not live in a world where everything is renewable, and renewable energy spent on Bitcoin means whatever non-renewable power is being used elsewhere instead of being eliminated. It is also a myth that renewables have no negative environmental impact: metals have to be mined/smelted/etc., chemicals of various kinds are used, and there is waste from the manufacturing processes. Ideally we would be working towards more efficient technologies that use less energy to accomplish whatever task (and for the most part we have been doing that).
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#90From OC:
> One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.
Yup. Money is weird.
Measurement of value, accounting of debts, commodity to be collected.
David Graeber's book Debt has a pretty good survey of our evolving, manyform, paradoxical thinking towards money and related metaphors.
As for crypto currency, I mostly agree with Mark Cuban's conclusion they're collectibles. Ergo, they're useful for escrow use cases, like exfiltrating money and swapping assets.
I'll believe crypto currencies are proper money once a government accepts them as payment for taxes.