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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#851

Post by glitchc »

fredfoobar wrote: post #810
glitchc wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~600K USD per block is not “small” :). Mining power is directly correlated to cost of electricity. Most mining is located in electricity-rich districts for good reason. It’s the only cost-effective way to sustain the network. Those regions are scarce across the globe, ergo in high demand.

I like how you get so close to the truth and then shy away into your biases. People are funny. Are you going to lead the crusade against Christmas lights? https://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countr...

I'm sorry.. this feels like whataboutism and it misses the point entirely. Christmas trees are hung for festive purposes, not monetary gain. With Bitcoin, electricity is a major cost input that drives miner actions. We see them move collectively to lower energy jurisdictions to keep mining activities as profitable as possible. Hydroelectric dams are the cheapest, most consistent source of energy. It's no surprise that miners move en masse to sources of hydroelectricity. And you can't just throw up a hydroelectric dam anywhere, it's very much a function of geography. Some places are blessed [1], others less so.

If you do have a salient point to make about the "truth," perhaps you should come out and make it. I'm sure a bunch of us would be happy to hear it.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-27/bitcoin-m...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#852

Post by marshmallow_12 »

fredfoobar wrote: post #842
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically almost everything beyond food and medicine is wasteful. BUT cars improve the quality of my life (i like to drive). bitcoins floating through the cybersphere do not. end of story.

Horses are nice, end of story.

HN doesn't stand for Horse News

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#853

Post by marshmallow_12 »

solveit wrote: post #795
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technically almost everything beyond food and medicine is wasteful. BUT cars improve the quality of my life (i like to drive). bitcoins floating through the cybersphere do not. end of story.

That says more about you than it does about cars and Bitcoin. I like having code that nobody can take down but don't drive.

I think most people will agree you have rather singular tastes.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#854

Post by wonderwonder »

boredpandas777 wrote: post #348

Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead. "Bitcoin Is A Waste of Time (and Resources)" What Bitcoin has done is that it taught people they can come together in a sustained flash mob (like an on-the-fly hedge fund operation) and manipulate the price of speculative assets by creating artificial short-term pump-n-dump type demand. Bitcoin has trained our colle…

You are right. I own Btc and other crypto assets for that very reason. The desire to hit big is the primary motivator and it unfortunately bleeds into other investments such as stocks etc. I very much am attempting to go back to the buy and long term hold mentality but you are right, crypto has mentally ruined it for me.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#856

Post by marshmallow_12 »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #562
fredfoobar wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man, horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute like cars. Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations. We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.

Horses also have a lifespan of up to 30 years. These days you're lucky if you can get 8 years out of your car.

not sure what you're doing to your car. Mine is 20 and counting

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#857

Post by ryandrake »

makeworld wrote: post #849
ryandrake wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to haul an old kitchen oven to my dad's house so he can cook dinner, since his failed. Dad lives deep in the mountains at the end of a dirt road, far from any train station. I've got a 20 foot fishing boat sitting in my backyard. I want to take it out on the lake. I'd like to visit my in-laws who live on a farm in a rural town without bus service, 200 miles away. The temperature is a few degrees above freezing…

There are still genuine uses for cars, and I doubt OP would disagree. But in urban areas your example situations aren't relevant. The point is that cars are inefficient in most if not all urban cases.

The anti-car brigade's argument always hinges on assuming everyone lives in urban areas, and only has to go to urban areas. If you constrain the problem space that much, then yea, nobody needs cars. In the rest of the universe, they are indispensable.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#858

Post by teeblo »

UncleMeat wrote: post #846
teeblo wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That BTC I own represents an immutable thing that itself does nothing. Part of BTC's value is probably the hope (speculation) that it will one day be used as an alternative payment system / store of value / whatever, and that will cause it to maintain value. As of right now, a share of AMZN itself does virtually nothing either. Its value lies in the hope (speculation) that one day Amazon will pay us money for holdi…

Mining is productive. It supports the payment system. BTC does not. If we took 90% of all coins, shoved them in a wallet, and destroyed the key it wouldn't change the network's capabilities at supporting payments or storing value or whatever. That's the difference between a productive asset and something else. An AMZN share on the other hand represents some small percentage of actual labor and production being done b…

> An AMZN share on the other hand represents some small percentage of actual labor and production being done by Amazon's employees.

Which is nice on paper but is functionally worthless for virtually all shareholders unless AMZN pays a dividend, no? The only way to generate wealth from AMZN right now is to give it to someone else for more money than you paid for it. If you bought AMZN 20 years ago for retirement, you'd still be waiting for that asset to produce anything on its own. For fun, compare that to the East India companies which paid up to double digit dividends from year one.

To be fair, AMZN is one of the more promising examples of these tech growth stocks, but many of them seem to be trading in a way similar to BTC: pure speculation on an asset which currently does not produce anything on its own -- and has no guarantee that it ever will.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#859

Post by TheGrassyKnoll »

TobyBrull wrote: post #419
trts wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin specifically) Wouldn't it take a large number of resources and coordinated effort to do this? And then the result of a successful attack means that the value essentially drops to zero ... so why invest the effort? Seems like the only entity to have this incentive would be central banks / fiat regimes.

Given that Bitcoin has become quite liquid, there might also be ways to short it. But yes, governments doing it for political reasons would seem like the most obvious incentive.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GBTC?ltr=1

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#860

Post by yesbabyyes »

lordnacho wrote: post #697
fredfoobar wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will an electrobike take you home when you are blind drunk? What do we do when you run out of charge on your electrobike? what happens when there is a blackout? I don't think you've thought through all the problems properly.

> Will an electrobike take you home when you are blind drunk? Is this really the USP of horses? Do they even do this?

They do. Source: a neighbor where I grew up used to ride quite a lot, and drink even more (he has since given up both). After a particularly wet night at a neighbor's place, some 7-8 km away (or half that, going straight through the forest like a horse), his friends simply heaved him on to his horse and sent him home.
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