[HN Gopher] When Bitcoin miners take over a town
___________________________________________________________________
When Bitcoin miners take over a town
Author : edward
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-02-21 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| seibelj wrote:
| Even if the electricity argument succeeds in harming bitcoin,
| luckily there are many Proof of Stake coins such as Polkadot and
| (soon) Ethereum that will use a fraction of the electricity. So
| no-coiners will have to use a different argument. They have
| definitely started pushing this one hard even though IMO it's
| disingenuous given most BTC is mined through carbon-neutral
| sources like hydro and geothermal.
| bob33212 wrote:
| It is really interesting to see the crypto topic become so
| polarized. Either you think it is this amazing revolution that
| will be the future or you are a "No-Coiner" and you are against
| crypto.
|
| During the DOT COM bubble things were not this divided. There
| were certainly plenty of people pointing out that giving a
| company 100M just because they own a domain name may not end
| well, but it wasn't this heated.
|
| I assume this is because of social media. A lot more people
| have voices to point out flaws in the other side's arguments
| and then everyone gets echo chambered into one of two sides
| with the arguments that best support their side.
| Igelau wrote:
| Social media might be an amplifier, but the vehemence with
| which proponents of crypto defend its legitimacy reminds me
| of the people who defend MLMs. If you say "hey, isn't this a
| pyramid scheme?" to folks who have managed to slip into a
| profitable tier of the... well.. _pyramid_ , they immediately
| lash out with circular claims like "obviously this isn't a
| pyramid scheme, because those are illegal!"
|
| So yeah, everyone defending crypto is trying to bootstrap the
| illusion of its value as anything while simultaneously trying
| to un-map it from comparisons to recognizable scams. They
| have more dollars than they should tied to both of these
| dreams.
| bob33212 wrote:
| This is what I'm talking about. You are assuming the worst
| intentions or at least singling out the worst actors.
|
| Because of this polarization I'm having a really hard time
| gauging how many people are actually scammers vs the type
| of person who really thought in 1999 that shoes.com would
| have a monopoly on shoe sales in the future.
| Igelau wrote:
| > You are assuming the worst intentions
|
| I'm not assuming anyone's intentions.
|
| > singling out the worst actors
|
| I might be doing this unknowingly. I only have my own
| perceptions to draw on. Those perceptions, as you rightly
| observe, may be distorted by what bubbles up out of
| social media and HN commentaries.
| eecc wrote:
| It's not carbon-neutral as long as it interferes with
| renewables displacing carbon. I'm totally fine and will jump in
| crypto with both feet the day it stops pissing so much energy
| in the wind
| arbuge wrote:
| A lot has been said about fossil fuel producers not bearing the
| full costs of the externalities of the products they produce.
|
| I think the same now has to be said of cryptocurrency mining. Is
| this activity, and the vast amount of energy and resources it
| consumes, really something which is a net positive for society?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Even if you disregard the massive ecological harm it does,
| bitcoin is still a big negative for society, due to the immense
| amount of crime it enables - ransomware, money laundering,
| scams and fraud.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| I guess by your logic the US dollar USD is also a big
| negative for society then.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| That's my town! And it's actually totally unnoticeable, 98% of
| people in town have no idea.
|
| The real only effect it had on most citizens were the fires that
| got started at a few mines, from electrical overloads. Now it's a
| big pain if you want a large load of power, which makes starting
| a high power demand business a lot harder around here.
|
| We also have a ton of indoor pot farms, this is the best place in
| the country to grow indoors because power is so cheap.
|
| Since article was written a Diamond foundry opened up, pretty
| cool use of tons of power, and just about as useless as Bitcoin.
|
| Edit:spelling
| csomar wrote:
| > That's my town! And it's actually totally unnoticeable, 98%
| of people in town have no idea.
|
| Do you mean that the journalist over-exaggerated the story in a
| very heated topic to get eyeballs. I'm, for one, very
| surprised. /s
| schmuelio wrote:
| Diamonds aren't quite as useless as bitcoin currently. Bitcoin
| - as far as I'm aware - is currently mostly used for
| speculation. Whereas diamonds are very useful in many
| industrial processes which require hard materials (think
| cutting/grinding tools).
|
| One could argue that diamonds are considerably more useful than
| bitcoin, most of the world's diamond consumption is for
| industrial use rather than jewelry.
| calabroa wrote:
| Side note - we've done a lot of work in Wenatchee on their
| conversion to electric transit buses, which also benefit from the
| low cost electricity from hydro. Great little town
| m00dy wrote:
| Hi Calabroa,
|
| I would like to ask a couple of questions related to the work
| done in Wenatchee. I couldn't get your contact info in your
| profile. Would you send me an email to eren@countingcarbons.co
| ?
|
| thanks
| lxeiqr wrote:
| In my opinion, Bitcoin's Proof of Work is the biggest downside of
| that cryptocurrency (mostly due to extreme power consumption of
| the network). Moreover, the conservative approach of its
| developers to new concepts means that it's quite unlikely that
| the situation is going to change in coming months or years.
| Regardless, I wonder whether there are alternatives that could
| significantly reduce power usage of the whole network without
| making it more susceptible to various attacks. I've heard of
| Proof of Stake (Ethereum is planning to switch to it) or
| alternative PoW algorithms (such as Monero's RandomX), but I'm
| not experienced enough to tell how would these solutions scale
| for a cryptocurrency as big as Bitcoin today is.
| qertoip wrote:
| Precisely the opposite, Sir.
|
| Employing PoW to protect against Sybil attack in anonymous
| network is the very invention that made Bitcoin possible.
|
| Without PoW you must ID participants, which makes system
| trivial to regulate or shutdown (see Facebook Libra, or
| security fraud case against Ripple). And no, PoS isn't the
| answer, because PoS implies a handful of biggest exchanges
| control the coin, because they genuinly stake the most.
|
| If Bitcoin was PoS, Mt Gox would run Bitcoin to this day!
| ralusek wrote:
| Proof of Work and Proof of Stake are not too different in
| terms of what it would take in order to control the network.
| Stake and access to computing power are both just functions
| of being able to assemble sufficient resources so as to
| represent a sizable enough portion of control.
| ralusek wrote:
| What's interesting is that all of the magic of crypto comes
| from:
|
| - Signed transactions being broadcast onto a p2p network
|
| - This network being visible to anyone who is interested
|
| The much less important part of crypto is exactly how the
| shared ledger is assembled. So long as these transactions are
| put together in a relatively timely manner, and no transactions
| are being willfully excluded, whatever mechanism used for
| assembling the ledger doesn't really matter that much. Proof of
| work is literally just a time-gated lottery for some entity to
| be the one that gets to say "I am submitting the next update to
| the ledger." They're not providing any service to the network
| that a single shitty chromebook couldn't provide on its own,
| the time-gated proof of work is literally just to arrive at a
| consensus. There are so many alternatives that make more sense
| than this.
| qertoip wrote:
| > The much less important part of crypto is exactly how the
| shared ledger is assembled
|
| No! It is of *critical* importance how the shared ledger is
| assembled, because Bitcoin's threat model assumes the World's
| governments descending upon the shit, eventually!
| ralusek wrote:
| The part of critical importance is ECDSA (or any
| public/private key DSA), and p2p networks. With that
| technology alone, you have the basis for a functional
| decentralized currency.
|
| The blockchain assembly with proof of work, while an
| interesting and very creative solution, is just one of a
| multitude of ways you can arrive at a consensus.
| tromp wrote:
| Spot the error in this sentence:
|
| "By the end of 2018, according to some estimates, miners here
| could account for anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of all bitcoin
| mining in the world, and impressive shares of other
| cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum and Ripple. "
| mgberlin wrote:
| On the one hand, we have the biggest crisis to ever face
| humanity, where all of our lives literally hang in the balance
| and daily we're seeing the effects from wildfires to cold blasts.
|
| On the other hand we have bitcoin.
| Krasnol wrote:
| On the one hand, we have the biggest crisis to ever face
| humanity, where all of our lives literally hang in the balance
| and daily we're seeing the effects from wildfires to cold
| blasts.
|
| On the other hand I ate a delicious burger.
|
| What's your point?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha no. _You_ have the biggest crisis. _You_ have a problem
| with wildfires. _You_ have a problem with cold snaps.
|
| _I_ have Bitcoin.
|
| Yeah, I'm not particularly helping with your problem but you
| never really helped with mine so it's all good.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| what , you live on another planet?
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, but I have ways to survive all this. Even climate
| change will only lead to some billion deaths at worst. One
| in seven chance? Not a big deal for me. I'll take it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Generally this attitude, if actually held, would be
| described as psychopathic.
|
| And if you think that your quality of life would be the
| same, even if you survive, then you are blind to the
| violence that must surely come when the world goes to
| hell.
|
| When that many people die from starvation and
| dislocation, you better believe that the pitchforks will
| come out, and no one will give a damn if you are a BTC
| lord, you'll be left in a latrine by roving mobs who out-
| number you 100000 to 1.
| KYjjDNtKBDe8wrj wrote:
| I thought this was a joke, but you sounded like someone I
| know, so I went digging through your history. And sure
| enough... I particularly liked this bit: "In fact, people
| quite like me." Hah. It's a small World, Rene. Remember
| that. Not just because of the bullshit you attach to your
| name online, but also the bubble you think you can
| maintain around you in real life.
| elliotpage wrote:
| Well, one of those is more fun to endlessly ramble about on
| Reddit so of course Bitcoin will get the attention!
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Let's face it, when it comes down to it humanity, on the whole,
| will always choose to burn the world for a quick buck.
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| "you could buy electricity for around 2.5 cents per kilowatt."
| this is a typo. they meant 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
|
| i think its really interesting that elon musk has changed his
| public stance on bitcoin. originally, and for a long time, he
| described bitcoin as an alternative to cash but not an
| alternative to centralized banking because the primary purpose of
| money is to act as a database or tool for resource allocation. i
| had never thought of it that way and it intrigued me. overall he
| was basically dismissive of crypto. but then recently he has
| endorsed bitcoin, offered to buy out dogecoin investors and other
| things. and he hasnt elaborated on why he turned around, and joe
| rogan was too stupid to ask him when he came on the podcast
| recently.
| jrv wrote:
| He commented a bit more here:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1362600676174557186?s=19
| vmception wrote:
| This should be labeled 2018
|
| The North American crypto mining landscape and trade has evolved
| alot since this article, it is the most robust in the world as
| the hardware shifts from location to location to prevent becoming
| waste
| moralsupply wrote:
| Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap" energy,
| which improves the efficiency and costs of energy production,
| making it surprisingly "green".
|
| Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than
| Gold and Silver.
|
| Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than
| credit cards and the banking system in general.
|
| Yet Bitcoin is frowned upon by environmentalists, as if Bitcoin
| was a company and they could use political power to shut it down.
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah people harp on and on about the amount of energy instead
| of the source of energy
|
| turns out those entire countries in their favorite analogy also
| use a smaller amount of energy than many industries
|
| the source is more important either way
| texasbigdata wrote:
| I'm a beginner but is your energy comment in perpetuity or at
| current point? Specially in 2734 or whatever due to the
| verification of Bitcoin transactions each requiring energy, as
| long as the transaction cost of non-Bitcoin was lower than
| Bitcoin in the long run (maybe the "you're long dead" long run
| run) wouldn't coin use more energy? Sorry for n00b question
| dtech wrote:
| Bitcoin is not even close to a replacement of banking and
| debit/credit cards. If bitcoin fulfilled those roles, it would
| use a lot more energy than the current system because of how
| energy-intensive transactions are due to the required mining.
| xur17 wrote:
| I keep hearing this repeated in threads about Bitcoin, and
| it's just flat out wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does not
| scale based on the number of transactions. Its energy usage
| scales based upon the value of the block reward and the
| efficiency of mining operations.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| It's not wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does scale based on
| usage; it scales based on the value of money flowing
| through the system (in order to secure a certain
| transaction volume, you need electricity usage that
| corresponds to the value of those transactions). In order
| for Bitcoin to replace banks, it would have to consume an
| incredible amount of electricity.
| xur17 wrote:
| That is simply not true. I don't think you understand how
| Bitcoin works.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| If the electricity usage falls below a certain fraction
| of the value going through the network then double
| spending attacks become a significant risk. Bitcoin only
| works on the assumption that the electricity usage (and
| hardware usage) is too high to make double spending
| attacks feasible.
| MrMan wrote:
| If a bitcoin is functionally equivalent to a dollar you still
| need the entire stack of the financial industry, bitcoin
| doesn't in any way obviate finance
| moralsupply wrote:
| Bitcoin can't handle the amount of transactions the banking
| system can handle at the moment.
|
| For it to scale to that level it requires an L2 solution (eg.
| Lightning), in which case energy consumption is not going to
| increase.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| What's the argument for using L2 networks on top of Bitcoin
| instead of simply using one of the other cryptocurrencies
| that was designed from the start to handle transaction
| volume?
|
| Why do we need a separate currency for sending money around
| anyway?
| moralsupply wrote:
| The argument is that Bitcoin work very well as a store of
| value, and is proven (10+ years in operation with little-
| to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to
| attack the network). It doesn't need to be "perfect" in
| every front.
|
| L2 solutions still transact the same tokens as their L1
| counterparts.
|
| Other solutions may potentially be "better" technically,
| but that doesn't mean they are proven in the long run,
| and the on-ramp, corporate, etc. infrastructure is not in
| place for them.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents,
| despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network).
|
| Shame about all of those hundreds of millions of dollars
| worth of Bitcoin that have been stolen. Come to think of
| it, while I haven't crunched the statistics, it wouldn't
| surprise me if your money were more likely to be stolen
| if you kept it in Bitcoin than a boring bank account.
| moralsupply wrote:
| Is that because of the Bitcoin protocol or because people
| are dumb and lost their coins?
| MrMan wrote:
| Why don't we use dollars
| moralsupply wrote:
| We do use dollars, the last time I checked...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why would L2 solutions use less energy than current
| banking, payment processing and transactions solutions? Or
| with other services related be at least in same ballpark?
| moralsupply wrote:
| L2 doesn't require mining, only channels maintained with
| relatively low processing capabilities
| mgberlin wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| But really, I'm interested in these arguments, please let me
| know where I can learn more. Especially regarding the idea that
| it uses less energy than the current banking system.
| moralsupply wrote:
| https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2018/01/25/gold-mining-
| ener...
|
| https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/DataTre.
| ..
|
| Do your calculations
| mgberlin wrote:
| That's a completely ridiculous answer and makes it clear
| you have no idea what you're talking about. 1) Gold has
| nothing to do with banking transactions, I've lived my
| whole life without ever touching a spec of gold. 2) Is
| about the energy consumption of bank branches. My bank
| doesn't even have branches. You're comparing apples to...
| tires or something.
| moralsupply wrote:
| So your bank has no offices, no people, no nothing to
| make it work?
|
| Do you think that corporations don't require buildings,
| computing resources, transportation, etc. to exist?
|
| As for the link about gold, read my original comment.
| jcranmer wrote:
| And you are willing and able to tot up those statistics
| for the people who make Bitcoin miners and other machines
| running nodes? And the buildings that house those, etc.?
| As long as you are not, it's still an improper
| comparison.
| tonfa wrote:
| > Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than
| the current banking system.
|
| I guess this one is pretty clear, OP was only comparing to
| gold/silver (I have no idea how it compares in practice).
|
| To be comparable to banking, bitcoin should probably first
| reach the level where it can provide the same functionality
| (payment, fractional banking, etc.). (And then prorated as
| even if it were to provide the functionality, it would have
| to scale by several orders of magnitude to replace banking)
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's pretty unlikely that the majority of energy consumed is
| truly 'excess', it's just not how energy generation and
| distribution works.
|
| There can certainly be periods of time where it is excess, it's
| just hard to believe it's typical for there to be zero
| dispatchable sources operating on the grids supplying the
| power.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Realistically, miners aren't going to turn the equipment off
| as long as the ROI is positive, however narrowly. When it the
| ROI becomes too small to mine, they'll sell the equipment to
| someone else who can run it cheaper.
|
| The mining equipment is also diffusing into the hands of
| people who don't pay their own energy bills. I'm part of an
| IT forum where network admins are constantly sharing stories
| about employees trying to hide mining equipment in the office
| to use the free power and cooling for pure profit. Similar
| situation in school dorms.
|
| The idea of miners turning these things on only during rare
| times of excess grid capacity is a myth. They're running 24/7
| and they're consuming energy that would otherwise be sent to
| the grid to offset fossil fuel consumption elsewhere.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Could you provide some links for these:
|
| > Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap"
| energy, which improves the efficiency and costs of energy
| production, making it surprisingly "green".
|
| > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis
| than Gold and Silver.
|
| As for
|
| > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis
| than credit cards and the banking system in general.
|
| Bitcoin supports at many orders of magnitude less transactions
| on the ledger than the banking systems [1] and needs 10 minutes
| to add a new block to the ledger [2] and ETH about 10-15
| seconds[2]. In contrast, according to this [3], in 2019 there
| were on average 100M visa transactions in the US alone, per
| day, so around 5 orders of magnitude more transactions in just
| the States, excluding MasterCard, paypal and every other
| system.
|
| Now, there are better alternatives, ETH uses proof of stake,
| there are also papers on proof of space [4]. Personally I'd
| like to move to something decentralised and away from the banks
| as much as possible.
|
| [1] https://charts.bitcoin.com/btc/chart/transactions-per-
| block#...
|
| [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/block-time-
| cryptocurren...
|
| [3] https://www.cardrates.com/advice/number-of-credit-card-
| trans...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space
| pyrale wrote:
| > ETH uses proof of stake
|
| AFAIK they have pledged to move to proof of stake for quite
| some time now, without delivering so far.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The idea of cheap, "excess" energy that keeps Bitcoin mining
| operations running 24/7 is a myth.
|
| Bitcoin is, and always will be, additive on top of the world's
| energy consumption. Every Terawatt of energy that goes into
| Bitcoin is a Terawatt of energy that isn't being put into the
| grid to send to homes or industries or other users. No one is
| choosing to build power plants in the middle of nowhere without
| a way to send that energy into the grid.
|
| The grid is not perfectly efficient, but it's still better to
| transfer that energy through the grid than to keep a coal plant
| running somewhere else because Bitcoin is (hypothetically)
| consuming the new renewable energy sources coming online.
|
| The key is to remember that no one is waking up and wondering
| if they should run their Bitcoin miner or charge their Tesla.
| Both happen independently, and it's not hard to see that miners
| run 24/7 regardless of energy demand fluctuations elsewhere.
|
| This idea of unused, surplus energy that somehow can't be
| connected to the grid is a myth perpetuated to whitewash the
| absolutely massive (country-scale) energy consumption of
| Bitcoin.
|
| Not to mention, none of us can buy video cards right now
| because they're all being consumed to mine other
| cryptocurrencies. Discussion forums are full of people swapping
| tips for mining with their GPUs to offset the cost.
|
| There is no angle on this in which we can ignore the 120,000
| Gigawatt energy consumption of Bitcoin and the additional
| energy consumption of all the other crypto currencies popping
| up in its wake.
|
| Frankly, at this point it's depressing to see this trope
| repeated so often on HN, where usually the users would have
| enough intellectual curiosity and engineering sense to read up
| on the basics of power transmission and marginal energy costs
| before repeating such an obviously flawed argument. I'm afraid
| everyone's personal financial investment in cryptocurrency is
| clouding judgment on the topic when all of the facts are right
| in front of us.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >Every Terawatt of energy that goes into Bitcoin is a
| Terawatt of energy that isn't being put into the grid to send
| to homes or industries or other users.
|
| Not really. Electricity is tough to transport over distances
| and interconnects are expensive and have limited capacity.
| That's why new hampshire's retail cost for electricity is 17
| cents/kWh[1] but quebec only pays 5.8 cent/kWh
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
|
| [2] https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/ (7.3C//kWh
| converted to USD)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Transmission costs are not the only reason why people in
| different regions pay different prices for retail energy.
| Retail prices include far more than the pure generation and
| transmission costs. You can't use those numbers to assume
| transmission is the primary driver of cost.
|
| The actual cost of sending power across the grid is
| relatively low.
|
| The Wikipedia page on power transmission is a good place to
| get an introduction:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
|
| Specifically:
|
| > The cost of high voltage electricity transmission (as
| opposed to the costs of electric power distribution) is
| comparatively low, compared to all other costs arising in a
| consumer's electricity bill. In the UK, transmission costs
| are about 0.2 p per kWh compared to a delivered domestic
| price of around 10 p per kWh.
| gruez wrote:
| > Transmission costs are not the only reason why people
| in different regions pay different prices for retail
| energy. Retail prices include far more than the pure
| generation and transmission costs. You can't use those
| numbers to assume transmission is the primary driver of
| cost.
|
| You're right, although an alternate source shows that the
| same difference exists for residential to large power
| (50,000 kW+) customers. Presumably for large power
| customers the cost of electricity becomes a bigger factor
| compared to other expenses.
|
| https://www.hydroquebec.com/data/documents-
| donnees/pdf/compa...
|
| >> The cost of high voltage electricity transmission (as
| opposed to the costs of electric power distribution) is
| comparatively low, compared to all other costs arising in
| a consumer's electricity bill. In the UK, transmission
| costs are about 0.2 p per kWh compared to a delivered
| domestic price of around 10 p per kWh.
|
| There's selection bias going on here. Power is expensive
| to transmit over long distances, so power authorities opt
| to build local power plants, so that the expensive long
| transmission lines aren't built and therefore aren't
| being factored in.
| _Microft wrote:
| China manages to transfer 10+GW of power over 3000km with
| losses of ~3%/1000km just fine. [0]
|
| It is the infrastructure we are going to need anyways to
| geographically balance varying supply and demand with
| increasing amounts of (intermittent) renewable energy on
| the grid.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| voltage_direct_current
| gruez wrote:
| > China manages to transfer 10+GW of power over 3000km
| with losses of ~3%/1000km just fine. [0]
|
| Against how much power usage? California has 10GW[1] of
| north/south transmission capacity against 80GW[2] of
| installed capacity.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26187166
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The bottom line is that their transmission lines were
| built in conjunction with power plants.
|
| They weren't building power plants in the middle of
| nowhere without any plan to get that energy back into the
| grid, to where it needs to be. There wasn't an excess of
| power plants sitting idle with no way to send their power
| into the grid until Bitcoin came along to consume it.
|
| Mining is, however, negating any potential environmental
| offset of those plants by consuming the energy before it
| can be sent to other locations that are still dependent
| on fossil fuels.
| geogra4 wrote:
| The newer proof of stake coins solve this in a much more sane
| way. Proof of work is going to kill the planet
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| the issue with btc is that it lacks any stabilising element.
| Mainstream services invests in other products as well. This means
| that even if their product fails, the entirety of their energy
| investment wont be lost. The flipside is that if btc turns out to
| be a success (i'm not saying it's even possible), it should be
| more efficient at being a currency.
| burlesona wrote:
| Title should say (2018).
|
| Good article, especially for my extended family who live in that
| part of WA and have been wondering what this is all about.
|
| Does anyone know if this is still holding up? I would assume that
| minors are currently cashing in given the price has increased so
| much very recently, so new mines are only just now coming online.
| On the other hand we should be due for an explosion of mining
| difficulty.
|
| I was talking about this with my wife just a few days ago
| actually. I think that one of the base risks to bitcoin is that
| as the power demand continues to skyrocket, nation states begin
| to ban bitcoin mining, or more harshly regulate it to control
| power demand. You could imagine mining shutting down in more and
| more countries, until there's a "last man standing" somewhere
| with almost all the mining activity, and hence a highly
| centralized and highly vulnerable blockchain.
| vmception wrote:
| Its more likely that more nation states vie for control of
| bitcoin mining, causing more competition over the resource and
| continual decentralization, much like how Iran has put a lot of
| support into the industry so that they dont have to use the
| sanctioned state-sponsored payment rails like SWIFT
|
| As bitcoin mining is mostly using clean energy or a
| sustainability solution for economic reasons, people should put
| their energy on making sure it stays that way, because nation
| states competing would be able to undermine the economics and
| make mining an actual environmental disaster instead of the
| imagined one people have assumed is happening
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > As bitcoin mining is mostly using clean energy or a
| sustainability solution
|
| This is misleading and Bitcoin is currently an actual
| environmental disaster. Electricity is fungible and Bitcoin
| miners using green power sources are preventing the shutdown
| of coal power plants that would have otherwise shut down.
| vmception wrote:
| > misleading
|
| only because it's not a simple binary answer that people
| wish for. its a long answer with variables that have to be
| actively monitored. an annual dissertation really.
|
| even your acknowledgement of bitcoin miners using green
| power sources runs counter to detractor's worldview, and
| forces people to need to understand it better than "huh
| thats a lot of energy must be bad"
|
| so now we're at "wait they _are_ green but now here is this
| indirect other problem when the goal post moves because I
| don 't like how the energy is being used and I presuppose
| that energy is fungible"
|
| okay, yeah sure we can move the goal post a lot further and
| still show that its a working economic sustainability
| solution which _can be improved_ when people direct their
| mental energy in a more nuanced way. your position is not
| to improve it, its to deflect towards there being no energy
| use at all, and that will never get you anywhere as the
| people that would actually have the authority to represent
| your wishes would look at it and come to my conclusion
|
| for example, not all the energy is fungible which is why it
| is being used by miners, and that's only in some of the
| variety cases, although a major case
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| You realize that the article is quite explicit that the
| power being used here would otherwise be exported? The
| prices of electricity in that town aren't cheap because
| there is some non fungible surplus of power. They are
| cheap because the local government sells the electricity
| at below market rates due to political reasons.
|
| > The combined output of the basin's five dams averages
| around 3,000 megawatts, or enough for the population of
| Los Angeles. Until fairly recently, perhaps 80 percent of
| this massive output was exported via contracts that were
| hugely advantageous for locals. Cryptocurrency mining has
| been changing all that, to a degree that is only now
| becoming clear.
|
| The miners aren't consuming free or spare power: they are
| directly using fungible electricity that would have
| otherwise been exported and used to shut down coal power
| plants.
|
| This isn't some minor indirect problem, the article
| literally points out that this is going on.
| vmception wrote:
| This is matches my point, although the energy that they
| had tapped into was being exported where possible, the
| local area doesnt even have substations to take advantage
| of it all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but other parts of
| the article are suggesting that 80% of what was harnessed
| was being exported. Which means if the town is using 200
| megawatts then another 800 megawatts was being used, and
| another two gigawatts were not being used. Please
| confirm.
|
| Also we don't know whether Seattle or Los Angeles is
| going to switch to coal, thats a problem you have to
| address in those places.
|
| My point is that as this keeps growing they need to
| continually be addressed to make sure it doesnt start
| using unclean energy. But a reality is that this is a
| perfect example of miners using up to 2 gigawatts of
| energy, which can absolutely be more than several
| countries, but it all still being clean as it was not
| previously being utilized. The article talks about
| building new power stations and getting contracts for all
| the power immediately, which means this is still an
| ongoing process while the dam has been there for quite a
| while. All that energy all this time just not having
| enough demand to justify harnessing, till now.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > All that energy all this time just not having enough
| demand to justify harnessing, till now.
|
| There was demand for that power. The dams were always
| running at full utilization. Most of that demand was
| simply outside the local area and the electricity was
| being exported. As stated by the article itself in the
| quote I just gave you (80% of the 3000 megawatts were
| exported). Those exports lead to reduced fossil fuel
| usage elsewhere because they allow other people to shut
| down fossil fuel plants. And the article directly states
| that now exports are going to have to be reduced now that
| miners are using that power. Which means in other parts
| of the country they are going to have to spin up new
| power plants (or extend the lifetime of fossil fuel
| plants).
|
| The reason why you got confused over the 200 megawatts
| thing is because that's only one of three local utilities
| drawing power from the dams. Presumably all three of
| those added together consume ~600 megawatts, (20% of the
| total power available).
| underseacables wrote:
| (2018). It would be interesting to see an updated version of this
| article.
| eecc wrote:
| How about hooking up that excess energy to a federal grid and
| make that growth both permanent and sustainable? What will happen
| when BTC goes back into the dumpster for a couple years (if not
| forever)?
|
| All those tons of Carbon that could have been turned off had that
| hydro replaced Coal should be laid at the feet of crypto and
| fundie "anti-state" nutjobs
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's on the grid (the article discusses the power being sold
| into California). Presumably the local miner operations are
| able to pay the producing utilities more than grid buyers are
| willing to pay.
| eecc wrote:
| Oh, umm. I admit to not having read so far into the
| article... :(
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Where this article is about, Wenatchee, they were for the
| longest time paying below wholesale, that is changing
| rapidly.
|
| It was even partially subsidized, the power company used to
| cover the costs of upgraded utilities to your site, with no
| contact in usage. then they realized these mines closed as
| fast as they opened, it cost the local power company
| millions. Nowadays if you want load, you gotta pay for
| everything and it takes years to justify, explain and build.
| Only new data center going in anytime soon will be a massive
| MSFT DC.
| bdcravens wrote:
| How many towns were transformed when water was used to power new
| factories during the Industrial Revolution? Detroit and the
| automobile revolution? San Francisco in the Gold Rush? Houston in
| the Oil Boom?
| sega_sai wrote:
| My take on this is the following. Everything we do as a society I
| think should be from time to time evaluated from a point of view
| of benefits for society/world and then depending on this
| evaluation, the incentives should be updated to support things
| that we consider useful, and to penalize things that we do not. A
| few years ago Bitcoin didn't really register there, and it was
| okay to disregard. Now with so much energy/efforts spent there,
| one should ask oneselves, is it good allocation of resources? Is
| it good that so much cheap electricity is used for mining
| bitcoin? Can we think of a way of either taxing, or changing
| incentives, so that society benefits from this. I don't know
| what's the best way of changing the incentives, but it must be
| done in my opinion.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making
| sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining?
|
| There are tons of things the society could do without and be
| better off. Or maybe not, who decides? Surely it shouldn't be
| majority as then we will approach Idiocracy level of
| civilization in no time with Kayne designer flip-flops getting
| a yay and NASA or a new semi-conductor start-up getting a may.
|
| I think there are two problems with crypto currencies:
|
| 1) Pollution and carbon emission is not taxed but should be.
|
| 2) Regulators allowing the situation where magic token is the
| only way to do certain kind of trades while competition faces
| insurmountable mountain of regulation and requirements. If it
| was possible to make fast money transfer system without hiring
| the army of lawyers in every country you want to operate then
| BTC would never gain any traction.
| Closi wrote:
| > If it was possible to make fast money transfer system
| without hiring the army of lawyers in every country you want
| to operate then BTC would never gain any traction.
|
| I don't know where you get the idea that BTC is being used
| primarily to transfer money fast between countries without
| lawyers being involved, because as far as I can tell that's
| mainly a hypothetical use case rather than one that happens
| often in reality.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making
| sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining?
|
| Or the entertainment industry as a whole, it's pointless.
| imtringued wrote:
| >Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making
| sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining?
|
| Considering the array of competing cryptocurrencies that
| consume far less energy while providing more transactions per
| second and additional features like smart contracts, yes it
| is. For example. Ethereum has twice as many transactions per
| second while consuming a third of the energy.
| spaced-out wrote:
| > Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making
| sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining?
|
| Even looking at the usage of graphics cards specifically, is
| Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than
| playing video games? Than running ML models at Facebook?
| imtringued wrote:
| >is Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than
| playing video games?
|
| I have done a lot of activities in video games that would
| require significant CO2 emissions in real life. Potentially
| millions of tons. So yes, it's much better. There is also a
| significant population of software developers that picked
| up programming because of video games. Economic simulation
| games can help you develop an intuition on how to run a
| company and how they work without having to risk starting a
| real company with the potential to fail and ruin you
| financially.
|
| Meanwhile the only worthy claim that Bitcoin has is that
| it's a middleman for central bank money. Yes it probably
| funded a lot of good economic activity, but it's the job of
| the central bank and government to do that. If they didn't
| fail then Bitcoin would have literally nothing to do.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > ... but it's the job of the central bank and government
| to do that
|
| says who ? the central band and governments ? The whole
| point of crypto is to provide an alternative to arbitrary
| decisions from unelected officials.
| dgellow wrote:
| Given that bitcoin would also work without a Proof of Work,
| yes, it's a more stupid way to burn resources than pretty
| much anything else. Bitcoin without the ridiculous amount of
| energy consumption is possible, though I'm personally
| doubtful that will happen.
|
| As an example Cardano and Tezos are two blockchain based on
| Proof of Stake, they both require a very low amount of energy
| compared to bitcoin or ethereum (no mining rigs, a node can
| run on a raspberry pi 4).
| geogra4 wrote:
| Proof of work needs to go to the gutter. It was a bad idea
| to begin with. Proof of stake makes more sense and operates
| like a bank deposit interest rate
| jwblackwell wrote:
| Can you elaborate more? It seems to be that a lot of very
| smart people think the opposite and are investing huge
| time and money in it
| aeternum wrote:
| The big problem with proof of stake is that it requires a
| centralized root of trust.
|
| Suppose for example that I takeover the Cardano website. I
| could create my own root block and generate millions of
| 'stakers'. Staking requires ownership but since it's my own
| new chain, I can generate coins easily without expending
| any real-world resources. As a new user, how could you
| differentiate the 'real' Cardano chain from mine?
| jwblackwell wrote:
| Isn't this basically the case with github now? i.e all
| the cryptos have their code public on github so if I
| wanted to start mining, I'd have to go there to get the
| code
| thysultan wrote:
| You tax industrial bitcoin miners that you can detect, country
| A now has an advantage over you. You loose!
|
| You actually haven't changed anything it has just moved to
| another country that is probably using coal. You loose!
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| You say that as if having an industry based around a
| speculative asset that is more volatile than OTM stock
| options sucking up a third of your countries energy resources
| is actually an advantage in some way.
| imtringued wrote:
| You're making the mistaken assumption that people care about
| whether Bitcoin is being mined. They only care about it not
| being mined in their backyard because the low electricity
| prices are just meant to be a subsidy to local residents. The
| electricity is being exported to a different location for a
| fat profit. If that other location is mining Bitcoin you're
| just giving the local residents more money. It's a pure net
| loss for Bitcoin miners.
| guenthert wrote:
| By that logic we should legalize slavery.
| kortilla wrote:
| > My take on this is the following. Everything we do as a
| society I think should be from time to time evaluated from a
| point of view of benefits for society/world and then depending
| on this evaluation, the incentives should be updated to support
| things that we consider useful, and to penalize things that we
| do not.
|
| Who is "we" and why to "we" get to decide instead of "they"?
| This approach to governing only sounds good when you're not in
| the sights of those with the legislative pen.
|
| In Iran, "we" (the government) have decided that "they" (gay
| people) should not be able to live openly gay.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I am not an anarchist or libertarian, so I believe in
| democratic governements. And I do believe it's their job to
| establish rules/regulations/laws that benefits society as a
| whole. Obviously and important point is the government must
| be democratically elected, to be able to control/revert
| things if the governement screws up.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| So do you admit that to an anarchist or libertarian that
| Bitcoin _does_ have value? The US military is the #1 user
| of energy on the planet. I definitely consider them a net
| negative to humanity, yet they 're what's propping up the
| same neo-liberal democracy you think should be establishing
| the rules. Is that an acceptable use of energy to you?
|
| I think Bitcoin is an excellent use of energy because it's
| at least a potential alternative to our current
| governmental systems. A small piece of the puzzle but a
| prerequisite to change none the less.
| insert_coin wrote:
| You'll be chasing your tail forever.
|
| The problem with bitcoin, or the issue to be more honest
| because it is not really a problem, is that right now there is
| no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin. That is the
| truth you must grapple with. Or as Google would say, the best
| option for the collection of arguably the most brilliant minds
| that have ever walked this planet is to work for Google, trying
| to get people to click more on ads. That _that_ is true, that
| is your problem and everything else is noise. If you really
| want an environmental problem to tackle go fight the oil
| industry killing thousands of animals every day, destroying
| communities every day, destroying them literally.
|
| But, if you insist you must "fix" something about the current
| crypto boom because somehow they do not adhere to your morality
| then you should look at everything else but bitcoin and ask
| yourself, _why is the thing I consider moral not attractive to
| the market?, what can we do differently to make doing something
| else at least as profitable as mining bitcoin?_ If you just tax
| it or try to ban it they 'll just move and you'll be a)poorer
| and b)left without a say.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| >right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than
| bitcoin.
|
| I don't have a good use for rocks. That doesn't mean I should
| throw them at cars from an overpass.
| yarcob wrote:
| > If you just tax it or try to ban it they'll just move
|
| Which is exactly what the locals would want, is it not? I
| mean, if I live in a place with cheap power, I don't want
| some outsider to come, take advantantage of that fact, and
| use so much power until the prices approach average power
| prices.
|
| Hydroelectric plants usually require flooding huge areas of
| beautiful nature. People accept that because it's better than
| burning coal. But if people are just going to use it for
| something that doesn't help the local community at all, why
| bother destroying the local scenery?
|
| There's more to the economy than just money; local
| governments often subsidize local companies if they think
| it's good for the locals even if it would be more profitable
| to move production overseas.
|
| We don't need to find a way to make the "moral" thing more
| profitable. We can just make laws that prohibit the "amoral"
| thing. If we would let the market decide everything, why
| bother electing a government in the first place?
| temp8964 wrote:
| > if I live in a place with cheap power, I don't want some
| outsider to come, take advantantage of that fact, and use
| so much power until the prices approach average power
| prices.
|
| There is no way someone use so much power until the prices
| approach average power prices, without making other
| changes. Maybe they offer lots of job positions? Maybe they
| pay lots of local Taxes?
|
| Yes. Money is not everything, but good people can use those
| money to do "moral" things.
| vinger wrote:
| Groups of new people moving the local area is exactly what
| you hope your cheap electrical prices will bring. They
| create some jobs or support local store,increase real
| estate values, attract more supporting businesses.
|
| The not in my backyard crowd are common in San Franisco but
| everywhere else welcoming new people raises all boats.
| andrewzah wrote:
| " If you really want an environmental problem to tackle go
| fight the oil industry killing thousands of animals every
| day, destroying communities every day, destroying them
| literally."
|
| It's not one or the other. I'm critical of Bitcoin just like
| I'm critical of other things affecting the environment.
|
| "If you just tax it or try to ban it they'll just move"
|
| Good. Let them move. Not everything is about acquiring as
| much money as physically possible. Getting more money out of
| people is not a tenable argument for whether something is
| appropriate or not.
|
| Markets are wildly inefficient and do not account for
| everything. The areas that had low electricity prices were
| doing just fine for themselves before Bitcoin miners moved
| in, and will do just fine afterwards. Saying we should allow
| things because "money" is just sickening. At least come up
| with a better argument.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Well then, that it sickens you is such a better argument
| isn't it not? You should've told us earlier!
|
| Look, we can admit the reality of the world we live in or
| we can pretend, but only if we admit the real world _to
| ourselves_ we can even begin to contemplate finding some
| kind of solution to our problems. Trying to ban everything
| you don 't like is what is really sickening because
| newsflash, people can think for themselves and don't need
| you to decide what's moral for them.
|
| Money is important in society, deal with it. Money is
| useful in society, deal with it. Money, for better or
| worse, arguably controls society. Deal with it.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Living in reality is different than justifying it. Saying
| that Bitcoin miners using up electricity means there was
| no better use is not derived from reality- that's your
| own personal viewpoint.
|
| I don't need to make any argument as I'm not the one
| presenting anything here. All I'm saying is that "money
| is good, therefore actions that net money are good", is a
| terrible argument and we can do better than that.
| vinger wrote:
| I see them aligning with the locals and saying perhaps you
| should move out if you protest too much.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| >is that right now there is no "better" use for that
| electricity than bitcoin.
|
| You can't abstract away the fuel for energy production. I'm
| sure bitcoin miners would be fine with mining every last bit
| of coal on the planet and using it to run their rigs if they
| can do it cheaply (which they probably can as coal prices
| drop and renewables ramp up)
|
| Majority of bitcoin mining is run on fossil fuel power.[0]
|
| A better 'use' is keeping it in the ground.
|
| Here's a byproduct of bitcoin mining, basically throwing a
| lifeline to dying coal plant: "Bitcoin miner Marathon signs
| for coal-fired electricity in Montana"[1]
|
| [0]https://decrypt.co/43848/why-bitcoin-miners-dont-use-more-
| re...
|
| [1]https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/bitcoin-miner-
| mar...
| paulgb wrote:
| > Why is the thing I consider moral not attractive to the
| market
|
| Because markets are notoriously unable to price in
| externalities on their own.
|
| I realize there is a temptation here to throw up your hands
| and say "well, all human activity emits carbon", especially
| if you are long bitcoin, but it's a false equivalency.
| Bitcoin is an energy consumption monster by design, and its
| difficulty adjustment mechanism neutralizes any attempt at
| making mining more efficient.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Also its limited market cap and halving schedule will
| probably eventually phase out the energy consumption.
| Provided people are not willing to pay hundreds or
| thousands of (current day) dollars for transactions.
|
| Edit: And if they are willing to pay that much that should
| be a clear sign of the value provided by the network
|
| Edit2: And wether this will also phase out Bitcoins
| security model will be very interesting to observe across
| the next 10-20 years (depending on when btc will hit its
| market cap threshold in real terms)
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Awesome response! I love that @ HN for every shortsighted
| person there is a longsighted one providing a non-mainstream
| view. What ratio do we have on other platforms or even in
| real life? 1 to 100?
| andrewzah wrote:
| Sorry, but the above argument is really a poor one.
|
| Just because there's "no better" use for that electricity
| (which I disagree), does not justify using it up on bitcoin
| mining. This is like saying it's morally permissible to do
| A because if you don't, someone else will.
|
| Not to mention conflating "the best use of X people's time"
| with "who is giving out the best compensation in a society
| where we need money".
|
| The mainstream view -is- positive of Bitcoin. Very few
| people are actually concerned with the environmental
| impact.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| > The mainstream view -is- positive of Bitcoin. Very few
| people are actually concerned with the environmental
| impact.
|
| You should ask yourself why that is. I think it's because
| Bitcoin _is_ providing value to people. It has an
| extremely low barrier to entry. You don 't need good
| credit to use it. You don't need to go to a bank. You
| don't need an id.
|
| I don't think most people are actively using it yet, but
| they see the democratic nature of the "interface" to the
| crypto system and recognize that the power is shifted in
| their favor a bit more than the established monetary
| system. They know this because they've been abused by
| that system their entire lives.
|
| I find a lot of upper middle class people struggle to see
| the value in Bitcoin because they can't empathize with
| people who can't use traditional banking.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Appealing to popularity fallacy.
|
| For anyone in the US you do need an ID to use Bitcoin in
| any practical manner. Exchanges require it. Avoiding this
| requires jumping through multiple hoops, especially if
| you want to convert to cash.
|
| People don't think about the environmental consequences
| because most people don't think about that anyways. We're
| also on HN, where software companies use or rent
| computational power with zero regard to the environmental
| impact. And for Bitcoin owners it's specifically in their
| financial interest not to think about how Bitcoin miners
| are using more electricity than actual countries.
|
| All of that said, Bitcoin is a failed experiment. People
| aren't using it as an actual currency, they're hoarding
| it. Partly because of the model and mostly because trying
| to actually spend Bitcoin sucks badly.
|
| Bitcoin is going to be replaced by a cryptocurrency
| that's actually usable and competitive with existing
| payment networks. And hopefully one that doesn't use such
| an electricity intensive model.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| You can't just call use-cases you don't like a "fallacy".
| Like I said, the tech is still early, but there are
| decentralized exchanges where you don't need an ID to use
| them.
|
| > People don't think about the environmental consequences
| because most people don't think about that anyways.
|
| They don't think about that because:
|
| A. They're not the cause of the environmental damage
| (check with the military and large industry there).
|
| B. They're concerned about paying rent, buying food...
|
| Money is at top of mind for most people.
|
| > All of that said, Bitcoin is a failed experiment.
|
| If this is failure to you, I hope Bitcoin keeps failing!
| By any metric you look at it, Bitcoin is reaching all
| time highs with exponential growth.
| soheil wrote:
| We're willing to concede that the best minds of our
| generation should be in the business of manipulating others
| to click on ads, but god forbid if some try to liberate us
| from total control and tyranny placed on civilization.
|
| This should be the top comment of this post.
| vkou wrote:
| I'm quite flattered that you think[1] that I am one of the
| best minds of our generation, but I would disagree with
| your assessment of what the most difficult projects at
| Google are.
|
| [1] Mistakenly, in my self-assessment.
| soheil wrote:
| The most difficult projects at Google are tangential to
| Google's raison d'etre, it exists to get people to click
| on ads.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "right now there is no "better" use for that electricity
| than bitcoin."_
|
| That's just not true. The higher the price of Bitcoin, the
| more incentive there is for miners to outbid other energy
| consumers.
| soheil wrote:
| Which is exactly what the OP's point is, ie
| if the price of Bitcoin is high enough == there is no
| better use than to mine Bitcoin
| guenthert wrote:
| Say profitable if you mean that, not "better".
| soheil wrote:
| ...better use for electricity
| ori_b wrote:
| Shuttering -- or not even building -- unnecessary power
| plants is a better use of electricity.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Which is what I said, that is my point. That everything
| else is becoming so unattractive, that is the problem.
| pavlov wrote:
| Adding lead to gasoline was an attractive innovation, and
| very profitable to oil companies.
|
| It was also a known poison. Market forces alone don't
| always solve these problems.
| jfim wrote:
| > is that right now there is no "better" use for that
| electricity than bitcoin [...] the best option for the
| collection of arguably the most brilliant minds that have
| ever walked this planet is to work for Google, trying to get
| people to click more on ads
|
| That's more about the fact that it's not measured in terms of
| dollars and shareholder return.
|
| Would it be beneficial to have this electricity being used
| for other things or have those engineers do other things than
| optimize an ad click factory? Probably, we could use this
| electricity to have cheaper power for lower income
| households, or those engineers could work on improving other
| things.
|
| But the market doesn't necessarily pay for those things, and
| if the system is geared towards optimizing for more dollars,
| then the only one gets is more dollars with all the non-
| priced externalities dumped onto the society at large.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Everything we do as a society I think should be from time to
| time evaluated from a point of view of benefits for society
| /world and then depending on this evaluation, the incentives
| should be updated to support things that we consider useful,
| and to penalize things that we do no_
|
| This is vague to the point of meaninglessness. On one level, it
| describes democracy and lawmaking. On another level, it
| describes communist-style state control of economic factors.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| bitcoin is now significantly contributing to an existential
| threat. Its not alone of course...most things we do daily do
| so. However, I wish it wasn't such useless work.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Show me a list of what you do in a day and I'll find
| questionable, selfish uses of cheap energy that don't benefit
| society. That's not a game you want to play.
|
| People making noise about Bitcoin energy consumption seem to
| have little idea how much energy anything else uses kinda like
| how Americans only compare everything to Hitler because WW2 is
| all we're really taught in school.
|
| People suddenly act like they care about how others choose to
| spend their energy when it comes to Bitcoin but not anything
| else, like the incredible amount of land and energy it took to
| bring that pound of meat to your table that you only eat
| because it pleases your tastebuds. Or the tech gadgets you own.
|
| Seems convenient to only turn on the ol careface when it's
| something you don't happen to indulge in, yet it makes you
| blind to the inconsistency of your position. There are a lot of
| necks on the chopping block long before you get to Bitcoin
| mining when you start bringing up the metrics that you think
| damn Bitcoin mining, probably your entire way of life.
| ZitchDog wrote:
| Whataboutism at its finest. Current energy waste doesn't
| justify future energy waste. Especially waste as avoidable as
| PoW mining.
| lifty wrote:
| Folks, please stop with the 'whataboutism' argument. We are
| debating the morality of energy usage so comparative
| arguments are perfectly fine. You don't hear every day
| articles about the huge nr of gaming PCs or gaming consoles
| sucking energy, but you do hear about bitcoin. I have
| absolutely no problem with taxing dirty energy or
| disincentivizing high energy consumption but do it for
| everything. It's hypocritical otherwise.
| kortilla wrote:
| Do we not realize the massive incentives Bitcoin is providing
| for energy production? If we could just agree to tax carbon
| emissions (the thing most of the world agrees is bad), then we
| should encourage this behavior as much as possible.
|
| We're creating a wonderful scenario where miners would be
| investing in as much cheap energy as possible. If their cost
| gets to close to average, then they can just leave it to the
| market.
| ZitchDog wrote:
| It would still increase energy costs for everyone.
| p_l wrote:
| Miners are interesting in extracting the cheap energy from
| the market. There's literally no incentive for any of that
| benefit to fall to anyone else, and in fact using up low-
| carbon electricity for cryptocurrency PoW "mining" takes away
| the benefits of the low-carbon investment from everyone else.
| djoldman wrote:
| Capitalism seems to be the best of the possible solutions to
| the resource utilization problem.
|
| Bitcoin seems to be just the latest in a long string of events
| suggesting that humans are irrational, not necessarily that
| capitalism or markets are bad.
|
| If Bitcoin were processing a zillion transactions at a very
| very low fee per transaction, I believe few people would be
| saying it was a waste of resources.
| collinexander wrote:
| I do not understand this argument. The fact that bitcoin mining
| is profitable inherently means that society has already deemed
| it useful, no? Users would not pay for it if it were not
| useful.
|
| > Everything we do as a society I think should be from time to
| time evaluated
|
| Who should do this evaluation? If not users freely allocating
| their own resources on the free market, then who?
|
| > the incentives should be updated to support things that are
| consider useful, and to penalize things that we do not.
|
| Please define useful. Humans have different needs and value
| things differently. What is useful to one may not be useful to
| the other. Any system that picks winners will also pick losers.
| ghgdynb1 wrote:
| I'm truly shocked by the number of people who totally fail to
| grok the economic logic behind a lot of the projects being
| built on blockchain tech. Many dismiss such work as totally
| worthless.
|
| I suspect such dismissive types lack the combination of deep
| technical ability and profound economic intuition that made
| the Collison brothers wealthy. Or maybe it's just that they
| don't care to think these things through. Like PG says in his
| exploration of the aphorism "a word to the wise is
| sufficient:" "Understanding all the implications -- even the
| inconvenient implications -- of what someone tells you is a
| subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational
| resourcefulness."
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html
| imtringued wrote:
| >I'm truly shocked by the number of people who totally fail
| to grok the economic logic behind a lot of the projects
| being built on blockchain tech.
|
| If you are so shocked then please explain why Bitcoin
| miners refused to increase the transactions per block to a
| level that is suitable for Bitcoin? It's literally a
| configuration flag they have to change and the
| environmentalists and people against power waste would be
| happy and you could tell them to shut up. The people using
| Bitcoin as money would also be happy. Everyone would be
| happy except some puritans that insist on a specific block
| size.
|
| The reality is that no amount of economic intuition and
| deep technical ability can explain this and it's not making
| any neo "Collison brothers" types wealthy. It also isn't a
| problem of not thinking things through. It's not a matter
| of groking economic logic because there is literally no
| economic argument in favor of restricting transactions per
| block. It's worthless because everyone that wanted to use
| Bitcoin for its intended purpose has already left and only
| those who are in it for the bubbling behavior have stayed.
|
| I will even admit that after understanding the long term
| trend of Bitcoin (not the xth bubble that is currently
| occuring) I would buy it, but again, only for speculation.
| It's worthless, as a currency, precisely because its
| deflationary, expensive and slow to transact, a tax
| nightmare because of capital gains and the fact that nobody
| accepts it.
|
| So yes, it definitively is worthless. Just because some
| tech dudes bet on price increases doesn't mean it isn't
| worthless.
|
| I'm more shocked by the number of people who fail to grok
| the economic logic and still engage in correct behavior.
| They make the mistake of equating the power consumption as
| necessary to process a certain amount of transactions and
| they are definitively wrong, however their judgment is
| still right. Bitcoin wastes too much power for the little
| value it provides. They don't have any right to be worthy
| of your criticism but yet they do, if you listened to them
| your crappy little currency would be better off and that's
| why your argument is on very thin ice.
|
| I have an absolute disdain for dishonesty. Own and admit
| your mistakes instead of pretending that the other side is
| wrong.
| melolife wrote:
| > If you are so shocked then please explain why Bitcoin
| miners refused to increase the transactions per block to
| a level that is suitable for Bitcoin?
|
| I'm no Bitcoin maximalist, but this problem cannot be
| solved by increasing storage requirements in a linear
| fashion to accommodate more transactions, as then you are
| trading one problem for another.
|
| Case in point Bitcoin Cash which, (if actually used) with
| a block size of 32MB could grow at 1.6 TB/year,
| prohibiting most individuals from running a node.
|
| There's also the problem analogous to road planning where
| adding lanes does not decrease congestion, because the
| level of congestion than exists represents what people
| are willing to tolerate before giving up on driving.
|
| That being said wrt your question there's also an element
| of greed in that there's money to be made selling level 2
| solutions, but it's not as clear cut as the big block
| crowd would have it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I'm truly shocked by the number of people who totally
| fail to grok the economic logic behind a lot of the
| projects being built on blockchain tech.
|
| Literally none of them have any logic behind them other
| than "let's add blockchain at the end, and ask investors
| for money".
|
| > Many dismiss such work as totally worthless.
|
| It is absolutely, 100% entirely worthless with no
| exceptions.
|
| > I suspect such dismissive types lack the combination of
| deep technical ability and profound economic intuition that
| made the Collison brothers wealthy.
|
| Stripe actually does provide a useful, and a used service
| with a well-defined and understood economic model.
|
| > Understanding all the implications -- even the
| inconvenient implications -- of what someone tells you is a
| subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational
| resourcefulness
|
| Yes, And the implications of bitcoin are simple: it's a
| useless wasteful technology that still hasn't found any
| useful application, or an application that cannot be
| achieved faster and more securely by other means.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The fact that tulips are selling for 10x their prior year
| price inherently means that society has decided tulips are
| more valuable than gold. People wouldn't be investing their
| life savings in tulip futures if they weren't a stable store
| of wealth, right?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I do not understand this argument. The fact that bitcoin
| mining is profitable inherently means that society has
| already deemed it useful, no? Users would not pay for it if
| it were not useful.
|
| Just because there is a market for something doesn't mean
| that "society" as a whole has decided that it is useful.
| There's an underground market on taking out hits on someone
| else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided that
| murder is good.
|
| > Who should do this evaluation? If not users freely
| allocating their own resources on the free market, then who?
|
| A public body that is democratically constrained.
|
| > Please define useful.
|
| Welfare enhancing for humanity. Sometimes, a welfare
| enhancing step will involve losers and winners, you're right.
| For instance, if one person held $200 billion and the rest of
| humanity held $1, redistributing that money would almost
| certainly be a welfare enhancing step given diminishing
| marginal utility of the $.
| [deleted]
| collinexander wrote:
| Thanks for the reply, it helped me understand where you are
| coming from.
|
| For purposes of discussing bitcoin, it is a global good,
| and environmental concerns are a global concern. If there
| is a global market for bitcoin, then taxing bitcoin mining
| (or other such measures) in one country would just
| incentivize miners to move to another country. So any such
| action as you describe would need to be coordinated on a
| global level among several or all nations.
|
| > There's an underground market on taking out hits on
| someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided
| that murder is good.
|
| Not sure if it is fair to compare bitcoin production to
| murder. I agree that we need some sort of action for
| climate change, but I am not sure regulating bitcoin is the
| answer. We'd have to apply the same subject "utility"
| measuring stick to _any_ activity that consumes electricity
| and regulate that. Like others have suggested, maybe taxing
| certain types of energy usage directly according to their
| climate change impact would be more effective and would
| apply evenly to all goods / services without deciding on
| behalf of individuals what is useful and what is not.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > So any such action as you describe would need to be
| coordinated on a global level among several or all
| nations.
|
| I was not the original person you were discussing with,
| so I don't think a tax specifically on bitcoin mining
| would be the best idea, but yes global problems require
| global scale coordination often.
|
| > Not sure if it is fair to compare bitcoin production to
| murder.
|
| My point is merely that the fact that a market exists for
| something is not sufficient to show that "society" has
| decided it is useful IMO.
|
| > Like others have suggested, maybe taxing certain types
| of energy usage directly according to their climate
| change impact
|
| Yeah, I was the one who commented that, so I definitely
| agree
| generalizations wrote:
| We put far too much faith in centralized authorities to
| arbitrate standards of morality. How sure are you that such
| an authority will actually reflect the best interest of the
| people, and not itself?
|
| > There's an underground market on taking out hits on
| someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided
| that murder is good.
|
| That's a great cherry-picked example, but there are far
| more examples of people freely purchasing what they deem to
| be useful, and even more examples of useless things
| disappearing because no one wanted them. Most failed
| startups we cover here are probably an example of the
| latter, and there's plenty of discussions of how to achieve
| the former on hn, too.
|
| > Welfare enhancing for humanity.
|
| Who gets to determine this, except the members of humanity
| themselves? Does some 'public body that is democratically
| constrained' know what's best for each individual person
| it's responsible for? Does it adhere to some ideology that
| dictates the universal moral good, whether everyone else
| likes it or not? How does a group of politicians living in
| their own little bubble know what's best for Joe Plumber in
| e.g. North Dakota?
|
| What moral framework do you suggest that we inflict upon
| all of humanity?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > That's a great cherry-picked example
|
| I consider it reasoning from the limit case - _obviously_
| the existence of a market is not sufficient to prove that
| society has decided it is good, as the counter-example of
| the market in murder shows. Nothing more behind that
| statement and I think that markets are often a powerful
| tool.
|
| > What moral framework do you suggest that we inflict
| upon all of humanity?
|
| You can't escape "inflicting" a moral stance on the
| world. In the hypothetical world where the one has $200
| billion and the remainder have $1, perhaps the government
| is not "arbitrating standards of morality", but if they
| make it illegal for the 7 billion to steal from the one
| person who has $200 billion, they are taking an ethical
| stance and "inflicting" it on the rest of the world.
|
| We're a socially cooperative species - obviously we need
| a way to govern the form of those interactions, even in
| order to have a functioning market in things.
| generalizations wrote:
| > You can't escape "inflicting" a moral stance on the
| world.
|
| Only if you start from the assumption that such things as
| bitcoin mining ought to be regulated in the first place.
| You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species',
| and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and
| don't invoke some government authority.
|
| I'm arguing that involving a governmental authority to
| arbitrate morality is a can of worms that really doesn't
| need to be opened here.
|
| > Nothing more behind that statement
|
| Fair enough, I thought you meant to take that statement
| farther than you did.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species',
| and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and
| don't invoke some government authority.
|
| So it's cool if I go to someone and take their bitcoins
| from them at gunpoint? Or start Mafia 2.0 and create my
| own protection racket here in SF?
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Your crime, your time.
| ub99 wrote:
| I don't understand - it's like we have to repeat the same
| mistake over and over again. What industries have
| historically successfully self-regulated for the benefit
| of the society at large? Regulations and government
| involvement is why we don't live in a slave society with
| a handful of militaristic barons.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > You're right - we are a 'socially cooperative species',
| and we're good at it. Leave us alone to cooperate and
| don't invoke some government authority.
|
| Isn't "some government authority" exactly how we as a
| species go about "socially cooperating" on a larger
| scale?
| iso1210 wrote:
| > The fact that bitcoin mining is profitable inherently means
| that society has already deemed it useful, no?
|
| Not when that mining doesn't account for externalities
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What if rather than taxing bitcoin, we just tax carbon usage?
| thysultan wrote:
| You tax carbon, country B now has an advantage over you. You
| loose!
|
| Now all your products are produced in country B, you've
| changed nothing and country B is probably using coal so
| you're worse off from your initial goal.
|
| You loose double!
| jcranmer wrote:
| That's why a lot of carbon tax proposals also impose those
| taxes on imports.
|
| (Also, you mean to use 'lose' here, not 'loose'.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > You tax carbon, country B now has an advantage over you.
| You loose!
|
| Tariff based on carbon expenditure.
|
| It's pretty simple, this has been thought out - and it is
| pretty clearly a welfare enhancing policy.
| thysultan wrote:
| Add Country C into the mix: It doesn't produce carbon but
| doesn't have tariff's on Country B.
|
| >It's pretty simple, this has been thought out
|
| You and others alike have clearly not thought this out as
| the scenario i have layered out is already happening with
| other tariff-able commodities.
| ericd wrote:
| Trade blocs and economic sanctions?
| iso1210 wrote:
| If it imports carbon from Country B then it uses carbon,
| so treat it as such.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Why would it be country-based? Besides the obvious thing
| that Country of Origin rules apply anyway.
| undersuit wrote:
| An argument could be made if we don't apply the Carbon
| Tax to poor or third-world countries it will help them
| develop faster... but those third-world countries
| shouldn't be _shipping_ us resources in the first place!
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Why do people think "enforcement is impossible" is such a
| strong argument against taxes?
|
| If your argument is that tariffs don't disincentivize
| behaviors because the government is just _that bad_ at
| collecting taxes, you 're not really in step with
| reality.
| thysultan wrote:
| But you can't enforce your taxes in other governments.
|
| In fact other governments in a game theory like ploy to
| get ahead of your country may agree to international
| agreements that they know they can game to their
| advantage.
|
| The fundamental assumptions are wrong. You're not in this
| together. All countries are in direct competition, and
| some a more cut-throat than others. If potential disaster
| B is coming irregardless, country B can position
| themselves to come-out on top of country A when it does.
| spaced-out wrote:
| You add tariffs to country B's products to make up the
| difference.
| thysultan wrote:
| country B sells to country C that does the final
| packaging and then sells it to you.
|
| This is happening right now if you haven't already
| noticed.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Country of origin rules still kick in that case. This is
| tour de force for rules around tariffs, know you nothing
| about how these work?
| thysultan wrote:
| If it worked it wouldn't be happening, the fact that it
| is happening, and to well known country's proofs they
| don't work and is profitable for country B and C for it
| to continue to not work.
|
| This not withstanding the obfuscation of country of
| origin that can happen If country B and C really wanted
| to work together.
| spaced-out wrote:
| You're describing someone evading the law, and your
| argument boils down to: "if laws worked, people wouldn't
| get away with breaking them."
|
| We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
| [deleted]
| jbay808 wrote:
| This is why you sign up for an international treaty that
| has teeth, ratify it, and back it up with penalties
| including carbon tariffs.
| thysultan wrote:
| Name one international treaty that has ever had teeth
| where the benefits of non-conformance out weight the
| teeth.
|
| Country B could tarrif country A in return and some
| countries cannot afford the cost of what that may do to
| them.
|
| So you end up with an international treaty without
| international conformance or a treaty with no real teeth
| because the signee's have contributed to it what would
| allow "them" to game the treaty.
| jude- wrote:
| Banning CFCs globally via the Montreal Protocol.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Nations agreed on laws for ocean and air travel. Countries
| that disobey them are ostracized or even subject to
| violence. Nations could in theory do the same for polluting
| the ocean and air. But that gets viewed as denying
| developing countries the benefits developed countries had.
| pyrale wrote:
| While taxing carbon usage is a good idea, there is something
| fundamentally wrong with the idea of allocating so much
| resources, in servers, in power and in space, for what
| essentially doesn't improve people's lives.
|
| That this craze receives so much attention and funding while
| we face very real existential challenges is maddening.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea of
| allocating so much resources, in servers, in power and in
| space, for what essentially doesn 't improve people's
| lives_
|
| The track record of "for the people's good" juntas is poor.
| When they aren't venally stripping the populace, they're
| squashing any hint of innovative challenge to the
| incumbency.
| barneygale wrote:
| Who suggested juntas?
| pyrale wrote:
| I don't believe we have discussed before. Maybe
| interpreting my words as a call for the establishment of
| a junta isn't the best start in a constructive
| discussion. Do you start like that with anyone interested
| in ethics?
| dylan604 wrote:
| If the owners of the miners are actually able to turn their
| coins into wealth that increases their lifestyle, then the
| mining did improve someone's life. Just because it affects
| a very small number of people isn't much different than
| most other "traditional" financial products in exsistence.
| pyrale wrote:
| It is wealth redistribution, though, not wealth creation.
| These people essentially take money from newcomers to the
| btc ecosystem, but btcs themselves are not tied to any
| tangible asset or value.
|
| More importantly, creating new bitcoins is not tied to
| the creation of new counterparts. Essentially, when
| someone mines bitcoins, they are not involved in a
| productive act.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > then the mining did improve someone's life
|
| On net, was it welfare enhancing for our species though?
| If I make $1 off of emissions that cause external harm
| worth $2 distributed among the 7 billion people on this
| planet, I'm basically just laundering money through a
| loophole in what the law today considers to be harming
| someone else.
| seibelj wrote:
| You just keep moving the goalposts by using the most
| extreme argument you can muster.
|
| To be honest the sports industry uses tons of energy in
| lighting stadiums, streaming them, training players, it
| goes on and on. Entertainment could be done much more
| cheaply and effectively. I think society should outlaw
| sport - so many people are hurt in injuries, and the
| climate is just utterly demolished through all the energy
| waste. I can't see a reason why society would allow
| sports. It's ultimately beneficial to a very small amount
| of owners and their players (who are exploited!) that
| take all the cream off the top. Completely immoral
| honestly. The fact society wastes so much thought,
| effort, energy, focus, when we could instead be going to
| Mars or training STEM graduates is just criminal.
| imtringued wrote:
| Okay, lets say we agree that the sports industry causes
| externalities. The sports industry recognizes this and
| installs LEDs and other efficient electronics and cuts
| their energy consumption by 50%. If the sports industry
| and Bitcoin were equivalently bad the sports industry
| would immediately respond to the efficiency increase by
| doubling the number of stadiums and consume the same
| amount of energy in the end. Worse, they also had to
| construct new stadiums with concrete and therefore
| emitted CO2 during the construction process.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > You just keep moving the goalposts by using the most
| extreme argument you can muster.
|
| The most extreme arguments I can muster? There are _tons_
| of industries that produce negative net value when
| accounting for externalities. $1 in profit for $2 in
| external harm is not at all that ridiculous.
|
| > I think society should outlaw sport - so many people
| are hurt in injuries
|
| My argument is that we should price carbon usage to
| account for externalities. I highly doubt sports turns
| out to be net unprofitable, even once accounting for
| those externalities.
| pyrale wrote:
| Bitcoin is not advertised as entertainment, though. And
| if it was, gambling industries are heavily regulated. If
| you argue that bitcoin is essentially a new entrant in
| gambling, would you support similar regulation?
| Otherwise, there is not much besides whataboutism here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the owners of the miners are actually able to turn
| their coins into wealth that increases their lifestyle,
| then the mining did improve someone 's life_
|
| Bitcoin is between high finance and casinos. Both are
| highly regulated.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It improves people's lives, just likely not yours. Just
| like I don't benefit from caps on medical professionals, or
| police unions, or health insurance.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| How? Beyond creating a few lottery winners, it has no
| utility for the average person.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Neither does a multi-million dollar yacht or companies /
| foreigners buying billions in properties for investment
| displacing communities.
|
| In the real world, "utility" doesn't exist unless it
| benefits a select few.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Vanishingly few things have substantial utility for the
| average person. But clearly BTC has utility for those
| participating in transacting and mining it, or they
| wouldn't be doing it.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It's not "clear" BTC has utility for anyone. For most
| people it seems like a speculative investment vehicle
| (i.e. a lottery ticket).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Even granting that, speculative investments have utility.
| That's why people participate in them.
| grey-area wrote:
| No, they don't.
|
| Investments have utility, speculation does not.
|
| Time was Bitcoin proponents would talk about the future
| of money (investment).
|
| Now everyone just wants to get rich at the expense if the
| poor fool who comes later (speculation). We're now at the
| mania stage of this bubble, where crazy things happen and
| ordinary people invest because of the distorted prices.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| What is their utility beyond being a lottery ticket? That
| was my original question. Lotto winners have mixed
| outcomes, so I'm not sure that its clear if those lives
| were improved. We may come find out they weren't.
|
| State governments have had a monopoly on lotteries for my
| entire lifetime, so if we've granted that crypto is
| nothing beyond a lottery ticket, then there is no issue
| with society regulating it to whatever degree we can
| agree on.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Society can regulate whatever it wants. Usually it can
| attempt to make some sort of justification but the
| justification can be fairly flimsy (as the marijuana
| regulations have proven). So sure, society can regulate
| crypto, as the US Gov already has attempted to do.
|
| For the utility of decentralized currencies, it's best
| you get information from more than an Internet comment.
| Which sources have you used already?
| CamTin wrote:
| The average person isn't doing any mining, specific
| people are. It has utility for the people doing it.
| tuesdayrain wrote:
| It's not just a few lottery winners. Every single person
| who bought and held BTC for a reasonable amount of time
| has made money. BTC is an extremely valuable investment
| vehicle that has no equivalent.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > While taxing carbon usage is a good idea, there is
| something fundamentally wrong with the idea of allocating
| so much resources, in servers, in power and in space, for
| what essentially doesn't improve people's lives.
|
| There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of
| deciding _for_ people what might improve their lives and
| what isn 't allowed to try, rather than letting them decide
| for themselves individually. People decide to allocate
| those resources, for something they consider worthwhile.
| Some of them think they'll get rich. Some of them think
| they're changing how the world does business or exchanges
| money. Perhaps some of them are right; perhaps none are
| right but a successor that learns from them will be;
| perhaps they'll solve a novel problem or perhaps they
| won't. The world needs room to experiment with interesting
| ideas.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of
| deciding for people what might improve their lives and
| what isn't allowed to try
|
| I disagree, I don't think this at all an a priori wrong.
| It's helpful to consider the limit case.
|
| If we lived in a world, for instance, where one person
| owned all of the food in the world and didn't want anyone
| else to eat it, it would be permissible for the other 7
| billion people in the world to "decide _for_ " that one
| that their food will be redistributed.
| vinger wrote:
| Permissible by whom? The one who owns the food? By the
| mob of 7 billion? By your own Morality?
|
| What if you are the only one without, would the 7 billion
| agree the person is morally correct to steal from them?
| user-the-name wrote:
| > There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of
| deciding for people what might improve their lives and
| what isn't allowed to try, rather than letting them
| decide for themselves individually
|
| This is literally the whole point of having law.
| pyrale wrote:
| > deciding for people what might improve their lives
|
| I don't believe I did this. What I do, though, is measure
| the actual positive impact this tech has now.
|
| > The world needs room to experiment with interesting
| ideas.
|
| Bitcoin is way past the experimental phase.
|
| > rather than letting them decide for themselves
| individually.
|
| We're talking about something that has systemic impacts.
| Once individual actions reach such a scale that others
| get impacted, it's normal for society to get involved and
| set rules.
| samdoidge wrote:
| > What I do, though, is measure the actual positive
| impact this tech has now.
|
| I don't think just measuring the carbon footprint is
| giving you an accurate measurement.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| How do you objectively measure the actual positive impact
| of this tech exactly?
| user-the-name wrote:
| We don't really need to. The damage it does is so
| incredibly massive that positive impact would have to be
| gigantic to offset it, and it is blindingly obvious no
| such massive impact exists.
| pyrale wrote:
| I simply hear to proponents' testimonials.
|
| So far, the prevalent stories have been about servicing
| people living in countries suffering from hyperinflation,
| which is just as easily done with a foreign currency.
|
| Another common point is the promotion of smart contracts.
| It seems to me that these tools are still anecdotal, and
| don't really provide a significant competitive advantage
| compared to standard contracts. Besides, cryptos not
| using pow and incorporating good tooling are much better
| suited for that.
|
| The decentralized nature of the ledger is another common
| selling point, but proponents don't really tie it to a
| material benefit.
|
| Other impacts, usually not really promoted are its
| support to illegal activities such as digital
| racketeering, money laundering, etc. For instance, the
| financial aspect of ransomware is usually supported by
| this technology.
|
| If you feel I have missed some impacts, feel free to
| point them out.
| nightski wrote:
| You've probably missed the most important one -
| diversification. A lot of people (rightly or wrongly) are
| concerned about the U.S. Dollar after what has transpired
| (and is still transpiring) with this pandemic. The Fed
| has unleashed it's full force and we simply don't know
| (although many are making their best predictions) what
| the future holds.
|
| There's a reason companies and major asset holders are
| putting 1-10% of their portfolios into Btc, and I assure
| you it's not _only_ speculation.
| pyrale wrote:
| I understand that people may be interested in finding a
| safe asset to diversify into, but if there is no
| underlying asset to anchor btc to, it's purely a social
| consensus.
|
| If at some point the economy gets better and people want
| to invest back into actual stuff, what happens to the
| late leavers?
| undefined1 wrote:
| > we just tax carbon usage?
|
| yes please, that would be the holistic approach.
| externalities like carbon need to be priced in. if it's in
| the price, then the market will adjust accordingly. a $4
| [thing] will jump to $12, people will buy fewer until
| producers figure out ways to reduce externalities in order to
| bring the price down.
|
| what's free will be overused. price it in to force efficiency
| and alternative seeking.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I think it is probably good to tax for Co2 production as a
| way of addressing global warming. I just don't think we
| should equate bitcoin production with other CO2 producers.
| I.e. I personally think that the CPU-cycles used for science
| on HPCs are much more valuable than the bitcoin mining
| (that's just my opinion though).
| xur17 wrote:
| As you noted, this is just your opinion - are we going to
| have a person or group that decides what forms of Co2 usage
| are most "worthy", and adjust taxes accordingly? And let's
| say we do go down that path - one could certainly make the
| argument that Bitcoin usage from folks fleeing oppressive
| regimes are much more worthy than Co2 used to search for
| aliens or participating in far out HPC research.
| imtringued wrote:
| This is a terrible argument because the transaction fees
| on Bitcoin are high enough that anyone who wants to flee
| an oppressive regime would just buy any other
| cryptocurrency that isn't suffering from power
| consumption problems.
| xur17 wrote:
| Fees are $3 if you are willing to wait 12 hours,
| otherwise $5 for 30 minutes.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Incentivizing stupid things (like taking on mortgage debt
| or over-coverage by employer health plan) is already the
| status quo of the tax code.
|
| > Bitcoin usage from folks fleeing oppressive regimes
|
| Have bitcoin people (I don't know what else to call the
| people who want to talk about it all the time) actually
| convinced themselves that this is a substantial share of
| bitcoin usage?
| imtringued wrote:
| >Have bitcoin people (I don't know what else to call the
| people who want to talk about it all the time) actually
| convinced themselves that this is a substantial share of
| bitcoin usage?
|
| It's not because this is literally Monero's value
| proposition. Why would anyone who wants to flee an
| oppressive regime publicly announce to their government
| that they bought Bitcoin in the oppressed country and
| sold it in a less oppressive country?
|
| Information about Monero (don't dare to even think of
| buying it for speculation) https://www.monero.how/how-
| does-monero-work-details-in-plain...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| How do I cash out monero?
| sega_sai wrote:
| I think, yes, somebody should adjust taxes accordingly.
| The status quo with existing costs and taxes already
| effectively establishes some preferences for
| industries/goals, just implicitely. I think trying to
| explicitely express those preferences is better. (and it
| will never be 100% optimal that's for sure)
| xur17 wrote:
| I agree, taxing carbon usage is the correct way to go about
| this. All the ways I can think of taxing Bitcoin directly
| wouldn't modify the right behaviors. It seems like the
| options would be:
|
| * Tax Bitcoin transactions - decreasing Bitcoin transactions
| wouldn't decrease energy usage
|
| * Tax Bitcoin holdings - this is already accomplished via
| capital gains taxes, and again, it isn't the holding or usage
| of Bitcoin that causes the energy usage. It's the fact that
| Bitcoin has value that causes usage.
| toyg wrote:
| * Aggressively taxing GPU sales, with exemptions for some
| sectors and hard monitoring of commercial flows.
| gruez wrote:
| GPUs are made in china/taiwan so good luck with that.
| xur17 wrote:
| Well for 1, that won't affect Bitcoin mining since it
| hasn't been profitable to mine on a GPU for years, and 2
| that will just force mining overseas to locales that
| don't have this tax (possibly to locales that have less
| carbon efficient energy sources).
| amelius wrote:
| Yes. New business-models should not be accepted by default,
| especially if they are disruptive.
| mgberlin wrote:
| Reductio ad absurdum.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think the argument they made was dumb, but I have never
| understood why "reductio ad absurdum" is popularly
| considered a 'fallacy'.
|
| It seems like a perfectly logical argumentative technique,
| designed to point out when a general-statement is actually
| false in at least one case.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I have never understood why "reductio ad absurdum" is
| popularly considered a 'fallacy'.
|
| > It seems like a perfectly logical argumentative
| technique,
|
| It's _both_. The strong form of the valid argumentative
| technique involves what amount to a series of valid
| syllogisms, where each step from the premise to the false
| conclusion involves a true premise and a logical (and
| therefore absolute) implication. The false conclusion
| drawn through valid implication and and a series of
| premises all but one of which is accepted as true thereby
| disproves the premise that was in doubt. There is a
| weaker but still valid (though not in the logical sense)
| form, where the steps aren 't logically necessary but
| contingently true, with both the intermediate premises
| and the inferences with high enough likelihood that the
| conclusion is very likely true if the questioned premise
| is true.
|
| The _fallacy_ has a similar shape but involves
| intermediate premises that are false or at least
| unjustified, or intermediate steps that are unwarranted,
| or consists of steps that are a likely enough
| individually but which in aggregate are not sufficiently
| likely to justify the conclusion that the premise is
| false.
|
| Most commonly, the fallacy form rests on what reduces to
| the reasoning:
|
| 1. If A, it is most likely that B 2. Most likely A. 3.
| Therefore, most likely B.
| [deleted]
| erikerikson wrote:
| A contradiction (A ^ ~A) is the point at which reductio
| ad absurdum is achieved. It proves that a false
| assumption was made.
|
| A counter example to a universal proposition is but one
| means of finding a contradiction since the universal
| allows you to assert the positive. A proof that no
| examples exist would contradict the statement that some
| do, just as effectively achieving reductio ad absurdum.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What you're saying is not incongruous with what I'm
| saying.
|
| statement leads to contradiction -> "general-statement is
| actually false in at least one case", so if reductio ad
| absurdum is defined as achieving a contradiction, then
| the original statement is false in at least one case.
| amelius wrote:
| How many new business-models do we see, really, on a yearly
| basis?
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| my point exactly! The only reliable indicator of whether btc is
| good or bad overall is time. I was of the latter opinion, but
| what am i compared to the Great Musk? (judging by past
| experience, the answer is nothing).
| user-the-name wrote:
| Bitcoin is, at this point, an ecological disaster and a crime
| against humanity.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| the way i see it is like this: bitcoin is an administrative tool
| to help facilitate the transfer of products more efficiently.
| Society invests a lot of energy in developing and maintaining
| such tools, for example currency and tax accountants. This is
| because the faster wealth can be exchanged, the faster new wealth
| can be created. This makes investing huge resources into
| inherently worthless services -like banks- worthwhile. They don't
| create any wealth but instead help people save time. This time is
| used to extract wealth from the earth and thus increase the
| overall quality of life. IF bitcoin helps to extract more raw
| products than was invested in the process of maintaining it, then
| it can't be criticised for waste more than the banks, for
| example. Edit: I am NOT merely finger pointing. A knee-jerk
| reaction would be to condemn btc as being entirely wasteful and
| therefore bad, but the reality is more nuanced.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| The enormous efficiency gains from transferring Bitcoins should
| never be underestimated!
|
| https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
|
| At just $25.97 USD per transaction, the banks should just close
| up shop because they'll never be able to compete again.
| RustyRussell wrote:
| (2018)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Wow what a waste, at least use the waste energy to heat Texan
| homes.
| kevindong wrote:
| As it turns out, virtually all electric heating is equally
| efficient (in terms of electricity used per unit of heat
| outputted). The only difference is that with electric heating,
| the desired output is the heat itself. While as with computers,
| the desired output is some kind of audio/visual signal with
| heat being a generally undesired byproduct.
|
| So during college, I repurposed my desktop PC to mine crypto
| instead of turning on the (electric) heat in the apartment. I
| ended up making ~$60 worth of crypto in about 1-2 months before
| I stopped mining crypto because the fan noise was unbearable.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| If only energy was that easy to transport.
| casi wrote:
| if it costs $1 go buy then it is worth spending $0.99 on mining
| it. the more expensive it becomes the more it consumes. its
| basically a paperclip maximiser.
|
| I am pro digital currencies in general, but we can do much better
| than bitcoin.
|
| That said we should avoid moral panic, it only brings division.
| Ultimately we are all on the same side.
| erikerikson wrote:
| You mention nothing about externalities. Sure the $ books
| balance out but what other effects are being selected?
|
| We are all on the same side but benefits and costs are not
| evenly allocated.
| gruez wrote:
| >the more expensive it becomes the more it consumes. its
| basically a paperclip maximiser.
|
| this is partly counter-balanced by the block subsidy halving
| every 4 years.
| henron wrote:
| See the founder of Coinbase fail to name a single specific way
| that bitcoin makes anyone better off:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1073&v=Iiny6KBekSc.
| aokiji wrote:
| So now we are using the climate as an excuse to attack bitcoin?
| Weak propaganda.
| giacaglia wrote:
| This attack will become more and more common
| Angostura wrote:
| It uses a shocking amount of energy. Is it wrong to point this
| ou?
| arebop wrote:
| Aluminum production and datacenter operations also use a
| shocking amount of energy. Apparently Argentina uses a lot of
| electricity. People complain about bitcoin specifically
| because they don't recognize any value and they're frustrated
| that other people disagree. If they were genuinely worried
| about environmental impact, they'd look at the externalities
| of electricity production & distribution in a more general
| way (cap & trade? carbon tax?) rather than arguing that one
| particularly visible use of electricity is immoral.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Alcoa owns 24-26% of a very large hydroelectric dam in
| Wenatchee Washington. It's more profitable to sell their
| power shares then to run their plant, so the largest(also
| one of the best paying) employer in town shuttered their
| plant to sell power instead.
|
| There are also economic impacts not just ecological.
| DanBC wrote:
| We get something useful from aluminium production.
| smabie wrote:
| we clearly get something useful from bitcoin
| doomroot wrote:
| Subjectively. Clearly bitcoin users get something useful
| or they wouldn't use it, no?
| FatalLogic wrote:
| Some people might choose to focus on that issue, but the
| article is about a lot more than that
| cuchoi wrote:
| Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy as Argentina. I think is
| fair to raise the issue.
| freedomben wrote:
| It is true that the climate is used frequently as a convenient
| weapon against things people don't like politically, but this
| is a real issue.
|
| I'm a huge proponent of crypto currencies. I rail against the
| abuses from central banks like the Fed, and the evils of using
| a currency to engineer control over free people. I point this
| out so you know I think crypto currencies like Bitcoin are
| super important.
|
| But if we destroy our climate/environment, crypto currencies
| aren't going to feel like a big deal. We have to care about it.
|
| There are alternative models. One of the reasons I got into Eth
| was the work on proof-of-stake over proof-of-work they were
| undertaking.
|
| As proponents of bitcoin I think we do ourselves (and bitcoin)
| a disservice by dismissing climate-based criticisms. Sure the
| messenger may not be sincere and with the best of intentions,
| but lets take the argument seriously regardless. If there are
| problems with the argument, let's address those rather than
| question the credibility of the messenger.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's not a new development, people have been pointing out the
| large amount of energy consumed for quite some time.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| The article is from March 2018. It is indeed not a new
| development.
| cletus wrote:
| I am beginning to wonder if energy is what will eventually doom
| Bitcoin. Currently, Bitcoin consumes more energy than Argentina
| [1].
|
| Another article suggests the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is
| equivalent to New Zealand [2].
|
| It's not just the cost of mining new coins (which will ultimately
| end) but the cost of maintaining the network. The more valuable
| the collective Bitcoins are, the more energy you need to spend
| defending it against 51% attacks.
|
| To the apologists claiming there's no other good use for that
| energy, it's not simple. Using too much electricity can raise the
| price that everybody pays [3].
|
| Miners will keep chasing cheap power but I expect, much like
| ArbBnB, municipalities, states and even countries will
| increasingly clamp down on it.
|
| The thing is... Bitcoin solves a problem for almost nobody. It's
| almost entirely a speculative bubble. Citizens of stable
| countries are almost entirely better off with traditional
| currencies. Try and see ordinary people deal with a Bitcoin
| wallet and discover there's no recourse if a vulnerability in
| their computer means the contents are irreversibly stolen.
|
| I realize there are corner cases (eg sending money to and from
| Venezuela). There's also a lot of illegal use cases.
|
| Thing is, blockchains aren't really as immutable as pundits
| suggest. Bitcoin and Ethereum have had forks.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952#:~:text=Cambrid....
|
| [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-
| wor....
|
| [3]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cheap-power-drew-
| bitcoin-m...
| fearface wrote:
| Forks don't mutate the origin chain.
| mortehu wrote:
| Chains are amended, not mutated. Consensus about what new
| blocks to accept to the chain can change at any time. For
| example the chain following the original Ethereum rules is
| now called Ethereum Classic and its market cap is less than
| 0.5% of the new consensus.
| ubersync wrote:
| Unfortunately, Ethereum did infact mutate its chain. Bitcoin
| never mutated the chain, but once a fork was done to abandon
| the original chain from a few blocks back, and start mining a
| new chain from there, thus invalidating some transactions.
| However Ethereum did something which is essentially a crypto-
| blasphemy. They reversed a single transaction without a valid
| signature. Ethereum-Classic is the original chain that still
| contains that transaction.
| neillyons wrote:
| The fact that they created a new chain diminishes one of
| the main characteristics of a blockchain. That it can't be
| altered.
|
| This has always been my biggest sticking point with
| cryptocurrencies. It doesn't take into account that
| sometimes you need to fix a mistake.
|
| Cryptos also have a usability problem. If you forget your
| login credentials you lose access to your account. If you
| forgot your credentials at a regular bank, they have
| multiple avenues for figuring out if you are who you say
| you are. Eg post etc.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| It is clear that you don't believe in Bitcoin ("Bitcoin solves
| a problem for almost nobody") and thus want to use this energy
| angle to take it down. Good luck. But if you are more open
| minded read this thread and educate yourself:
| https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587?s=...
|
| Also, have fun staying po...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It is clear that you don't believe in Bitcoin
|
| Bo one believes in BitCoin except a few people who don't
| understand how the word works.
|
| Do educate yourself: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-
| years-in-nobody-has-c... and followup:
| https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-
| trustle...
|
| As to your tweet, it is as ignorant and uneducated as
| anything coming from bitcoin apologists.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > educate yourself
|
| With a twitter thread?
|
| I mean, what _is_ the application of Bitcoin, except crime?
| celticninja wrote:
| >Bitcoin solves a problem for almost nobody.
|
| Same as Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. They may use less
| power but their negative influence is far greater.
| Tycho wrote:
| What negative effects are those?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Is this supposed to be some reductio ad absurdum? Shut down
| bitcoin and social media. Humanity is better off without
| either.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > It's almost entirely a speculative bubble.
|
| Just the other week an older relative asked me to help get them
| set up so they could buy Ethereum. Another friend asked me to
| help them setup an account to buy Doge. Neither have any
| intention of using it as anything besides a speculative store
| of value because they hear other people are buying it, which
| would be fine if it didn't actually have such poor
| environmental externalities.
|
| What a time to be alive.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Same thing happened when it peaked at 20k - the hairdressers
| were talking about Bitcoin and altcoins. The difference this
| time is big time investors started gambling with it - so who
| knows where it's going to go.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Silver was a big bubble at that time too. I knew the end
| was near when the owner of a restaurant I frequented showed
| me the silver statue he had made of his dog.
|
| Once you have real ETFs the crypto mania will turn into yet
| another debt fielded bubble. In the meantime, enjoy the
| ride!
| lifty wrote:
| It is the bed central banks have laid for ourselves. They
| did and continue doing everything in their power to
| prevent asset price deflation, and this is the result.
| And I imagine that when things will get even more out of
| control we will get capital controls.
| [deleted]
| rawtxapp wrote:
| I'm guessing a lot of people also tried to get in on the dot
| com bubble, does it mean we write off the internet as a
| speculative bubble that's not providing any value?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I mean sure, but this is sort of a straw man - of course
| bubbles can exist even if the underlying asset has
| fundamental value. The Internet, housing, and tulips are
| all great things with value. But it's not entirely clear to
| me that Bitcoin provides more value than the energy cost it
| requires to sustain it.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Consider the costs, both environmental and financial, to
| mine, secure and transport gold.
|
| How does it compare against Bitcoin? What intrinsic value
| (besides "ooh, shiny") does gold actually have?
|
| I agree that BTC and cryptocurrencies generally are
| utterly wasteful, but what too many look at is the
| headline figure of energy consumed, and not _what_ energy
| is being consumed.
|
| Disclaimer: I think BTC is a total waste of time, and I
| am long BTC because I think it'll buy me a house one day
| too.
|
| (EDIT: I also have gold too)
| fakedang wrote:
| Gold can be used to make jewelry which is a big cultural
| thing in most of the Old World. It's still "ooh shiny"
| but it has value in being a tangible "shiny" good used to
| keep up appearances and show status.
|
| I don't know how you can show status with Bitcoin though.
| Maybe show your server farm or something.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| The time someone explained email to me, I was immediately
| hooked.
|
| But we're well over a decade into cryptocurrencies, and
| there is no application for them yet except crime.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a lot of people also tried to get in on the dot com
| bubble_
|
| _Ex ante_ , it is difficult to differentiate a Pets.com
| from an Amazon, or a dot com bubble from a beanie baby
| boom.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| > it is difficult to differentiate a Pets.com from an
| Amazon
|
| Arguably a small minority were able to differentiate and
| it paid off very well for them.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They may feel like they were able to differentiate, but
| without an actual explanation of how they differentiated,
| we can't determine whether they differentiated or whether
| they got lucky.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a small minority were able to differentiate and it
| paid off very well for them_
|
| True. But from a policy perspective this punts the
| problem. _Ex ante_ , identifying the president from the
| deluded is difficult.
| TheBlight wrote:
| >The thing is... Bitcoin solves a problem for almost nobody.
| It's almost entirely a speculative bubble. Citizens of stable
| countries are almost entirely better off with traditional
| currencies.
|
| Tell that to citizens of countries who have experienced
| hyperinflation and whose currencies became worthless almost
| overnight.
|
| There is a reason every asset is going up right now. Real
| estate, stocks, commodities, and crypto. More money is being
| printed this year than ever before. The financial media and the
| fed can claim minimal inflation but the markets are exposing
| that claim as dubious.
| Lt_Riza_Hawkeye wrote:
| Aah yes, paying a $25 transaction fee to buy a $5 loaf of
| bread at the grocery store with bitcoin. Perfect.
| nikanj wrote:
| A car used to cost 2BTC, then 20BTC, and presently some 1BTC.
| Bitcoin isn't exactly the model currency for stability.
| nightski wrote:
| You achieve stability through diversification, not by
| buying all stable assets.
|
| It's kind of like saying you don't want to buy an index
| fund because there are some really volatile stocks in
| there!
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| Remind me again, are we talking about an asset or a
| currency?
| Closi wrote:
| It depends what your argument is.
|
| If you are arguing that bitcoin is a bad currency because
| of high transfer fees, very few merchants accept it and
| that very few people are _actually_ buying things with it
| in any meaningful way, then that 's wrong because it's an
| asset.
|
| If you are arguing that as an asset it is purely
| speculative and has no fundamentals and zero return other
| than appreciation, then that's wrong because it's a store
| of value.
|
| If you are arguing that as a store of value it's actually
| highly volatile and has experienced multiple serious
| crashes, then that's wrong because it's actually a
| currency.
|
| This is the primary tactic Bitcoin seems to use to deploy
| to combat any criticism - if someone critiques its
| ability to do one thing you claim it's something else..
| [deleted]
| spinny wrote:
| it is both and neither, it has properties of both, it
| also lack lack some properties of both
| p_l wrote:
| Depends on which problem of bitcoin they are currently
| defending.
| nightski wrote:
| Do you not view the USD (or other currency) you hold as
| an asset?
| TomSwirly wrote:
| The US dollars' value is comparatively stable...
| grumple wrote:
| > Tell that to citizens of countries who have experienced
| hyperinflation and whose currencies became worthless almost
| overnight.
|
| Yeah, it's almost as though they had invested in Bitcoin
| during one of its crashes. What do you think they will say
| next time Bitcoin crashes back to 10% of its value?
| retrac wrote:
| That they were foolish for holding onto Bitcoin itself.
| That's not what it's being used for.
|
| Here in the West there's basically no barriers for someone
| like me sending $10k or $10 million wherever, for whatever.
| Just ensure I pay any taxes on investment profits, and
| don't fund terrorists or drug cartels. Many countries are
| far more strict. E.g., Argentinians can only move $300 a
| month out of the country legally, as I understand it. If
| they want to purchase real estate in Canada or Australia as
| a hedge against inflation, for example, that can be very
| hard even if they have the funds.
|
| Getting around capital controls seems to be a niche for
| Bitcoin. I can think of few other ways to simply send
| $10,000 from Argentina to Nigeria in one hour, reliably and
| securely. Assuming people can exchange Bitcoin for cash or
| similar on both ends, it can be near-ideal for certain
| pairings compared to the legal and traditional financial
| system.
| logifail wrote:
| > Getting around capital controls seems to be a niche for
| Bitcoin
|
| Q: If you pitch up in, say, Canada or Australia, and
| offer to buy a chunk of expensive real estate and pay
| with Bitcoin, who is selling?
|
| Q2: ... or do you have to convert to AUD/CAD first, and
| if so, which bank(s) can you rely on to not worry about
| KYC?
|
| Q3: ... or do you have to actually travel to Canada or
| Australia first, in order to open a regular bank account
| first, in order to have somewhere to move your Bitcoin
| _to_ , in order to have local currency, in order to be
| able to pay the local seller?
| retrac wrote:
| I do know that people have transacted real estate in
| Bitcoin in Canada before, mostly as a gimmick, but no
| reason you couldn't do that legally on the Canadian end.
| But I assume one would convert to CAD. What's the problem
| with KYC on the Canadian bank end? Canada has no such
| controls and wouldn't care that the money was laundered
| out of Argentina.
|
| Even if you had to do that, laundering the funds into
| Canada unfortunately does not seem it would be difficult
| in practice, given the apparent scale of money-laundering
| associated with the Vancouver housing market. And you do
| not have to be physically present to acquire property in
| Canada.
| logifail wrote:
| > laundering the funds into Canada unfortunately does not
| seem it would be difficult in practice
|
| Is this true only if you're sufficiently under the radar,
| or does it still hold true no matter how
| big/famous/wanted a criminal you are?
|
| EDIT: see
|
| https://www.step.org/industry-news/canadian-citizens-
| challen...
|
| and
|
| https://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/guidance-
| directives/client-...
|
| ??
| retrac wrote:
| Of course some people get caught. (Though some of what
| I'm describing wouldn't be considered illegal under
| Canadian law in the first place. You can just buy
| property with BTC here if you have BTC.) Still, it's a
| huge problem:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cullen-
| commi...
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/7593419/bc-casinos-too-
| dangerous-...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Western Union operates all over the world, you can send
| money instantly and the fees are lower than Bitcoin's
| network fees for transactions.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Another reason why every asset is going up right now:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
|
| Savings rates have exploded, and those funds need to go
| somewhere.
| toinetoine wrote:
| Looking at both, it looks like the gradual decline in the
| savings rate since the early 1980s correlates with a
| gradual decline in inflation from that time:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/infl...
| deathanatos wrote:
| Is the arrow of causality that way, though?
|
| I'm at the traditional "first-time-homebuyer" age, and I'm
| personally saving a fair portion of my income primarily
| _because_ assets, such as houses, are so expensive. Were
| housing cheaper, I 'd be paying a mortgage instead of a
| saving account.
|
| (And, I'd argue, sending longer doing so too due low
| interest rates.)
| M277 wrote:
| Yeah, and how many citizens of these countries buy and use
| BTC? Particularly with how unstable it is compared to other
| assets like e.g. gold.
|
| Mind you, I speak as someone who is a citizen in a country
| that experienced that. Not now, but back in 2016, our
| currency got halved. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody
| ever thought "I should have bought crypto."
|
| When the 2017-2018 crypto rush happened, and people started
| mining ETH, well-off people* here got onto it and started
| mining ETH.... only to immediately sell it as they mined.
| Nobody held onto it.
|
| *well-off because GPUs were absurdly expensive due to the
| inflation, and it only got worse when the shortages hit.
|
| EDIT: I also want to add that very, very few people here in
| my country actually understand what bitcoin even is (or
| cryptocurrency or blockchain). The people that I have seen
| support mining here only really view it as a way to earn some
| money while doing nothing.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| There are other safe-havens against inflation which have
| existed for hundreds of years. Bitcoin didn't invent the
| concept of an inflation hedge, and the citizens you refer to
| had and still have standard alternate solutions. Which in all
| honesty are a lot safer than a digital collectible token with
| no intrinsic value that's primarily used for speculating and
| drug deals, which can be regulated, shut down, or taken over
| whenever your or another country wants to shut it down.
| qertoip wrote:
| Bitcoin is by far the best hedge against inflation. All
| assets tend to zero in Bitcoin terms, long term.
|
| This has been true for the last 12 years and will continue
| to be true.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This is groupthink propaganda nonsense. Bitcoin can only
| do 1.5KB/s of transactions and the average transaction
| costs $26. Any rapid decrease in price will lead to rapid
| decreases in mining and thus transaction throughput. Does
| this seem like the future of financial transactions to
| you?
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > All assets tend to zero in Bitcoin terms, long term.
|
| Good luck with _that!_
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > Tell that to citizens of countries who have experienced
| hyperinflation and whose currencies became worthless almost
| overnight.
|
| I don't think any of my family in Algeria are using Bitcoin,
| and same for my wife's family in Bangladesh. In Algeria at
| least, generally you'll go to a hawala money changer who
| gives you better rates than the banks and exchange your local
| currency into Euros. If you need to send money abroad you use
| the same old Islamic hawala system to send it to France or
| wherever else.
|
| There will probably be some useful things built on top of
| blockchains, and I don't think crypto has zero value, but I
| don't think it's going to reasonably fix a situation of a
| failing state.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Tell that to citizens of countries who have experienced
| hyperinflation and whose currencies became worthless almost
| overnight_
|
| At best, this argument turns Bitcoin into a massive subsidy
| by stable countries of unstable ones. A subsidy paid for in
| the form of higher energy prices, environmental damage and
| opportunity cost.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| It's not just Venezuela that is a corner case. China is another
| one, a one billion "corner case".
|
| Lots of banking problems in your so called "stable" countries
| like your account getting blocked (try running a business on
| transferwise or paypal) because of some shit algortihm.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Doubtful it will doom it. Bitcoin and similar crypto scale
| difficulty based on the amount of power spent.
|
| So if a bunch of miners drop off due to electricity prices or
| such concerns, the network will simply readjust and keep on
| going.
|
| BTC has a lot of issues, but nothing forces it to be ever power
| hungrier. It can scale down the energy consumption and keep on
| existing just fine.
| vinger wrote:
| "Try and see ordinary people deal with a Bitcoin wallet and
| discover there's no recourse if a vulnerability in their
| computer means the contents are irreversibly stolen."
|
| I lived in a period without debit and credit cards. You dropped
| your cash it was gone. I'm not sure not having a reversal
| transaction is the killer missing feature.
| gota wrote:
| Anecdote - to me it is.
|
| I know what life is like with the existing feature of getting
| thousands of stolen dollars back by relying on the banking
| (and/or legal) system. I won't willingly adopt a system
| without it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Even with cash you had consumer protection laws. So you could
| get your cash back.
|
| With bitcoin it's medieval ages at best.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Could anyone in the world hack into your phone and steal your
| wallet from the comfort of their homes like they can with
| Bitcoin?
|
| Most Android phones stop receiving security updates after two
| years or less.
| spinny wrote:
| The capability of performing a 51% attack and sustaining a 51%
| attack are very different. Performing a 51% attack by mining a
| single gets you nowhere (at most you can revert some
| transactions, that block will eventually be orphaned).
|
| Today i believe, most usage of Bitcoin is for legitimate
| purposes. There is always lots of illegal use cases for
| anything with value, if it has value, people will do illegal
| s** to get it and will use as payment. Human nature.
|
| The energy used since the inception of the network is what
| makes the network valuable. Think of it this way: to create a
| cryptocurrency you need some "value" attached to it, Bitcoin
| does this by converting energy->work->bitcoin, you add "value"
| to the network in the form of energy and get bitcoin back (you
| get your "value" back in the form of money when you sell the
| mined BTC). Ethereum took a different approach (token sale +
| PoW) and now are moving to PoS.
|
| Pure PoW seems the only way to launch a completely anonymous
| and decentralized crypto
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > Today i believe, most usage of Bitcoin is for legitimate
| purposes.
|
| Like what? Aside from "speculating that it will increase in
| value", what are these legitimate purposes?
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > The more valuable the collective Bitcoins are, the more
| energy you need to spend defending it against 51% attacks.
|
| I wonder how afraid one actually needs to be of 51% attacks.
| How would the attacker profit from a 51% attack? They might
| double-spend, or rewrite known history somehow, or decide to
| only include certain transactions in their blocks and leave
| other transactions stranded. In each of these cases, it would
| be clear to everyone that Bitcoin has been broken, and that it
| has lost its usefulness and the properties it became famous
| for. The attacker might then control a large amount of Bitcoin,
| but having lost everyone's trust in it, that large amount of
| Bitcoin would be worthless. It's not in any attacker's interest
| to actually break the system, since they would need a gigantic
| initial investment and get no return on it. (Except if it were
| _very_ cheap and the attacker 's motivation would really be to
| destroy Bitcoin.)
|
| I don't think we need to fool ourselves that miners are in it
| to "protect" the network. They're in it to make money.
| qertoip wrote:
| > Currently, Bitcoin consumes more energy than Argentina
|
| How Argentina justifies using so much energy?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Argentina's economy supports the life and livelihoods of some
| 45 million people.
|
| Bitcoin supports the degenerate gambling habits of some
| nerds.
| jwblackwell wrote:
| > Bitcoin solves a problem for almost nobody
|
| This is a very Western centric view. Also, I live in the west
| and see Bitcoin as a good alternative store of wealth.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Look into how miners are making use of stranded methane that is
| otherwise flared and contributes greatly to global warming
| (23:00 to 1:11:00 in video below)[1].
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/emc83bQYiF8?t=1358
|
| Also, consider the massive dis-incentivization of consumption
| that BTC will encourage. The environmental effects are
| ambiguous, and probably not nearly as bad as mainstream media
| suggests. It could even be net positive.
| xtracto wrote:
| I agree with you of the idea that Bitcoin's doom is going to be
| energy. In my case, I do think Cryptocurrencies are here to
| stay, and other approaches like the ones used in ETH2, IOTA,
| Nano, etc will come to replace PoW.
|
| I think at some point, government is going to ban PoW mining in
| the same way they ban gasoline based cars or plastic bags.
|
| > The thing is... Bitcoin solves a problem for almost nobody.
| It's almost entirely a speculative bubble. Citizens of stable
| countries are almost entirely better off with traditional
| currencies
|
| That's the key: citizens of stable countries are just
| speculating, but for people of not so stable countries (Mexico,
| Argentina, China, among several others) where people just do
| not trust their government & their banking system,
| Cryptocurrencies deffinitely have value.
|
| In my case, I have part of my portfolio on Bitcoins, because
| there is no easy way to open a USD account in Mexico, and
| storing USD or gold is just not practial. And with our stupid
| president having 4 more years to go, the country is quickly
| going to a deep recesion. I don't doubt that when a recession
| come, the government will "lock" the banks to prevent a "cash
| run" as they did before (and as it has happened in other
| countries like Venezuela and Greece)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| > _but for people of not so stable countries (Mexico,
| Argentina, China, among several others) where people just do
| not trust their government & their banking system,
| Cryptocurrencies deffinitely have value_
|
| Fair point, but curious in how many shops in those countries
| you can buys groceries or how many landlords take their rent
| in Crypto? Because if you can't use it to feed or house
| yourself then what's the point of owning it other than going
| back to BTC's only real use cases so far: storing it for
| speculation, drug trafficking and ransomeware payments.
|
| Plus, can you imagine paying a $26 transaction fee every time
| you buy a $0.30 loaf of bread with bitcoin?
| wyre wrote:
| Bitcoin is a store of value. When they need money to buy
| groceries or pay rent they will sell an amount of bitcoin.
|
| Stores and landlords won't take payment in gold or index
| funds either.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| You're making the bold assumptions that landlords or
| grocery stores accept bitcoin in those countries.
|
| Do they really? Or are you fantasizing a Cyberpunk future
| where they would?
|
| Because fantasies are cheap, but food and shelter is not,
| and the ones who make the bread might be more into the
| cash in hand right now rather than waiting for your BTC
| transaction to clear.
| asenna wrote:
| > You're making the bold assumptions that landlords or
| grocery stores accept bitcoin in those countries.
|
| The parent is clearly not making that statement.
|
| Parent said ".. they will sell an amount of Bitcoin"
| which can be done either through exchanges or just as
| easily peer-to-peer through platforms like LocalBitcoin.
| If you have Bitcoin in a scenario like that, most
| definitely will not be a problem.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> If you have Bitcoin in a scenario like that, most
| definitely will not be a problem._
|
| Until the regime decides to cut off access to crypto
| exchanges or the whole internet country wide. Good luck
| cashing out your bitcoins then.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| > Bitcoin is a store of value
|
| That's what's said now because it failed as a currency.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Bitcoin is a store of value. When they need money to
| buy groceries or pay rent they will sell an amount of
| bitcoin._
|
| Seems like a great way to lose any stored value in
| transaction fees. Transaction fees are $26USD right now,
| which is likely more than what most pay in those
| countries for their groceries.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Why do people miss the substantial transaction fee when
| proclaiming BTC as a viable day to day currency? And in
| poor countries out of all places.
| qertoip wrote:
| LOL, no.
| cryptica wrote:
| Bitcoin demonstrates the importance of first-mover advantage.
|
| It's one of the worst and most inefficient cryptocurrencies in
| existence but because it was the first, it's the most valuable.
| The world would be much better off with a Proof of Stake
| cryptocurrency as the dominant cryptocurrency.
|
| The rhetoric is extremely resilient. The price of Bitcoin has
| nothing to do with the underlying technology, it's all about the
| social network and infrastructure which exists around it.
|
| The rhetoric concerning Bitcoin only using clean energy is BS...
| If Bitcoin didn't use that surplus electricity, some other useful
| project would have had access to even cheaper electricity.
|
| But the same can be said about most of the big tech companies in
| existence today. Their dominance is all about social networks,
| infrastructure and rhetoric.
| cybert00th wrote:
| Bitcoin = snake oil - it cures what ails ya. Miners may be making
| money now, but let's face it, it's an intangible asset made of 1s
| and 0s and wholly dependent on the presence of electricity. What
| could possibly go wrong...
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| That definition works for major potion of USD in circulation as
| well. So what's your point?
| dylkil wrote:
| why is hacker news so anti crypto
| loceng wrote:
| I wonder, all 3 current comments - including by someone shadowban
| - aokiji (I recently learned about the "showdead" setting you can
| toggle on in settings) - have been downvoted, I wonder if those
| downvoting all have financial interest in the success of the
| Bitcoin MLM?
| mrits wrote:
| It only took a few months for me working around bitcoin
| warehouses to realize I was being extremely hypocritical. Some
| will argue that bitcoin is important to society so the
| electricity use can be justified. I personally drastically
| reduced my stake in bitcoin though and put it in crypto that is
| committed to greener proof of stake algorithms.
| jakupovic wrote:
| This is FUD. You provide your opinion based on zero evidence.
| Good for you, but what did that do for anyone else?
| loceng wrote:
| Cool, at least you're trying. I think Bitcoin's structure,
| the way its blockchain is designed, is inherently flawed with
| too many unavoidable-unfixable pitfalls - along with
| unnecessarily transferring wealth from later adopters to
| earlier adopters. Consensus and use, alignment towards its
| adoption, can occur through democratic processes -
| democratically elected governments (save regulatory capture)
| - to use a blockchain currency/system that's transparent and
| prevents printing of money (or at least unknown printing of
| money) by nations, without transferring wealth simply due to
| use - without aligning people via greed, financial incentive.
|
| Edit to add: I feel showered in the glory of downvotes today.
| doomroot wrote:
| Hfsp
| bidirectional wrote:
| Are there interesting technical challenges related to Bitcoin
| mining which induce competition and innovation? I ask because I
| see Bitcoin mining dismissed in the same way high frequency
| trading is (if you have enough starting capital/connections, you
| get to print money). However I know enough about HFT to realise
| that characterisation is very unfair (plenty of firms go bust,
| they capture a lot less value than the people they replaced,
| innovation is rife), is there anything similar going on with
| cryptocurrency mining, or are the surface level dismissals fair?
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| I would be much happier if there were no innovation. Instead of
| just wasting electricity, we are wasting lives and minds. We
| have teams designing _custom silicon_ to print Bitcoin. At
| least it 's better than them working for Google, I suppose.
|
| A "mine" is just a big warehouse full of jerry-rigged
| infrastructure. It will employ maybe two people and will pack
| up shop in an afternoon if the owners find cheaper electricity
| elsewhere. It doesn't provide any value to the local economy.
| wmf wrote:
| There's definitely plenty of engineering around making the
| chips, miner boxes, and data centers as efficient as possible.
| Much of that engineering may not be transferable to other
| fields like cloud computing though.
| marktangotango wrote:
| There are two aspects. One is the hardware. Coin production is
| held nearly constant by adjusting the difficulty. Hardware
| evolves such that hardware from a few years ago is drastically
| less effective than current hardware, and the difficulty is
| similarly higher. This means it takes new hardware to mine
| effectively. With jumps in prices comes jumps in prices of the
| hardware. And difficulty acquiring it.
|
| Also, the economics change with the price of btc (obviously).
| When btc is $50k, you can mine very profitably with $.12 kw/h
| domestic electricity (ie your house). When btc was $10k, you'd
| break even or lose money.
|
| So if you can get the hardware, and get access to cheap power,
| yes you can print money. Neither of those are easy. That's the
| challenge and why it's so easily dismissed as you observe.
|
| The really provocative question is imo, how high will the price
| of btc go? A lot of people speculate $100-300k. That kind of
| price justifies a lot of capital expenditure.
| Animats wrote:
| That's from 2018. Apparently there was a crash around 2019.[1] A
| boom might be starting again.
|
| [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/sunday-
| buzz...
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