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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

#821

Post by thebean11 »

hannasanarion wrote: post #820
thebean11 wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody is using it > no competitively successful commercial activity Those are two wildly different claims but I'll bite anyway: Your argument against DeFi could be made about Schwab, or any brokerage providing margin so I don't find it very compelling. Is selling margin to gamblers not a "competitively successful commercial activity"? Your original claim was that there were no users. > crypto distributed betting m…

Now you're just being deliberately obtuse. > semantics Every competent English speaker knows that the phrase "nobody uses X" is never meant to be taken literally. When I say "nobody uses PowerPC", I mean that its market share is miniscule and the industry has moved on, I am not claiming that there does not exist some nerd somewhere who maintains a 20 year old imac as a hobby, and finding that nerd is not a disproof.…

> When I say "nobody uses PowerPC", I mean that its market share is miniscule and the industry has moved on, I am not claiming that there does not exist some nerd somewhere who maintains a 20 year old imac as a hobby, and finding that nerd is not a disproof.

Well that's bad analogy, because unlike PowerPC there are more users of Ethereum than ever before, and Ethereum is generating more revenue than ever before.

> Self driving cars are new technology. Online betting is not, it has been around since the beginning of the internet. Blockchain is doing nothing but helping the illegal gamblers to hide from law enforcement.

I think you're being obtuse. Ethereum is the new technology here, that enables a distributed betting platform that was previously not possible. Self driving cars are a new technology that enable a type of transportation (existing market, like betting) that previously wasn't possible.

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

#823

Post by willis936 »

tekknik wrote: post #803
Godel_unicode wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly a lot of people who use it for tax evasion, to be sure. One interesting tangible example that this problem exists is the recent removal of large bank notes by the Indian Central Bank, which was done expressly to combat tax evasion and money laundering. The fact that lots of people in India have had serious issues because they were unbanked does seem to indicate that there's a sizable population of…

> My personal belief is that the number one use is for money laundering... Have you ever experienced a natural disaster? One thing you realize quite quickly is that your debit card is useless. That doesn’t mean transactions stop, people are still buying and selling, those with cash at least. If there’s runs on banks, infrastructure outages, etc, those relying entirely on debit and other payment cards won’t be buying…

That's a reason why you might have cash, not why you would use it. For example, you might own a gun in case society collapses. It stays locked in a hard to find place in your house. You don't walk down the street with it on your hip. Similarly, you don't pay for goods and services with cash when you're not in a crisis unless you're breaking some law, whether or not you want to figure out if you are or not.

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

#824

Post by unkulunkulu »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #554
meowster wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Just because something valuable was already wasted, doesn't make the result valuable.

Agreed, that is why on a long enough timeline someone will end up holding the bag.

A lot of people are comparing crypto to some kind of ponzi pyramid thing, ie a scam where some people will get rich but a lot will suffer. But isn’t that true about everything, ie smarter/more lucky ones will find ways to increase their wealth and those making suboptimal decisions will get broke? It looks like only when it gets obvious how the scheme works it becomes a scam.

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

#825

Post by meowster »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #554
meowster wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Just because something valuable was already wasted, doesn't make the result valuable.

Agreed, that is why on a long enough timeline someone will end up holding the bag.

It could stabilize at a price and not crash, but who knows.

I sold most of my crypto because it's too risky/sketchy for me now.

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

#826

Post by yolo1two3 »

Why people give a crap what Bill Gates thinks about anything recent is beyond me. Its like the Dave Chapelle Joke about the news station that interviewed Ja Rule after 9/11 to hear what I thought about 9/11. Ive never heard of Bill Gates knowing or contributing anything useful to bitcoin I really dont care what he thinks about that or Corona virus. Oh I actually do care about one single thing only and that is I wonder what he thinks about molesting children and Jefrrey Epstein.

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

#827

Post by s1artibartfast »

CountDrewku wrote: post #818
s1artibartfast wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure anyone is being swayed by Bill Gate's opinion. Who is pushing the idea that he is an expert, or that expertise is even required to have an opinion?

Uh the media... I mean he's everywhere being interviewed constantly on what his opinion is on everything. This obviously promotes the idea (right or wrong) that he has some idea of what he's talking about.

The media also interviews Kanye, Elon, and the cookie monster because they are celebrities but that doesn't mean we have to believe what they say.

I think it is reasonable to think that bill gates has some idea what he is talking about, especially because in this case he is essentially saying 2+2=4. Still, he is not the definitive authority on crypto.

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

#828

Post by yazaddaruvala »

jf22 wrote: post #814
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between short term utilitarian value and long term utilitarian value. BTC might have no short term utilitarian value, but in the long term the utilitarian value is to create a globalized monetary policy. 1. BTC is speculative because it may not actually achieve the goal of a single globalized monetary policy. Some other crypto might become the defacto denationalized currency instead, or maybe no…

>globalized monetary policy Could we do this without burning more energy than entire countries?

Great question, but I'll answer a slightly different question.

> If and when we have a globalized monetary policy, how do we run it without burning more energy than entire countries?

1. You could get all entities governing the market / governing the globalized monetary policy to perfectly trust each other. Seems impossible given the Prisoner's Dilemma is exponentially more difficult to solve as the number of actors grows.

2. It is outside my domain of expertise to know how we can make a trust-less ledger efficient to run. The engineers behind ETH and Nano seem to believe it is possible.

However, given 1. is an impossible problem, and every unique entity that governs the globalized monetary policy will be competing with each other for control. They will all compete in an arms race to control as many crypto nodes as possible (i.e. a war of energy production).

It seems like the amount of energy needed will always be larger than most countries use because otherwise any one country can spin up a 51% attack very easily.

This doesn't mean crypto energy consumption will spiral to infinite as the world's super powers compete. Because, the world's super powers already have to worry about "mutually assured destruction" and as such can "trust" each other not to trigger a 51% attack because that would be treated as a global signal to launch nukes[0].

And like nuclear de-armament, there will likely be a push for the super powers to consume less energy while protecting against a 51% attack. There will be some interesting equilibrium. My guess is the equilibrium will probably be around the energy consumption of the p99 country sorted by energy consumption.

[0] I've never thought about this before, but a 51% attack could be an automated signal to launch nukes. I hope no country removes the humans from the launch process.

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

#829

Post by saalweachter »

willis936 wrote: post #823
tekknik wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal belief is that the number one use is for money laundering... Have you ever experienced a natural disaster? One thing you realize quite quickly is that your debit card is useless. That doesn’t mean transactions stop, people are still buying and selling, those with cash at least. If there’s runs on banks, infrastructure outages, etc, those relying entirely on debit and other payment cards won’t be buying…

That's a reason why you might have cash, not why you would use it. For example, you might own a gun in case society collapses. It stays locked in a hard to find place in your house. You don't walk down the street with it on your hip. Similarly, you don't pay for goods and services with cash when you're not in a crisis unless you're breaking some law, whether or not you want to figure out if you are or not.

There's something like $13 trillion in consumer spending in the US each year, and something like 9% of that is in cash.

That's like $1.2 trillion in boring, normal, law-abiding cash transactions each year.

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

#830

Post by asdff »

CountDrewku wrote: post #817
asdff wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this rage coming from? It doesn't take an expert to see the damage bitcoin is causing for the planet, the exernalities are pretty clearly outlined (although conspicuously ignored by crypto-evangelicals). His quote in the article is true. I also don't understand the attacks on his academic credentials. He had been working in his field since he was 13, he's published in CS, and he was taking graduate level cla…

It's coming from the fact that Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world and has massive sway over his followers. This is dangerous. It's the same reason celebrities speaking on issues they have no idea about is dangerous. People will take his word for truth when he's no more informed than the average citizen on what's happening.

People do that for everyone. It doesn't have to be bill gates. You might believe some conspiracy theory because your uncle shared it on facebook and you trust his opinion more than some domain expert.
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