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Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

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Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#81

Post by incrudible »

bingbong70 wrote: post #78
incrudible wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have unlimited leverage to buy Bitcoin, you have unlimited leverage to buy any other asset. All the billionaires in the world are worth 11 trillion dollars. How much are they realistically going to allocate to Bitcoin, to support a >1 trillion market cap? Bitcoin is like gold in that it just "sits there", it doesn't do any work. If gold can drop 30% over a few months, despite all the pandemic fears, then Bitco…

>If you have unlimited leverage to buy Bitcoin, you have unlimited leverage to buy any other asset. The hardest, most inflation protected and liquid asset wins. Bitcoin. >How much are they realistically going to allocate to Bitcoin, to support a >1 trillion market cap? Bitcoins adoption example = make BTC just 1% of your portfolio, wait, that 1% is now worth more than the other 50% of your portfolio...you can guess w…

> The hardest, most inflation protected and liquid asset wins. Bitcoin.

Bitcoin realistically isn't any more liquid than an ETF, you need to go through similar on/off ramps, and the tax considerations are also comparable.

> Two words, "Ape In".

"Ape in" can lead to "chimp out".

> Lossless store of value is "work"...if your billion dollar nest egg in fiat is losing 10-20% per year due to currency debasement, assets that result in not losing that $200M aren't doing valuable work?

What I mean by "not doing work" is that one Bitcoin stays one Bitcoin over time. A company can grow and pay dividend. Real estate has people working to pay for its rent. Currency debasement affects all asset classes, including stock and real estate.

Then the question becomes: Why would you put money in an asset that doesn't do any work? The answer is that you want to be decorrelated from certain risk. This is a fair argument for Bitcoin (or gold) in terms of portfolio diversification, but it's not a good argument for a large allocation.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#82

Post by bingbong70 »

incrudible wrote: post #81
bingbong70 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you have unlimited leverage to buy Bitcoin, you have unlimited leverage to buy any other asset. The hardest, most inflation protected and liquid asset wins. Bitcoin. >How much are they realistically going to allocate to Bitcoin, to support a >1 trillion market cap? Bitcoins adoption example = make BTC just 1% of your portfolio, wait, that 1% is now worth more than the other 50% of your portfolio...you can guess w…

> The hardest, most inflation protected and liquid asset wins. Bitcoin. Bitcoin realistically isn't any more liquid than an ETF, you need to go through similar on/off ramps, and the tax considerations are also comparable. > Two words, "Ape In". "Ape in" can lead to "chimp out". > Lossless store of value is "work"...if your billion dollar nest egg in fiat is losing 10-20% per year due to currency debasement, assets th…

>Bitcoin realistically isn't any more liquid than an ETF, you need to go through similar on/off ramps, and the tax considerations are also comparable.

The on and off ramps are heavily limited in ETFs. Bitcoin can be purchased/sold P2P without counterparty or exchange custody risk. Many ETFs regularly miss the inflation hurdle, all ETFs are not permissionless, and can go bankrupt. Also, have you ever tried selling an ETF at 2am on a Saturday?

>A company can grow and pay dividend. Real estate has people working to pay for its rent. Currency debasement affects all asset classes, including stock and real estate.

Real estate/company resale market isn't as liquid as bitcoin's and they are not immune from catastrophic failure, degradation over time, or agency related downside risks. Also, ever tried selling a $200M home/company on a Saturday at 2am?

For comparison, anyone can liquidate $200M of Bitcoin in 10-20 minutes and top exchange order books are thick enough to absorb that volume with little price slippage.

You are trying to separate the unique combination of properties bitcoin has and individually address them with an alternate asset. The real work you have to do is find an asset with all of the valuable properties mentioned, working in unison, that also wins the hardest money contest. Unfortunately, you can't and that's why bitcoin wins as a store of value, especially over a long time horizon.

TLDR Every asset is a shitcoin compared to "Energy Money" aka Bitcoin. Price action and growing depth of market proves that.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#83

Post by cableshaft »

scientismer wrote: post #72
vmception wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gold actually peaked in Aug. 2020. You'd think that at least some of the bitcoin interest would have gone to gold, but it hasn't. Maybe people are selling gold to buy bitcoin, but again, they don't act similarly. To add to this discussion, gold traded range bound for 20 years from 1980 to 2000, across many different economic realities, across several different Federal Reserve money supply increasing policies, in sl…

Personally, I would consider gold as an insurance. The current price does not matter that much. What matters that in case of a catastrophe (financial crash, system crash, socialist takeover, whatever), it would be valuable. I would assume that in case of a system crash, gold would be more likely to retain some value than most other assets. Like think socialist takeover - all other assets (real estate, company stock)…

Same, that's why I have some. Not a lot, but some, in case SHTF.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#84

Post by cableshaft »

inter_netuser wrote: post #66

When Hackernews becomes full on irresponsibly bullish on all things crypto - this is when you sell ALL your crypto. That's the only thing I have learned from this forum, by far the best counter-indicator.

Judging by all the comments I've seen on here I'm pretty sure that's never going to happen, so I guess Bitcoin is now in a permanent bull market.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#85

Post by wqsz7xn »

Nursie wrote: post #20
wqsz7xn wrote: post #11

I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?

Thought experiment - Bitcoin supports fewer transactions than are needed for a mid-sized town, yet uses more power than most small countries. The upper limit of the amount of power a country’s financial system could use is the power footprint of that country. Likely the real usage is a small percentage of that, but that’s the upper limit. Now, given Bitcoin uses more power than countries of millions, but supports the…

The aim wasn't for it to be favourable to bitcoin. I'd honestly just like a comparison.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#86

Post by wqsz7xn »

losteric wrote: post #25
wqsz7xn wrote: post #11

I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?

Not bank transfers, but https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption says > 778,988 - The number of VISA transactions that could be powered by the energy consumed for a single Bitcoin transaction on average (1157.81 kWh). Obviously bank transactions would also come out way ahead, those are essentially a DB update built on trust and for speed, whereas proof-of-work is severely inefficient by design.

Wow! That's what I was looking for. Thanks!

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#87

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

Nursie wrote: post #80
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total market value of BTC is higher than the Russian Ruble. It is securing a lot of value. https://coinmarketcap.com/fiat-currencies/ >That's not just to secure the value of dollars, your comparison is meaningless. Yes the calculation is not complete, but it demonstrates that the other calculations are completely invalid too because it doesn't consider those factors either

The question was what are the efficiencies per transaction. The total market cap of a cryptocurrency is a somewhat meaningless statistic, it certainly doesn't directly translate to value.

> The question was what are the efficiencies per transaction.

Yes and the calculations are all completely invalid. Not sure what you are missing.

You need a whole infrastructure to power a transaction. That means an asset with value, a secure way to broadcast it, for other people to see it, etc. Running the infrastructure and securing it is absurdly expensive for the traditional system; they are even employing perhaps millions of people to run the worldwide network. The human cost is extreme but you are limiting the discussion to energy expended. Unless you consider all this how can you put the energy usage of BTC in context? This is especially true since a system like BTC, the energy used is not even proportional to the number of transactions that are processed. Extrapolations don't even consider that the mining reward is motivating miners but it will disappear completely in future - i.e. the energy is being used to build a system and distribute assets that can exist for endless years. All the logic is a joke

It's like saying it's cheaper to solve an equation by hand than to build software that can do it automatically. But doing it by hand requires human intervention, while that one-time cost of building the software can automate the work, be adapted for myriad usecases and run for the next 1000 years

The consequences of expending the energy to create and distribute this 'unit of account' is profound and incalculable, even if one wants to argue that a decentralised financial system with mass surveillance like BTC will have a negative impact on society

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#88

Post by incrudible »

bingbong70 wrote: post #82
incrudible wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hardest, most inflation protected and liquid asset wins. Bitcoin. Bitcoin realistically isn't any more liquid than an ETF, you need to go through similar on/off ramps, and the tax considerations are also comparable. > Two words, "Ape In". "Ape in" can lead to "chimp out". > Lossless store of value is "work"...if your billion dollar nest egg in fiat is losing 10-20% per year due to currency debasement, assets th…

>Bitcoin realistically isn't any more liquid than an ETF, you need to go through similar on/off ramps, and the tax considerations are also comparable. The on and off ramps are heavily limited in ETFs. Bitcoin can be purchased/sold P2P without counterparty or exchange custody risk. Many ETFs regularly miss the inflation hurdle, all ETFs are not permissionless, and can go bankrupt. Also, have you ever tried selling an…

> Bitcoin can be purchased/sold P2P without counterparty or exchange custody risk.

By definition, you can't exchange Bitcoin for dollars without counterparty risk. Technically you can exchange it over-the-counter or with some guy in a shady alley, but few are willing to do this.

> Real estate/company resale market isn't as liquid as bitcoin's and they are not immune from catastrophic failure, degradation over time, or agency related downside risks. Also, ever tried selling a $200M home/company on a Saturday at 2am?

True, real estate isn't as liquid, but compared to stock, you can live in it and may have some tax advantages. You can have stocks and real estate, you don't really need Bitcoin in the picture.

> You are trying to separate the unique combination of properties bitcoin has and individually address them with an alternate asset. The real work you have to do is find an asset with all of the valuable properties mentioned, working in unison, that also wins the hardest money contest. Unfortunately, you can't and that's why bitcoin wins as a store of value, especially over a long time horizon.

I'm looking at it from an investment perspective, because you are arguing that all the billionaires are going to "ape in". Bitcoin may have all these properties and still be not interesting as a large allocation. The "hardest money contest" doesn't matter, because holding money is not the point of investment.

> Price action and growing depth of market proves that.

Price action doesn't prove anything. Bitcoin can still drop 10+% in a single day.

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