[HN Gopher] Bitcoin Is Time
___________________________________________________________________
Bitcoin Is Time
Author : taylorwc
Score : 310 points
Date : 2021-03-02 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dergigi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dergigi.com)
| phyro wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! I wrote a much shorter article on why
| I believe Grin is the closest to "time is money" here
| https://phyro.github.io/what-is-grin/grin_emission.html
|
| Bitcoin can be thought of as a clock, but the unit that is being
| transfered can't be thought as time because for it to be mappable
| to time, you need a linear function and Bitcoin's emission is
| exponential because of the halvings.
| [deleted]
| hanniabu wrote:
| How is Bitcoin's admission exponential? Isn't it a stepped
| linear emission?
| tromp wrote:
| It's inverse exponentially approaching the 21 million limit,
| which it can never reach [1].
|
| [1] https://medium.com/amberdata/why-the-bitcoin-supply-will-
| nev...
| hanniabu wrote:
| It's a stepped linear emission that mimics an inverse
| exponential emission. You can even see it in that chart if
| you expand it. Between the halving periods the emission is
| constant.
| tromp wrote:
| The block subsidy is constant between halvings. And is
| thus a step function. But "emission" refers to cumulative
| block subsidies. And thus is piecewise linear, with 34
| pieces of exponentially decreasing slope, the last one
| ending up flat.
| phyro wrote:
| If you zoom in enough, you won't see these exponential
| steps. If you were able to zoom out completely, you'd see
| _only_ the exponential function. Bitcoin's emission is an
| exponential function (dropping exponentially), the fact
| that there is some time period between these exponential
| steps does not make it non-exponential. This would have
| been obvious if the halvings were every 30 minutes, but
| it's much less obvious when the "in-between step
| interval" is 4 years.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Thanks for linking the Grin article! Now you've sent me on a
| rabbit hole reading about different emission strategies and
| ideas. (I follow Beam development, so I love to read about both
| projects).
|
| Doesn't the consistent emission of Grin depend upon the number
| of users and transactions also rising at the same consistent
| rate? Can we really count on that like we can count on the
| ticking of time?
| phyro wrote:
| Glad to hear that. In Grin, each block creates 60 coins. The
| time to mine a block is set to be 1 minute on average, so it
| will average out as 60 coins each minute and hence 1 coin per
| second. This won't be _exact_ of course due to the variance
| in block times so you definitely can't count on that - just
| like you can't count on Bitcoin getting exactly 24*6 blocks
| each day. But these systems are defined such that if the
| blocks start coming in too fast, they make them come slower
| and if they are coming in too slow, they make sure to make
| the puzzle easier to solve so the blocks can come faster. I
| think this follows the models they have good enough.
| olah_1 wrote:
| That does seem like a cool feature. It just requires a bit
| of a mindset change.
|
| Compared with gold, yes you can estimate when new gold is
| unearthed, but at the same time, there is a theoretical
| limit to the total amount of gold in the ground, right?
| Taek wrote:
| I don't think Grin does this but you can adjust the emission
| schedule based on the clock time (Sia does) so that the
| number of total coins produced on a given date is within a
| very tight bound of its expected amount, regardless of how
| much the hashrate has changed.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| It's about the number of blocks though, not the amount of the
| mining block reward. I think you are conflating two different
| things.
| phyro wrote:
| I'm glad you mentioned this. Indeed, there are two different
| things. First is the linearity of blocks and the second is
| the linearity of the emission of units with which we
| transact. Bitcoin has the former, but does not have the
| latter. You can't unambiguously say "I'm going to buy an hour
| of Bitcoin" because this hour depends on _when_ you plan on
| buying them - the emission over any time interval (including
| one hour) changes over time due to the halvings. This is why
| I think coins with a constant emission (especially Grin where
| 1 coin is emitted every second) can bring to life the saying
| "time is money" because money becomes time. There is no
| difference between calling your 100 Grins "100 Seconds" and
| buying an hour of Grin. So yes, you're correct that the
| article talks about the "block time", but I think this can be
| pushed further where you not only have a global clock for
| events, but your unit of money is time itself.
|
| P.S. I prefer thinking of a blockchain as a "drunk" clock,
| because of the variance that comes with the finding of a
| valid PoW. It might sway a bit left and right, but it mostly
| goes in the straight line in the end.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Bitcoin is entropy.
|
| Sheer wasted electricity.
| arbawk wrote:
| You didn't read the article, did you?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I have _ahem_ lost more than enough time on articles about
| Bitcoin, and its tiresome wide-eyed fanatics. The comments
| are bad enough.
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| So, you didn't read the article. Please contribute to
| discussion specific to the article.
|
| "Mining wastes electricity" is a trite talking point we
| will see in every discussion.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| And yet you found time to litter internet with you telling
| other people that you won't spend even little time
| understanding the topic at hand or posting something
| produced by your own thinking... That's even worse than
| creatively criticising the topic, that's just meaningless
| jibberjabber.
|
| PS let me rephrase my point: you write "I have ahem lost
| more than enough time on articles about Bitcoin, and its
| tiresome wide-eyed fanatics. The comments are bad enough."
| implying that you have decided for yourself that you are
| not wanting to spend any more time on adding meaningful
| things to this conversation.
|
| Who do you think is interested in this information? Why on
| earth would you think it's a useful thing to share (on top
| of that with that negative attitude that makes it painful
| for a normal person to read)? If you don't want to
| participate, just don't.
| jakeva wrote:
| I assume comments like that are from people who are
| conflicted by the fact that if their head weren't so far
| up their ass they would have entertained the notion
| enough to at least acquire a few bitcoin, but because
| it's now too late it's better to celebrate just how far
| up their ass their head is.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| You are basically restating this crappy argument:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316375
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316392
|
| See the replies. There is nothing more to add to this
| deeply dull line of thinking.
| jakeva wrote:
| And yet what I responded to was a restatement of the same
| "deeply dull line of thinking" as you put it that
| triggered the responses you say I'm restating. I'm not
| sure what your point is, other than to say people on the
| internet tend to restate things.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yeah I wish the bitcoiners would just bitcoin off and
| bitcoin happily together, leaving the rest of us in
| peace. But pyramid schemes depend on continually hyping
| the product, so they can't.
| jakeva wrote:
| You know you don't _have_ to read about bitcoin, right?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I've worked with a bitcoin bore.
|
| An analogy for you: like working with an Evangelical
| Christian who always assumes that your annoyance at their
| pestering _can only be jealousy_ that Jebus won't let you
| into heaven.
| jakeva wrote:
| I mean I get it but your annoyance in this case appears
| to be directed at evangelicals on the internet you are
| free to ignore, as opposed to coworkers the presence of
| whom you have little choice. Maybe you are less free to
| complain about coworkers and so instead complain here?
| Either way, your complaining is no less annoying than the
| thing you're complaining about.
| doomroot wrote:
| Hfsp
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This kind of post is against HN rules.
| Dzugaru wrote:
| Good read. Is there a similar take on how proof-of-stake can work
| (for example current sketch of Ethereum Casper protocol)?
| gt565k wrote:
| Check out Cardano's papers. Its PoS protocol has been live on
| mainnet for a while. Native token support just rolled out to
| mainnet yesterday and smart contracts are coming in Q2 this
| year.
|
| It was founded by ETH co-founder Charles, who formed an
| academia network of CS PhD researchers to deal with 3rd gen
| blockchain problems and solutions.
|
| It is 3rd gen blockchain built to handle the problems of
| ethereum and other blockchains that came prior.
|
| https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...
| DennisP wrote:
| Here are the two papers on Casper:
|
| Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09437
|
| Combining GHOST and Casper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03052
|
| A very simple summary is that it's a fairly traditional
| consensus protocol, in which if anyone breaks the rules it's
| possible to prove who did it and penalize them by burning their
| stake. It achieves scale by using aggregated signatures.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Proof-of-history using verifiable delay functions (VDF) is a
| valid consensus mechanism that scales of PoS and PoW networks
| [1]. Solana is build on top of it and it looks very promising as
| a fast consensus mechanism.
|
| OP pretty much explains the intuition behind why history as a
| sequence of events in a blockchain works, but Bitcoin PoW is
| different from PoH as maintaining order is the main work done and
| not a side-effect.
|
| 1. https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-
| for-...
| bearerofgarbage wrote:
| what problem of value does it solve?
|
| every post including cryptocoin here gets a generic comment
| like yours about some other cryptocoin that is 'very promising'
| jtms wrote:
| It appears that it solves the problem of there needing to be
| yet another cryptocurrency
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| Maybe try reading the post again? I have no affiliation or
| even opinion about that coin, but it is painfully clear for
| that post only that the proposed problem of value is
|
| "valid consensus mechanism that scales of PoS and PoW
| networks".
|
| Half of the comments on this page complain about how Bitcoin
| uses too much energy and how PoW is wasteful. This is a
| direct (allegedly, if what they write is correct) solution to
| exactly that.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I honestly don't think that either BitCoin or
| CryptoCurrency in general _can_ be reformed. The whole mess
| is a complete write-off.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| You're dismissing a whole branch of computer science on
| decentralised systems with no argumentation as to why.
| Consensus algorithms, solutions to the CAP trilemma,
| uncensorable decentralised applications that run as long
| as people are willing to use them, trustless oracles,
| decentralised dispute resolution, democratised loans and
| finance. Those are some applications that grew out the
| cryptocurrency space.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| On a somewhat related note, I just wonder for my personal
| interest, why do you write it that way? "BitCoin". You
| are just signalling everyone that you haven't done any
| deep research, you have not read any meaningful amount of
| articles or books or studied it in depth... It is spelled
| "bitcoin". "BitCoin" is how a housewife would spell it
| (no disrespect or negativity towards housewives, it is
| simply an example of a person who does not know much
| about bitcoin and has just heard the name on the tele or
| something).
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > "BitCoin" is how a housewife would spell it (no
| disrespect
|
| Did you understand me? Then the spelling was good enough.
| Please don't attempt to derail with gender role trolling.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > Did you understand me?
|
| I probably understood even more than you were willing to
| share: your level of knowledge about this topic.
|
| > gender role trolling
|
| What does gender has to do with anything? You brough it
| up, not me. Also where did I "troll" you? The word
| "housewife"? Not sure why you would take offence in that,
| for me it is not a negative or lower-value term, it
| simply refers to a person that has chosen and has had the
| possibility and privilege to spend most of their time at
| home taking care of their family. I could just as easily
| have used "hairdresser" or "bricklayer", those people
| have equally likely little to do with crypto and have the
| same level of knowledge about bitcoin that you seem
| (assuming by that spelling, in which I could be wrong of
| course) to have. That's why I wonder, where did you pick
| that up? That spelling? Nobody in the industry spells it
| that way, that's all.
| Tenal wrote:
| You're a neckbearded gender troll. The sooner you can
| admit it to yourself, the sooner you can start healing
| yourself.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| I wanted to share a cool algorithm related to the time as
| consensus. My intention was not to shill a specific project.
|
| I follow alternative consensus algorithms and trustless
| decentralized app tech in the blockchain space because I
| think it is interesting and democratizing tech. I do not own
| half of the coins I follow and couldn't care less for
| speculation. Technologically, cryptocurrency is still an
| exiting domain and scepticism is in place, but the blind hate
| for anything blockchain on HN is a bit OTT.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Not the first time I whine about the elusiveness of human
| writing: I could not find what's the article talking about after
| scrolling one screen...
| md2020 wrote:
| The earlier points in the piece about the distinction between
| information and physical matter got me thinking. I only have a
| bachelor's in computer science and not much cryptography
| knowledge, so please excuse if this question has a simple answer:
| What fundamentally prevents us from creating a digital analog of
| gold? Gold (partially) has value because it is scarce, and it's
| scarce because it's difficult to create--nuclear fusion takes a
| ton of energy, and gold is one of the heavier naturally occurring
| elements. As the article mentions, all physical assets can retain
| value because they're impossible to copy. If I give you my gold,
| the transfer of value is being held up by the laws of physics.
| You now have it, and I don't. There's no ledger keeping track of
| all the gold atoms in the universe, therefore it's trivial to
| transfer it from one part of space to another. What keeps us from
| having some cryptographic primitive that enforces the same thing?
|
| Bitcoin got the part of "requiring some difficulty to create",
| but I feel like the killer cryptocurrency would be the one where
| no ledger is needed.
| crazypython wrote:
| > What fundamentally prevents us from creating a digital analog
| of gold?
|
| You can infinitely copy information. It's in the article.
| md2020 wrote:
| Yeah, I read the article. My question was what really
| prevents the existence of some cryptographic operation that
| would allow us to "port" the laws of physics to the digital
| space, so that when information moves we could enforce that
| the sender no longer has it and the receiver does.
| johndoe42377 wrote:
| Honestly, what kind of bullshit is this?
| keiferski wrote:
| _Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I
| repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the
| suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be
| chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus
| teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile
| than the one on the island of Pharos._
|
| --Jorge Luis Borges, "The Zahir"
|
| https://longreads.com/2016/06/14/borges-and-money/
| 7373737373 wrote:
| > Richard Dawkins said in an offhand comment in The Selfish
| Gene that "Money is a formal token of delayed reciprocal
| altruism." - https://nakamotoinstitute.org/reciprocal-altruism-
| in-the-the...
| octocop wrote:
| Thanks for the link, really interesting stuff.
| seph-reed wrote:
| This is an amazingly refined definition.
| dnautics wrote:
| This isn't too far off from the point that David graeber
| makes in debt: the first 5000 years
| kiliantics wrote:
| I think this is a rosy-eyed view. Money is a formalised
| manifestation of debt, which previously was an informal
| system of reciprocity and altruism. But formalising this
| debt with financial and monetary systems destroyed the
| altruistic part of the arrangement.
|
| Graeber explains how money was created by states to enforce
| its authority and basically coerce people into
| participation. The anonymity of monetary debt and the fact
| that the system is controlled by the "powers that be" make
| it kind of the opposite of altruism.
| Sebastian_09 wrote:
| Along these lines, there is an excellent book by John Kenneth
| Galbraith - Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975) that
| covers the whole history of money, with much details & wit
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Nearly any currency when used in commerce is primarily used as
| an IOU for time. Due how the POW is designed to ensure
| immutability of the blockchain it also is dependent on how
| cheap it is to generate energy for the people who mine.
|
| Comparing it to a bank with fiat a bank usually ensures the
| consistency of transactions so miners perform this action (and
| also developers of bitcoin if there are security holes) and
| your wallet is an account and bitcoin have a transaction cost
| which is like using a debit card associated with an account.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I've always thought about it this way: We trade our time (work)
| for money and later trade that money for time (other's work).
| We see this manifestation in lots of places: bus is cheap but
| also costs time vs limousine is expensive but uses minimum
| time. Growing food is dirt cheap but also costs time vs buying
| produce is expensive but uses minimum time. This exchange has
| also allowed the producers to invest in efficiencies and
| economies of scale. All told, this is why I generally have a
| rule to not spend money on anything that doesn't buy me time,
| it is my most limited resource.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| That sounds almost poetic. I wish people who mindlessly rail
| against capitalism on twitter actually took the time to
| understand how these systems work. I think many of them would
| like to believe that we can all live in a system without
| currency. They don't realize that much of the freedom we
| enjoy today comes from capitalism. The ability to start your
| own business, and more fundamentally, to decide how your
| money (and time) is spent. Communism and centralized control
| over resource utilization necessarily results in less
| freedom.
| abledon wrote:
| I'm curious how 70% of mining of BTC is done by China... how USA
| will react to allow BTC to take over their financial territory?
| Can governments step in and do some sort of play on this to not
| lose out on their value?
| moralsupply wrote:
| Check again. 70% of the _mining pools_ are in China
|
| The majority of the hash rate is produced in the USA
| ajarmst wrote:
| I always enjoy conversations with cryptocurrency cognoscenti:
| "Ok. Assume I have some bitcoin (a bitcoin? bitcoins?). How would
| I exchange it for, say, a carton of milk?"
|
| Don't get me wrong. I'm a math nerd. I think bitcoin is
| fascinating as a technical achievement, and hope we keep
| exploring the blockchain idea. However, I also know that bitcoin
| mania has literally affected global supply chains of computer
| components and inflicted a measurable exacerbation of global
| warming. There is a colourable argument about whether bitcoins
| have value, but it's very clear that bitcoin has a non-trivial
| cost.
| o_p wrote:
| Personally I see bitcoin more as internet gold, you wouldnt buy
| a carton of milk with gold either, but you can create commerce
| services on top of bitcoin who are backed by this
| descentralized currency
| agumonkey wrote:
| Talking about that I see a few projects throwing the idea
| generalized of time limited currency. I find the idea a bit
| interesting and weird at the same time.
| randomopining wrote:
| Bitcoin is deflationary thus by nature it lets you lock in your
| time-value.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| _tl;dr_ - The article's a bit confused, so to clarify: Bitcoin's
| entropy _starts_ maximized, and then miners reduce it. According
| to the second-law-of-thermodynamics, the net-entropy of the
| universe tends to increase, so Bitcoin 's entropy-reduction is
| just increasing entropy elsewhere (hence its huge electric
| consumption). Bitcoin's doing this because its security is based
| on having a high-entropy barrier against attackers (like a good
| password), except instead of a legitimate party being whoever has
| the password (and thus can beat attackers), it's based on whoever
| can attack the entropy the best (through 51%+ control of mining).
|
| ---
|
| Some of the entropy stuff seems a bit confused.
|
| As time goes on, Bitcoin's blockchain's entropy is decreasing,
| not increasing. The [genesis-
| block](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block) is like a
| [nucleation-seed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_crystal),
| and the blockchain's growing from that genesis-block like ice
| crystallizing from a nucleation-seed as the surrounding water
| freezes.
|
| The second-law-of-thermodynamics asserts that entropy _tends_ to
| increase in the overall system, in a cumulative sense, but not
| necessarily throughout the entire system. Bitcoin 's blockchain's
| removed entropy tends to imply an increase of entropy in the
| surrounding environment (leading to the environmental concerns
| with its energy-consumption).
|
| If Bitcoin's mining-difficulty were reduced and the miner-pool
| shrunk a lot, then Bitcoin's blockchain would have less entropy
| removed, but the environment would have less entropy added to it
| as Bitcoin's power-consumption would be less.
|
| This is by-design. For example, if you want a secure password,
| then you want it to have [high entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Password_strength#Entropy_as_a...), because then it's harder
| for an attacker to guess your password. Bitcoin's the same way,
| except that it doesn't start knowing the password -- instead,
| Bitcoin asserts that whoever controls the most entropy-removing-
| power (mining power) is the correct authority. So that's why
| [Bitcoin sets a high-enough
| difficulty](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty): it needs a
| high-enough difficulty to prevent someone from easily [faking a
| longer blockchain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
| spending#51%_attack).
| f430 wrote:
| You mean bitcoin is a ticking time bomb kept afloat by an
| unbacked asset that is now the target of Federal agencies?
| shoshino wrote:
| Tether's impact on the price of Bitcoin is grossly misreported
| and without basis.
|
| The only "Federal agency" targeting Tether was the New York
| Attorney General's office, however the investigation was
| settled last month with with no admission of guilt from Tether.
| caycep wrote:
| I probably need to read this more closely after work, but have to
| ask - have there been thermodynamic esp w/r to information
| theory/shannon entropy, information encoding properties of
| bitcoin?
| amelius wrote:
| Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.
| [deleted]
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| Did you read the article? Your comment is copy-and-pasted on
| every cryptocurrency article, please discuss _this_ article.
|
| It is also completely wrong. A Ponzi requires a central actor
| (like Charles Ponzi) to actively pay profits to earlier
| investors with funds from more recent investors.
|
| If you understood that you would understand it is not a Ponzi.
| I think you think you're trying to say "Pyramid scheme," which
| it also is not. It's hardly even a "scheme."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It's a decentralised, consensus based Ponzi scheme.
|
| Well done, Mr. Satoshi.
| joshsyn wrote:
| lol, you are wrong.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Ponzi schemes have a schemer with asymmetric information about
| the scheme. How is the analogous to bitcoin since there is no
| asymmetric information (anyone can see the code). You can argue
| that bitcoin is a pump and dump scheme perhaps but not a Ponzi
| scheme.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| A Ponzi scheme is a specific type of financial scam and
| Bitcoin, even with the least charitable definition, does not
| fall under that definition.
|
| Needing new buyers for price to increase is not the definition
| of a Ponzi scheme. Because that is true for any speculative
| asset due to the price setting mechanism. Your argument entails
| that the price of Bitcoin is highly inflated over its
| fundamental value, i.e. that it is a speculative bubble.
| Speculative bubbles are very different from Ponzi schemes. A
| Ponzi scheme has the following definition according to the SEC:
| >"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing
| investors with funds collected from new investors. Ponzi scheme
| organizers often promise to invest your money and generate high
| returns with little or no risk. But in many Ponzi schemes, the
| fraudsters do not invest the money. Instead, they use it to pay
| those who invested earlier and may keep some for themselves."
|
| Ponzi schemes require a central fraudster to pass on money
| directly from old to new investors with the underlying asset
| obfuscatedly held on promise by the fraudster.
|
| With cryptocurrency the buyer has control of the commodity, you
| actually have control of the crypto, there is no promise of a
| consistent return with little risk, there is no central entity
| defrauding targets with promises that hold the asset in reserve
| passing on money directly from new to old investors.
|
| What we do have is a speculative bubble which will no doubt be
| devastating for new investors when it collapses. But the
| definition of a Ponzi scheme is not met.
| bdamm wrote:
| If Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, then gold must be as well.
| jhauris wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how that's true? Gold has use in making
| other physical products, such as electronics, which can do
| things and thus create value. Bitcoin comparatively seems to
| be a net drain on resources and value.
| TheBlight wrote:
| The vast majority of gold is held for speculation. If that
| use case went away it'd be effectively worthless.
| epx wrote:
| Wrong. It it fell 50%, many industrial uses of gold would
| resume. I'd have 4 gold fountain pens instead of 2.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Lol I stand corrected :)
| ttul wrote:
| Not really. Half of the value of gold, or thereabouts,
| relates to its utility as a metal. Bitcoin is purely valued
| because people believe others will buy it from them in future
| at a good price - hopefully a higher price.
| doomroot wrote:
| So half the people that use gold are involved in a ponzi
| scheme?
| ttul wrote:
| It may also not be correct that Bitcoin is a Ponzi
| scheme. A Ponzi scheme is, strictly speaking, one wherein
| the latest investors are used to pay out interest and
| withdrawals to earlier investors.
| arbawk wrote:
| Ponzi schemes will always have people at the pinnacle of the
| period looking to sell.
|
| Bitcoin supporters will never sell, thus there is no bottoming
| out. It's actually just money, you're likely missing something.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Why won't Bitcoin supporters ever sell? How can you say that
| with certainty? People sold GameStop, for instance.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Not everyone will hold forever. BTC's situation is really
| no different from gold's: it's seen as a store of value,
| but in the case of BTC, there's a lot of hype around it.
| The GME situation is related, but doesn't have the overtly
| greedy hedge funds at the forefront.
| joshsyn wrote:
| One reason I think is because of the global phenonmenon and
| easy to exchange native currency to crypto. And the
| immutable and fixed capped supply. Huge prizes to be won
| for someone cracking the network.
| gnrlst wrote:
| I'm ready to be downvoted to oblivion, especially by all the
| Bitcoin purists, but I hope my message sparks at least _some_
| curiosity.
|
| Bitcoin is getting "weaker" every year for several reasons:
|
| - emerging centralization due to economies of scale. If this
| trend continues the mining power will be so consolidated that a
| 51% attack will be likely. The Nakamoto coefficient is already at
| 4, and tending towards 3.
|
| - energy usage due to Proof of Work is growing astronomically,
| and the higher the price of bitcoin, the less incentive there is
| to use renewable energy. Bitcoin uses more energy than the
| country of Argentina.
|
| - transaction times are SLOW, and expensive. The lightning
| network is incredibly buggy and won't actually solve the problems
| it's promising.
|
| There is a better alternative. RaiBlocks, named nano since 2018.
| It got a bad rap due to the BitGrail hack, but it's picking up
| steam again. The developer community is great, the main dev team
| on the Nano protocol has been consistently chugging along
| regardless of the 3 years of crypto winter on a shoestring budget
| and the nano community is made up of _users_ , not speculators.
|
| This article sums it up quite nicely:
| https://senatusspqr.medium.com/why-nano-is-the-ultimate-stor...
|
| I'm happy to receive downvotes, but all I ask in return is that
| you give it a read with an open mind.
| paulmd wrote:
| > The lightning network is incredibly buggy and won't actually
| solve the problems it's promising.
|
| it's actually worse than that - lightning only works in the
| context of centralized banking. It presumes there is some other
| entity with whom you can hold a channel open, who you do
| roughly equivalent amounts of deposits and withdrawals from. If
| that criterion is not met, then you have to keep closing
| channels and re-opening new ones, each of which incurs a new
| transaction fee just like if you did it yourself. So it is
| still expensive to send arbitrary transactions, it is just now
| relatively cheap to do "banking" with a single entity.
|
| That entity sending money for you may still be expensive as
| well. If they have another entity who they do roughly equal
| amounts of transactions and withdrawals from then yes, they can
| nominally transact that for free, but they will still probably
| charge you for the service, and having that bank send a payment
| to an _arbitrary_ user with whom they don 't have balanced
| deposits/withdrawals incurs the normal bitcoin transaction fee.
| You can see where all of this is going - Lightning doesn't
| really solve anything, it _still_ is only optimized for
| transactions between large, centralized entities.
|
| Oh, and if you ever lose power or internet then your channel
| has to be closed and resolved, then reopened if you want to do
| further business. So you have to pay a transaction fee every
| time you lose internet (or there is a routing problem somewhere
| on the net) or power.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| > you have to keep closing channels and re-opening new ones,
| each of which incurs a new transaction fee just like if you
| did it yourself.
|
| Channel factories will significantly reduce the need to go to
| the blockchain to open and close channels.
|
| > if you ever lose power or internet then your channel has to
| be closed and resolved
|
| This is complete non-sense, your channel lives on as long as
| you don't close it, if you're concerned about counterparty
| risk, you can use a watchtower.
| varajelle wrote:
| > It presumes there is some other entity with whom you can
| hold a channel open, who you do roughly equivalent amounts of
| deposits and withdrawals from.
|
| I don't get how you go from there to "centralised banking".
| Contrary to a bank, you do not need to trust this entity with
| your money. Also it is not centralised, there can be many
| such entity and they connect together.
| pwm wrote:
| This is incorrect and highly misleading. You don't have to
| open and close channels like that. Instead you keep them open
| and do circular rebalances when your channels are imbalanced.
| As an experiment I've been running an lnd node for the last 6
| months. During this time I've routed 1445 transactions
| totalling 4.68249963 BTC (~223K USD currently) and only
| closed a handful of channels, using single digit sat/vB as
| it's not urgent. Lightning transaction fees in general are
| negligible at today's btc price. You transact with all your
| peers for free while you usually pay a fraction of a cent for
| sending transactions anywhere in the graph. Transactions are
| pretty much instant.
|
| After running it for 6 months, I could certainly criticise
| various aspects of lnd but none of what you have written
| falls into the valid criticism category.
| bibabaloo wrote:
| This sounds cool, do you have any recommended resources to
| get started with running a lnd node and getting it
| connected to a larger network? And, just curious, do you
| make any money from lighting fees?
| [deleted]
| la_fayette wrote:
| This is not true! RTFM
| zepto wrote:
| Can you offer one contradiction to it? That would be more
| helpful than just saying it's not true.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| But a 51% attack (with e.g. a double spend) will be easily
| spotted by the community, right? What would be the incentive
| for an actor with such a vast amount of specialised hardware
| just for Bitcoin mining, to undermine its security? Its not
| that I'm saying it is not possible but its your usage of
| "likely" that I would argue against
| betterunix2 wrote:
| You are assuming that the attacker would not gain more from a
| general loss of faith in Bitcoin than they would gain from
| controlling Bitcoin itself. That is a bad assumption. What if
| the attacker is trying to push a competing system? What if
| the attacker holds short Bitcoin futures contracts?
| vngzs wrote:
| I see the ideological foundation for a theoretical 51% attack
| more aligned with causing mass disruption & chaos than some
| kind of financial gain. Yes, it would likely be detected. But
| it would undermine BTC, lots of people would lose lots of
| money, lots of businesses would go under, portions of the
| global banking system would be disrupted and likely pushed
| back to more centralized alternatives. The most likely threat
| actor for such an attack would therefore be a nation-state.
|
| China is the only country pushing that kind of hash rate at
| the moment, so we should analyze whether the move would be
| beneficial to them in order to determine the risk.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But a 51% attack (with e.g. a double spend) will be easily
| spotted by the community, right?
|
| The real problem is that if it happens once, it's proven to
| be both possible and practical. And once it's proven to be
| possible and practical, how do you know it won't happen again
| and again?
|
| > What would be the incentive for an actor with such a vast
| amount of specialised hardware just for Bitcoin mining, to
| undermine its security?
|
| Most mining hardware is specific to hashing, not Bitcoin
| specifically.
|
| The obvious attack is something like this: Imagine someone
| invents a Bitcoin competitor that is somehow more resistant
| to these types of attacks, yet can use the same mining
| hardware. To convince everyone to switch to their new
| alternative (which they have accumulated significant amounts
| of, similar to Satoshi), they spend the money to crash
| Bitcoin, while advertising themselves as the more secure
| alternative to Bitcoin.
| AJ007 wrote:
| A hacker that was able to hijack the mining pool just for
| malicious reasons could do it. Maybe they are motivated by
| not liking Bitcoin energy use.
|
| The better argument here is that 98% of cryptocurrencies
| are very cheap to 51% attack, and they are attacked
| successfully. One would expect these to be exploited
| aggressively before a successful Bitcoin attack. Hints of
| unmanageable abuse would be exchanges de-listing
| alternative cryptocurrencies due to mounting losses.
|
| The bottom line is if Bitcoin can't survive a 51% attack,
| then everything else below it is non-viable.
|
| Personally I think the gaping vulnerabilities of altcoins
| and the scalability of Ethereum is a bigger issue than what
| may happen to Bitcoin over the next decade+. Major
| catastrophes with any of the other stuff could go a long
| way toward causing loss of trust, interest, and value in
| Bitcoin.
| csomar wrote:
| The difference is that Bitcoin success was largely accidental.
| People are very touchy about others getting a head start.
| Miners got their Bitcoins by burning electricity, this makes it
| a "fair deal" despite destroying the environment. Satoshi
| disappeared and never moved his coins, which removes the "pre-
| mine" aspect.
| yholio wrote:
| So it's a 100% premine that already pushes on 1 billion market
| capitalization. How is that any different from the Bitcoin
| bubble?
| keymone wrote:
| Valid observation. The difference is that bitcoin isn't a
| premine.
| yholio wrote:
| That's hardly relevant for someone looking at them in 2021,
| of for choosing a "global reserve currency" which involves
| a staggering appreciation of both. Bitcoin 2021 has been
| 85% "premined", the only difference is that it is (much)
| more widely distributed.
| keymone wrote:
| The difference is that it was not a premine. I don't know
| how can you say it's a small difference..
| kflzufkrbzi wrote:
| Nano was distributed via solving capchas(pow) no
| different than mining bitcoin.
| companyhen wrote:
| If you want to see a real Decentralized Central Bank I highly
| recommend digging into SORA Network.
|
| It's a self-funded project by the founder (No VC's, No ICO, No
| Presale, etc.) with a fair launch and the team has already
| developed a live central bank digital currency called Bakong in
| Cambodia.
|
| https://sora.org/
|
| https://sora.org/blog/
|
| https://sora.org/soratokens/
|
| https://soramitsu.co.jp/
| jes5199 wrote:
| can you explain your point about renewable energy? I'm not sure
| I see how that follows
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think the idea is that, as mining fees and power generation
| requirements increase, you have less incentive to build the
| most efficient power generation (renewables) and increasing
| incentives to build financially reliable proven technologies.
| Coal power plants, though less efficient than solar, have a
| much better known lifecycle and are easier to plan around.
| diego wrote:
| It doesn't follow. Bitcoin chases cheap energy, so wherever
| green is cheaper than carbon that's where Bitcoin will be
| mined. Eventually carbon will be more expensive everywhere.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| And wherever green is not cheaper, Bitcoin prefers to use
| dirty and send the externalities to my grandkids.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| Stop shilling. And to have the galls to say something like Nano
| has the ability to take on Bitcoin just indicates that you very
| new to this market - and thus want to make a quick buck by
| shilling your random shitcoin. The thing which Bitcoin has, and
| that few others can match, is acceptability from a large swatch
| of investors and predictable security/emission schedule.
|
| And, just fyi, Nano is not made of users. Go to its reddit and
| you will see everyone shilling it and having price targets on
| it. Stop giving such these weak arguments - most of us are in
| here for the money and don't give two hoots of the technology.
| koonsolo wrote:
| The Nano reddit is split up because of this reason:
|
| You have NanoTrade where these things are discussed, and you
| have NanoCurrency where Nano itself and adoption is
| discussed.
| zepto wrote:
| > most of us are in here for the money and don't give two
| hoots of the technology
|
| Given that the technology determines the timeframe over which
| you can make money, this seems like a weird position to take.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| No - not necessarily. IN crypto, it is quite possible to
| multiply your money when investing in altcoins - purely
| based on shilling and positioning with no technology to
| speak of. This is what the OP likely is trying to do here.
| zepto wrote:
| Fair point!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > most of us are in here for the money and don't give two
| hoots of the technology
|
| Monero's technology enables private and untraceable
| transactions. It's amazing and I own some just because of
| that property. Seems to be the only cryptocurrency that still
| aims to be an actual currency.
|
| You're right about the altcoins though.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I love Monero. The transactions are fast and cheap too.
| gruez wrote:
| >Monero's technology enables private and untraceable
| transactions
|
| Not exactly. The decoy inputs/outputs provide some
| plausible deniability when you look at a transaction in
| isolation, but over repeated transactions it gets gradually
| lost. It's not enough to pin you as a criminal with 100%
| certainty, but it's enough for the police to keep an eye on
| you and wait for you to slip up.
| the_local_host wrote:
| What's wrong with shilling?
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| Nothing wrong. But then be honest about it vs. actually
| comparing a nonsense shitcoin with Bitcoin - and misguiding
| the users
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| > And, just fyi, Nano is not made of users. Go to its reddit
| and you will see everyone shilling it and having price
| targets on it.
|
| Not saying you're wrong, but this feels like every subreddit
| dedicated to a crypto.
| duskwuff wrote:
| That's because the problem is endemic to the cryptocurrency
| space. There has been very little serious work done on
| making any cryptocurrency usable as a medium of exchange,
| even for projects which claim to have that as a goal.
| Speculation is about the only activity that's _possible_
| for most coins, so that 's what people do.
| iameli wrote:
| > most of us are in here for the money and don't give two
| hoots of the technology.
|
| Nice to hear someone say the quiet part loud. Could you tell
| all the rest of the most-of-us to be honest about that too?
| It'd save me a lot of time in conversations where people
| refuse to consider any Bitcoin alternatives because they'd
| lose money if people started to switch.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > most of us are in here for the money
|
| This seems a little ironic after complaining about shilling.
| willis936 wrote:
| Is it? It seems pretty consistent with their "cut the
| bullshit" theme.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| This is a bit off topic, but if you were here for the money
| shouldn't you just be in the stock market? It seems like the
| people who really try and analyze it (like in quantitative
| trading) do extremely well and if you don't have the time for
| that (who does outside of work), then mutual funds have a
| great return on investment and are significantly less risky
| and have a way lower barrier to entry. I am a bit ignorant on
| the economics of bitcoin (though I have built a miner and did
| all the merkle tree stuff), but its unclear how bitcoin is
| better unless you have a lot of capital already and can
| stomach the risk.
| drdeca wrote:
| not sure what you mean by "weaker". If you mean the security,
| then, I would think that would be a result of energy use going
| down, not energy use going up. (but as someone else pointed
| out, the power use seems to be steady, and neither trending up
| nor down)
|
| (that being said, it becoming more centralized might be an
| issue for security, yes. I don't know how (de)centralized it
| currently is though)
|
| Also, isn't there a rule or guideline or something discouraging
| talking about how getting downvoted?
| keymone wrote:
| Nano is a scam. Nano fanboys don't even get the concept of
| latency on the internet, forget anything more complex like
| recovery from network partitions. There are reasons behind most
| of the things that you consider drawbacks in bitcoin, shitcoin
| proponents don't understand those reasons and simply copy
| bitcoin with some parameter changed, completely oblivious to
| the fact that it makes their shitcoin worthless.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| There is also no meaningful contribution for the work. Imagine
| if there was a blockchain crypto attached to folding@home it
| would work that has value.
| Franciscouzo wrote:
| That's by design, if you use a proof of work that's validated
| outside of the blockchain, the work could be valid for
| multiple forks, thus being a really bad proof of work system.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Isn't that Gridcoin (GRC)
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Not sure. Let me check that puppy out.
| tarsinge wrote:
| > The lightning network is incredibly buggy and won't actually
| solve the problems it's promising.
|
| Not an expert but I found that a readable summary of different
| layer 2 scaling strategies and why Ethereum developers prefer
| Rollups instead of Channels (like Lightning):
|
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
| wmf wrote:
| Talking about _different layer 2 scaling strategies_
| implicitly ignores much simpler layer 1 scaling, e.g.
| Avalanche.
| westurner wrote:
| "Bitcoin scalability problem" could link to the Ethereum
| design docs:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem
|
| The Ethereum design docs could link to direct-listed premined
| [stable] coins as a solution for Proof of Work and TPS
| reports: https://github.com/flare-eng/coston#smart-contracts-
| with-xrp
|
| (edit) re: n-layer solutions: The https://interledger.org/
| RFCs and something like Transaction Permission Layer (TPL)
| will probably be helpful for interchain compliance.
|
| > _Interledger is not tied to a single company, blockchain,
| or currency._
|
| From https://tplprotocol.org/ :
|
| > _The challenge: Current blockchain-based protocols lack an
| effective governance mechanism that ensures token transfers
| comply with requirements set by the project that issued the
| token._
|
| > _Projects need to set requirements for a variety of
| reasons. For instance, remaining compliant with securities
| laws, limiting transfer to beta testers, or limiting transfer
| to a particular geo-spatial location. Whatever your reason,
| if a requirement can be verified by a third-party, TPL will
| be able to help._
|
| In the US, S-Corps can't have international or more than n
| shareholders, for example; so if firms even wanted to issue
| securities on a _first-layer network_ , they'd need an extra-
| chain compliance mechanism to ensure that their issuance is
| legal pursuant to local, sovereign, necessary policies. Re-
| issuing stock certificates is something that has to be done
| sometimes. When is it possible to _cancel_ outstanding
| tokens?
| Solvitieg wrote:
| > energy usage due to Proof of Work is growing astronomically,
| and the higher the price of bitcoin
|
| Not true. The energy used to power the bitcoin network has been
| stable for a few years.
|
| https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Yep, Nano is all the things bitcoin was attempting to be
| initially. Using Nano is a breeze, it feels like the future,
| especially compared to bitcoin in terms of speed.
| trts wrote:
| What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin
| specifically)
|
| Wouldn't it take a large number of resources and coordinated
| effort to do this? And then the result of a successful attack
| means that the value essentially drops to zero ... so why
| invest the effort?
|
| Seems like the only entity to have this incentive would be
| central banks / fiat regimes.
| TobyBrull wrote:
| Given that Bitcoin has become quite liquid, there might also
| be ways to short it. But yes, governments doing it for
| political reasons would seem like the most obvious incentive.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin
| specifically)
|
| Besides trying to destroy bitcoin, couldn't such an attack be
| used to simply drive up transaction fees for anyone who
| wanted to use it? For instance, if they refuse to process
| transactions with a fee below a threshold, they'd leave money
| on the table in the sort term, but eventually the higher fee
| requirement would have to be discovered and transactions
| reissued to pay it.
| birdsbirdsbirds wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > they [the central banks] can expand the money supply to keep
| the system propped up.
|
| They have to expand money supply to keep the value of the
| currencies stable as long as most money is not spent. The
| economy depends not on the supply of money but on the stability
| of the money.
|
| By which force do central banks have to keep increasing the
| money supply once people start spending? There is no reason to
| do so and thus no reason for fiat currencies to collapse.
|
| It's more likely that they increase interest rates when people
| start spending again, and thus reduce supply and as a
| consequence, keep the value of money stable.
| [deleted]
| hfsp wrote:
| The market has spoken:
| https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NANOBTC/.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I'd take a look at Cardano:
| https://coinlib.io/en/compare/2020-06-01/ADA/NANO
| hfsp wrote:
| F* off scammer
| crazypython wrote:
| "The Nakamoto coefficient is a way to quantify the
| decentralization of a blockchain or other decentralized system.
| It's the number of entities you need to compromise at least one
| essential subsystem."
|
| If a 51% attack occurs, the bitcoin full nodes are still
| fundamentally in control. Full nodes decide whether or not to
| accept a blockchain, they socially decide whether to accept a
| 51% attack. They can hard fork and change the hashing
| algorithm, firing all current miners.
|
| How does Nano prevent me from setting up two servers, sending
| the money to different nodes, and double-spending the money?
| sphix0r wrote:
| It's really sad to see the current state of bitcoin. We can't
| really justify the current energy consumption while mainly
| being used as a financial instrument to speculate on.
|
| Nano has been on my eye for a while now. I hope Nano will get
| the attention it deserves. Sub second feeless money settlement
| transactions is such a game changer. Nano just works.
| akudha wrote:
| Any thoughts on Cardano? They seem to be moving slow, but
| they also seem to be taking a more rigorous approach.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| Cardano is the daddy of shitcoins. It is the Ripple of this
| bull run. Literally the only thing it is being used for is
| speculation. Everything else is "coming soon".
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Bitcoin is technologically obsolete but that doesn't matter. As
| the very first coin, its history is the main reason it's still
| relevant today. It's very well known and that makes its
| position as the number one cryptocurrency extremely hard to
| shake even though we have much better coins now such as Monero.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Bitcoin is technologically obsolete but that doesn't
| matter.
|
| Which just underlines how much of this whole phenomenon is
| brand and hype.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| Says someone who is using 1970s technology called ACH and
| SWIFT to send money over. At least be aware of what is
| happening around you before attacking other technologies.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Says someone who is using 1970s technology called ACH
| and SWIFT to send money over. At least be aware of what
| is happening around you before attacking other
| technologies.
|
| Technology isn't a linear tech tree with newer == better.
| In some very real ways, Bitcoin is like a a new car
| design with some interesting new technologies (e.g. a
| satellite radio receiver) but that doesn't support other
| technologies like seatbelts.
|
| Dismissing something as "<past-time-period> technology"
| is lazy. You really need to compare explicit pros and
| cons.
| briatx wrote:
| Pretty sure ACH and SWIFT can do more than 7 transactions
| per second.
|
| Talk about a step backward.
| kache_ wrote:
| Is it really getting this easy to create a shill account and
| bot it on hnews?
| aeternum wrote:
| Suppose I create a new coin that I also call Nano. I create a
| bunch of bots and websites and post on message boards so it
| looks like my version is more popular and has more
| participants.
|
| How will people tell the difference?
| barnbuilder wrote:
| There are people and organizations attempting to do this with
| Bitcoin right now. How do people tell the difference?
| Sometimes they don't and they get scammed.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| You won't. This is why Bitcoin is valuable since it has stood
| the test of time and has gained more acceptability. Nanos and
| other nonsense coins are just trying to attack the emperor in
| the hope that they come close to it and thus make the
| speculators a lot of money.
| Tenal wrote:
| It's weird how hard you go against literally anything
| except Bitcoin because of your rabid obsession with
| whatever paltry sum of money you've made over this one
| dated technologically is. You're literally like a cancer-
| ridden coal miner coughing his last lung to keep the mines
| open. Good riddance.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| Wow - someone missed the train and is salty. HFSP.
|
| And you are not getting rid of me btw.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| The sibling comments show just how difficult it is to talk
| constructively about these things even at a place like HN. I
| have no idea about the technical merits of Nano but the
| emotionally charged reactions with little argumentation aren't
| helping anyone. Is there a place online where people actually
| discusss cryptocurrencies on a technical/economic merit? That
| kind of discussion certainly isn't happening on reddit, and
| sadly not on HN either.
| companyhen wrote:
| That is why someone created
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/
| mmastrac wrote:
| > The lightning network is incredibly buggy and won't actually
| solve the problems it's promising
|
| I'm curious to know why this is the case. I don't know much
| about it - ELI5 or a good link to read more?
| rawtxapp wrote:
| It's not, it's fully functional and there are many users.
| Only people who haven't actually tried using it says things
| like "it's incredibly buggy".
| ketamine__ wrote:
| How many? What is the transaction volume like compared to
| Ethereum, Bitcoin, BSC, etc?
| OGWhales wrote:
| I found this site after reading your comment and being
| curious myself. no promises on it being trustworthy data:
| https://1ml.com/statistics
| rawtxapp wrote:
| Keep in mind that a lot of lightning end-users would have
| private channels that are truly peer-to-peer, so number
| of users is likely much higher than any public stats you
| could gather.
| domatic1 wrote:
| - 51% attack is unlikely, pools have mining power but every
| miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is still
| decentralized.
|
| - energy usage of gold is worse, that's not a good argument.
| What is the energy use of air conditioners?
|
| - transactions are slow yes but bitcoin is now used as a store
| of value
|
| - I'm sorry but nano doesn't have the network effect Bitcoin
| has and never will.
| imhoguy wrote:
| > 51% attack is unlikely, pools have mining power but every
| miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is still
| decentralized.
|
| Ok, what if they agree somehow either by govt order or
| massive worm hack (Stuxnet like)?
| lxgr wrote:
| > every miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is
| still decentralized
|
| Do you think most miners are continuously auditing the blocks
| they are solving?
|
| Yes, long-term they'd switch away from a dishonest/non-value-
| aligned pool, but the damage might already be done at that
| point.
| benlivengood wrote:
| There's also the other Bitcoin, BCH, which suffers from
| basically none of the problems you listed.
|
| If a 51% attack was actually lucrative then shouldn't at least
| some miners attempt it given that BTC hash-power is about 100X
| that of BCH?
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| It suffers from all the same problems. The only advantage it
| has is that they chose a slightly larger arbitrary constant.
| It still does not and can not scale. One order of magnitude
| makes little difference when we're dealing with something
| that is four orders of magnitude slower and four orders of
| magnitude more power-hungry than the competition.
|
| 100 maximum transactions per second is still orders of
| magnitude too low to be useful on a daily basis outside of
| niche uses (read: drugs). Ten minutes confirmation time is
| still orders of magnitude worse than credit cards or cash.
|
| Obviously, what we need is the _REAL_ Bitcoin from the
| confirmed legitimate Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin SV.
| gruez wrote:
| >Obviously, what we need is the REAL Bitcoin from the
| confirmed legitimate Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin SV.
|
| This is sarcasm right?
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| Yes.
| dandanua wrote:
| Bitcoin network is constantly readjusting mining complexity, so
| that every new block will be mined in approximately 10 minutes.
| Then, they substitute the notion of time with the sequence of
| Bitcoin blocks. Yeah, well done!
|
| Bitcoin proponents are becoming more and more insane.
| olalonde wrote:
| > Bitcoin proponents are becoming more and more insane.
|
| Don't give them too much credit. The notion of time in
| distributed systems has been defined "insanely" since at least
| 1978[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_timestamp
| Vecr wrote:
| It's always been like this, I'm not sure what you mean by
| "becoming". According to this article, the concept comes from a
| series of papers from the 1990s.
| dandanua wrote:
| EDIT: To be honest, knowledge of the hash of a block can be
| used as a proof that something has happened AFTER a particular
| event (similarly to a picture of a hostage with the newspaper).
|
| But you can't prove that something has happened BEFORE a
| particular event using Bitcoin hashes.
|
| Also, this "feature" is unrelated to Bitcoin being a
| cryptocurrency. You can have cryptocurrencies without "global
| time" (e.g. NANO).
| mtve wrote:
| > But you can't prove that something has happened BEFORE a
| particular event using Bitcoin hashes.
|
| https://opentimestamps.org/
| [deleted]
| dandanua wrote:
| Yes, you can do it if you put the hash of a message INTO
| the chain as a transaction (I think they do something of
| this kind). But in this way you will share the limits of
| the Bitcoin network. They claim they do it in some
| efficient way, though. But I wouldn't trust it without
| checking their algorithm.
|
| Anyway, any other "linear" blockchain (e.g. with PoS
| consensus) can do the same work. No wasting of resources is
| needed.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Or is it the detractors that are becoming more and more insane?
| Perhaps it's both. There are so many detractors who seem to
| have the need to go "hurmph!" every time someone mentions
| Bitcoin, and often times they have knowledge gaps that destroy
| their credibility. In every Bitcoin related thread here on HN,
| there's tons of detractors who make ridiculous claims around
| the utility and mechanics of Bitcoin that it's hard to take
| them seriously. Why are they so invested in shouting down
| Bitcoin in the first place? If someone doesn't like Bitcoin,
| they can simply not use it. There's nothing wrong with healthy
| criticism, but it's there's an air of emotional insecurity in
| these people that makes me wonder whether they're former
| Bitcoin supporters who got burned after 2017 because of their
| misconceptions.
| dandanua wrote:
| What kind of misconceptions and knowledge gaps are you
| talking about? Do you have examples of some unfair criticism
| of Bitcoin?
| Geee wrote:
| I think the insane people are getting louder. :)
| personlurking wrote:
| Here's another good one (30 min read): Bitcoin is Venice
|
| https://allenfarrington.medium.com/bitcoin-is-venice-8414dda...
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Funny, I pinned Bitcoin more as the type to honeymoon at the
| Maldives.
|
| Bitcoin is a Venice, time, a Ponzi scheme, a climate disaster,
| digital gold, dead (x400), criminal, a bubble...
|
| The half-baked hot takes that reach the frontpage of HN are
| getting better and better.
| gt565k wrote:
| Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain
| tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is
| legacy software after all.
|
| PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy.
|
| Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake
| blockchain protocol.
|
| https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...
| olah_1 wrote:
| I'm not saying this is you, but many people on HN will cry out
| "Use Boring Tech!" while also not understanding why Bitcoin is
| king.
|
| Bitcoin is old, secure, proven, and most importantly _simple_.
|
| Of course what you sacrifice with Proof of Stake is
| sovereignty. A random person cannot participate in the network
| unless they have X amount of existing resources. So that's the
| trade-off as I understand it. Depends on where your values
| align. No doubt that existing financial institutions would
| prefer to be core partners with a performant PoS chain.
| vekker wrote:
| Doesn't the same hold for PoW systems, except the X amount is
| in the form of mining resources? This is why people argue PoS
| blockchains are (besides being more eco-friendly) actually
| more decentralized.
| olah_1 wrote:
| >Doesn't the same hold for PoW systems, except the X amount
| is in the form of mining resources?
|
| That's not as true as I would have thought. Surprisingly, a
| single person can have a profitable mining setup on Bitcoin
| today. It might only be $10 USD per day profit, but it's
| something. To me, that is an achievement.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| Your point could be truth in theory, and/or in the future.
|
| However, in practice, it seems that it almost works the other
| way around.
|
| To mine on BTC, you cannot enter the game with 10$ to your
| name. You can't buy a mining rig, it is way too wasteful to
| mine on your existing CPU, etc.
|
| However if we look for example at staking in Ethereum, there
| are decentralized (no trust required) pools that allow you to
| stake however little amount of ETH. The chain itself will
| require at least 32ETH to run a single meaningful staking
| contract, but through pooling this is directly practically
| accessible to anyone with even small amount of ETH.
| olah_1 wrote:
| There's a difference between merely making money and being
| your own sovereign node in the network that is not reliant
| on anyone else (other than your source of electricity :P).
|
| Just making money, yes you can pool together. And that's a
| great feature of smart contract networks. But we are also
| seeing smart contracts being brought into Bitcoin that
| allows the same things. I just think sovereignty and making
| money shouldn't be conflated.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen
| blockchain tech.
|
| Because it doesn't seem to be going away faster than the newer
| generations. There is a real chance that if cryptocurrency ends
| up being a thing forever that BTC is the winner. And that is an
| environmental disaster until we get to 100% clean energy
| worldwide.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Even then. This stuff produces heat.
|
| The way the scaling operates, as it goes along, even if you
| had FREE energy piped from a hyperspatial link in the heart
| of the Sun... eventually the ASIC farms themselves will begin
| to cook the planet.
|
| It doesn't stay alive and profitable unless it keeps burning
| energy MORE. The fact that the energy's going to come from
| the dirtiest and most dangerous (cheapest) possible fuels, is
| certainly a problem and will continue to be one for as long
| as such fuels exist, but in the literal absence of fuel and
| cost of fuel, the exponential-growth thing just switches to
| the computers turning (now free and infinite) energy into
| calculation.
|
| There is always a bigger server farm, because such a thing
| costs money, and those with money are the ones who can and
| will make more of it. With cryptocurrency, that's just
| literal, and their profitability is always a perfect and
| direct match with how hard they can cheat or abuse any
| possible rule there to constrain them. The end result,
| perfectly untraceable and fungible, as long as the system is
| allowed to continue.
|
| Disaster will always be more profitable, in cryptocurrency-
| land. I mean, I suppose you could play nice and barely make
| any money...
| casi wrote:
| pretty weird seeing this recent trend of hn going from crypto-
| resistant, to cardano pumping. out of all the blockchains
| cardano? thats where you see the future? really?
|
| bizarre.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| Pretend that someone is really reading and trying to
| understand for a moment ;).
|
| What do you see in Cardano that makes it a poor candidate for
| a future blockchain? Governance? Functionality? Algorithms?
| Investment?
| casi wrote:
| well #1 would be Charles Hoskinson and his history...
|
| but more meaningful opposition would be in why use a DPoS
| network now that we can have PoS networks without the
| delegation? if you value decentralisation and think it has
| a future why would you go for a DPoS network that can so
| far just send tokens, there are better dpos networks like
| cosmos or polkadot, and ethereum is moving to pos. What is
| cardano actually (still attempting) to solve that hasnt
| already been solved by polkadot/cosmos?
|
| Why use haskell as the contract language? do you think in
| the limited pool of blockchain developers there are many
| people are wanting to write haskell? and that they are
| going to port all the existing tokens/defi/contracts made
| over the past few years to a haskell+utxo model? who is
| expected to build on this. in 15 years of dev work ive met
| a handful of haskell devs, they are all in academia and
| dont make production software.
|
| And alongside that, and why i refer to it being pumped, is
| that it is getting so much publicity but barely being used.
| i just looked at the block explorer and in the past ten
| blocks three are empty and the rest have a top of 10
| transactions being processed. Where are the supposed
| network effects driving it? shouldnt the blockspace be in
| demand? especially with the recent price surge, if the
| price is going up but it has empty blocks surely that is a
| bad sign?
| cloakandswagger wrote:
| This is the only commenter in this post mentioning Cardano,
| so I wouldn't characterize it as a trend.
|
| Don't worry, HN comment sections will be filled with
| indignant nocoiners for years to come.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| I wonder the same thing about people that still talk about
| cars. Electric cars solve all the problems with cars. Why do we
| even bother to talk about cars?
| user-the-name wrote:
| > PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy.
|
| For a value of "solves" that doesn't actually include anyone
| solving anything YET. Maybe in 18 months!
| SkipperCat wrote:
| Bitcoin is only popular because tech workers get paid a lot and
| have the ability to speculate, we live in a world of massive
| asset bubbles created by government fiscal policies and Bitcoin
| is excellent for buying drugs on-line.
|
| Most people want security in their assets, which is why a
| majority of folks read articles about bitcoin but never touch
| one.
|
| All of these articles are great examples of creative writing. I
| do kind of enjoy them.
| neilwilson wrote:
| "we live in a world of massive asset bubbles created by
| government fiscal policies"
|
| Do we? Or have we lived in a world where asset prices were
| suppressed due to artificial intervention by central banks.
|
| Interest rate setting is a market intervention. If left to its
| own devices the market rate would be driven down towards zero.
| flurben wrote:
| > If left to its own devices the market rate would be driven
| down towards zero.
|
| How do you figure?
| lolsal wrote:
| Being driven down to zero I think means people would lend at
| 0% interest - I would think thousands of years of anecdotal
| evidence would speak to the contrary - how would it ever get
| to zero? Who would lend like that? What would their
| motivation be?
| capableweb wrote:
| > Bitcoin is excellent for buying drugs on-line.
|
| Out of all cryptocurrencies that exist today, Bitcoin is
| probably the worst one for buying drugs online. It's pseudo-
| anonymous at best (compared to Zcash that is actually
| anonymous), slower than many others and if government agencies
| have tracking tools in the cryptocurrency space, Bitcoin is
| probably the most popular target for those tools.
| vocatus_gate wrote:
| Zcash is not anonymous; cloaked transactions are optional and
| hardly anyone uses them (so they stick out like a sore
| thumb). It also requires trust that the founders aren't
| printing hidden coins (due to its flawed "trusted
| initialization" procedure used at the coins inception).
|
| Monero/XMR is the _only_ 100% private, fungible
| cryptocurrency. All transactions enforced private by default,
| with no option to send an un-private transaction.
| arbawk wrote:
| Actually it's pretty important for many:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYYh4aPXAM
|
| It's being widely adopted in countries with inflating
| currencies: Nigeria, Vietnma, and Argentina made it to #3 today
| (this link is slightly old).
| https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Ironically, the number of people who use Bitcoin directly
| (that is, on the blockchain with their own address) is
| significantly smaller.
|
| Most people use Bitcoin via exchanges, where they keep the
| coins. The average crypto user from Nigeria has zero interest
| in paying $10+ transaction fees every time they need to do
| anything with their money.
|
| At this point, it doesn't matter if they own BTC or ETH or
| DOGE or whatever. They just want whatever allows them to move
| money around. The exchanges could simply keep balances in a
| database and reconcile them amongst each other via contracts,
| and it wouldn't make any difference as far as the end users
| are concerned (There are examples of this happening between
| exchanges).
| bena wrote:
| I see this being thrown about as a talking point a lot, but I
| think it ignores what's fundamentally happening here.
|
| Bitcoin is essentially a proxy for another currency. Mostly
| the USD. These people need a way to protect their assets from
| what their own governments are doing to the value of their
| native currencies.
|
| They cannot buy securities or foreign currencies for various
| reasons.
|
| Bitcoin gives them a way. A way to convert their native
| currencies into USD, a stronger currency.
|
| So while it's a good use-case for Bitcoin, it's not exactly a
| situation that's applicable to the world at large.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > Bitcoin is essentially a proxy for another currency.
|
| Yes, but this is only temporarily. It's like refactoring
| systems. You create a new system and a proxy and then have
| the old system communicate with the new one via the proxy
| (or vice versa). Eventually, the old system becomes
| obsolete, so you kill it and get rid of the proxy.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| But if your proxy takes at least $10 of your currency
| every time you use it, you would expect people to look
| for a different proxy.
|
| In your example, Bitcoin would obviously be the "old
| system" if everyone wanted to use it for moving money
| around, because there are plenty of more advanced
| alternatives that work far better.
|
| So why is Bitcoin so popular? Because it's a speculative
| investment. A new asset class divorced from fundamentals,
| making it impossible to say when the value is too high.
| That's why people like it.
| kortilla wrote:
| But there is no evidence Bitcoin will ever make that
| transition. Gold has been around forever and we still
| don't transact with it.
| [deleted]
| dcist wrote:
| I fail to see how something with wildly fluctuating value
| like bitcoin can ever serve as a stable currency or medium of
| exchange.
|
| Maybe it's a "less terrible" solution in poor countries with
| inflation challenges, but I don't see that as a strong
| proposition for the utility of bitcoin. Cigarettes are used
| as a medium of exchange in prison. That doesn't serve as a
| strong argument for using cigarettes as currency.
| druidmaster wrote:
| Volatility is only problematic to the downside, not the
| upside. Bitcoin's volatility is _skewed_ to the upside. Yes
| if you were not advised properly, and buy the top, you may
| be down, but only temporarily.
|
| There are long phases in BTC's history where 100% of
| holders are in very handsome profits. And that's the
| problem?
| dcist wrote:
| No, it's also problematic to the upside if you're trying
| to use it as currency or medium of exchange rather than a
| speculative investment. How do sellers of assets price
| things? If I'm trying to sell a home in bitcoin and btc
| surges in value one day, do I lower my price accordingly?
| Or do I wait to see if btc goes back down a bit and
| settles? Volatility - both up and down - is destructive
| to price discovery.
|
| If you're just making long speculative investments in btc
| and volatility is skewed to the upside, well sure that's
| fine but you're not using bitcoin as a medium of
| exchange, you're investing in it as a security.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's primarily poor people buying into crypto,
| not tech workers. Go to r/cryptocurrency and read the posts,
| does it look like HN (primarily tech people)? are there any
| technical discussions, or is it just full of get-rich-quick
| hopers?
|
| hint: posts mostly consist of "<famous guy> tweeted about <my
| favourite shitcoin>, this is good for the price of <my
| favourite shitcoin>".
| vocatus_gate wrote:
| Correct. If anything, tech workers like we find on HN tend to
| be more openly against Bitcoin (specifically) and
| cryptocurrency in general. The people I see buying it on
| /r/cryptocurrency are the ones posting "finally managed to
| get 0.01 BTC!"
| [deleted]
| olah_1 wrote:
| This is the article that made things finally click with me.
| Thinking about the pre-WWI gold standard and the issues that
| existed there and the improvements that Bitcoin brings around
| time, consensus, etc.
|
| The baseless negative comments with no interaction with the
| article content confirms for me that Bitcoin is on to something.
| Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think.
| toto444 wrote:
| > Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think.
|
| Or maybe it comes from people who have read an Econo101
| textbook and who have spent a lot of time trying to explain a
| crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts why their reasoning is wrong but
| no one has been listening to them so far so they are bored.
|
| Back in the time I used to spend my days on a forum about
| Economics. Every other week there was a random guy who signed
| up just to explain us his grand new theory about money. It
| seems that tech has enabled a grand new theory about money to
| be implemented.
|
| That does not make it less true that money does not have
| magical properties and bitcoin will not create a new world
| order.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| Would you care to share your Econo101 knowledge?
|
| I'm not an economist, but nothing has convinced me yet that
| bitcoin is not the best form of money.
| toto444 wrote:
| > I'm not an economist, but nothing has convinced me yet
| that bitcoin is not the best form of money.
|
| Contrary to the Bitcoin crow I don't spend my days thinking
| about it so my argument may seem weak. You mention bitcoin
| being 'the best form of money'. Assuming there is a
| hierarchy of forms of money, from what I understand the
| main advantage of Bitcoin is that Government can not
| manipulate its quantity. I wonder if a world where there is
| no possibility for governments to use monetary policy in
| times of trouble to stabilize the economy is desirable.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| I would say that it shouldn't be the role of a government
| to govern over money.
|
| The economy is very complicated. There are no models that
| can predict the output of changing its parameters. It
| wasn't possible before to have the properties in money
| that we have with bitcoin (a gold standard was easily
| removable by a powerful government). The current central
| banking system is an experiment as much as anything
| before it and anything that will follow.
|
| I see it like this. I want my economic output to be
| measured in something that is:
|
| - salabale over time (1 btc is always 1/21 million of the
| monetary base)
|
| - salabale over space (i want to work remote)
|
| - understandable and auditable (the bitcoin concept can
| be understood by everyone, the code is auditable by mid-
| level developers)
| Nursie wrote:
| > (1 btc is always 1/21 million of the monetary base)
|
| Why is that good? Why should I, if I have 1 bitcoin,
| always have ownership of a fixed proportion of the entire
| societal monetary base?
|
| This seems like a great deal for someone who has a
| bitcoin, and a terrible situation for new workers and the
| economy as a whole. If the economy expands, your fixed
| proportion of the monetary base sees you profit off the
| backs of others for nothing more than sitting on
| currency. Not investing, not even speculating, just
| sitting on it.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| As an employee I would rather have the lever in
| renegotiations. I also would like to be able to save
| without having to put my economic output at risk.
|
| If you don't invest your bitcoin in productive assets you
| will be behind peers who do that, however they carry a
| risk.
|
| Today you carry risk if you don't invest your savings.
| However with low-income you can't, as you need emergency
| funds.
| Nursie wrote:
| What lever?
|
| As an employee, in a growing economy denominated in
| bitcoin, you would see your pay drop frequently as the
| money supply gets stretched. There's no reason at all to
| think BTC-denominated salaries would be able to stay
| constant as the value of the money rises.
|
| > I also would like to be able to save without having to
| put my economic output at risk.
|
| That's not the same thing, a fixed proportion of the
| money supply does not guarantee that, nor is it a
| necessary precondition.
|
| Further, this is not in the interest of wider society -
| work today should be valued more than work yesterday. If
| you want to grow your money, you make it work.
|
| This is just a rehash of the problems with the gold
| standard now. But worse.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| > As an employee, in a growing economy denominated in
| bitcoin, you would see your pay drop frequently as the
| money supply gets stretched. There's no reason at all to
| think BTC-denominated salaries would be able to stay
| constant as the value of the money rises.
|
| Assuming the world productivity is denominated in 21
| million bitcoin, if world productivity grows by 3% per
| year, my salary of 1 bitcoin gets more purchasing power.
| This is where you get a lever with your employer, he
| needs you to earn less, you don't have to negotiate to
| earn more (same applies to minimum wage, it needs to be
| adjusted upwards in a inflationary monetary system)
|
| Every money is inherently more valuable yesterday than
| today, as you can divest it. I would argue that it is
| very much in the interest of the wider society to have
| their savings not inflated.
|
| The best way to make your money work will always be to
| invest it in productivity, be it in educating yourself or
| investing it in companies. This investments need to be a
| lot more smarter and more sustainable than those of
| today, as the base money is not worth less every year.
|
| I think wasteful spending is a property of an
| inflationary money, where smart spending would be a
| required property in a non-inflationary money.
| Nursie wrote:
| There's no lever there. In a bitcoin economy there's no
| chance your contract gives you a fixed salary in the
| first place, it would be tied to some measure of
| inflation.
|
| Like I said, most of the rest is just a rehash of gold
| standard stuff.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| > Like I said, most of the rest is just a rehash of gold
| standard stuff.
|
| Exactly, however bitcoin is infinitely better money than
| gold and makes the "gold standard" viable. Fortunately
| the gold standard has a lot of proponents globally, some
| of whom started embracing bitcoin.
|
| I just hope that the experiment bitcoin keeps on going
| and I'm guessing we will see some form of resolution,
| maybe even in this decade. There is a lot to learn still.
| Nursie wrote:
| Ah, I see, you haven't figured out why the gold standard
| was terrible either.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| Tbh. my very basic knowledge comes from strongly
| opinionated austrian economics literature, which tends to
| confirm my bias, and from [0], which at least gives me
| some data points to refer to.
|
| Do you mind giving me some of your arguments why it's
| terrible?
|
| [0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > my salary of 1 bitcoin gets more purchasing power
|
| You assume your salary remains fixed. Why would it? As a
| portion of global productivity, your contribution
| shrinks.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| Unfortunately my salary is fixed today as well and not
| only does it shrink as a portion of global productivity,
| but also as a portion of the monetary supply.
| africanboy wrote:
| > if world productivity grows by 3% per year, my salary
| of 1 bitcoin gets more purchasing power.
|
| but you are going to pay more for the same goods and
| services
|
| if your bitcoin is 3% more valuable, when you use it to
| buy milk it's going to cost you 3% more
|
| the game is working only because today if bitcoins
| increase their value you can exchange them for more fiat
| money
|
| in a bitcoin economy one bitcoin is worth exactly one
| bitcoin, forever, whatever that buys
| ballofrubber wrote:
| In a non-inflationary monetary system cost of goods
| decreases every year, thats how productivity growth
| works.
|
| You seem to have it backwards, this is where the Econo101
| book from the parent comment might help ;) /s
|
| Inflation drives down the purchasing power, hence why
| milk gets more expensive every year, even though we get
| much more efficient at producing it. Remove inflation and
| 1 bitcoin buys you a liter today and 1.03 litres next
| year.
| africanboy wrote:
| > In a non-inflationary monetary system cost of goods
| decreases every year
|
| and so do salaries, they are a cost to someone ...
|
| as long as your purchasing power stays the same salaries
| will go down as well.
|
| it's simply natural.
|
| you can't really believe that billions of people will get
| rich by sitting on the salary of a single year
|
| BTW that liter of milk will generate 3% more profit to
| the seller. there is no incentive to lower the prices if
| hoarding is so rewarding
| ballofrubber wrote:
| Salaries are negotiable and the renegotiation lever is
| skewed towards the employee. e.g. "i accept the pay cut
| of 3%, but will need 2 days of vaction more" vs "please
| employer pay me 3% more to combat inflation"
|
| You won't get more rich by sitting on your salary, but
| you will also not get more poor like you do today.
|
| If the milk seller doesn't lower his prices a competitor
| will do that, as he is able to do that with the bigger
| margin the better productivity brought.
| africanboy wrote:
| Here in Italy I already have 28 days of paid vacation and
| can't be fired without motive and a judge can reinstate
| the worker if the motive was not valid
|
| That's a political issue, it has nothing to do with how
| currencies work
|
| If the milk seller is going to lower the prices to beat
| competitors, workers will compete on salaries as well
|
| nothing different from what we have now, the only
| difference is that rich people could amass fortunes much
| more easily than today
|
| they'll just need to keep their money in the bank (i.e.
| their gold reserve will keep appreciating by the virtue
| of existing)
| ballofrubber wrote:
| That's great for you, honestly!
|
| Rich get richer today by being closer to the money
| source. In the "bitcoin standard" non-rich people can
| even keep their money in the bank and don't lose
| purchasing power by not risking it.
|
| Rich and non-rich will always want to take risk to
| increase their net worth, however the assets must perform
| much better to outperform the money. Unlike today where
| almost all investments appreciate when measured in fiat.
|
| edit:
|
| > That's a political issue, it has nothing to do with how
| currencies work
|
| Would you agree that it would be a good thing if the base
| monetary layer would enable that? I only see that
| happening with a monetary policy that respects savings
| and is not alterable by a few elected and unelected
| officials
| africanboy wrote:
| > can even keep their money in the bank and don't lose
| purchasing power by not risking it.
|
| assuming they don't need the money to live and realise
| that 5 years ago they spent a today fortune on a liter of
| milk...
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The collective energy spent by Bitcoin miners equals the
| energy consumption of Argentina, yet the Bitcoin network
| only processes a small fraction of the number of
| transactions per day that Visa processes. For reference,
| Visa itself consumes only a small fraction as much energy
| as Argentina.
|
| In other words, you must cover the cost of vastly more
| energy per Bitcoin transaction compared to the mainstream
| financial system. Environmental concerns aside, that
| amounts to a huge tax on every transaction that reduces the
| economic efficiency of the system. Note also that this is a
| per-transaction tax, regardless of transaction size, making
| Bitcoin less useful for small transactions.
|
| There is also the fact that such a high energy cost per
| transaction causes the value of Bitcoin to be more strongly
| correlated with the price of energy. Energy prices are
| notoriously volatile; hence Bitcoin's value will also be
| volatile. Volatility makes a currency less useful (it
| introduces risk into every transaction and disincentives
| investment) and a very volatile currency will eventually be
| abandoned entirely. It should surprise nobody that the
| overwhelming majority of merchants who "accept
| cryptocurrency" as payment do so via services that
| _immediately_ convert that cryptocurrency payment into
| their local fiat currency, because the majority of the
| world 's fiat currencies have very stable values (compared
| to Bitcoin etc.).
|
| I could go on but to be honest the technical objections to
| Bitcoin outweigh the economic objections, at least in my
| opinion. Happy to get into those objections as well if
| anyone is interested.
| shawnz wrote:
| Western Union has a lower transaction rate than Visa, so
| does that make it necessarily less useful or valuable
| (either absolutely or per-kilowatt)?
|
| Also, as you noted the energy usage is correlated with
| the value, not the transaction rate. Transaction rate
| limits could be changed arbitrarily without affecting the
| energy usage of the coin.
|
| However you have the causal relationship backwards: The
| value of the coin determines what level of electricity
| spending is profitable for miners. The electricity
| spending of miners doesn't determine the value.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "Western Union has a lower transaction rate than Visa, so
| does that make it necessarily less useful or valuable
| (either absolutely or per-kilowatt)?"
|
| The transaction rate is not what matters; what matters is
| the energy spent per transaction. Visa process many more
| transactions for much less energy than Bitcoin, and is
| therefore more efficient. I suspect Western Union's
| energy consumption is roughly in proportion to Visa's,
| but I have no data (the Visa example comes right out of
| their annual report, which covers both the number of
| transactions and amount of energy consumed).
|
| "The electricity spending of miners doesn't determine the
| value."
|
| The energy cost determines the transaction fees. Higher
| transaction fees make Bitcoin less valuable by imposing a
| greater burden on using the system. Yes, there are other
| factors that determine price of Bitcoin, but if nothing
| else changed ("all things being equal") then volatility
| in energy prices would trigger volatility in transaction
| fees and thus volatility in Bitcoin's overall value.
| shawnz wrote:
| My point was that WU and Visa solve totally different
| problems which have different challenges. Why should it
| be expected they would have a similar cost per
| transaction?
|
| > Higher transaction fees make Bitcoin less valuable by
| imposing a greater burden on using the system ...
| volatility in energy prices would trigger volatility in
| transaction fees and thus volatility in Bitcoin's overall
| value.
|
| Good point, that is certainly a risk with Bitcoin.
|
| EDIT: Actually thinking about it more I'm not sure why
| this would be true. Since the transaction rate is not
| related to the number of miners, volatility in energy
| prices might cause miners to enter/leave the system but I
| don't see why it would impact the coin prices.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Whichever miner mines the block that a transaction is
| included in must collect at least enough in transaction
| fees to cover the energy spent on mining. Since the block
| size (and thus number of transactions that can be
| recorded per block) is fixed, this implies that any
| increase in the global price of energy will raise Bitcoin
| transaction fees (all things being equal). This assumes
| that the transaction rate is always at the maximum
| possible; if the transaction rate is too low and blocks
| are not being filled, the effect is even more pronounced
| as there are fewer transactions over which the energy
| cost can be recuperated (last I checked, Bitcoin is
| already operating at its maximum transaction rate, but
| someone may want to correct me on that).
|
| The reason it impacts coin prices is that higher
| transaction fees make Bitcoin less desirable as a medium
| of exchange and reduces demand. To put it another way,
| let's say I am paid in Bitcoin. If transaction fees
| increase, I will need to demand a higher nominal salary,
| at least enough to cover the transaction fees incurred
| when I spend my salary. Likewise, any merchants that
| accept Bitcoin payments will raise their prices, to cover
| the fees they will have to pay. Yet the same work is
| being done and the same goods are being sold; hence,
| inflation, or in other words, the value of Bitcoin has
| decreased.
| shawnz wrote:
| If transaction demand stays equal, and the rate of
| transactions that can be processed stays equal, then why
| would the fees raise? If electricity costs go up, miners
| will be priced out of the market, and then difficulty
| will go down for other miners making it profitable again
| once the hash rate drops enough.
|
| Miners can't choose the transaction fees, they will
| either process the most expensive transactions they see
| or just stop mining. If they stop mining, that doesn't
| impact the rate of transactions that can be processed.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The number of miners does not really matter. Whatever
| miner mined a given block must receive enough to cover
| the electricity cost, regardless of how many other miners
| are involved. There is also no particular incentive for a
| miner to reduce his own electricity consumption in
| response to the difficulty being reduced. The only reason
| miners will shut their equipment down is if they are
| unable to cover their electricity costs because e.g.
| nobody is willing to pay the higher transaction fees.
|
| Obviously everything I described is a simplified model
| where energy costs change equally for all miners. The
| real world is not that simple, but there is some
| correlation in energy costs across different regions as
| there is a global market for typical fuels (coal, natural
| gas, uranium, etc.).
|
| It is also important to remember that transaction fees
| are not in proportion to transaction sizes. People doing
| large Bitcoin transactions could absorb much higher fees,
| so in all likelihood nobody would be priced out of the
| market (and Bitcoin would be dominated by large
| transactions, which is more or less the case right now).
| shawnz wrote:
| I am not suggesting miners will react to the difficulty
| change. The difficulty change reacts to the miners.
|
| Miners will shut their equipment down as soon as the
| electricity costs become greater than the rewards. When
| some of the miners shut their equipment down, that causes
| a difficulty change which makes mining profitable again
| for the remaining miners, and also keeps the transaction
| rate the same. The miners have no way to impact what
| transaction fees are acceptable because they have no
| control over the transaction rate.
| hfsp wrote:
| >Bitcoin network only processes a small fraction of the
| number of transactions per day that Visa processes
|
| Btc is not replacing visa. Btc is replacing central
| banks. The appropriate comparison here is what is the
| energy cost of the banking infrastructure of the
| incumbent system.
|
| >Environmental concerns aside I am concerned that you are
| using electricity to power your computer, access the
| internet, and comment on HN. Are you the arbiter of
| "moral" energy use? Am I? Slippery slope, and an anti-
| human one at that.
|
| >Energy prices are notoriously volatile; hence Bitcoin's
| value will also be volatile.
|
| This is not how it works. There is an argument to be made
| for risk of on-grid miners sudden increase of electricity
| prices in the case of a power shortage. Miners don't like
| this type of risk, so they choose to locate at places
| with abundant supplies and stables prices of electricity.
| Miners sign long-term electricity agreements. Risk to off
| grid miners is another level removed from on grid miners.
|
| >will eventually be abandoned entirely. According to how
| you feel? All signs point otherwise.
|
| >the technical objections to Bitcoin outweigh the
| economic objections You are free to make your own fork,
| BIP, or new "crypto" and compete. Good luck. By the way,
| there are 7999 "crypto" coins competing and losing so
| far.
| Aunche wrote:
| Aside from its transaction costs, which may be mitigated by
| the lightning network, Bitcoin is still a lousy currency.
| One important function of money is the creation of credit.
| If you have a large quantity of money that you don't want
| to spend in the short term, the money is better put to use
| by loaning it to a small business or couple purchasing
| their first house.
|
| Without regulation or FDIC insurance, very few people would
| be willing to give their bitcoins to a bank so that it
| could be lent out to people who have a better use for it.
| Even if a Bitcoin bank could exist, an economic downturn
| could cause a liquidity crisis, where everyone tries to
| withdraw their Bitcoin at once. The banks would have no way
| of returning the Bitcoins to many of their customers.
| Because there is no central bank that can print out
| Bitcoin, the entire Bitcoin financial system would be in
| ruin following the crisis.
| boringg wrote:
| Um transaction costs alone make it not the best use of
| money. It isn't widely used for goods that you would want
| to use on a day to day basis / the transaction costs of
| using it / energy use for bitcoin are some of the low
| hanging counters to why it isn't the best form of widely
| used currency.
|
| Are those things that can change over time? Certainly - but
| it hasn't happened yet.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| These low hanging counters have been discussed over a
| lot.
|
| Transaction cost is pretty low in multiple views:
|
| - You can globally settle billions of dollars worth of
| bitcoin for less than 10$ [0]
|
| - FIAT Settlements between banks is a complicated and
| non-auditable process, which is internationally speaking
| also very slow
|
| - You can build layers on top of bitcoin, i.e. the
| Lightning Network or liquid, which reduces transaction
| costs and time by a lot (sub cent range in the lightning
| network)
|
| Energy usage is not tied to transaction throughput. It is
| vital to be very high in the future, as it secures this
| global and auditable settlement network. Mining is a very
| competitive business. Renewable and unused energy IS the
| cheapest energy available (without govt. subsidies), thus
| the most competitive miners will use them. Mining also
| "subsidizes" research in cheap energy, as it gives you a
| competitive advantage.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/CoreFeeHelper/status/136678735198
| 5287168
| [deleted]
| boringg wrote:
| Im answering his question why bitcoin is not the best use
| of money:
|
| (1) Most people don't settle on large volumes (thats
| typically banks/states/institutionals) so small volumes
| have a high cost percentage making it not a good daily
| driver. The fact that there is any transaction cost makes
| it challenging to work with as a daily money vehicle for
| consumers.
|
| (2) It requires energy to exist and keep a ledger, it
| also requires energy to mine. Your comment on renewable
| energy isn't accurate sadly and unused energy works only
| if you can get access to it which isn't universally
| available. In some jurisdictions renewable energy beats
| on price but this is largely on huge projects that are
| bid into utility grids (At least in North America). It
| will get there but still needs more time.
|
| I don't see how mining subsidizes research in cheap
| energy.
|
| Understand they have been debated ad nasueum and the
| reason is that they haven't really passed muster for the
| use case we are talking about.
|
| Don't equate my arguments as saying bitcoin is bad - it
| doesn't have a good universal use case for money and it
| does have negative environmental benefits associated with
| it.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| (1) I think people assume that just because bitcoin
| exists banks will vanish. Bitcoin is the protocol that
| banks can use, but individuals as well. Also,
| micropayments on Bitcoin exist today. I encourage you to
| download a lightning network wallet (e.g. Breez Wallet:
| non-custodial and open source) and send me a "lightning-
| invoice" I can pay you in the sub-cent range.
|
| (2) It requires real world resources to be spend and uses
| the most globally available resource, energy. I see it as
| a feature not a bug.
|
| Renewable energy is the cheapest though[0] and thus the
| one that competitive miners need to use. Non-competitive
| miners get driven out very fast thanks to the difficulty
| adjustment.
|
| Any percentage of optimization you can get in your energy
| production you can use to outperform other miners, thus
| get more of the block subsidy and drive out inefficient
| miners.
|
| Bitcoin mining de-risks investments in energy producing
| facilities. You always have a buyer for your energy,
| which is a problem especially in renewables. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_
| source [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/
| abs/pii/S13640...
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > It requires real world resources to be spend and uses
| the most globally available resource, energy. I see it as
| a feature not a bug.
|
| Such a horrific, unproductive use of energy is definitely
| a bug from a scientific perspective, maybe not for a
| financier.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| I think from a scientific view, allowing and observing
| the experiment bitcoin is extremely interesting. Nothing
| like it has challenged economic thinking in the last
| decades.
|
| It is very productive for a large population of the
| world.[0]
|
| Not everyone gets paid in a stable currency or has easy
| access to it.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYYh4aPXAM
| arrosenberg wrote:
| How it is challenging economic thinking? There is a near-
| zero chance cryptocurrencies replace an actual currency
| as the global reserve, so it's going to continue to be a
| novelty until people move on to something shinier.
|
| > Not everyone gets paid in a stable currency or has easy
| access to it.
|
| Bitcoin doesn't appear to solve this issue at all. How is
| private manipulation of Bitcoin any different than an
| authoritarian manipulating the local currency? If I was
| in a country with unstable currency, I'd want Euro or US
| Dollars, not bitcoin.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| I think that the chairmen of the fed and ecb arguing
| about bitcoin is a strong signal of a challenge.
|
| As I and the video mentioned Euro and USD is not easily
| accessible in those countries, Bitcoin doesn't need
| permission though.
|
| What you refer to as private manipulation is called
| supply and demand, maybe try reading Econo101 :)
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > What you refer to as private manipulation is called
| supply and demand, maybe try reading Econo101 :)
|
| Does Econ 101 cover asset bubbles or financial
| manipulation? It's been so long, that I can't remember,
| but I promise you that prices can reflect things other
| than supply and demand once you manage to get past that
| first class.
|
| > Bitcoin doesn't need permission though
|
| No authoritarian would EVER cut off or filter the
| internet in their country. Nope, has never happened, will
| never happen.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| > No authoritarian would EVER cut off or filter the
| internet in their country. Nope, has never happened, will
| never happen.
|
| You're right, Myanmar just did that! Scary to think of
| it. Fortunately Bitcoin works over more communication
| protocols, but no internet is certainly not in any way
| easily defendable today. But i still think that physical
| and banked usd, euros and gold are more easily seizable
| by a government. A no internet scenario is probably
| economic suicide by any government.
|
| I really don't get what you mean by financial
| manipulation in regards to bitcoin.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I really don't get what you mean by financial
| manipulation in regards to bitcoin.
|
| Bitcoin entered a speculative bubble in the middle of
| 2017.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| And that is financial manipulation how?
|
| The supply got less, while the demand didn't decrease.
| The intrinsic value increased because of the network and
| lindy effect, which is why institutional investors jumped
| in. Bitcoin entered a speculative bubble the moment the
| first block was created.
|
| I would say we just don't know the price of bitcoin yet,
| hence the heavy volatility.
|
| What would you price it at? Are you shorting it?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I wouldn't price it at all, because I don't see it as
| valuable, and I don't gamble, so I'm not going to short
| it. The supply got less because people bought bitcoin
| based on media hype. That's pretty classic manipulation.
| ballofrubber wrote:
| I'm astonished that you have such a strong opinion, while
| not even trying to understand how pricing works. Good
| thing you're not gambling on that!
|
| Media hype typically drives demand, not supply. Supply in
| bitcoin is a very fundamental concept and controversial
| topic, which is a function of proof of work, difficulty
| adjustment and block subsidy.
|
| What exactly in supply and demand is manipulation? You
| can't just shout manipulation and argue with "media
| hype", which historically for bitcoin is very mixed[0]
| and affects any asset class?
|
| [0]https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
| lottin wrote:
| Proponents of Bitcoin are rarely financiers. It's clear
| to me that they don't understand finance.
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| Bitcoin has transitioned to "store of value", like gold,
| not "frequently transacted currency", like the dollar.
| There's plenty of other crypto currencies that fill that
| need.
| boringg wrote:
| Don't disagree - I am just correcting the OP comment
| about it being the best use case for money. It isn't the
| best use for money.
| Retric wrote:
| For Bitcoin specifically. You can use a different token
| backed up by Bitcoin, but the actual implementation has
| these issues.
|
| Transaction rates - Artificially kept low to profit miners.
|
| Privacy - Every Bitcoin transactions is on a public
| blockchain.
|
| Transaction fees - Using Bitcoin for even one transaction a
| day gets expensive.
|
| Online only - Unlike cash only works with network access.
|
| Conformation Time - Failing to wait for conformation in
| effect allows double spend attacks. Think 10 people buying
| computer equipment from different stores at the same time.
|
| Assuming the implementation was changed to support wider
| adoption, a fixed currency has significant economic issues.
| For example, making or taking a loan in a currency that's
| gaining value quickly becomes untenable.
|
| PS: Of course all of this could be changed, but
| acknowledging issues is the first step in selecting a new
| set of tradeoffs.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| First off, thank you for making fair criticisms.
| Unfortunately some of your information is old.
|
| You don't need a bitcoin backed token, lightning does it.
|
| Transaction rates are not artificially kept low. In fact
| most the vast majority of the time bitcoin has excess
| capacity.
|
| Privacy- this is a legitimate concern but it is
| improving, slowly. Taoroot and Lightning are both privacy
| improvements.
|
| So your daily transactions aren't meant for bitcoin. A
| distributed ledger that replicates all data globally for
| eternity is not an appropriate method for recording
| coffee purchases. Though I have done it. Bitcoin makes
| sense for settlement, and lightning is appropriate for
| coffee.
|
| That said, I regularly clear bitcoin transactions for $1
| or less in fees, and it is cheaper then every other form
| of payment in the world. You may think a SWIFT
| transaction is "free", but its merely the cost is hidden.
| And don't forget the inflation tax, that is a global
| wealth tax on any money held in an inflating currency. So
| compared to that, $1 to send $100 is cheap.
|
| Online Only- I don't think there is a solution to this
| criticism, but not sure what the issue is.
|
| Lightning allows speed without double spend problems.
| Personally when moving large (for me) amounts of money I
| font mind waiting an hour for the confirmations. I
| certainly won't trust a payment without them.
|
| But bitcoin is voluntary, it doesn't have to be perfect
| in every regard.
| Retric wrote:
| > Transaction rates are not artificially kept low.
|
| You can look it up, larger blocks where allowed in the
| past, 1MB is a completely arbitrary size that was
| overkill at the time but hasn't increased. Even 1$
| transactions are quite expensive though they are often
| much higher.
|
| The lighting network has it's own separate set of issues.
| It's Bitcoin backed but loses some of Bitcoins
| advantages: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.08513.pdf
|
| > Online Only- I don't think there is a solution to this
| criticism, but not sure what the issue is.
|
| It's simply a dependency. Shops may have issues accepting
| CC payments after a hurricane for example, but they can
| always take cash.
| vntok wrote:
| Generalized mesh networks should solve this problem quite
| nicely in the next decade.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Generalized mesh networks will solve power outages?
| cyphertruck wrote:
| The block size is not a limiting factor in transactions.
| And it was quadrupled in 2017.
|
| The biggest problem with bitcoin is that scammers spread
| FUD to justify their scam coins and too many people
| believe the FUD.
|
| You are repeating FUD here and basing it in your non-
| understanding of how bitcoin works.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "Online Only- I don't think there is a solution to this
| criticism, but not sure what the issue is."
|
| The fact that I need to connect to some peer-to-peer
| network or third party service for every transaction is a
| limiting factor. It reduces the efficiency of the system
| and increases latency, and it adds additional points of
| failure.
|
| In fact it can be solved for electronic transactions and
| there is a mountain of published research on the topic
| that dates back to the late 80s. Here is a recent
| research paper:
|
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1220.pdf
|
| The idea is to ensure that users who attempt to double
| spend can be identified and penalized later (e.g. by
| being added to a blacklist; some systems actually ensure
| that _all_ transactions in which the cheating user
| participated can be identified, so merchants who try to
| evade the blacklist can also be penalized). The money has
| to be issued by a bank under the security definition. If
| anonymity is not a requirement -- and presumably a
| Bitcoin enthusiast does not care about anonymity since
| Bitcoin is not anonymous -- this can be easily achieved
| by using ordinary digital signatures.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| I think you are not understanding how bitcoin works, and
| this exact problem of double spending was better solved
| by bitcoin. You dont need to trust a third oarty or
| "online service", you can dimply run a bitcoin node. If
| it is that important a raspberry pi and SSD is cheaper
| than your average credit card terminal.
|
| The credit card network, by the way, is much worse in
| this regard.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| ...so you need to be online, connected to the rest of the
| Bitcoin peer-to-peer network, to engage in a transaction.
| I am talking about offline transactions, where I only
| need to communicate with the other party in the
| transaction. Again, you can just read the paper I gave a
| link to, which describes this scenario, or any of the
| other hundreds of papers published on the topic.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| This[1] is an insightful article from an economist who has
| experienced the real world economics from very close
| quarters.
|
| I don't have any opinion about Bitcoin one way or another,
| though through these fascinating arguments I gain new
| insight about the money and its relationship with
| geopolitics, human civilisation and other aspects.
|
| [1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-
| the-da...
| cyphertruck wrote:
| That article is from 2013 and so we must grade it on a
| curve. He makes several wrong assumptions about how
| bitcoin works because he's thinking it is based on trust,
| and he is an inflationist.
|
| I have yet to have an economist explain to me why
| deflation us bad- computers getting cheaper is good,
| fixed income people being able to afford things us good.
| Inflation mainly allows government to hand out money yo
| wall street in exchange for bribes at the expense of
| everyone else. That's not good.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > I have yet to have an economist explain to me why
| deflation us bad
|
| At risk of being the "Let Me Google That For You" Guy,
| it's not too hard to find articles where economists give
| cases against deflation, e.g.:
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/5-reasons-to-worry-
| about-...
|
| https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/978/economics/definiti
| on-...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-is-deflation-bad
|
| The basic argument is that in _small_ amounts, both
| inflation and deflation can be fine, but either one can
| become a problem. The issues with too much inflation are
| fairly obvious; the issues with too much deflation is
| that downward price pressure falls on _everything._ If
| deflation is so reliable that prices are going to be
| meaningfully lower if I can put off a big purchase for as
| long as possible, I 'm going to do that. If enough people
| follow my lead, that hurts sellers. Wages go down -- more
| than likely through layoffs rather than pay cuts. And
| anyone who's already in debt -- and this doesn't just
| include your Uncle Bob who routinely puts too much on his
| credit card, it includes companies using lines of credit
| -- can end up in real trouble.
|
| > computers getting cheaper is good
|
| Sure, but -- even though I've seen this example trotted
| out before as a pro-deflation argument -- the prices of
| manufactured goods steadily fall due to continual
| improvements in manufacturing processes, economies of
| scale, and general technological progress. This has been
| particularly noticeable in computers over the last three
| decades, but Moore's Law isn't a supporting argument for
| the benefits of monetary deflation.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| "This has been particularly noticeable in computers over
| the last three decades, but Moore's Law isn't a
| supporting argument for the benefits of monetary
| deflation."
|
| Asserting that an argument is not an argument is not a
| rebuttal.
|
| The claim that people having more purchasing power will
| stop the economy is self serving for inflationists and
| never supported by evidence.
|
| In fact the opposite has been the case time and time
| again.
|
| As I proved in the example you simply ignored.
|
| So, like I said, I have never seen an argument. Just
| these kinds of self serving assertions.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| > "I have yet to have an economist explain to me why
| deflation us bad"
|
| 1 bitcoin will always buy more and more and more and
| more. So you have zero incentive to spend your money
| today and you have all the incentive to wait as far as
| you possibly can before spending anything. The economy
| would grind to halt. Isn't this obvious?
|
| Besides, rich people can sit on their money instead of
| re-investing. They will never have to work and neither
| will their descendants. You basically established some
| kind of stupid cyberpunk feudalism.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| You are arguing that the kings if the past with lots if
| gold starved, simply because their gold could buy more
| food over time. People don't forgo food for decades to
| put more money into index funds despite the broad market
| increasing in value consistently over time.
|
| Computers get cheaper every year such that even inflated
| dollars can be held to get a better computer next year.
|
| And yet the technology industry has not ground to a halt.
| Food is low tech, cell phones are high tech.
|
| It is obvious- this argument in favor of government being
| able to debase the currency to fund wars and somehow
| that's good for poor people is never going to hold water.
|
| But here is another thought- no matter how much you call
| it stupid, or fuedalistic, leftists gave been making this
| argument fir over a decade now and Bitcoin has only
| gotten stronger.
|
| You may even be able to make it "illegal" if you ignore
| the constitution and laws, but you cannot stop it.
|
| Bitcoin will be the tool that liberates the people out
| from under your technocratic thumb.
|
| Thats what I find most exciting.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Wow, I can't even make sense of what I read. It's like
| all the crazy conspiracy theories thrown into a blender
| and the outcome is: "Bitcoin liberates!".
|
| I think you really have poor mental models of the world.
| I'm sorry but there's not even anything else I can say.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > and he is an inflationist
|
| Is this going to be a new slur from the community?
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Wasnt a slur, but a representation of his position. It
| should be a slur, though, as monetary inflation is a tax
| that hurts the poor the most.
| luhn wrote:
| If you don't like the Fed throwing money at rich people,
| you should probably be rooting for inflation. The
| historically low inflation of the past decade has them
| handing out money like candy.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| We have not had low monetary inflation since at least the
| Ford presidency.
|
| You are confusing the consumer price index for
| "inflation". It's understandable, this lie is one of the
| earlier examples of fake news.
|
| When the fed prints money it goes to wall street and
| politically connected people. (This is quite literally
| the definition of fascism- a private economy run by
| government)
|
| Wall Street profits from the inflation, but the rest of
| the people get poorer.
| lottin wrote:
| > computers getting cheaper is good
|
| In the context of deflation goods getting 'cheaper'
| simply means that their nominal price falls, while real
| prices remain constant. If you thought that deflation
| makes people richer (or that inflation makes people
| poorer) then you were wrong.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Inly if you redefine "rich". Increased purchasing power
| makes you richer, giving you a chance to build wealth.
| Inflation robs this from society and is oppression. I
| really don't care to be gaslit about economics.
|
| Bitcoin fixes this.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "I have yet to have an economist explain to me why
| deflation us bad"
|
| There are a few different issues. First, volatility is
| universally bad for a currency, because it makes all
| transactions in the currency more risky. Money should
| always be a medium of exchange first and foremost; there
| should be little to no room for speculating on the value
| of money and people should not have to factor in
| unexpected changes in the value of money when determining
| prices. In general people will switch from more volatile
| to less volatile currencies because less volatile
| currencies make trade more efficient.
|
| Unexpected deflation is particularly bad, because in
| addition to the general problems with volatility, it also
| triggers defaults on loans (because money becomes more
| difficult to obtain). Too many defaults in too short a
| period of time will create a "contagion" effect by
| reducing the collateral held by lenders (who use loans as
| collateral for their own debts), which triggers even more
| defaults. Worse, as lenders see their collateral vanish,
| they will try to make up the difference with money,
| taking money out of circulation and causing even more
| deflation and thus more defaults. This is the
| "deflationary spiral" scenario.
|
| Inflation is not some trick to hand money over to "Wall
| St." Rather, a low, _predictable_ rate of inflation is
| targeted so that there will be some "breathing room"
| during an economic crisis. It does not hurt people on a
| fixed income because it can be planned for and the fixed
| income can be adjusted for inflation (e.g. someone could
| hold a portfolio of TIPS). It also has nothing to do with
| the price of computers, which have become cheaper because
| of economic growth (and in fact have become cheaper over
| decades of inflation). Inflation also encourages
| investment activity by discouraging the hoarding of
| money, which is a good thing for the economy.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| It's a shame you spent so much time patiently trying to
| explain all that to me, not realizing it's probably the
| ten thousandth time I've heard this. I appreciate the
| efforts, bit that view is rationalization and I tried to
| save you the effort by pointing out that the technology
| industry has not stopped like you would expect if your
| view were reality.
|
| And I assure you, as someone who holds bitcoin that has
| greatly appreciated, I can't wait to spend it on things
| that depreciate.
|
| In fact my spending has increased now that my spending
| power has increased dramatically.
| [deleted]
| phroobster wrote:
| Someone reading an econ101 textbook and immediately deciding
| that Bitcoin is unnecessary is an amusing example of Dunning-
| Kruger :)
| thebean11 wrote:
| Do you really think it's feasible everyone else is simply
| missing some entry level economics knowledge? That's more
| likely than you missing something, or misunderstanding that
| very econ 101 knowledge?
|
| I took more than 101, and not sure what you refer to there.
| [deleted]
| jakeva wrote:
| I'm close with a person holding a Ph.D. in economics (close
| as in she's my girlfriend), and she would absolutely enjoy
| arguing with you.
| hfsp wrote:
| >Or maybe it comes from people who have read an Econo101
| textbook and who have spent a lot of time trying to explain a
| crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts why their reasoning is wrong
|
| The market decides. Not an economics "expert", nor fitting
| btc to an arbitrary theoretical definition of money.
|
| >It seems that tech has enabled a grand new theory about
| money to be implemented.
|
| Are you aware of the Austrian school of economics?
| Aunche wrote:
| The market is currently deciding that Bitcoin is almost
| entirely a vehicle of speculation, which is exactly what
| economists had predicted.
|
| The Austrian school of economics is completely adverse to
| empirical data, which makes it functionally useless.
| lottin wrote:
| > Austrian school of economics
|
| The only school of economic thought that is built upon the
| rejection of the scientific method.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology
| hfsp wrote:
| Have fun staying poor.
| zepto wrote:
| The market decided about Tulips at one point. It later
| changed its mind.
| hfsp wrote:
| If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have
| time to try to convince you, sorry.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > That does not make it less true that money does not have
| magical properties and bitcoin will not create a new world
| order.
|
| Is anyone really claiming that? The OP's post doesn't seem to
| be in this spirit anyway. It's more like "Bitcoin has true
| usefulness, it will keep some meaningful value for a long
| time, enable other use cases that didn't even exist before.".
| Nobody is saying that it is going to replace all other forms
| of money.
| toto444 wrote:
| > Nobody is saying that it is going to replace all other
| forms of money.
|
| To be a money it somehow has to. What is the value of a
| dollar ? The set of goods you can buy with a dollar. As
| long as the value of a bitcoin is expressed in another
| currency that is weird to call it a money.
| hfsp wrote:
| There is a lot of conflation in btc threads between store
| of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.
|
| You are referring to unit of account.
|
| https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoin-as-a-store-
| of-...
| shawnz wrote:
| The value of every currency is expressed in other
| currencies. How else would you do it? Are you saying
| there is nothing in existence which can really be
| considered "money" except maybe the US dollar?
| toto444 wrote:
| If suddenly every land on Earth but the UK is flooded,
| PS1 will still have a value : the set of goods you can
| buy with PS1.
| shawnz wrote:
| How is that different from Bitcoins? If suddenly every
| land on Earth but one is flooded, and some people there
| happen to use Bitcoins (in addition to their other
| assets, probably), Bitcoins will still have a value too.
| Same with gold and everything else besides the fiat
| currencies of the sank countries.
| lottin wrote:
| The value of a currency is expressed in purchasing power.
| Exchange rates are prices of currencies in terms of other
| currencies, they don't tell us anything about purchasing
| power.
| shawnz wrote:
| Sure, the actual utility of the currency might be best
| measured with purchasing power and not exchange rates.
| Same with Bitcoin or anything else, though.
| loceng wrote:
| Lazy people who don't read an article and comment becomes a
| proof point that Bitcoin is onto something? That's an extremely
| weak argument point.
|
| And arguably there's a much larger mob of people who haven't
| critically thought through any of Bitcoin - who own Bitcoin -
| but that are financially incentivized to promote Bitcoin or are
| biased to want Bitcoin to become something.
|
| Convincing yourself that someone commenting negatively about
| Bitcoin is simply jealous is also a common thing I've seen many
| Bitcoin owners use to justify ignoring legitimate counter-
| narratives of a lot of propaganda.
| user-the-name wrote:
| There is nothing baseless in saying that using 0.1% of the
| _entire world 's energy_ in order to do 3 transactions per
| second is beyond ludicrous, and an environmental disaster of
| massive proportions.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3
| transactions per second is beyond ludicrous
|
| In comparison to what?
|
| What do we get in return? Many consider the benefits to be
| worth it.
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| > What do we get in return?
|
| Fantastic question. I've been waiting 10 years for a
| convincing answer; still waiting.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| There are millions of people who use it, trade it, store
| their value in it, program more software for it etc. They
| see the answer, they get the point.
|
| Can you please just answer this - do you suppose they all
| halt what they are doing and wait for an undeterminate
| amount of time for you to also get it, before they can go
| on with their businesses and lives?
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| I would upvote this a hundred times if I could. I don't
| understand where this kind of demand for further
| understanding even comes from we are well past the point
| where it could have been written off as a fad and it is
| obvious there is value to it. There is no reason why
| everyone should feel the need to "get it" or get value
| out of it to understand that other people do get it and
| do get value out of it.
|
| It is such a weird sentiment to me because it would never
| occur to me to devalue the value others get out of things
| I don't understand. I hate bonds, I don't "get" why
| anyone would want to buy bonds, people have tried to
| explain it to me. I decided that I will never buy a bond
| in my life because they are just the dumbest form of
| investment. I can hold that sentiment whilst saying "I
| don't get why they buy them but clearly there is a lot of
| value from the vehicle and it is clearly a valid form". I
| don't see why I should need to understand an monetary
| vehicle or like an investment vehicle to understand that
| some people do, and those people have a valid opinion.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the more pertinent question is, if they all
| halted what they are doing for an indeterminate amount of
| time for other people to get it, would the world [in
| future] be a worse place? And how?
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| Can we at least acknowledge how far the goal posts have
| moved? I can remember what people were saying about
| Bitcoin in 2013 - that it was a revolutionary technology
| on par with the creation of the Internet; that it was
| going to completely transform our global financial
| system; that it was going to replace fiat currency; that
| it represented a dazzling new future that you'd have to
| be an insane Luddite to not go all-in on.
|
| Well, where are we now? What significant advancements
| have occurred since 2013 as a result of Bitcoin (other
| than the catastrophic climate impact)? What new
| technologies are powered by crypto other than niche,
| nerdy shit which no-one outside of a handful of
| enthusiasts cares about? Bitcoin is now 12 years old - if
| Bitcoin is the next World Wide Web, then who is the
| Google of crypto? Who is the Amazon? Hell, does Bitcoin
| even have a Lycos or a Yahoo?
|
| And yes, I acknowledge that millions of people own
| Bitcoin and are trading it. But what reason is there to
| believe in Bitcoin, other than the fact that other people
| believe it? Yes, I know that you could say the same of
| fiat currency: dollars only have value because we believe
| they do. But the difference is that I use fiat currency
| every day to accomplish real things that have an enormous
| material impact on my life. The only thing I've ever used
| Bitcoin for is to buy drugs - what else am I ever going
| to do with it, except hope that the value increases so I
| can sell it to another speculator?
|
| Maybe the crypto enthusiasts are laughing at me for
| asking these rhetorical questions as if there isn't an
| obvious answer - in which case, let me know! I don't want
| to miss out on the crypto wave if it really is as big as
| people keep telling me. But I've read books about
| Bitcoin, delved into crypto-related code, and spent many
| hours of my life studying blockchain technology and
| trying to understand what all the fuss is about. That was
| a couple of years ago, and I got bored and gave up. I've
| been telling myself to take another look given the recent
| price surge, but I just can't motivate myself. What am I
| missing? Why do people act as if this is all so obvious?
| [deleted]
| user-the-name wrote:
| In comparison to literally _anything in the world_.
| ben_w wrote:
| What benefits? Bitcoin isn't fundamentally better than a
| database running on a fraction of the power (i.e. every
| modern bank).
|
| The _claimed_ benefits of BTC are (1) to remove government
| control of money, and (2) to eliminate the need for trust,
| but (1) ignores why we have chosen to give governments
| control of money in the first place when gold still exists
| (and can be traded electronically), while (2) requires you
| to ignore the other half of the transaction where you buy
| something with the money rather than just putting it in
| someone else's account -- reports of being ripped off by a
| vendor goes back to Akkadian cuneiform, and things like
| chargebacks and courts are there to deal with this, putting
| rules on what was once anonymous shiny rock that anyone
| could mine in a literal rather than metaphorical sense.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > being ripped off by a vendor [...] things like
| chargebacks and courts are there to deal with this
|
| Third party escrow services, the better business bureau,
| the police... all of these can (and should in many cases)
| exist with bitcoin. It doesn't have to be either/or.
| ben_w wrote:
| When you have a society where those work, "trustless" is
| no longer a benefit.
|
| It's a catch-22: to be useful, it can't be useful.
| arbawk wrote:
| Now do the gold mining industry, and then how USD is backed
| by armies. And then you can research Lightning Network on top
| of Bitcoin and how it can process an unlimited number of
| transactions.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Quite an amazing feat fitting all the ridiculous things
| Bitcoiners say about energy usage into such a short post.
|
| 1. The gold mining industry has nothing to do with bitcoin.
|
| 2. The gold mining industry has nothing to do with money.
|
| 3. The gold mining industry does not use anywhere near 0.1%
| of the entire energy production of the planet.
|
| 4. Just throwing the army in there for some reason, huh.
|
| 5. The lightning network does not "process an unlimited
| number of transactions".
|
| 6. The Lightning network does not scale.
|
| 7. Nobody knows how to make the Lightning network scale.
|
| 8. If the Lightning network worked, which it doesn't, it
| doesn't need to run on top of Bitcoin, so Bitcoin still
| does not need to burn 0.1% of the world's energy.
| casi wrote:
| "unlimited" surely you mean limited? theres rarely tech
| with no limits.
|
| also the military/police/law/government defend you from
| being killed for your bitcoin.
| Vecr wrote:
| Pretty close to unlimited, if you imagine a channel as
| slider or a bead on an abacus, as long as both nodes
| using the channel agree where it is, the position can be
| updated an infinite number of times without touching the
| blockchain. Timelocks let a transaction pivot through
| many of these.
| derethanhausen wrote:
| This is just whataboutism. Gold isn't used as a currency.
| Seems a stretch to claim the armies exist solely for the
| USD. And until the Lightning Network is actually
| implemented it will remain theoretical.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| Not sure where you get your news but LN is implemented
| and functional. There are wallets, services, software,
| etc, downloadable, functional, used every day. If what
| you mean to say "get all the marchants that support BTC
| to accept LN", then yes, there is still some progress
| needs to be done.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > there is still some progress needs to be done
|
| That's an understatement. There are _two_ restaurants
| within 100 miles of my home that accept BTC, let alone
| use LN.
| user-the-name wrote:
| The LN is _not_ functional. It does not have an
| implementation of routing that scales. Nobody knows how
| to make an implementation of routing that scales.
|
| If LN ever sees anything more than toy usage, it will
| fall over instantly, and become unusable.
| maxmax wrote:
| So you agree then that the USD is not fiat, but is in fact
| a plutonium based currency? How does this fact effect the
| bitcoin case?
| doomroot wrote:
| Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US
| military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so
| much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a
| daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy
| consumption of the US military?
|
| Because it's a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell
| things when you want to.
| neatze wrote:
| > Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines?
|
| In analogy, it is same reasons why we lock our doors and
| don't leave keys in parked car.
|
| Do you seriously assume that some nations and some
| organization, do not, actively seek, how to take things
| that do not belong to them ?
| user-the-name wrote:
| > What if it was the only way to defund the US military?
|
| It's not.
| almost_usual wrote:
| If you think the US military or any military will go away
| because Bitcoin you're delusional.
|
| > Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining
| about the energy consumption of the US military?
|
| People are willing to pay a high energy cost for safety.
| Bitcoin doesn't provide me any safety and it doesn't have
| the strongest military in the world claiming it's worth
| anything.
|
| If you think Bitcoin will topple governments be prepared
| for a long future of conflict and casualties. Maybe it will
| be worth it but I doubt it.
|
| So all in all it's a massive energy waste thought
| experiment.
| as300 wrote:
| Erm, there's a good portion of the world's population
| (I'd say over half) that doesn't think the US military's
| activities support it's safety.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Of course that's true, I'm talking about US citizens not
| the world population.
|
| What makes you think the US wouldn't put it's population
| in front of the rest of the world in a life or death war
| scenario?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I _know_ the US military won 't go away as long as USD is
| used as the world's currency. Getting off USD is a
| prerequisite to ending American imperialism, it's not the
| only thing that needs to be done by a long shot though.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Ending American imperialism is a massive war. It's
| possible but it's not going to happen without millions of
| casualties.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| We can lessen those casualties by working hard to defund
| the military (which is a multi pronged endeavour).
|
| For instance, I have no problem paying taxes for social
| services. I have a _major_ ethical problem with my tax
| dollars being used to fund military action. Bitcoin is
| not the only piece of the crypto puzzle but if I could
| keep my assets out of the hands of the US government, I
| would do it for purely ethical reasons.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Ok, defund the US military now what? China or Russia has
| a stronger military and guess who is controlling our
| interests now.
|
| What you're proposing is that Bitcoin needs a massive
| shift in thought that overthrows all forms of militarized
| government. Possible? Maybe but highly unlikely without
| millions of people dying.
|
| The new Bitcoin power would also need its own military to
| do this. So we're back at square one or where we are
| today.
|
| That is unless you think Bitcoin is also the answer to
| world peace which seems even more far fetched.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I do see the toppling of the US government having a
| domino effect on other powerful nations. If the systems
| are in place to end US imperialism, those same systems
| can be used by citizens of other oppressive regimes.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I do see the toppling of the US government having a
| domino effect on other powerful nations.
|
| I guess you are about 11? May be 15?
|
| Before you were born a great power was toppled, called
| The Soviet Union. It happened over three years,
| 1989-1991. We can all see the domino effect, for sure.
| almost_usual wrote:
| You're proposing Bitcoin will bring world peace. Sorry, I
| don't believe this.
|
| Who controls the power grid, the land, the roads, the
| infrastructure? How is that power enforced? Physical
| force.
|
| No one gives away power without a fight. If Bitcoin is
| the future people will need to die to make it so.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I said very clearly at the start that Bitcoin alone will
| not bring peace. It's one piece of the puzzle to get us
| off our current government. People are going to die
| either way, I'm just done using my money to pay for bombs
| to kill people that have nothing to do with me.
| MrMan wrote:
| I will be very happy if the US lays down its arms- I can
| employ former soldiers as mercenaries to seize bitcoin
| wallets and mining complexes.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Why do you think it is a prerequisite? Imperialism can
| certainly exist without having the reserve currency--
| consider the world situation on the outbreak of WWI,
| which was the height of imperialism and yet no country
| had a reserve currency (everyone being on the gold
| standard).
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Taxes on USD are used to fund the military. I see long
| term value storage in Bitcoin with operational and
| privacy focused "cash" like crypto being pegged to BTC as
| a way to choke the input funds to the US military.
| lottin wrote:
| Why do you think it makes a difference whether Americans
| pay taxes in USD, JPY or wheat?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I'm saying it's much harder for the US government to
| collect taxes from crypto. It's _much_ easier to work
| with a bank to directly pilfer your account than for them
| to force people to hand over their private keys. The
| latter doesn 't scale nearly as well as the former.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| So you're saying that the only benefit of bitcoin is that
| is is useful for committing crimes. Gotcha.
| lottin wrote:
| Sure, and it's even harder to collect taxes from cash
| transactions. The thing is that with or without Bitcoin
| you still need financial institutions, so I'm not sure
| your tax evasion plan is as brilliant as you think it is.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I had originally figured that you believed that a
| government would forego its fiscal policies if a monetary
| crisis ensued, the general assumption for most
| aficionados of the gold standard (albeit one that is
| _thoroughly_ disproven by history).
|
| The way the government forces you to make good on your
| tax obligations is wage garnishment: they tell your
| _employer_ not to pay you but pay the government instead
| because you 're in arrears. In general, I think you
| overestimate the willingness of third parties to become
| criminals for your sake.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| If that was the argument, I would ask in response: if it
| could do that, why would the combined vested interests of
| the US military-industrial lot _allow Bitcoin to succeed_?
| It's not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted
| trade, and even though bans are not magic, even a half-
| arsed enforcement of such a ban is enough to prevent a
| currency becoming endemic.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > It's not beyond the reach of governments to ban
| unwanted trade
|
| Yeah, right, it worked so well for alcohol... It DOES
| (/s) work so well for drugs in the US right now... And
| hey imagine whether it's easier or harder to ban
| something that doesn't take any physical space in your
| suitcase and can be transacted with only internet
| connection.
| Applejinx wrote:
| On the contrary, bitcoin mining operations can be sniffed
| out by their impossibly outlandish power requirements,
| like pot growers used to be.
|
| Increasingly, mining operations have to make special
| arrangements with entire power grids to suck up their
| energy and basically just burn it in arbitrary
| calculation. The scale at which this operates, and the
| increase over time, are both what makes up a lot of the
| problem, and what makes it impossible to hide.
|
| If you'd prefer a world where people value bitcoin
| BECAUSE due to its unpopularity and externalities,
| governments resort to drone striking such operations when
| discovered, all I can say is: well, that solves the
| energy wastage issue, as blown-up ASIC farms aren't good
| at burning energy anymore. Maybe it solves the constant
| devaluation against energy cost issue, too! But I think
| you're missing the point and looking at only the end
| product of the industry.
| shawnz wrote:
| Mining doesn't have to happen in the same country where
| you use the coin though.
|
| In order for this scenario to become a reality, many
| governments would have to collaborate to make mining
| infeasible. But they would be incentivized to not
| collaborate so they can instead tax their miners and get
| the profits for themselves.
| ben_w wrote:
| Did anyone in Prohibition USA purchase a house or car or
| pay their bills with a literal barrel of whiskey?
|
| """and even though bans are not magic, even a half-arsed
| enforcement of such a ban is enough to prevent a currency
| becoming endemic."""
| almost_usual wrote:
| You're saying Bitcoin will never be mainstream if it's
| not accepted by a militarized government.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Basically we are talking about the world's reserve
| currency becoming a denationalized currency. To be
| "mainstream" the denationalized currency will need to be
| defended by the militaries of the Euro-zone, US, India,
| China, and Russia (likely one after the other in this
| order).
|
| Only the US is incentivized to have USD be the world's
| reserve currency. Meanwhile, 7 BB people around the world
| prefer a denationalized reserve currency, countries will
| prefer to interact with each other with a less trackable
| currency (e.g. Iran and the current sanctions), and based
| on the usage of tax loopholes by every multi-national
| company (e.g. FB, Apple, Google) every business will
| prefer transacting in less trackable currency (especially
| with crypto-coin tumblers). This demand for a
| denationalized reserve currency will be supplied by some
| crypto-coin (maybe BTC, maybe something else). FWIW, I
| don't think having a "less trackable currency" is a "good
| thing", I'm just saying there are large organizations
| that benefit from it financially and therefore it will
| exist.
|
| Frankly once the S&P companies purchase enough BTC (e.g.
| TSLA, Square, etc), a BTC 51% attack will need to be
| defended against by the US military to ensure national
| stability. If BTC (or any crypto-coin) can hit "too big
| to fail" in the US, the rest of the world's militaries
| will all build a defense strategy around BTC mining. As
| as consequence, cheaper energy will also be an investment
| into national security.
|
| There are still more problems with BTC specifically, like
| "slow transactions" but as may here have said, we can
| either use a geographically sharded blockchain (e.g. BTC-
| California, BTC-USD, BTC-CAD, BTC-RUP), where each shard
| allows fast transactions, and slow reconciliation, or we
| will just leverage credit for fast transactions like we
| do today, with slow reconciliation between banks like we
| have today. I don't see "centralization" as a problem,
| because having bank accounts and credit are very useful
| as an individual (as individuals will likely only
| transact with credit cards like we do today).
|
| Will BTC become "too big to fail" in the US? Unclear.
| Another crypto might get there first. However, there is
| no scenario where the world's reserve currency continues
| to be tied to a single nation.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Alcohol didn't apparently threaten to end the authority
| of the state.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'd actually argue that it was more of a threat to the
| authority of the state than Bitcoin is today. The
| widespread disregard of Prohibition lead directly to its
| repeal. Defying the state in one aspect of your life
| leads to defiance in other aspects.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Alcohol distribution was also controlled by violent
| criminals who you guessed it, had a strong physical
| force.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > I'd actually argue that it was more of a threat to the
| authority of the state than Bitcoin is today.
|
| If that is the case, then BTC certainly isn't going to
| _end the US military_.
| dntrkv wrote:
| One possible reason is that by the time they realize it's
| a threat, it will be too late.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given what governments worldwide have done with
| currencies in the past, I think you're underestimating
| their capacity and how much they care about the
| functioning of their currency.
|
| If you'll excuse my admittedly also-naive wargaming of
| their responses:
|
| "Dear ISPs, this is the government. That stuff you do to
| block piracy and illegal porn? Do that for bitcoin."
|
| "Dear Banks, this is the government. Purchase of bitcoin
| is now a federal offence. Tell us if anyone tries to
| exchange them for money."
|
| "Dear The Power Company, this is a government order. Turn
| off power to these properties who are engaged in illegal
| Bitcoin mining."
|
| "Dear everyone, this is the government. Your taxes can
| only be paid in dollars, not in bitcoin."
|
| (Not that I would say such things will _never_ happen,
| only that I expect America to become irrelevant on the
| world stage _before_ it happens; and even in the most
| extreme USSR-mimicking scenario that is not something I
| expect before 2041).
| dntrkv wrote:
| As I mentioned in my reply above, I think the way it can
| work is if it grows exponentially, and the US government
| doesn't respond in time at which point not using crypto
| will put the US at a disadvantage. Crypto has the unique
| ability to spread across borders with ease, no other
| currency has had this ability. So I think it's a pretty
| unique scenario in that case.
|
| Another scenario is if it grows slowly amongst the
| countries that have unstable currencies. Slowly it takes
| over the USD as the world currency. At a certain point,
| the US would have to allow it to participate in that
| economy.
| ben_w wrote:
| Nations with bad currencies and mismanaged economies
| _sometimes_ switch to the USD.
|
| Such nations collectively switching to a different
| currency like the Euro or the Yuan is _way_ more
| plausible than switching to Bitcoin; and not only do none
| of the USA, the Eurozone, nor China have economic
| policies compatible with giving up direct control of
| inflation, the usefulness of a shared single currency
| isn't enough to outweigh the political costs for the UK
| to use the Euro (famously), or South Korea to use the
| Yuan, or Canada to use USD.
|
| Money in the scale of governments _isn't like_ money on
| the scale of individuals. For governments, money isn't
| even _like_ it is for the richest individuals, different
| as it is between the rich and normal people.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| I don't follow. Why would a country's citizens choose to
| use a different country's currency rather than a
| denationalized currency? i.e. couple their monetary
| policy to the world market, rather than to a single
| country's market. Given they just experienced one
| countries economy create poor monetary policy, why trust
| a single entity rather than diversify by trusting the
| group decision of many decentralized entities?
|
| And why wouldn't a government whose citizens do not trust
| the government's currency, not incentivize its citizens
| to use a denationalized currency instead of funding
| potential threats?
|
| e.g. The Venezuelan government would way rather its
| citizens use BTC over USD or Colombian currency, in order
| to ensure inflation/deflation is globally decided by
| neutral parties, rather than decided by a single foreign
| entity with potentially malicious intent.
| ben_w wrote:
| Aaa... this will take too long to do justice to the
| topic, but politically speaking, the Euro is
| supernational and the UK collectively hates it, that sort
| of attitude is part of the problem. "Loss of sovereignty"
| is how they felt about it, how many discussed it.
|
| > The Venezuelan government would way rather its citizens
| use BTC over USD or Colombian currency, in order to
| ensure inflation/deflation is globally decided by neutral
| parties
|
| Why would those parties have Venezuelan interests in mind
| rather than their own? One of the arguments against the
| Eurozone (I'm not qualified to judge it on quality, but
| it is given as an argument) is that Northern Europe
| "should" have different inflation to Southern Europe to
| help boost the local economies. Can't do that with a
| single currency, they say, and that would apply more the
| wider that zone spreads. A single global economy -- fiat,
| digital, or metallurgical -- would never be able to
| resolve it.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Too late to what? Forcefully distribute it as it sees fit
| or else put you in prison or harm your family? If you
| keep using it in secret it will never be mainstream.
|
| Physical force is the strongest currency on Earth.
| Arguing it's not is arguing millions of people die for
| entertainment rather than shifts of power.
|
| If Bitcoin is the revolutionary future millions will die
| on that hill to make it so.
| dntrkv wrote:
| If they haven't done it by now, then they don't currently
| see it as a threat.
|
| Now let's say in a few years, that inflection point
| happens where crypto sees an exponential rate of
| adoption. Every other country begins to use it, some ban
| it, many others adopt it. At that point, if not using
| crypto will put the US at a disadvantage, they have no
| other choice but to adopt it as well.
|
| A semi-related example is the way many companies
| "disrupt" the markets e.g. Uber/Airbnb wasn't a threat to
| many cities, until it was. At which point, the demand for
| Uber/Airbnb outweighed the government's ability to do
| anything about it.
|
| It's not the best example since some cities have done
| things about it and Uber/Airbnb, being a company, is
| easier to target.
|
| With crypto, its decentralized nature makes it much more
| difficult to control and attempting to ban it will raise
| issues around free speech.
|
| That's not to say countries won't try and succeed in
| getting it banned, though in the case of the US, I don't
| think it's as cut and dry.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Militarized countries do not forfeit power without
| conflict and loss of life. It's quite possible what all
| world governments have in common.
| dntrkv wrote:
| But what if it's not a conscious forfeit of power. The
| power is taken out from underneath them and by the time
| they realize it, they have no recourse. Other than
| threatening all countries that use the currency, which I
| don't see happening.
| almost_usual wrote:
| How could a militarized country have no recourse?
|
| You're saying all militarized countries on Earth will
| come to a point where Bitcoin is prominent and they will
| forfeit their power over their citizens without any
| fight?
|
| You're proposing Bitcoin will bring world peace without
| conflict?
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| For example, if the rest of the world adopts BTC as the
| world's reserve currency, the USA would HAVE TO purchase
| crazy amounts of BTC, and defend against a 51% attack by
| investing into mining.
|
| Meanwhile, the USA could try to preempt this future, but
| only the USA is incentivized to have USD be the world's
| reserve currency. As such the USA would need to threaten
| every other country in the world to stop using BTC, but
| its not clear if that causes BTC adoption to drop, or the
| Streisand Effect to kick in.
|
| And ofcourse, "mutually assured destruction" stops any
| large country from employing too large a threat against
| any other large country.
| ben_w wrote:
| Would any nation allow itself to be in a position where a
| coalition of the willing could perform a 51% attack on
| their currency? Because if not, only one country could
| use BTC or anything with the same mining algorithm.
| dntrkv wrote:
| They have no recourse because the box has opened, and the
| new economy is up and running. Barring your citizens from
| participating would put your whole country at a
| disadvantage.
|
| Also, I don't think I agree with the notion that adopting
| crypto would result in a country forfeiting their power
| over the citizens. There are plenty of ways to integrate
| crypto into existing governments while still maintaining
| control.
|
| I'm not claiming this will happen, more of contemplating
| on how a global decentralized currency can take over.
|
| As far as bringing world peace, I don't think a
| decentralized currency would do any such thing. It's
| probably one of the required steps towards it, but one of
| many.
| tomp wrote:
| I mean all that US Govt needs to do to crash the price
| 90% is, accuse ... not even that, only _hint_ , that
| Tesla's BTC holdings might be tainted by drugs/terrorism
| financing/money laundering. Game over.
| mdoms wrote:
| This is delusional.
| DennisP wrote:
| Anything Bitcoin can do, we can do now with proof-of-stake
| currencies at a tiny fraction of the energy consumption.
| mindcandy wrote:
| That is true only to the extent that proof of work has
| already been performed. You have to stake something of
| value or POS doesn't work. Staking a POW coin to "mine" a
| new POS coin works. So does burning a POW coin to convert
| it to a new POS coin that can be staked for more. But,
| you can't bootstrap a POS coin without leveraging proven
| investment from previously burned work.
|
| At this point Bitcoin and Eth have about a trillion USD
| of built up burned work. Is that enough to prime the pump
| for a POS-based world economy? I dunno. Probably?
| 015a wrote:
| That's true. So, where are those currencies in the market
| capitalization charts and news articles?
|
| Remember; the last time Bitcoin tried to change its
| mining algorithm, the democracy voted for a split.
| Ethereum has said they're moving from Proof of Work to
| Stake; I'm not surprised, given the Ethereum developers
| seem to abhor Work in all of its forms, including making
| progress on Ethereum itself, so we'll see if that
| actually happens in a few decades.
|
| PoS is a theory right now, with some minor market
| traction, but nothing to the degree of BTC or ETH. Don't
| levy it as a promise which absolves the environmental
| sins of cryptocurrency, when its so obviously unlikely to
| do so. Bitcoin is the zeitgeist; its actively destroying
| the planet; its not moving to PoS.
| DennisP wrote:
| Ethereum's PoS has been running in production for three
| months, and has about $5 billion staked. So far it's
| running perfectly.
|
| They still have to migrate the rest of the network to it,
| but that's a relatively easy task. Once you have
| consensus, adding more data to reach consensus on is
| basically just adding a hash value to each block.
| space_rock wrote:
| No theory to backup this claim. We had what is now
| rebranded PoS well before Bitcoin and it never and never
| will solve the problems PoW solves
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| How will Bitcoin lead to the defunding of the US military?
| Can I get a specific, plausible answer that isn't some
| vague utopian libertarian handwave?
| matvore wrote:
| If bitcoin causes the value of fiat currency to fall
| enough, the government will not be able to print money to
| fund wars. A war will require overtly billing the people
| for it or raising taxes. So it will be less likely the
| people will consent to start a war.
| lottin wrote:
| How does, exactly, the US government print money to fund
| wars?
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Without commenting on the "funding wars" part. The US
| leverages inflation as a taxation strategy (and doesn't
| really admit it).
|
| Most lay-persons don't understand it as a tax and
| therefore do not complain about it until they cannot
| afford things (housing, food, etc), and at which point
| the government distracts by bundling (hiding?) the
| inflation problem with the stagnant wage / income
| equality problem.
|
| Eventually (every 2 decades) minimum wage in increased to
| catch up to inflation. Basically the inflationary tax
| strategy results in the US budget getting 2 decades of
| "extra taxes" (burdened by the lower middle class and the
| working classes[1]), then a reset, and then repeat.
|
| [1] Note inflation as a tax strategy is actually a
| negative tax on low-interest debt holders like
| businesses, and home owners. It is also has a net-neutral
| effect on the investing class, because assets inflate
| proportionally. Meanwhile, credit card debt and other
| high-interest loans are not reduced as much (i.e. X%
| inflation of 19% credit card interest is a lot lower
| than, X% inflation of 2.5% mortgage interest).
| lottin wrote:
| Okay, the claim is that the US government raises funds by
| generating inflation, that is clear. The details are the
| problem. Say the US government issues a bond, some bank
| buys it, and eventually they sell it to the Federal
| Reserve. The US government has the same debt, and it
| seems to me that the only thing that has changed is that
| the bank now has cash where before it had a bond. How
| does this 1) create inflation and 2) is leveraged by the
| US government as a taxation strategy? That's what I'm
| asking.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| If Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency, the theory goes
| that the US would not need to involve itself in as many
| petrodollar wars as it does today, thus resulting in a
| smaller military.
|
| I don't think anyone seriously thinks Bitcoin will
| replace militaries completely.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Wouldn't the US become _more_ desperate to hold onto its
| influence in oil producing regions and do so with
| violence? don 't see why "wow, everybody is starting to
| use BTC rather than USD for oil transactions" would lead
| to "guess we don't need this aircraft carrier" instead of
| "time for some coups to install governments who will do
| what we want and not switch to BTC".
| inter_netuser wrote:
| I don't advocate that theory. Previous transitions in
| reserve currency status led to literally worldwide
| military conflicts.
|
| May Satoshi save us all.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| That's not the point. The point is, it hypocritical to
| complain about bitcoin energy consumption without also
| complaining about the energy, material and human deaths
| consumption caused by for example US military, which is
| in essense what is required for something like a USD as a
| reserve currency to function.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Textbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In practice, we need to get our emissions down in the next
| few decades (if it's not already too late). I think
| retooling our energy economy is already an incredibly
| ambitious project, and I'm not sure we'll be able to
| achieve it in the designated timeframe. I certainly don't
| imagine us doing that _and_ deprecating the US military in
| favor of _Bitcoin_ , even if you accept the very, very bold
| idea that the former serves the same functions with the
| same efficacy as the latter. In other words, even if I was
| convinced that Bitcoin could replace the US military, I
| would still argue that we should stop Bitcoin mining until
| we solve the energy crisis and then take our time with a
| slow, thoughtful transition from military hegemony to
| crypto.
| thrwaway2day wrote:
| Why would we need to do that, Trump lost and the good guy
| won. Surely the good guy who is friends with the guy who
| won the peace prize wouldn't be out there starting wars. No
| way. Our fair and independent media would tell us if that
| was the case surely. If not them it's not like views
| against that administration are removed from social media,
| no way.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > What if it was the only way to defund the US military?
|
| What if the moon were made of cheese?
|
| I don't see any connection between the growth of BTC and
| the shrinking of military budgets or the reduction of
| warfare.
| Aunche wrote:
| Bitcoin is nothing like gold. Gold has inherent value. If I buy
| 100% of the world's gold, gold would still be valuable. If I
| buy 100% of the world's bitcoin, it's the same as owning no
| Bitcoin. Gold would be immensely valued during an extreme
| global crisis (WWIII, massive solar flare, etc) whereas bitcoin
| would be entirely useless.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > If I buy 100% of the world's gold, gold would still be
| valuable
|
| Sure, yes. It would be valuable in the way that a barrel of
| oil is valuable. It has a number of practical uses in
| electronics, medicine, etc. Valuable as a currency or means
| of transferring wealth? Not as much. It's cumbersome for that
| role.
|
| Bitcoin's value is not "coins". It is valuable for what it
| does (transfer wealth). It's a ledger, not really "coins".
|
| Did you read the original article? It's actually worth the
| read if you didn't yet.
| Aunche wrote:
| The point of this comment was to debunk how Bitcoin is a
| good store of value. Gold is great in that aspect because
| the unique color, density, and stability make it trivial to
| identify, which gives it has immense strategic importance.
| This is why nations hold much more of it in reserve than
| they would need from industrial applications.
|
| This comment of mine explains why I think Bitcoin is not a
| good form of money. Transferring wealth may be the most
| important function, but it's far from the only one.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26319657
|
| The article is certainly interesting. Unfortunately, the
| main source of inconsistencies with ledgers comes from
| human factors rather systemic ones. Fat finger errors,
| identity theft, credit card chargebacks, and fraud are all
| inconsistencies created by humans and can only be resolved
| through trusted centralized authorities.
| [deleted]
| thewarrior wrote:
| I recently decided to think deeply about Bitcoin and I think my
| initial skepticism about Bitcoin was wrong. Most of the
| criticisms of Bitcoin are centered around the fact that Bitcoin
| has a very low throughput. However this is not necessarily a
| problem. And here is one hypothetical example of how we can
| overcome this issue:
|
| When countries owe each other money they used to transfer gold
| back and forth or trust someone else to do it for them. So all
| transactions within a country would happen in a local currency
| and then once in a while "settlement" would happen.
|
| Bitcoin is digital gold for settlements among digital
| currencies. For eg I could start a new Stable coin called
| MyDogeCoin HQed in Switzerland and each MyDogeCoin is backed by
| 1 Bitcoin. Anyone who trusts me can transact in MyDogeCoins and
| can convert their MyDogeCoins into Bitcoins if they are willing
| to wait and pay a sizable fee to account for Bitcoins slowness.
| However most people don't need this it just needs to be
| possible. Now anyone using MyDogeCoin can send money to each
| other quickly as long as they trust me. This isn't any
| different to how you trust a country. And many countries like
| Zimbabwe aren't trust worthy at all. This has BTC behind it.
|
| Now suppose you want to send MyDogeCoin to MyMemeCoin HQed in
| Singapore and is similar. We trust each other and hence we do
| the transfer. Once in a while we do a "settlement" on the BTC
| blockchain. This way we don't need that many TPS. And large
| untrusted nodes can use the BTC blockchain as a trustless
| settlement layer.
|
| Since BTC is the final trustless layer its a foundation. Now I
| realized how BTC can have long term value and it could be
| around even a 100 years from now. Doesn't mean its not over
| priced now but it will have a non zero value over the long term
| and is revolutionary. Unless the government goes to war against
| it. The US government used to use gold and then basically
| defaulted and forced everyone to accept dollars by force. Thats
| not sustainable.
| krrrh wrote:
| One of the properties of gold that roughly held true for
| centuries was a stable value. When gold threatened to become
| too scarce for a growing economy the incentive to mine,
| explore, and develop new mining technology increased.
| Goldbugs often point out that an ounce of gold has always
| been close to the price of a nice suit (admittedly a fuzzy
| measure, and it's sometimes a really nice suit, and sometimes
| just a really nice jacket).
|
| Bitcoin has gone from pennies, to around $100 for a year, to
| around $1000 for a year or two, to between $20000 and $3000
| for a few years, and now to $50-60k.
|
| I guess you could argue that this is just going to take a few
| decades to stabilize, but that's a pretty big bet, and a
| pretty weird way to design the next monetary framework.
|
| There was a pretty interesting Clubhouse discussion on the
| weekend where Eric Weinstein praised the genius of Bitcoin
| but bemoaned the stupidity of its design ("a QWERTY
| problem"), and Lex Fridman tried to charitably compare
| Bitcoin to JavaScript as a flawed tech that had great
| distribution and has been making the best of it since then.
| They were both rudely dismissed by a group of Bitcoin
| maximalists as "not getting it".
|
| The question I've asked since the start is, if this is a
| functional idea, why is the dumb beta version still the
| dominant implementation? There's a bizarre religiousity and
| _post hoc_ rationalizations for some of the weirdest
| decisions in its design, and mistaking speculative mania and
| nominal price for success, while proposed uses for Bitcoin
| and the blockchain have been quietly discarded. Bitcoin's
| valuation is more of a symptom of post-2008 monetary
| conditions than a long-term challenge to them.
| svachalek wrote:
| There are various "stablecoins" that show you can have some
| of the benefits of crypto without wild price fluctuations.
| There is another interesting project called SORA that
| features a digital central bank managed via sortition
| (basically like juries, but more complicated).
|
| https://medium.com/sora-xor/sora-the-new-economic-
| order-3ec3...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Well, it's no major mystery WHY you get religiosity and
| post how rationalizations. Those with Bitcoin, especially
| those with a LOT of their net worth tied up in Bitcoin,
| will work the hardest to protect that investment.
|
| Of course, rich people have always done that (post hoc
| justifications for their wealth), but when that wealth is
| not codified and protected by anything other than
| speculative value, it just increases the volume of that
| effect even more. The lack of technical fundamental
| superiority of Bitcoin vs other approaches (and no need to
| mention alternatives, y'all know them) increases the fervor
| of defense of Bitcoin as that's basically the only thing
| keeping it up.
|
| Anyway, as long as Bitcoin has perceived social value, it
| may still have niche uses like allowing you to get money
| out of Venezuela. And maybe slightly cheaper than wiring
| large amounts of money.
|
| So actually you're left with just: 1) pure social perceived
| value and 2) small use case when you have utter failure of
| the formal financial system. The first case is a self-
| licking ice cream cone, but... Unfortunately, #2 could end
| up being a self-licking ice cream cone, too, because now
| you have a bunch of people kind of invested in the formal
| system failing. I'm not really worried about it as the
| number of Bitcoin true believers is low vs the total
| population (and there have often been such people with a
| stake in system failure), but it is something to keep in
| mind.
|
| But not everyone just acts mechanically in response to
| financial incentives, as there are some cryptocurrency
| advocates who see the need to shore up the formal system
| and advocate for that.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Because it's the one that's caught on. There's no actual
| need for inherent utility of it that can't be papered over
| by running everything through one of a few big exchanges.
| Or, preferably, ONE big exchange, where all settlements can
| take place off-chain and the blockchain sits in a big vault
| and everyone just trusts you can redeem your account
| balance for Bitcoin if you ever want it, but you won't want
| it, because the balance is more valuable than the actual
| Bitcoin.
|
| (I'm drawing a comparison to gold here, but this is also
| true for other commodities, and for that matter, _stocks_.)
| danShumway wrote:
| > Or, preferably, ONE big exchange, where all settlements
| can take place off-chain and the blockchain sits in a big
| vault and everyone just trusts you can redeem your
| account balance for Bitcoin if you ever want it, but you
| won't want it, because the balance is more valuable than
| the actual Bitcoin.
|
| That's an important point, because it prompts the
| question: what is the problem that Bitcoin is solving if
| the _preferable_ outcome is that it does exactly the same
| things that gold and centralized banks already do?
|
| The more that I hear people justify slow transaction
| times, high fees, and a general lack of platform
| evolution, the more it sounds to me like the only problem
| that Bitcoin is solving in the real world is that gold is
| already stable, and speculators need a new thing to jump
| on. The arguments people are making today about why slow
| transactions are irrelevant are not the same arguments
| that people were making when Bitcoin was new. It's
| revisionist history. And when people are talking about
| centralization as the end goal... this is also part of
| why I'm skeptical about claims that proof of stake is
| going to solve anything on the environmental front, or
| that microtransactions are ever actually going to get
| better.
|
| The overwhelming perspective I'm seeing here is that
| nobody involved in speculating on Bitcoin cares about the
| technological side at all, and I don't see what incentive
| there is for anyone to make mining easier, cheaper, more
| democratic, or more environmentally friendly. The whole
| point seems to be that people want to get in early and
| then erect as high barriers of entry as possible. What
| makes people think that anyone speculating on Bitcoin is
| going to care about proof of stake? At the point where
| bitcoin becomes a nationally backed currency that is
| _just_ a backbone for other smaller systems and is (for
| most people) completely independent from their regular
| everyday transactions -- there 's no advantage to
| creating that world, that is the world we already have.
| The only difference is that a few people on Reddit
| haven't gotten rich off of the world we have.
|
| The fact that the majority of the market is still
| standardized on Bitcoin despite a plurality of clearly
| better coins drives home to me that the discussion about
| Bitcoin has nothing to do with practical merits of the
| system, and everything to do with a bunch of people
| trying to extract as much money as possible before
| tragedy of the commons sets in. We can make centralized
| banks without bitcoin. If that's the end goal, then we
| should absolutely get rid of the blockchain because
| blockchain is not necessary for a centralized bank
| exchange with a small number of government-level actors.
|
| I'm surrounded by people who tell me that Bitcoin is a
| giant innovation, but who are then openly hostile to any
| kind of improvement to the platform and who are
| continually dismissing valid criticisms of its technology
| and governance model as irrelevant because those
| criticisms don't directly impact Bitcoin's value as a
| purely speculative currency. What you're describing when
| you propose a single, centralized exchange is, "we want
| to make banks a second time the same way, except less
| efficiently with fundamentally outdated technology,
| because we want some of the pie this time."
|
| Which, great, but as a non-speculator, why on earth
| should I support that or care about it?
| jakupovic wrote:
| I would say first read the article, which goes in detail
| what it solves. I'm not doing a TL;DR for you here but
| the post title does have a lot to do with it. You're
| stuck on speculation side. There are other parts to the
| problem which also needed a solution. As the time
| progresses the reward is smaller and then becomes
| negligible if bitcoin ever fulfilled it's ultimate goal.
| This is the reward for early adoption.
| danShumway wrote:
| I did read the article, it's an explanation of how
| blockchains work. And I know how blockchains work.
|
| What the article doesn't explain is why decentralized
| consensus and ledgers matter for a system that is
| increasingly obviously designed to be centralized and
| used in a centralized manner.
|
| Yes, Bitcoin allows transaction resolution in a
| distributed ledger. The problem is that everything _else_
| around Bitcoin 's design, implementation, and community
| is ill-suited for creating a decentralized currency.
| There are a hundred coins out there that use a blockchain
| to "create time". The article does not explain why
| _Bitcoin_ in specific is worth paying attention to, other
| than because speculators are currently already paying
| attention to it.
| jakupovic wrote:
| First to market and the technology that works good
| enough. Nothing has come around that is better, enough,
| to warrant a switch. Once that happens we will go with
| better technology, it has always been the case.
| danShumway wrote:
| _The current banking system_ is better right now, because
| it 's at least usable and scalable. Of course the current
| banking system is centralized and expensive, which is a
| problem, but if a substantial portion of Bitcoin's
| userbase is arguing for that transaction speeds and costs
| are irrelevant because Bitcoin will be centralized too,
| then I'm not giving them credit for that.
|
| And frankly, it's not at all true that no other coins
| have come around that are better. Monero is vastly better
| at privacy than Bitcoin in pretty much every way. There
| are already coins on the market that are using proof of
| stake today. In pretty much every area, the state of
| cryptocurrency has evolved over Bitcoin -- but,
| importantly, none of those coins have become better
| systems for speculative investing. And I would argue
| that's the "better enough" that most Bitcoin advocates
| care about.
|
| I also don't see any reason to assume that once Bitcoin
| goes more mainstream that a community that is currently
| hostile to change because it might affect their wallets
| is suddenly going to be less hostile to change. Bitcoin
| could be evolving today. People could be switching to
| better coins today. But they're not. It's not going to be
| easier to make those improvements in the future.
|
| Bitcoin _is_ the technology. The idea that we need wide
| adoption of a technology that is ill suited for the
| problem it is trying to solve, just so that we can drop
| that technology and choose something that 's actually
| usable on its own without first reimplementing the entire
| concept of banks -- it just doesn't make sense as a long-
| term strategy.
| jakupovic wrote:
| You're discounting the whole problem the bitcoin solves
| because of speculating. Since dawn of time there have
| been only 2 types of money, token and ledger. Bitcoin
| came around and created a third type of money and the
| genius of it is to do that it had to create a new concept
| of time. That's the cool part that the article goes in
| depth about. I'm sorry but it's hard for me to believe
| that anyone who read that article can go back to
| "speculation" arguments.
| danShumway wrote:
| There are tons of coins that do what Bitcoin is doing,
| except better. They also create their own concept of
| time. They handle distributed anonymity better, they
| integrate very clever concepts like zero-knowledge proofs
| and proof of stake. Bitcoin does not have a monopoly on
| the concept of a distributed ledger or any of the other
| concepts that are actually interesting about blockchain
| technology.
|
| But Bitcoin _is_ particularly bad at everything
| surrounding the concept of a distributed ledger. In fact,
| it is set up in such a way as to make working with its
| distributed ledger more difficult than it needs to be. It
| was an interesting first pass at this technology, but it
| has been very clearly surpassed by other coins in pretty
| much every single way.
|
| So the question is, given that Bitcoin is particularly
| bad at what it does, given that other cryptocurrencies
| are doing the same things that the article praises except
| better, why are people sticking with an outdated
| technology? I would posit that people who are really
| genuinely excited about concepts of "creating time" would
| be moving to better coins that are doing even more clever
| things than Bitcoin is, and the people who remain are
| largely remaining because they're interested in the
| speculation part and for them concepts like "first to
| market" are very important.
|
| But I don't see how anybody would ever say they prefer
| Bitcoin because of the technology. It's outdated.
| jakupovic wrote:
| Going in circles here, first to market and good enough
| technology, that's all there is to it.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The problem it solves is that currently, it's not
| possible for any single central entity to prove anything
| about ownership changes directly. Now, you can simply
| trace every on-chain transaction on the chain -- it's as
| if there were a universal log of every SWIFT transaction,
| available to the public. It's incredibly useful for
| forensics! And we can leverage the huge amount of compute
| power directed here to do useful work as a side effect,
| by putting in identity stakes and layer2'ing things like
| proof-of-identity or proof-of-ownership.
| danShumway wrote:
| But no, it doesn't solve those problems. Because you're
| talking about setting up a central exchange and layering
| separate currencies on top of it. You're talking about
| the majority of settlements and transactions taking place
| off-chain.
|
| So when you think about tracking on-chain transactions,
| what you're really talking about is tracking government-
| level, giant transactions that are largely divorced from
| the kind of detailed forensics that people would want to
| do. Which... there are better ways to audit giant
| government-level agencies than a blockchain.
|
| Similarly, leveraging the blockchain to handle things
| like proof-of-identity doesn't work if the transaction
| speed for ordinary people can't keep up. If you want to
| use Bitcoin for proof of identity transactions, you need
| ordinary people interacting with the network, not a
| central exchange. Because again, if you have a few
| central exchanges that everyone is interacting with, then
| it's almost strictly better to just let them handle proof
| of identity and proof of ownership in shared centralized
| databases.
|
| The only reason Bitcoin could matter is if it actually
| did scale enough that it was feasible for ordinary people
| to use it for micro-transactions and as a performant,
| robust API. But the problem is that Bitcoin as a
| technology is poorly suited for that use case, and none
| of the people hyping are interesting in solving those
| problems, evolving the technology, or moving to other
| coins that would be better suited.
|
| In a world with centralized exchanges and secondary
| layers on top of bitcoin that consolidate and batch
| transactions, all of the problems you're describing end
| up being easier and better to solve by just having the
| centralized exchanges coordinate with each other, the
| same way that banks already do. And to the extent that
| banks _don 't_ coordinate with each other right now, it's
| unrealistic to assume that the blockchain is going to
| suddenly change their incentives or force them to do so.
| byset wrote:
| I hear this idea a lot, that Bitcoin is obviously flawed
| design that would be done differently if we could do it
| over again, so either it's the myspace of crypto and
| something better will supersede it, or it's the QWERTY
| keyboard (or maybe MS Windows 3.0) of crypto -- locked in
| as a standard due to network effect but it's a sad thing
| because it's basically a garbage design that we're all
| stuck with now.
|
| But it's always kind of vague what is fundamentally
| different about this imaginary, perfected version of
| bitcoin. Is it the block size, i.e. Bitcoin Cash is really
| the ideal bitcoin? Seems highly debatable, but anyhow, the
| block size is a debate about tradeoffs between
| centralization and throughput rather than an obviously
| embarrassing decision. Or is it more about the issuance
| schedule and supply cap?
|
| Generally, if the current bitcoin is an embarrassing beta
| version that we're stuck with due to network effect, what
| does the better bitcoin look like? Does it exist already?
| That seems like a more interesting conversation than a
| meta-discussion about why we're stuck with this "dumb beta
| version" or why bitcoin maximalists are so mean.
| samatman wrote:
| This is where it's good that the article did such a solid
| job of explaining the difference between a token and a
| ledger.
|
| Any ledger which represents value in a purely abstract
| sense _has to_ start at zero value-- and any ledger which
| represents ownership of some concrete asset has to be kept
| aligned with reality, which makes it a nonstarter for a
| trustless, distributed system.
|
| As an aside, the value of "one Bitcoin" is a bit of a
| distraction: market cap is the relevant measure, as long as
| we're using an existing currency as the unit of account,
| and the only market cap at which a distributed ledger could
| be relatively stable is many trillions of dollars.
|
| So, for a trustless and decentralized ledger to become the
| next monetary framework through voluntary action, it has to
| start cheap, and persist for long enough to become
| expensive. There's simply no other way of doing it.
|
| As for why Bitcoin, and not some other cybercoin: well,
| jury is out, isn't it? But money exhibits very strong
| network effects, and Bitcoin's first-mover advantage is
| considerable. A global marketplace doesn't have any
| reliable way to communicate other than price signals, and
| either BTC forms a Schelling point as the new baseline
| store of value, or it doesn't.
|
| It hasn't yet, but it remains the most credible candidate.
| If you were a small central bank, nervous about the effect
| of 2020 USD and EUR printing on the buying power of your
| foreign exchange reserves, and you wanted to buy a little
| chunk of some distributed ledger "just in case", which one
| would you pick? Probably the first one you heard of, and
| the one with the largest market cap: Bitcoin and BTC,
| respectively.
| hfsp wrote:
| >There's a bizarre religiousity and post hoc
| rationalizations for some of the weirdest decisions in its
| design, and mistaking speculative mania and nominal price
| for success
|
| This is a feature, not a bug. It is very difficult to
| change the protocol. We have a 100% certain monetary
| policy.
|
| I agree with you that perception of what btc is and isn't
| changes with time.
|
| If you have a proposal, you are free to create and propose
| a BIP, or fork off.
|
| Good luck.
| [deleted]
| inter_netuser wrote:
| And down the rabbit hole we fall.
| nerdkid93 wrote:
| > then basically defaulted and forced everyone to accept
| dollars by force
|
| I found 3 instances of "defaults" over the history of the
| U.S. Federal Government[0], and I cannot figure out to which
| of those occurrences you might be referring. Bretton Woods
| was the agreement that made the USD the world's reserve
| currency, and that lasted for 30ish years while the U.S. was
| still on the gold standard.
|
| [0] Has the U.S. Government Ever "Defaulted"?
| https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44704.pdf
| nickysielicki wrote:
| > Bitcoin is digital gold for settlements among digital
| currencies.
|
| What are the implications of this on the network stability
| wrt mining? Doesn't bitcoin _need_ transaction volume to
| remain a stable network?
|
| My read is that the incentive structure changes. Right now,
| miners are motivated by block rewards. In the future, they'll
| be motivated by transaction fees. If transactions are rare,
| mining profitably is going to become much more difficult.
| Pair this with 51% attacks, and the long ramp-up of mining
| capabilities starts to look like it will regress after the
| the rewards go to zero. Can the network survive that?
| cyphertruck wrote:
| To answer that question you have to make assumptions about
| the cost of mining, the cost of attacks and the cost of
| hash power at a point 117 years from now. But we know in
| the future hash power (technology) will be cheaper and thus
| bitcoin security will be cheaper, while bitcoin will be
| more valuable (or non-existing -- it has to be either or).
|
| Also remember if you have wealth in bitcoin you would
| likely mine at a loss merely to secure your own bitcoin.
|
| I can't imagine mining going away.
|
| I think every appliance in a household will end up mining a
| little bit and it will be intrinsic to the fabric of the
| economy. The way the internet is now.
| shawnz wrote:
| > Also remember if you have wealth in bitcoin you would
| mine at a loss merely to secure your own bitcoin.
|
| You could also send null transactions which do nothing
| but pay a transaction fee
| nickysielicki wrote:
| If you're freely giving away money (either in the form of
| null transactions or putting money into mining) just to
| secure value that you're holding, you've clearly
| mispriced the asset you're trying to secure!
| shawnz wrote:
| If you put money in a savings account with interest below
| inflation, just to secure the value that you're holding,
| did you misprice the value? Or for example if you buy
| gold and then pay someone to watch it for you, does that
| mean you mispriced it?
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Both of those examples (holding money in savings account,
| holding paper PMs) are ultimately about liquidity, I
| don't see how bitcoin relates.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Null transactions require mining. The question is if
| nobody wants to mine who will mine? Old mining chips are
| already so cheap they cost less than a cheap bitcoin
| transaction. It would not cost much to mine just to
| preserve the value of your holdings.
| shawnz wrote:
| The point of submitting the transaction would be to
| incentivize mining by posting a bounty for it, in the
| form of a transaction fee. It would be just like paying
| other people to mine at a loss on your behalf.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Ah,I misunderstood your point because I read another
| reply.
|
| You make an excellent point!
| nickysielicki wrote:
| > To answer that question you gave to make assumptions
| about the cost if mining, the cost if attacks and the
| cost of hash power at a point 117 years from now.
|
| I'm not convinced that you actually do have to make too
| many assumptions. The claim I'm making here is that
| bitcoin has had a steady and predictable increase in
| mining demand as the currency has grown, but that _iff_
| bitcoin becomes solely a low-volume high-value settlement
| platform (instead of a buy-coffee high-volume low-value
| blockchain), there will be a demand shock once the block
| rewards go to zero. You can reason about this while
| keeping the hashrates and cost of achieving that hashrate
| abstract.
|
| If volume grows, this argument is moot because there will
| be plenty of transaction fees to gobble.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Not sure how you measure an increase in mining demand,
| but given that we have had three halvenings now, doesn't
| that imply mining isn't going away? They are getting less
| bitcoin, yet still mining. I don't think it will be a
| shock by then. Put another way, the shock in 2012, 2016
| and 2020 have all made mining very profitable in the
| following years resulting in mining booms in 2013, 2017 &
| 2021 (so far.)
|
| Transaction volumes over time have risen as well. If
| bitcoin has amy value to society in 113 years, people
| will pay to transact it. Whether that is one expensive
| transaction a month or a million every block I don't
| know-- but I think the latter is more likely.
| tomp wrote:
| > But we know in the future hash power (technology) will
| be cheaper and thus bitcoin security will be cheaper,
|
| This is not in line with my understanding if BTC. The
| difficulty adjusts automatically, so the real cost isn't
| hashing, but energy. And there is no inherent reason why
| any less energy would be spent/wasted on mining/securing
| BTC (assuming it will be worth more than today).
| cyphertruck wrote:
| The costs of mining are both capital to acquire the
| equipment and replace it when it is obsolete... and
| energy. It's not just energy. Recently that capital cost
| is about %50 of OpEx, but of course it varies. We cannot
| predict the future cost of electricity, but we can
| predict that technology will get cheaper, more generic
| and thus more ubiquitous. This is what I meant by
| "cheaper".
|
| I expect it will be cheap the way wifi is cheap on a
| raspberry pi. They just include it because you may use it
| and it's cheaper to include it than to make both a
| version with and a version without the WiFi module. (If
| you inly use WIFI, then the sane argument goes for the
| redundant-to-you ethernet port.)
|
| You are right about difficulty factor, but that just
| adjusts how fast blocks are won based on past 2 weeks.
|
| Even when price of BRC has crashed, hash power doesn't
| instantly go away.
|
| Also an attack lets you re-organize recent blocks only.
| Increased depth gets more expensive pretty quick.
|
| If mining chips are cheap and ubiquitous, then an attack
| us very hard, because you have to beat all the existing
| honest chips with your attack.
|
| If mining is cheap to attack, the rewards of such an
| attack will be low.
|
| If bitcoin is valuable, it will be expensive to attack.
| svachalek wrote:
| This idea is a big one behind the development of modern
| crypto currencies. Ideas like "Layer 2", "Zero Knowledge
| Rollups", and "Parachains" are all built on the idea that not
| everything that happens needs to be on the main blockchain.
|
| Personally I suspect that eventually a more modern blockchain
| will become the base level of record, or more likely that we
| may never settle on a single one, but indeed with proper
| layering it could all be BTC in the end.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| In Bitcoin, the "local currency" equivalent to your
| "MyDogeCoin" example is called The lightning network.
|
| Simplifying a bit to support your analogy:
|
| Bitcoin lets you lock coins on the chain for a certain amount
| of time. Two people can do this, then trade bitcoin
| transactions back and forth without submitting them.
|
| For example, I lock coins and give my coworker a bitcoin
| transaction I have signed giving him $10 worth of bitcoin for
| my share of the days lunch. Next day he fives me one for $13
| for his share, and I give the restaurant $43 for the bill--
| all these transactions are literally trading bitcoin IOUs,
| but in a nearly trustless way.
|
| This means a great deal of transactions can happen off chain
| without the risk of theft.
| ori_b wrote:
| Why are you so excited about a really inefficient clearing
| house? We already have those.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Ask Venezuelans and Iranians.
| zepto wrote:
| It doesn't seem like Bitcoin has actually solved any
| problems for them.
| ori_b wrote:
| Why are they interested in producing a public record of
| their transactions? Isn't that dangerous given their
| current political situations?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Have you?
|
| Venezuelans and Iranians aren't using crypto in any large
| numbers outside the dreams of speculators. Real people
| who actually need to do commerce prefer to transact in
| USD when the local currency falls short. You're never
| going to lose all your dollars because somebody guessed
| your email password.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| That's all fine, but the argument isn't that BTC has some use
| case. The argument is that BTC has some use case that is so
| valuable that the combined value of all BTC should be in the
| tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars.
| Geee wrote:
| There are also trustless ways to do that. Bitcoin's Lightning
| Network does exactly this in trustless way, and it's feeless,
| instant and private. Every "Lightning bitcoin" is
| cryptographically backed by real bitcoin. In the end, all
| transactions are settled on the Bitcoin main chain.
|
| Then there are centralized credit networks backed by Bitcoin.
| Paypal and Visa (with a custodian / bank) already provide
| this, in combination with a seamless exchange to local
| currency that is accepted by the merchant. For custodians,
| it's possible to algorithmically prove reserves, so that
| every user can verify that their "bitcoin IOU" is backed by
| actual bitcoin, but no one currently provides this afaik.
| ssss11 wrote:
| Yes, you're right. It's very common for people to refuse to
| attempt to understand something new and change their mind on a
| topic. At the same time, crypto has the potential to change the
| status quo for everyone and those invested in the existing
| financial systems don't want their pride hurt, adding to the
| refusal to impartially analyse crypto and make their own
| decision.
| noxer wrote:
| >Bitcoin is onto something
|
| What if it "was"?
|
| The "hate" people express against bitcoin especially here on HN
| is often towards the implementation. People clearly see the
| flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because
| they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that
| as hate because they missed the train to richness.
|
| Objectively PoW does not scale. Objectively we have DLTs
| (blockchains) with Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) instead
| of PoW/PoS that can do everything Bitcoin can and more without
| the most severe downsides that come with PoW/PoS. The future
| will probably bring even better tech and if we learned
| something from the past then its that better solution always
| take over the old worse solutions. Bitcoin ultimately has to
| fail because its not a system that could be upgraded. Its most
| fundamental core properties are intentionally not changeable.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| But did you really include Lightning Network in your mental
| calculations? If so, care to elaborate on what exactly would
| stop it from working? (I mean it already works now, there is
| nothing technical that is going to stop it from scaling)?
| noxer wrote:
| LN fundamentally changes nothing. Its still uses bitcoin Tx
| it just combines many Tx and does the on-chain settlement
| at a later point thus reducing the number of on-chain Tx
| increases speed and reduces fees. But if we reduce Tx on
| the chain we dont solve scalability we just bump into the
| limits a little later. LN on a global scale would still
| need orders or magnitude more on-chain Tx then possible.
|
| And if LN would actually reduce on chain Tx to a level
| where we would no longer need to worry about on-chain
| limits then we rendered bitcoin useless because we
| literally reduced the need for Tx to basically zero. Whos
| gonna pay for mining if block rewards vanish and LN makes
| on-chain Tx vanish as well?
|
| Bitcoins "goal" is that on-chain Tx should always be near
| the max so the fee per Tx is the lowest possible and reward
| are the highest While LNs "goal" would be to reduce the on-
| chain Tx to near zero because every on-chain Tx is
| extremely expensive.
|
| It probably meets somewhere in the middle. which means its
| still gets worse and worse the more Tx are made even if
| they are made over LN. Thats the definition of "not scaling
| well".
|
| LN and bitcoin are supposed to by a symbiosis but LN is the
| parasite that works best when it almost kills is own host.
| You can see it though the actions of large miners. They are
| not supporting LN. They could pour millions in the
| development and advertisement of LN but they dont want it,
| it reduces their profit.
|
| Its just very very deeply flawed overly complex system that
| only exist because some people would not accept that the
| layer 1 has deep flaws. Is rather obvious that building on
| top is not the right way forward. An since changing layer 1
| is not possible in any meaningful way the only way forward
| is to abandon it. Which wont happen as long as people make
| money with it.
|
| >what exactly would stop it from working?
|
| The absolute end state is that hashrate drops or stops
| increasing due to the fact that it isn't profitable anymore
| which leads to double spend and essentially destroys any
| trust in the system and renders it useless.
|
| No one know at which point hashing will no longer be
| profitable for a long enough time to cause this cascading
| effect. But once it started the price crashes > pushes more
| miners out of businesses > further reducing hash rate >
| panic > price drop more > repeat
|
| All while mining hardware becomes cheap because demand goes
| to zero and supply increases, which makes a double spending
| attack cheaper. Then once a double spend has been observed
| its game over. There inst even a theoretical plan how to
| move on at that point. In simple words it would move the
| requirement for block conformations to infinite so there is
| no point in doing any Tx anymore. Everyone just has to wait
| which further reduces any rewards for miners.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| " LN fundamentally changes nothing. Its still uses
| bitcoin Tx it just combines many Tx and does the on-chain
| settlement at a later point thus reducing the number of
| on-chain Tx increases speed and reduces fees."
|
| That's changing everything.
| Vecr wrote:
| The difficulty can adjust down over time if interest goes
| down, and that's pretty much fine as long as no one gets
| over 50% of the hashrate.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Exactly. Lightning was anticipated from the very first
| email group conversation on Bitcoin. It is not ready for
| primetime usage, but it is rapidly approaching that point
| as Lightning improves.
|
| The "killer app" of Bitcoin is the shared CPU power /
| consensus, not necessarily the plain layer-1 transactions.
| noxer wrote:
| No clue where you got that from but satoshi expressed in
| his emails that he was under the impression that bitcoin
| would scale on its own in the early days. Just like he
| tough that millions of people would us their desktop to
| mine and therefore decentralization would only ever
| increase over time.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Lightning network is just a brand name for the
| cryptography that was needed to make Satoshi's payment
| channels work.
|
| So, while Satoshi's opinion isnt really relevant to
| bitcoin's future, since you brought it up, Satoshi
| clearly didn't think layer one was the inly way yo go.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > No clue where you got that from
|
| "Most transactions cancel out at the account level. The
| binks demand bitcoins of each other only because they
| don't want to hold account money for too long. So a
| relatively small amount of bitcoins infrequently
| transacted can support a somewhat larger amount of
| account money frequently transacted."
|
| https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography
| /th...
|
| > satoshi expressed in his emails that he was under the
| impression that bitcoin would scale on its own in the
| early days
|
| And it did. I don't think today still classifies as
| "early". See above for people already thinking far ahead
| for longterm solutions to scaling.
| cloakandswagger wrote:
| >People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not
| emotionally attached to it because they have no money at
| stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they
| missed the train to richness.
|
| The vitriol that Bitcoin evokes from HN commenters can really
| only be explained by jealousy, the environmental concern is
| just a cover for covetousness.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| This is true, because the vitriol was there prior to anyone
| complaining about Bitcoin's power usage (i.e. when it was
| too small to matter).
|
| I remember when I first heard of Bitcoin. I quite frankly
| found it technically intimidating. It was a totally new
| concept. I didn't get it. I took my own discomfort as a
| sort of signal that it was really important; something
| totally new. So I studied it. I had to put time and effort
| to read the books, play with the code... Eventually I got
| it and found it to be one of the most elegant pieces of
| technology and sociology of my lifetime.
|
| I think a lot of geeks never made that first push past the
| intimidation. As the value has gone up, the sour grapes
| have as well. This is a group of people that _should_ have
| been first on the wagon, but instead many of us found out
| the hard way we weren 't on the cutting edge as much as we
| liked to think. Myself included, I have some Bitcoin but
| I'm not a BTC millionaire, like I would have been had I
| pushed harder through my intimidation faster.
| noxer wrote:
| If you do the same kinda research about FBA you will "get
| it" too and you will know that PoW is useless. You
| probably wont make money form that but still I hope you
| dig into it. I myself saw "the beauty" in bitcoin once
| and later saw it in FBA again. After all it solves the
| same problem just in a very different way.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > You probably wont make money form that but still I hope
| you dig into it
|
| There is something to say for incentives. The positive
| incentive loop is what drives adoption, innovation,
| security etc.
| noxer wrote:
| There are FBA coins out there so people who want can trow
| money at something an maybe make profit if they gain
| value. But its not new so who knows how early people who
| join now really are. Can't compare it with buying bitcoin
| at a few bucks that's for sure.
| zepto wrote:
| The problem is that there could easily be flaws in
| Bitcoin that have been there all along. We'll know the
| answer to this if it eventually fails.
|
| I too wish I'd made more effort to buy it earlier.
| Presumably that sentiment applies to the majority of
| humans on earth, whether you are now a Bitcoin
| millionaire or not.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The energy wastage argument isn't "environmental concern".
| If bitcoin were to scale up enough to combat Visa, it would
| twice as much energy as all the generators in the world put
| together can produce, just to do what Visa already does,
| but without fraud detection, ID verification, or
| reversibility.
| noxer wrote:
| Funny how there was no "environment" argument in the whole
| message but someone came alone an made sure to devaluate it
| anyway.
|
| The argument was that PoW can not not scale. Its an obvious
| objectively verifiable fact and its completely irrelevant
| what kind of environmental side effects bitoin has or will
| have in the future. For all we know it could run on fusion
| reactors and biodegradable ASICS only and it still would
| not scale.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| I don't understand the recent preference for taking
| assertions and declaring them "obviously objectively
| verifiable fact".... but that is a good indicator they
| are false.
|
| Bitcoin can and has scaled. And that is a fact, from
| Segwit and Taproot to Lightning the capacity and cost
| have improved dramatically.
| boringg wrote:
| That seems inflammatory (covetousness?).
|
| My take is HN commenters try to typically reason through
| articles with thought and an open mind. I would wager there
| are so many bitcoin bros who hype ad nausea that beckons
| the skepticism you see here.
| cloakandswagger wrote:
| "Bitcoin bros" is inflammatory and slanderous. Please
| edit your comment.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| You have called lock downs "arrogant and threatening
| authoritarian movements" and told someone that saying
| racist hate groups lead to violence is "hyperbole that
| isn't going to work for you much longer". You also said
| that "hn is filled with indignant nocoiners".
|
| I think acting offended by 'bitcoin bros' is
| hypocritical.
| pyrale wrote:
| On the other hand,
|
| > the environmental concern is just a cover for
| covetousness.
|
| ...is an insulting way to dismiss a concern without
| adressing it.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I believe the distinction is that if you or I are accused
| of sour-graping Bitcoin, we cry crocodile tears on the
| internet, but if Bitcoin bros aren't taken as serious
| thought leaders of the future world economy, they stand
| to lose a lot of money, potentially leveraged.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| "Bitcoin bros" is a pejorative.
| mortehu wrote:
| Counterexample: when I recently read about its energy
| consumption (per byte stored), I sold my bitcoins in
| disgust, at roughly today's prices. I've held almost
| continuously since 2011, although I trimmed my position a
| few times.
|
| If I come across something that works without PoW, is safe
| against quantum computers and somehow eliminates the threat
| of forks (seems impossible), I'll invest in that.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > when I recently read about its energy consumption (per
| byte stored), I sold my bitcoins in disgust
|
| You fell for the meme...
|
| Energy consumption as compared to what? What energy
| sources? This line of argumentation feels very misleading
| to me and always has because it is presented with a very
| specific framing. Here's an alternative framing for
| example:
|
| https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-
| waste-en...
|
| At least you sold high, so good on you!
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Good. I hope you git rid of your hair dryer as well.
|
| It's not too late, you can get back in, though you will
| have a tax bill. Maybe it can be a wash trade.
|
| But if FUD that's dishonest about bitcoin mining scared
| you off then you haven't learned enough about bitcoin
| yet.
|
| This us how bitcoin seeks the strongest hands. HFSP
| mortehu wrote:
| The hair dryer, unlike a blockchain, is not a technology
| for durable, immutable and highly available storage, so I
| wouldn't judge it based on energy per byte second.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| That us not the purpose of bitcoin. (There is no
| "blockchain technology")
|
| While bitcoin is a record of transactions, and as such a
| database, it was not created to be a database.
|
| Did you read the OP article?
| elixirist wrote:
| This will likely be dismissed as shilling of a shitcoin,
| but on the off-chance anyone is actually willing to take
| a look, this cryptocurrency meets your criteria (which is
| exactly why I bought it): https://www.algorand.com/.
|
| The pedigree of the team behind it is ridiculous, most
| notably its creator: Silvio Micali - one of the co-
| inventors of zero-knowledge proofs as well as other
| cryptographic primitives.
|
| EDIT: it's not quantum-safe yet, but that's a problem
| they're actively researching, and given the team they
| seemed credibly positioned to solve it.
|
| See: https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/chris_peiker
| t_joins_... and
| https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/algorand-
| contributes...
| noxer wrote:
| As per my original message you should look into FBA. Its
| not a coin but some coins do use it. Whether you want to
| buy such coins and which one is none of my business, but
| the tech is there and works since years.
| zepto wrote:
| > The vitriol that Bitcoin evokes from HN commenters can
| really only be explained by jealousy, the environmental
| concern is just a cover for covetousness.
|
| Obviously some people are jealous that they didn't hold
| Bitcoin earlier and make a lot of money.
|
| But equally, people who hold Bitcoin now are incentivized
| to dismiss any critique of Bitcoin, since they stand to
| profit directly from Bitcoin's reputation.
|
| Therefore the motivations of all participants must be borne
| in mind, and _no ad hominem_ carries any special weight
| since all participants have incentives for motivated
| reasoning.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| As an engineer with twenty years experience in this space and
| nearly as long studying the economics of it, I have yet to
| see a replacement for PoW that solves the problem that PoW
| solves.
|
| Proof of Work is trustless decentralization.
|
| Proof of stake is trusting the dudes who premined the coin
| and sold you a "fix for bitcoins inherent problem" to hype
| their ICO.
|
| If you were right, after 10 years one of those PoS currencies
| would be winning. Can you even remember the proof of stake
| currencies from 2011?
|
| Why did they fail? After all they had a huge economic
| advantage over bitcoin mining as they cost effectively zero
| electricity.
|
| Can you answer that question?
| Geee wrote:
| There hasn't been a secure decentralized PoS protocol.
| Mostly they rely on one or more trusted validators.
| Cardano's Ouroboros is apparently the first secure
| decentralized PoS, that is mathematically proven to be as
| secure as Bitcoin. I don't know if that's true, but that's
| what they say.[0]
|
| [0] Ouroboros - A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain
| Protocol https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf
| cyphertruck wrote:
| I looked into the "mathematical proof" a couple years
| ago, all I could find was hand waving and sleight of
| hand. This convinced me it was a scam.
| Geee wrote:
| I can't really understand their papers, but they've been
| published in peer-reviewed journals, so they're at least
| somewhat legit. And if it's a scam then someone should be
| able to attack it.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "This space" didn't exist 20 years ago.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Yes it did. It has been going on for ~50 years, and
| bitcoin is the culmination of work spanning that period.
|
| Bitcoin was not the first cryptocurrency. It was the
| first good one, though.
| noxer wrote:
| Its right in the message above. FBA is the result of
| researching how to make a bitcoin like system without PoW.
| PoS however is based on the ideas of PoW, it just moves the
| flaws, its not a solution.
|
| FBA was "invented/discovered" before PoS coins even
| existed.
|
| Essentially FBA is a distributed voting solution. Instead
| of let the person who has solved the PoW write the Tx in a
| block, everyone just votes on Tx order. The threshold is
| rather arbitrary. Most systems use something around 80%. In
| practice every valid Tx has near 100% votes anyway because
| no one listens to dishonest nodes. But nodes can go offline
| or Tx propagation can be delayed so a Tx could have only
| reached part of the network and thus not reach 100% Not a
| big deal even if a Tx has less than 80%. Nodes just re-vote
| for the Tx for the next round. Double spend is solved by
| the ordering alone. If one Tx is first the second that
| moves the same funds somewhere else, breaks a fundamental
| Tx rule so nodes wont vote to include the second. Which one
| came first is irrelevant. Each node just votes for the one
| he got first and in a possible second round it votes for
| what the majority of other nodes said came first. So the
| distributes system can not reach a state where a Tx is
| stuck.
|
| This is all very very very much simplified ofc but you can
| easily lookup systems and dig into details if you are
| interested. There are real "blocklchains" running with FBA
| since many many years so it without any doubt works.
| Although like I said in my original post it can allays be
| improved.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| What you described doesn't even address the reason PoW
| exists. So, I'm sorry but it sounds like you are
| repeating something you heard without understanding the
| issues at hand. I suggest you read "There's nothing
| cheaper than proof of work" by Paul Storzc
| boredpandas777 wrote:
| Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative
| territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead.
|
| "Bitcoin Is A Waste of Time (and Resources)"
|
| What Bitcoin has done is that it taught people they can come
| together in a sustained flash mob (like an on-the-fly hedge fund
| operation) and manipulate the price of speculative assets by
| creating artificial short-term pump-n-dump type demand. Bitcoin
| has trained our collective neural network to do this.
|
| The huddled masses can take their new superpower and apply it to
| stock, crypto, commodities on the commodity exchange, and all
| kinds of speculative assets, especially the virtual kind.
|
| It's taken a gambling-friendly society with feverish lust for
| winning (think for-profit fantasy sports, online poker, day
| trading, Vegas et al) and turned us into a giant decentralized
| casino.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Are you implying a cause and effect relationship from crypto to
| the GME stuff?
|
| I think thats a big "citation needed" from me..seems more
| likely both are on the "effect" side.
|
| > Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative
| territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead.
|
| How brave..
| Gatsky wrote:
| Well what you say has some merit, but...
|
| Goldrush FOMO is a very powerful force. Not saying this applies
| to you, but I think some people can't stand the cognitive
| dissonance of being a hacker and not getting into bitcoin,
| missing out on life-changing money. To deal with it, they need
| to vilify bitcoin often on quasi-moral grounds.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Gutsy, but it paid off. 86 karma points at the time of this
| writing.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| You just described the stock market. The only difference is
| that before, there were only a handful of people with the power
| and tools to manipulate it (ie. Wall Street), whereas now, due
| to the power of the Internet and social networks, masses of
| people are able to coordinate to achieve similar effects.
|
| In a way, what has been happening lately, is the
| democratization of the power to game the system. Which doesn't
| mean that now anyone can do it, but rather that it is not
| limited only to the rich and powerful anymore (until they
| figure out a way to gate-keep it again).
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The stock market is a place to purchase productive assets.
| That share I own represents _actual work_ done by human
| beings to produce goods and services. That BTC I own
| represents an immutable thing that itself does nothing.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The stock market is also a place for those of significant
| means to gamble on bets of variable terms.
|
| Your description is correct, but it's far from the full
| picture.
| MrMan wrote:
| A BTC is a receipt for compute wasted
| [deleted]
| usernamefk wrote:
| thanks for the comment. I totally agree. sadly, we are stuck
| with it...
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| The most boring, tired take around.
|
| Ignorant people like to call it Dutch Tulips. Was Dutch Tulips
| a one-tie event? Or did it continue to increase in value and
| usage with higher highs and higher lows every couple years?
|
| By your "waste of resources" take, which is again so tired - at
| least Bitcoin is helping Venezuelans and Nigerians and others
| who have purchased it, unlike video games, which waste FAR more
| electricity and are a larger waste of resources.
| rafale wrote:
| How many "bubbles" you know that have been through multiple
| boom and bust cycles? The US economy doesn't count.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Do you think all the institutional investors who have bought
| billions worth of bitcoin in the last several months see it as
| a pump-n-dump?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| They make money from you when you use their services. If
| FinancialCo thinks you'll buy Bitcoin, they'll offer it to
| you for a fee. They'd sell investments in inflatable
| dinosaurs if they could make enough money from fees for doing
| so.
| m00dy wrote:
| They use Bitcoin as a hedge against US dollar. It looks
| like stimulus packages are the new normal.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Institutions selling bitcoin investments for a fee is just
| one category. There are hedge funds and companies
| purchasing with their own money.
| nathias wrote:
| do you think bitcoin invented capitalism?
| jksmith wrote:
| In the analog perception of time it takes for me to complain
| about kids getting on my lawn, a measurable percentage of the
| pics taken in the 20th century were just now taken digitally.
| centimeter wrote:
| You're describing the concept known as "money".
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| Why do you think young people today are willing to take these
| extreme risks? Casinos and speculative instruments existed
| decades ago.
|
| I think it's because of the massive economic inequality that
| people experience today. Working an unskilled, or even a
| skilled job doesn't go as far today as it has in the past. Many
| people have internalized that they will never be as
| "successful" or as rich as their elders. Given that situation,
| it's easy to see why these risky asymmetrical bets are
| attractive. A failed investment pushes you deeper into poverty,
| but doesn't fundamentally change your situation. A successful
| one has the potential to change your life and break the cycle
| of poverty for you.
|
| For someone who's about to declare bankruptcy, a lottery ticket
| is an excellent deal. For the lower class of America, so are
| these investments.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| It's not an extreme risk if you only invest a small amount of
| money. I wouldn't suggest anyone remortgage their house to
| put that into bitcoin, but I've invested ~$1200 in there and
| I'm willing to wait and see what happens. If I lose it, it
| will be a learning experience and I'll be just fine.
| imbnwa wrote:
| People bet big when the ETA to payoff is perceived as near.
| A number of elements impede this behavior wrt BTC I wager,
| whereas in the case of GME, being a stock and not Bitcoin,
| we saw this behavior more liberally I think
| nightski wrote:
| This distinction is so tiring. It's just not interesting
| calling something gambling as if that is supposed to be bad.
| Every move we make is a gamble (yes, even storing that precious
| cash in the bank). Money is all about opportunity cost and
| choosing to do nothing is just as much of a gamble as doing
| something like storing it in bitcoin. Sticking ones head in the
| sand doesn't change the fact that your only choice is to place
| your bets and gamble.
| lxgr wrote:
| Everything is indeed a game, but not all games are zero-sum.
|
| I feel like when people criticize games, they are often
| implicitly referring to the latter kind, and in that sense,
| it's often constructive criticism.
| Taek wrote:
| Bitcoin is also not zero sum, it's a monetary system with
| unique properties (particularly censorship resistance and
| resistance to seizure) that can't be found in any other
| monetary system.
|
| Those qualities add value in a way that makes it attractive
| to buyers even if they expect the price to go down over
| time.
| briatx wrote:
| You're right! It's actually negative sum.
| nexthash wrote:
| I think you are the one with your head firmly shoved in the
| sand. Bitcoin has enormous problems with legality, energy
| usage, lack of trust, hacking, and slow, expensive
| transactions that make it a really shitty alternative to
| fiat. Bitcoin isn't just a gamble - its sole use as of now is
| as a pump and dump scam. There is no earthly reason why a
| digital token should be worth $50k a pop. Bitcoin is a shitty
| bet, and I'd take USD and a bank account any day over it.
| [deleted]
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| I love when you come to write a comment and someone did it for
| you :D
| 99_00 wrote:
| It's not new. History is full of these schemes. Eventually
| everyone who wants bitcoin has bought it, and there are no more
| bids.
| Scott_Sanderson wrote:
| But yet . . .
|
| Would you say eventually everyone who wants dollars will have
| enough and the demand for new dollars will be zero?
| 99_00 wrote:
| Bitcoin and dollars are not comparable. The US government
| forces you to use dollars under threat of violence. To
| exist as a legal entity in society you must use dollars, to
| pay fees, taxes, etc. And if you depend on the government,
| you must accept dollars.
|
| No one needs to use bitcoin. Its demand is chiefly
| speculation. It has very little use other than a
| speculative vehicle.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I think you describe quite well the fundamental reasons
| bitcoin was created.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Everything created by people was created for a reason.
| Having a reason for existing doesn't mean anything.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The entire world of finance is built upon there being an
| infinitely increasing supply of people who want to buy in.
|
| You're effectively saying that the global economy is also a
| scheme. I wouldn't disagree with that, it's just that what
| you're describing isn't unique to bitcoin.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >The entire world of finance is built upon there being an
| infinitely increasing supply of people who want to buy in.
|
| It's not. It's built on increasing productivity.
| loceng wrote:
| Financially aligning people through greed, speculation, is
| certainly one way to gain "consensus" - however that ignores,
| attempts to circumvent the harder work - which takes healthy
| individuals who have genuine community via regular,
| conversations that go deep - of building trust; Bitcoin is a
| virus that has spread because our immune system isn't working,
| we're currently weak due to a lack of real connection,
| interconnection.
| boredpandas777 wrote:
| Thank you. Upvoted.
| chrischen wrote:
| Just because people use an asset for gambling doesn't mean it
| is worthless.
| olalonde wrote:
| Why are no-coiners so obsessed with price? You dismiss a
| breakthrough technology, and probably skipped on reading a
| quite interesting article, because you don't like Bitcoin's
| price graph and the fact it attracts speculators?
| [deleted]
| oliv__ wrote:
| I'm genuinely amazed at how you're able to take such an in-
| depth, thoughtfully written article, and reduce it into a mere
| "bitcoin is a waste of time, people are gamblers".
| matwood wrote:
| I was a little disappointed since the poster didn't weave in
| tulips...
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I've come to realize, that prejudice is amplified online.
| Prejudice is, at its root, poorly examined opinions based on
| insufficient evidence.
|
| Prejudice gets amplified because it often seems insightful,
| and online, barraged by information all day, people click,
| read these blurbs and one liners, then pass them on.
|
| Prejudice is also emotionally satisfying because typically
| people believe what is already inline with their beliefs. So
| taking the time to research and understand topics is not as
| pleasurable as passing along prejudice.
|
| It's all around us online, from simple celebrity gossip, to
| political analysis, on and on.
|
| We've somehow as a society got to get our heads around the
| fact that this form of communication online is brand new to
| the human experience, and we have to understand it's
| impacting us in new ways.
|
| I fear all the ways Prejudice is pushing us apart, and away
| from fact, understanding, and compassion.
| Solvitieg wrote:
| It's easier to parrot a tired critique than it is to
| contribute a useful thought.
|
| What's concerning is its the top comment on this HN thread.
| fwiwm2c wrote:
| He likely didn't read it. People have strong visceral
| reactions when they hear about Bitcoin - mostly because a lot
| of them are salty.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Earlier I thought it had some obscure use case but this
| article convinced me that Bitcoin does not deserve the hate
| it does. It needs more discussion on ways to improve it and
| solve energy problem! Full disclosure I have 0 bitcoins.
| curuinor wrote:
| BTC is as old as android, and as likely to change
| basically and fundamentally as android.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Hacker News' Law - The most negative comments receive the
| most amount of votes on any thread related to Bitcoin or
| Cryptocurrency.
| usernamefk wrote:
| ever wond2red why?
| Igelau wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're trying to dismiss the parent comment,
| or if this is a damning observation on "thought" regarding
| bitcoin. Probably some of both, right?
| hooande wrote:
| Ugh. I appreciate and agree with your perspective, but this
| isn't related to the content of the article at all. You just
| responded to the title
| reader_mode wrote:
| Interest rates are negative - if you're saving in cash you're
| losing money. Everyone is happy to gamble in assets and
| commodities because the money has to go somewhere and it's not
| like there's infinite opportunities the money can go into, so
| it's "to the moon" on the markets.
| epx wrote:
| This is one of the few positives about Bitcoin - if people
| choose to sink money into it, effectively redistributing
| weatlh to people that bought these useless hashes when they
| were sold at $100, real estate, gold and other useful things
| we want will not appreciate as fast as if it didn't exist :)
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| Thank you, HN top-comment Bitcoin pessimist blogposter #378
| eloff wrote:
| It's a ten year pump and dump scheme?
|
| I'm also skeptical of bitcoin, but it can't be dismissed so
| easily anymore. There's clearly something to it, but what? Is
| it it just speculation about future value, a hedge against
| inflation and government control? A way around laws and
| currency export controls?
|
| I'm not sure.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Bitcoin obviously offers some value to some people, but I
| think bitcoin's greatest innovations were social.
|
| The bitcoin community has innovated all sorts of social tools
| for advocating causes and pumping assets. Could $TSLA have
| reached $850 post-split without these techniques? Maybe.
| Could $GME have reached around $350 without an army of
| "diamond hands" and "to the moon" (read: crypto memes)?
| Definitely not.
|
| This may feel like a stupid point, but I mean it. Goldbugs
| have been a thing for forever, but the sort of digital
| advocacy that bitcoin sees puts them to shame by comparison.
| Not only is there a hoard of crypto fanatics ready to tell
| you why sitting out of bitcoin is the worst decision you've
| been making your entire life, but you can even get several
| entirely disjoint explanations for _why_ bitcoin is something
| you should invest in (some at a glance: it 's going to make
| digital payments easy, it's a scarce asset like gold and will
| only increase in price, it will replace fiat as a global
| currency, it's a revolutionary technology and nothing else
| like it has been seen before, etc). Similarly, if you try to
| critique any one of these, another supporter will instantly
| take up the fight by moving the goalposts to _their_
| preferred explanation on why bitcoin is great. (Oh sure it
| can 't do many transactions, but it's not actually for
| payments it's digital gold...)
|
| This isn't meant to be derogatory against bitcoin supporters,
| but rather an expression of wonder. It's clearly not a fluke:
| bitcoin drops off the radar for most people and comes back
| every couple of years, clearly whatever the supporters and
| investors are doing to advocate for it is _working_.
| [deleted]
| malwarebytess wrote:
| > It's taken a gambling-friendly society with feverish lust for
| winning (think for-profit fantasy sports, online poker, day
| trading, Vegas et al) and turned us into a giant decentralized
| casino.
|
| I agree with your post overall, but I think you'd be foolish to
| think that it wasn't always this way. The only difference is
| another strata of folk now can play as well.
| zby wrote:
| And yet this is the way to create money - money is what we
| believe other people will want and will give us something
| valuable in exchange. It only works because other people also
| believe in it. It started with shells and gold and other
| collectibles - and we still collectively manipulate the price
| of gold in a kind of sustained flash mob. It is all circular -
| but it works and when you want to create a new kind of money
| you have to do the same trick again.
| suifbwish wrote:
| I believe it takes 72 TERAWATTS running for 10 minutes to mine
| one bitcoin. How is that justifiable when we are slipping
| deeper into an environmental crisis?
| 908087 wrote:
| Don't worry, the bitcoin "investment advisors" on social
| media all bought Teslas, so it's basically a wash.
| untilHellbanned wrote:
| What's the correlation of people who hate on crypto who lost
| money or missed out on it?
| rawtxapp wrote:
| There's a whole subreddit of them at /r/buttcoin.
| loceng wrote:
| I just posted this in another comment: "Convincing yourself
| that someone commenting negatively about Bitcoin is simply
| jealous is also a common thing I've seen many Bitcoin owners
| use to justify ignoring legitimate counter-narratives of a
| lot of propaganda."
| rpowers wrote:
| I'm really glad someone can articulate what I've bee thinking
| for a long time. It started when I realized that bitcoin was
| being used to fuel dark markets then again when I saw that
| anyone was able to make a coin and pre-mine thousands before
| sharing with others struck with FOMO.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| You can easily make rpowerscoin. But it won't be bitcoin. And
| its existence will have negligible impact on bitcoin.
|
| There have been 100,000 clones of bitcoin (according to
| someone who claimed to have counted)but none are genuinely
| successful. Even forks if bitcoin fail despite spending
| millions on propaganda.
|
| Think there might be a reason?
| anthropodie wrote:
| > Happy to be downvoted into negative territory.
|
| I see another comment on top doing the same. Why do people
| start with this? If you don't bother you should not even
| brought that up. Seems like an underhanded way of getting more
| points. Do people even fall for this?
| olalonde wrote:
| It's against HN's guidelines. I systematically downvote any
| comment that does it.
| Aunche wrote:
| > Do people even fall for this?
|
| According to OP's comment, it has received 76 - 11 = 65 karma
| as of now.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Haha. We need to spread awareness man.
| Aunche wrote:
| I actually have a lot of problems with Bitcoin, but I
| think that low-effort upvote-bait is seriously stifling
| productive discussion.
| Igelau wrote:
| For most other topics, I'd probably agree. In the case of
| crypto currencies it's important to point out that you'd
| rather hear compelling counterarguments rather than the all
| too frequent "You're right but I wish you weren't" downvotes.
| byset wrote:
| wow, can you teach me how to read minds?
| screaminghawk wrote:
| Yes. It's a common pattern on reddit (and probably other
| sites) to let people know your intentions, thoughts and
| feelings to give context to the content of your post
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's a very effective meme. Like most such memes, it worms
| itself inside, and the vehicle doesn't consciously know of
| its presence. These people aren't thinking "I'll do this.
| It'll get me votes". It is unconscious mimetic memetics, if
| you will :)
|
| Some of these memes become elevated into conscious actions.
| For instance, people cynically exploit "Linux can't do X" to
| get help for X. But some memes are unconscious and I think
| "I'll be downvoted for this" or "Get out of here with your
| facts and reason" or "Source?" are definitely examples of
| these.
|
| Personally, I think many of the privacy and security comments
| are also memes that propagate through mimicry of success, but
| that's its own thing.
| Mitzi wrote:
| Would you mind elaborating on which privacy and security
| comments you think propagate as memes?
| rtrdea wrote:
| I was with you til the last sentence. Have an upvote
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, that was unnecessarily controversial on my part. I
| can totally accept that other people disagree on that.
| floydnoel wrote:
| but you didn't even add the requisite "go ahead and
| downvote me!"
| byset wrote:
| given how much HN hates bitcoin, it's curious that anyone
| would assume anti-bitcoin boilerplate would get downvoted
| here
| edem wrote:
| I happily downvoted just because of this.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| It's a reddit technique to gain more fake internet points.
| samatman wrote:
| I have a personal policy, which, if treated as a Kantian
| imperative, would eliminate this.
|
| Any invitation to downvotes, I take. Any comment about
| downvotes, means _at the least_ that I won 't upvote that
| comment. Meta-comments about downvotes are exempt, I would
| probably upvote this comment if I saw it from someone else.
|
| Every person who adopts this policy improves the discourse by
| discouraging this behavior, please consider it!
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Kant's second imperative is great!
|
| However, people wanting feedback beyond mere downvotes is
| legitimate and downvoting without comment is the actual
| wrong here IMO.
|
| IMO the best scheme here is that you _must_ provide a
| reason to downvote. People who vote for your reason [ie
| they agree with you about downvoting the parent] should be
| the actual downvotes.
|
| This way instead of apparently arbitrary downvotes one gets
| a list of reasons with scores (HNs score hiding aside,
| though they'd still be ordered) indicating their relative
| worth as reasons for downvoting.
|
| That is actionable. Under K2I that would allow everyone to
| tailor their contents to the audience if they wished, or at
| least understand the audience's approbation.
|
| tl;dr I downvoted you ;o) ... except I didn't because your
| comment has value even if I disagree !
| samatman wrote:
| I agree that the downvote mechanism on HN could use some
| refinement!
|
| Funny thing, when I went to quote the specific HN
| guideline, I'm almost certain it used to say "Please
| don't comment about downvotes. It never helps" or
| something very much like that.
|
| But the current guideline says:
|
| > _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
|
| Which we're all in violation of! I'll do my best to
| follow this rule in the future.
| [deleted]
| guardiangod wrote:
| For the last 4 months I auto down vote whenever a post
| mentions 'downvote me', then I read the comment and see if it
| merits unvote.
|
| So far I have reverted only once on HN.
| 2-tpg wrote:
| In my country, bitcoin guards against inflation. Local currency
| in relation to the dollar, in 2020, I lost 50%. Bitcoin in
| relation to the dollar, in 2020, did 300%.
|
| Bitcoin here is a wealth transfer from the older generation to
| the newer generation. The older generation owns and invests the
| real estate, and this keeps the prices high and exclusive. The
| newer generation (techn-savvy) can now use crypto profits to
| fund innovation and progress. Several people I know funded
| their own startups.
|
| Of course the crypto market attracts tons of scum and shady
| people too. And the hype can be damaging (older generation
| buying in at all-time-highs, and panic selling, causing high
| variance).
|
| Early adopters were far from the huddled masses. Can't really
| blame them for others jumping on the hype train, just like you
| can't judge someone holding gold, by all the criminals holding
| gold or states going to war over it. Forget energy usage for a
| second, and wonder, "how many people actually die yearly to
| keep the dollar valuation high?" I feel the "resource waste" is
| more a feature, than a bug. If you need the electricity of
| entire countries to attack the network, the network becomes
| more robust.
|
| And then let the new rich generation use their profits on
| creating more green or nuclear energy, then keep on mining and
| holding. Tesla could perhaps help here. Industries where energy
| is a large part of the budget have the right economic
| incentives to make renewable energy more cost-effective. Older
| economies, industries, and hegemonies are married to oil, in
| aggregate pollute far more, and lack the right incentives.
|
| Poker is a game of skill which will serve you well if trading.
| Don't judge the game by the drunk pot-splashing tourists, or
| the risk-averse spectators in the stands, or the regulators
| looking for a ban after being lobbied by the older generation.
|
| Edit: I stopped bickering about and promoting bitcoin on HN
| when the price was around 4500$. The very sentiment then: This
| is a waste, and a hype, and a bubble, and only criminals use
| it, tulip mania, gambling addicts. All the nay-sayers back then
| should realize they actually lost people money! I got into
| Bitcoin and ETH early due to an enthusiastic post on HN. Please
| think back a few years, has your viewpoint changed? Do you
| allow yourself to keep commenting negatively, knowing how wrong
| you were for years now? Are you really doing the HN community a
| service with your expert hot takes?
| fredfoobar wrote:
| I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man,
| horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute
| like cars.
|
| Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute
| and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations.
| We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Horses also have a lifespan of up to 30 years. These days
| you're lucky if you can get 8 years out of your car.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I guess the difference is cars are useful.
|
| What can I do with a bitcoin except hope to sell it for more
| USD later?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Exchange it for goods and services.
|
| What can you do with USD besides exchanging it for goods
| and services? (Pay taxes)
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The USD (and more importantly, the banking system), also
| allows for efficient high-volume transfers,
| reversibility, ID verification, and fraud investigation.
| None of this is possible with blockchain, by design.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I'd argue that USD in isolation doesn't support those use
| cases: the banking system does.
|
| There is no reason a parallel banking system with all of
| the same features cannot built with Bitcoin being used as
| the denomination. I think this future is increasing
| likely (probably much to the chagrin of decentralization
| advocates) as Bitcoin increases in value and number of
| holders.
|
| efficient high-volume transfers - risky and expensive to
| do with cash, really requires a hawala-like middleman
| (often a bank)
|
| reversibility - not true of cash, only true within the
| context of softer credit systems. You could build a
| "Venmo backed by Bitcoin" where funds cannot be withdrawn
| for the reversibility period if you thought there was
| market demand for it.
|
| ID verification - subject to discretion of counterparty
|
| fraud investigation - Bitcoin is likely much better than
| USD for this because of it's traceability.
| tony101 wrote:
| Transfer funds across borders without dealing with multi-
| business-day bank delays or capital controls in countries
| like China. Accept donations or other online transactions
| without relying on Visa/Mastercard.
| danShumway wrote:
| > Accept donations or other online transactions without
| relying on Visa/Mastercard.
|
| And then you can either try and meet someone in an alley
| somewhere, or go to a gatekeeper exchange just like
| Visa/Mastercard to try and convert those transactions
| back to money that can actually be exchanged for food and
| shelter!
|
| I mean, let's be serious here. In theory, blockchain
| could allow us to build a good online payment system --
| and that is a problem worth solving.
|
| But in practice, Bitcoin in particular is completely
| awful as an online payment system, and I don't understand
| how people can reasonably claim otherwise. If the goal of
| Bitcoin was actually to make online payments easier, we
| would be using a different coin other than Bitcoin. The
| community would have moved on to any of the far better
| alternatives.
|
| The fact that Bitcoin is still the predominant coin
| proves that the technology and the convenience of online
| payment processing is not the end goal for most people
| getting into cryptocurrency.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Bitcoin is a settlement layer, like ACH, not a payment
| provider like Venmo
| danShumway wrote:
| The payment provider layer is the part that ordinary
| people worry about when they're looking at transaction
| fees, security, censorship, and privacy.
|
| If Bitcoin isn't a payment provider, then why should I
| care about it? It's more expensive and slower than ACH
| is. It's being converted into normal currencies and
| tracked by the same companies that are making payment
| providers today. What is it solving?
|
| All of these payment providers that are being built on
| top of Bitcoin are going to have the same regulations,
| restrictions, and problems as the payment providers that
| exist today. If Bitcoin isn't capable of replacing them
| (and there's every indication that it is not), then it's
| not going to have a tangible impact on how and where I
| can spend money online.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I* think the average person probably shouldn't/wont care
| about Bitcoin. Bitcoin will become something that only
| the sort of entities who directly interact with the ACH
| system are worried about.
|
| If Bitcoin succeeds, I don't think it is likely the
| average person will ever touch Bitcoin: it is technically
| complex to handle it securely. However, many of the
| Venmos and Squares in this future would likely be using
| Bitcoin to settle flow disparities behind the scenes.
|
| In terms of what it's solving:
|
| - Bitcoin has a much lower barrier to entry. It is very
| expensive and slow to get direct access to the ACH system
| (vs having your bank make transactions on your behalf).
|
| - Bitcoin is apolitical. Banking and finance is still
| very much an old-boys network of after hours handshake
| deals. Bitcoin lets you swim with the big fish without
| having to worry about kissing the right asses. Similarly
| to claimed noble benefits of public markets, Bitcoin has
| a democratizing effect by not having a mechanism to favor
| entrenched players.
|
| - Bitcoin is insulated from US monetary policy. This
| tends to appeal to gold-bug types who believe inflation
| is being underaccounted and will get worse.
|
| - Bitcoin is permissionlessly auditable. I wish there was
| more development in this space, but I think bitcoin could
| be very powerful for non-profits and other organizations
| which want to be as transparent as possible with their
| finances. If an organization wanted to prove holdings or
| transactions, Bitcoin is arguably better than bank-money
| because Bitcoin txns cannot be forged, while documents
| being alleged to be coming from a bank could. (Similarly,
| I think it would be really cool for a bank to make an
| option for fiat accounts to have their balances and
| transaction history published publicly online)
|
| * I am certainly not speaking for all Bitcoin advocates
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Violating Chinese currency controls generally results in
| spending one's life in a tiny prison cell.
|
| As for bank transfers, at my previous company we had to
| send hundreds of international payments each year and all
| of the transfers were finished within minutes of
| initiation.
|
| And Paypal and other companies have made it possible to
| donate to charities without a credit card for almost 2
| decades.
| cwkoss wrote:
| The housing market (and luxury vehicle market) on the
| Pacific coast of America would beg to differ
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The housing market in California is direct proof of the
| success of China's capital controls. Capital outflow from
| China to the West Coast dropped over 90% after Xi
| introduced capital controls.
|
| When I was still in consulting, I had dozens of clients
| whose projects were killed when their Chinese investors
| could no longer get their money out of China to invest. A
| billion building sits unfinished across the street from
| Staples Center in LA (and has, for 3 years) because the
| developer can't get its money out of China to finish the
| building.
|
| Thousands of local buyers are able to buy houses and
| condos in LA these past 3 years because they don't have
| to compete with all-cash foreign buyers any longer.
| Igelau wrote:
| Sounds legit! What are we buying?
| nwah1 wrote:
| The only answer that makes any sense is that you can do
| things that are otherwise illegal or banned by major
| companies.
|
| But the drawbacks are plentiful, even for this sort of use
| case. And this use case doesn't get easier with a whole
| bunch of speculation. In fact, it gets harder.
|
| And there's no particular reason for such users to leave it
| in a volatile form. Rather, they would be rational to cash
| out once the illegal transaction is over.
|
| So the real value of bitcoin should be the expected float
| for all the crypto-compatible types of black market
| transactions. Which I'm quite sure is many orders of
| magnitude below the current price.
| megameter wrote:
| It should be noted that should you have the right kinds
| of connections, bitcoin mining itself lets you launder.
| The miner is given the dirty money as capital, energy
| subsidies, etc, then creates clean bitcoin, which appears
| in some anonymous wallet and is then sold.
|
| So it's not just that the black market has incentive to
| _use_ it, there 's incentive to _make_ it and even to
| prefer it over alternatives, because the operation 's
| excess is a good front.
|
| The actual conclusion I think is most relevant is the
| nilhilistic one: "None of these tokens really matter!"
| The actual place of decentralized ledgers is as one of
| several tools for designing autonomous, non-coercive
| communities, and when designed as such most of the
| overhead of proving disappears(e.g. DAG coins).
| Everything else is an attempt to extract rent into the
| coercive economy, which in due course will be trivially
| subverted by forking the chain or starting a new one.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| If only you could do that with cars.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Sir! Are you sure of that argument?
|
| Bitcoin is a decentralized protocol for moving value on the
| internet, that is not useful enough for you sir? Is this
| hacker news? or lumberjack news?
|
| Besides, Horses >>>> Cars. Horses are more useful than
| Cars. Cars need roads to work, Horses don't.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Do you even know how much energy automobiles use in the US?
| it's more than the energy consumption of several nations.
| Shame on you.
| epx wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right. And there are different levels
| of being wrong.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Now that people are understanding that horses are better, can
| I turn your attention to concrete?
|
| The manufacture of cement produces about 0.9 pounds of CO2
| for every pound of cement. Since cement is only a fraction of
| the constituents in concrete, manufacturing a cubic yard of
| concrete (about 3900 lbs) is responsible for emitting about
| 400 lbs of CO2.
|
| We should stop making things out of concrete, it's destroying
| our climate, Mud huts are more than enough to protect us from
| the elements. We have so much land in the US, why can't we
| all spread out instead of building high rises??
|
| Edit: who's downvoting this? look at the replies below,
| people know this is a real problem.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Spreading out would use up so much land that we would
| effectively destroy the biosphere in the process.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Watched a cool video about the benefits of hempcrete last
| night. Very neat substance with good mechanical properties
| and it absorbs CO2 as it cures.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete
| glitchc wrote:
| Concrete is indeed a major polluter, your point stands. The
| world is already experiencing a severe shortage of
| concrete, it's that valuable. But it's also very hard to
| switch to alternatives as concrete has the best compressive
| strength per unit volume and is very well understood as a
| building material. Plus, it's hard to build high-density
| housing out of mud huts (buildings require concrete).
| perfect_kiss wrote:
| It appears that in Norway they are already concerned, no
| need to turn attention any more :)
|
| https://ccsnorway.com/
|
| https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/943cb244091d4b2fb3
| 7...
|
| A solution for full-scale CCS has now matured that
| facilitates the further development of CCS in both Norway
| and Europe. The project has encompassed carbon capture from
| Norcem's cement factory in Brevik and carbon capture from
| Fortum Oslo Varme's waste incineration facility at
| Klemetsrud, Oslo. Northern Lights, which is a collaboration
| between Equinor, Shell and Total, has been responsible for
| the CO2 transport and storage part of the project. This
| part of the project comprises ships for transport of liquid
| CO2, a reception terminal in Oygarden municipality, and
| pipeline to a well where CO2 will be injected into a
| storage formation beneath the seabed
|
| edit: formatting
| root_axis wrote:
| lol, cars have some tradeoffs as compared to horses, but
| overall they are a vast improvement to the problem of
| transportation compared to horses. Bitcoin is _generally_
| worse than what came before, despite being a new and
| otherwise interesting phenomenon unto itself.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| > Hand waves vaguely
| foepys wrote:
| Horses literally put shit on the streets. Imagine replacing
| each car with a horse and think about the amount of poop.
|
| Horses are also dangerous. A friend of mine lost almost all
| of their teeth because their horse kicked them in the face
| when they cleaned its hooves.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Get with the times sir:
| https://www.workinghorsetack.com/catch-it-manure-bag-
| horse-d...
|
| Horses need to be operated safely, just like cars, you need
| to learn how to ride them. Besides, if you can't ride a
| horse, sit in the carriage.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're kidding or not but cars are way way
| more dangerous than horses.
|
| Over a million people die every year in automobile related
| accidents.
| Taek wrote:
| The financial system literally gives you no guarantees
| about the supply. We just inflated the USD by trillions of
| dollars. USD cash is the number one asset used in criminal
| finance (from slavery to drugs to terrorism).
| iNerdier wrote:
| And cars shit into the air we breathe. It's not visible in
| the same way a pile of dung is but if anything that makes
| it more dangerous.
| janee wrote:
| Ironically...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis
| _of...
|
| Not saying cars are great, but it was seen as the
| solution to exactly this problem
| Held_der_Arbeit wrote:
| Horsecrap everywhere!
|
| We tried that, we switched to automobiles.
| pshc wrote:
| Who knows, deep learning AI has progressed to be just about
| smart enough to make autonomous poop-picking-up robots
| feasible--maybe it's a sign
| bennysonething wrote:
| O know this a joke, but the other problem with horses is
| fuel: endless fields for hay. So wilderness destruction.
| omginternets wrote:
| Imagine we focused on lab-grown hay instead of lab-grown
| meat...
| [deleted]
| ant6n wrote:
| I think the bigger problem is poop
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Sir, get with the times:
| https://www.workinghorsetack.com/catch-it-manure-bag-
| horse-d...
|
| You can use horse manure to grow the food for the horses.
| It's a total ecosystem. What can you do with the
| pollution cars create?? can you capture it in a bag??
| THINK for a second!
| glitchc wrote:
| As much as it's funny, this is a false analogy. Horses don't
| travel as fast as cars, or as far. They also can't pull/carry
| as much as a car, let alone a truck. How many horses are
| needed to carry the same load as one 18 wheeler?
|
| Would Amazon be possible without trucks? How about Walmart?
| trott wrote:
| > Would Amazon be possible without trucks? How about
| Walmart?
|
| Not Walmart, but Amazon makes even more sense in a horse-
| driven economy: First, you don't have to ride to the store
| and back -- mailing a small item is much cheaper than that.
| Second, with the price of shipping per mile per pound being
| higher, there would be more of an incentive to ship items
| directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. Mail-order
| catalogs existed before the age of cars.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Nice, I just want you to keep going in that line of thought
| and be consistent everywhere. Fingers crossed.
| glitchc wrote:
| I think I know where you want to go with this, but I'm
| not falling for it. Bitcoin is not progress towards the
| future, but a regression to the past. Pegging our economy
| to a finite (potentially volatile) asset has led to boom-
| bust cycles in the past, whether it is physical like gold
| or digital like Bitcoin.
|
| People crave financial stability. Bitcoin will not give
| it to them. I'm not averse to the idea of a distributed
| ledger acting as an underlying settlement mechanism for
| global finance, but Bitcoin does not achieve that goal
| either as it's zero sum (whereas economies are actually
| growing).
| [deleted]
| root_axis wrote:
| Horses are also living creatures capable of feeling pain,
| fear, fatigue and can also be stubborn or aggressive.
| Horses also need to be sexed, reared, trained, fed and
| cared for, you can't simply build more horses on demand or
| scrap and recycle their parts. It's a silly analogy all
| around.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I agree that cars are a horrible solution to the problem of
| transporting people and goods.
|
| It's only by virtue of history and our willingness to accept
| massive loss of life and limb every year that cars, driven at
| 100 kph by sleepy, angry, elderly or distracted people, are
| still a thing.
|
| Not to mention the massive loss of life and limb from climate
| change spurred by cars.
|
| You're making a solid point.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Finally, I'm being recognized for my wisdom. Thank you for
| your kind words.
| omginternets wrote:
| I second this. I was poised to dismiss your comment as
| facetiousness, and then suddenly realized that you are
| exactly correct. Why indeed should we prefer cars over
| horses for _most_ (but of course not all) applications?
|
| Aren't we as technologists always preaching the benefits
| of technological conservatism, minimalism and simplicity?
|
| Our environment has obviously changed in such a way that
| it's now difficult to re-introduce equine transportation
| on a mass scale (where would you park them in a city
| designed for automobiles?), but we need to think long and
| hard about the world view that led us to conclude cars
| were universally superior to horses. I suspect the
| argument comes down to "productivity", and the axiomatic
| belief that it should be maximized in all circumstances.
|
| I think your comment actually _is_ wise.
| root_axis wrote:
| One argument is that horses are living creatures. Farming
| them as labor slaves to meet the needs of industry is
| cruel and would likely have comparable environmental
| impact to factory farming meat.
| zachkatz wrote:
| E-bikes are the new horses.
| perfect_kiss wrote:
| In Europe, there are not much cities that were designed
| for automobiles. Most down town designs predate
| automobiles by several centuries. That is why traffic
| congestion, and related externalities, are very
| significant problem for Europe, much more than for US.
| During several last years, there had emerged a movement
| when large cities introduce anti-car rules, effectively
| banning traffic in the most affected areas.
|
| Some recent reporting on it from NatGeo:
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2021/02/six-
| euro...
| omginternets wrote:
| I am European as well :)
|
| My point was that they have _become_ adapted to a point
| where it is very difficult to re-adapt them to horses.
| hisham_hm wrote:
| fredfoobar _was_ being facetious. By his comments such as
| [1] and [2] it's clear that he's trying to attack other
| things in the world that happen to be both useful and
| pollutant, and induce a parallel between them and bitcoin
| -- his implicit argument being that bitcoin supposedly a
| net-positive beneficial thing in spite of the pollution
| it causes. Whenever someone counters that assumption, the
| mask falls off and he's back on the attack [3].
|
| That does not invalidate the point that cars _are_ highly
| pollutant and shouldn't be the primary means of
| transportation in any sustainable society.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26319996 [2]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26319974 [3]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26319558
| omginternets wrote:
| Yes, and I was about to dismiss the comment until I
| realized there was some depth to it _despite_ the
| facetiousness.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Indeed! you sound like eminent scholar in the area of
| "usefulness of things", clearly your opinions are free of
| bias. I tip my hat to you, you have unmasked me! I feel
| naked.
|
| In all seriousness though, we should at least move to
| electric cars.
|
| If that is acceptable we already have electric money
| (bitcoin), it'll fix most of our pollution problems. We
| don't have to worry about how much oil is being consumed
| to secure the petrodollar network. I've been waiting for
| a better argument against bitcoin for a long time, I
| haven't heard any yet.
|
| Most people who criticize bitcoin don't even understand
| it fully. My belief is that as people look deeper into
| it, they will be convinced by themselves. It has been
| generally true among my friends, including myself. I have
| gone through those phases of criticism (energy usage,
| funds terror, governments will ban it, it will be hacked,
| quantum computers will destroy it). As a software
| engineer, I think the system is beautiful, if you are one
| by profession (or not), I implore you to study it.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| What I desperately would like to understand is that why
| are there so many attacks on bitcoin based on flimsy
| opinions and incorrect information?
| divbzero wrote:
| Yes indeed. I've seen HN comments that pretend to be
| serious until the end when you realize it was parody.
| This comment accomplished the reverse.
| smolder wrote:
| I think building life _around_ cars is the dark turn that
| could have been avoided. At the time, I doubt anyone saw
| burning too much oil from the ground or giving the poor
| jobs to toil at as an evil thing, it just made them richer.
| In retrospect, manipulating people into wasteful lifestyles
| for personal gain might be _the invention_ that ends us.
| ssss11 wrote:
| I love this!
| jsight wrote:
| One of the motivating factors behind late 19th century
| horseless carriages was the reduction in pollution.
|
| It isn't at all accurate to say that horses don't pollute. In
| some respects their pollution is worse.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Sir, are you telling us that instead of dealing with that
| small problem of pollution
| (https://www.workinghorsetack.com/catch-it-manure-bag-
| horse-d...), we created a whole new system for transport
| that requires you to build infrastructure from the ground
| up just to use them? I wonder why.
| epx wrote:
| My SUV pollutes less than a dog, simply because I run it
| once a week or less. The dog, as a horse, must breathe, eat
| and poop 24x7. Animals generate CO2 too. And methane.
|
| To be short, saying that Bitcoin has the right of polluting
| while doing nothing useful in return because there are
| cars, is wrong.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| This is accidentally a good analogy.
|
| Because yes, cars have made the world materially worse, not
| because horses are better, but because dense urban
| development, public transit, walking, and cycling is better.
|
| Cars are enormously wasteful, much like bitcoin is, not only
| because it uses way more energy than is necessary for the
| task it is performing (~90% of the energy used by cars is
| spent to move the car, not the cargo or people), but also
| because it takes up space that could be used for more useful
| things: the average American city has 8 parking spaces per
| car, that means that each car on the road represents an
| entire ~1600sqft house that can't be built because a car
| needs places to park.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| technically almost everything beyond food and medicine is
| wasteful. BUT cars improve the quality of my life (i like
| to drive). bitcoins floating through the cybersphere do
| not. end of story.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| "accidentally"
|
| Do you always feel superior to other people? or is it just
| today?
| californical wrote:
| I think it was "accidentally" because your earlier post
| came off as sarcastic.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| So, you're telling me all the progress we've made so far
| has been wasteful and damaging to the environment? I
| agree.
|
| Look at the ecological damage humans have caused! Several
| other animals extinct because of us, we've taken over
| their space on earth too. Our greed has caused this.
|
| We must boycott all new things until nature heals.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Accidentally because opposition to bitcoin, like
| opposition to cars, isn't luddite rustic anti-
| industrialism, it's common sense advocacy for equally
| modern but different solutions to the problem.
|
| Bitcoin doesn't do anything that electronic banking can't
| do better, and it causes a lot of harm in wasted energy
| and space.
|
| Cars don't do anything that busses, trains, and bicycles
| can't do better, and they cause a lot of harm in wasted
| energy and space.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Bitcoin exists because electronic banking requires trust
| in centralized financial institutions.
|
| When you see the entire stock market move because the Fed
| chairperson makes an offhand comment about when they'll
| start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize having such a
| highly centralized system is dangerous.
| notahacker wrote:
| > When you see the entire stock market move because the
| Fed chairperson makes an offhand comment about when
| they'll start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize
| having such a highly centralized system is dangerous.
|
| Then you see that Bitcoin moves more when Elon tweets...
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Dude... the stock market is not the same thing as the
| banking system.
|
| How your investment porfolio reacts to a change in
| monetary policy has nothing whatsoever to do with the
| utility of your checking account.
|
| Trust in centralized financial institutions is not a
| problem. In fact it's is the opposite of a problem, it's
| an enormous benefit. Centralized financial institutions
| with government backing ensure the availability and
| safety of deposited funds.
|
| Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the US
| since the introduction of FDIC in 1933. In the last 10
| years alone, over a billion dollars in bitcoin has been
| stolen out of people's wallets by hacked exchanges and
| smart contract exploits, money that can never be returned
| because blockchain is irreversible by design. Does that
| really sound trustworthy to you?
| jyrkesh wrote:
| You're right in that the stock market and the banking
| system are not the same thing, but I'd argue that they're
| intrinsically linked.
|
| I move USD from my checking account into my investment
| accounts in order to buy equities, and I do that more
| when the Federal Reserve is pumping more liquidity into
| the market via low interest rates. There are many folks
| out there using e.g. TSLA as an inflation hedge (which is
| why it has a P/E > 1000) because they know that USDs will
| decline in value as liquidity keeps getting pumped.
|
| If we're all using a decentralized currency like Bitcoin
| with a fixed inflation rate, you're going to see a lot
| more sanity and price stability in the equities markets.
| npongratz wrote:
| > Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the
| US since the introduction of FDIC in 1933.
|
| Plenty of people have had their bank accounts drained
| when they fell victim to "identification theft." That is
| quite a crafty euphemism -- banks fail to create secure
| systems, attackers steal funds from victims' bank
| accounts, and instead of owning up to their failure,
| banks blame the victims of the thefts by saying the
| victims' "identities" were "stolen."
|
| I'll give the banks some credit, however: they'll prop up
| a seemingly empathetic customer service representative
| who will repeatedly say how "sorry" they are on behalf of
| their employer. If the victim is persistent enough, the
| customer service rep will eventually promise to initiate
| a lengthy investigation, after which the bank will
| perhaps reinstate the funds that were stolen from their
| system. Do they fix their broken, insecure system? Of
| course not. But at least the victim isn't clogging the
| customer service lines any more.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Identity theft is reversible. It has happened to me,
| somebody got a hold of my checking account details and
| drained the account of about $10,000. I called the bank,
| they reversed the transaction and gave me all my funds
| back right away, and it was over, just like that, no
| questions asked.
|
| What happens if your bitcoin details get stolen, hm? What
| happens when somebody drains your bitcoin wallet? Who can
| you complain to to get your cryptographically secure
| irrevocably transferred money back?
| npongratz wrote:
| That's simply the risk a person takes by having a bitcoin
| wallet. Seems (at least right now) there are plenty of
| people who want the benefit of a permissionless value
| transfer system and are willing to shoulder that risk.
| Hopefully they secure their magical numbers / private
| keys better than the banks do, because yes, obviously,
| there is no Central Bitcoin Governor acting as the
| Reinstater of Last Resort.
|
| Some people are fine with that risk. Others are not. It's
| totally cool. More than one value transfer system can
| coexist in the world.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| What do you mean "better than the banks do"? For one,
| banks don't have single-point-of-failure account access
| like blockchain does, and for another, the risks of banks
| are much lower because credit card and ACH transactions
| are easily reversible.
|
| These are all reasons that banks are _more_ trustworthy
| and _more_ secure than blockchain, which sees tens of
| millions of dollars of irreversible theft annually.
| yurielt wrote:
| >Implying electronic banking can do anything about
| inflation Don't be so dishonest
| arcticbull wrote:
| Inflation is not a problem so long as you invest your
| money as soon as you receive it and your wages keep pace
| with inflation (and they do). In that case the 2% per
| annum inflation rate only hurts you from the day you get
| your pay check to the day you invest it productively or
| spend it on necessities. In fact if you purchase your
| necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your bill
| comes due makes inflation work for you.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Want a deflationary monetary policy? Vote for it.
| Technology isn't going to solve the problem for you.
|
| Also, deflationary monetary policy is insane and nobody
| should want it. Economies grow from continuous re-
| investment and commerce, not from people stashing away
| their money and watching its value increase for no
| reason.
|
| edit: also, the fact that bitcoin is deflationary is
| entirely incidental, that was just Nakamoto's choice. It
| would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly
| inflationary. The only thing that blockchain guarantees
| is that monetary policy can't ever change, which is also
| a thing that no sane person would ever want, there are
| lots of good reasons to modify the rate of
| inflation/deflation.
| baxtr wrote:
| I liked your first comment. This one: not so much. It's
| not HN like.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Downvote away! HN apparently is ok with
| condescending/patronizing replies. But if I call them
| out, downvotes!
|
| Besides, I don't care about these fake points. You can
| keep them.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| What happens if you have the same amount of horses like
| cars? Aren't they wasteful and need a lot of space and at
| night a heated parking spot? :)
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Yes, which is why I didn't say anything about horses.
|
| Opposition to cars, like opposition to bitcoin, isn't
| rustic ludditism. There are modern solutions to
| transportation that are superior to cars, like rail,
| frequent busses, and bike infrastructure, but lose out in
| funding and hype because they're not prestigious and
| utopian like cars are.
|
| Likewise, Bitcoin does not solve any problem that any
| other transaction network technology can't solve, but it
| gets all the attention because it's flashy and new and
| utopian.
|
| And if you think cars aren't utopian, tell me the last
| time you've seen an automobile ad that showed somebody
| being stuck in gridlocked traffic in the lincoln tunnel
| inhaling gas fumes for over half an hour. I will contend
| that there does not exist a single automobile
| advertisement that shows the average car owner's typical
| experience of driving, certainly never in an urban
| setting.
| hossbeast wrote:
| The real problem you're going to run into with this
| argument is that people like cars, like to drive them,
| and want to own them.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| That may be the case for some car fanatics, but by and
| large the average person simply wants easy and flexible
| transportation. If public transportation were better,
| lots of people would opt to take the local train/bus/ride
| share because it would be a fraction of the cost, with
| ideally only slightly more friction as a passenger.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > There are modern solutions to transportation that are
| superior to cars, like rail, frequent busses, and bike
| infrastructure,
|
| Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and
| passengers; mass transit is less flexible. So they aren't
| strictly superior.
|
| > Bitcoin does not solve any problem that any other
| transaction network technology can't solve,
|
| How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that
| is resistant to inflation?
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger
| that is resistant to inflation?_
|
| A deflationary distributed ledger has yet to prove itself
| as having any kind of real utility in the first place.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| >Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and
| passengers
|
| My e-cargo bike with a trailer can hold more stuff than
| my sedan ever could. Did an Ikea trip with it last year,
| carried home a filing cabinet, a desk frame, and a small
| table.
|
| > mass transit is less flexible
|
| _frequent_ mass transit is plenty flexible. If a bus
| comes by your stop every 5 minutes, you never need to
| worry about planning.
|
| > distributed
|
| multi-node database. Done.
|
| > resistant to inflation
|
| Not something that sane people should want. Economies
| grow from commerce and reinvestment, not people jealously
| hogging every dollar they can find so that they can stash
| it under a bed to be used at higher value later.
| troycarlson wrote:
| Move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake?
| arcticbull wrote:
| *proof of waste.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and
| passengers; mass transit is less flexible. So they aren't
| strictly superior.
|
| Mass transit in much of the world is perfectly
| acceptable. You build cities around transit, walking and
| biking instead of giant chasms between buildings. This is
| not a problem that exists in Europe.
|
| You don't have to get rid of all cars, just most of them.
| And the best way to start is by getting rid of free
| parking, which is a regressive tax on the poor.
|
| > How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger
| that is resistant to inflation?
|
| That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it
| and getting back to things that _actually_ matter.
|
| Again inflation is easy: once you obtain money, purchase
| assets. So long as wages keep pace with inflation, which
| they do, this is not an issue. In fact if you purchase
| your necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your
| bill comes due makes inflation work for you.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| >> How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger
| that is resistant to inflation?
|
| > That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it
| and getting back to things that actually matter.
|
| The distributed ledger isn't even secure. Just look where
| the cheap electricity is, create a network partition and
| all the other transaction will vanish after the network
| partition doesn't exist anymore.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Bitcoin isn't exactly running rampant in North Korea heh
| jyrkesh wrote:
| But do you think we ever could have gotten to electric
| cars if we hadn't used gas-powered cars as a stepping
| stone? I'd probably agree with you if you were to say
| that it's taken too long, but I'd argue that the crappy
| fuel-burning stuff is a necessary milestone on the
| transition to something better.
|
| I see Bitcoin as the Model T of new currency models.
| Decentralization is the future of currency and contracts,
| even if Bitcoin itself is wasteful and inefficient as a
| v1 product.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The fact that cars burn gas is one of the least harmful
| parts of them. Electric cars are just as bad as any other
| car.
|
| The real harm of cars is in how they forced cities to
| spread out, putting miles of asphalty moonscape between
| every destination, forcing people to spend thousands of
| dollars a year on vehicles that they shouldn't need,
| driving greenfill development that doesn't raise enough
| revenue to support itself, forcing cities to develop ever
| more automobile suburbs for the immediate revenue to
| fulfil their maintenance obligations on the old ones,
| going into massive debt to keep up appearances on what is
| effectively a ponzi scheme, not to mention the human cost
| of traffic violence.
|
| ---
|
| Decentralization is not an advantage for currency and
| contracts. The problems that decentralization "solves"
| were never problems in the first place.
|
| Nobody was asking for a new way to store their money that
| doesn't have any identity verification besides a single
| digital key, which doesn't have the ability to dispute or
| undo transactions, and which takes multiple minutes to
| clear transactions.
|
| To quote Kai Stinchcombe
|
| > There is no single person in existence who had a
| problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an
| available blockchain solution was the best way to solve
| that problem, and therefore became a blockchain
| enthusiast. ...
|
| > Nobody went out and did a survey about whether most
| credit card users would be willing to give up their
| frequent flyer miles in return for also losing the
| ability to dispute a transaction.
| tzs wrote:
| > But do you think we ever could have gotten to electric
| cars if we hadn't used gas-powered cars as a stepping
| stone?
|
| That's probably not a good example, considering that
| electric cars predate gas powered cars. By the start of
| the 20th century, 40% of the cars in the US were steam
| powered, 38% electric, and 22% gasoline.
| hisham_hm wrote:
| The whole "horses vs. cars" argument is based on a false
| dichotomy: the are not only these two options for
| transportation.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I almost typed a snarky remark, but then realized that you
| make a valid point with that analogy. However the analogy
| feels a little weak to me:
|
| > _We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil_
|
| I don't see countries going to war over BTC (or the mining
| pool) as they already have cornered all the fiat currencies
| in a tight system. All they could do is sabotage the BTC
| system and make it less lucrative for normal public.
| glitchc wrote:
| Yet! Taking over mining power or electricity resources
| could certainly propel wars of the future if Bitcoin
| becomes the reserve currency of the world.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| I'm sensing a small nuance missed here, I'll clarify pro-
| actively: Adding more energy to your mining operation
| won't result in more bitcoin for you, you will only make
| the network more secure. Mining bitcoin is mostly about
| securing the bitcoin network and there is a small reward
| for doing so.
| glitchc wrote:
| ~600K USD per block is not "small" :). Mining power is
| directly correlated to cost of electricity. Most mining
| is located in electricity-rich districts for good reason.
| It's the only cost-effective way to sustain the network.
| Those regions are scarce across the globe, ergo in high
| demand.
| lowkey wrote:
| > I don't see countries going to war over BTC (or the
| mining pool) as they already have cornered all the fiat
| currencies in a tight system.
|
| I think that's the point here. Unlike BTC which is powered
| by Proof of Work (POW), the US Dollar is powered by Proof
| of Violence (POV). As a result the full accounting for the
| externalities caused by US dollars would have to include
| the cost of supporting and using the largest military
| industrial complex in the history of the world to protect
| the market for oil being denominated in US Dollars
| (petrodollars).
| smolder wrote:
| Fiat is not powered by "proof of violence" because
| violence is not needed for it to function. It is
| maintained by social contract and the _threat_ of
| violence, because otherwise it could only depend on
| trust, and trust is very expensive, as Bitcoin proves.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I have been trying to convince this in comments here but you
| did a damn good job with the analogy and now I am gonna use
| it every time this comes up. Thank you.
| Igelau wrote:
| Now that you mention it, if my car was a living creature, I'd
| probably give a damn about taking care of it...
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Exactly! Horses are very lovable creatures, they will take
| care of you back if you take care of them.
| smolder wrote:
| This would be a great analogy if Bitcoin were useful and not
| just a poor substitute for trust.
| perfect_kiss wrote:
| I got the feeling this post is a bit sarcastic, because it
| references horses, as opposed to automobiles.
|
| If you just replace "horses" with "mass public transit",
| "railroads" and "electrobikes", it suddenly starts to make
| much more sense.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Horses will work on YOUR schedule, and it's socially
| distanced during COVID.
| alliao wrote:
| with Animals being protected in my corner of the world,
| the way I'm neglecting my daily beater might land me in
| jail if it were a horse.......
| smolder wrote:
| Improperly maintained cars make me almost as sad as
| improperly maintained horses. We destroy billions of
| dollars worth of cars each year collectively because of
| people not affording/otherwise failing to do maintenance.
| On the flip side, thoroughly maintaining them would tend
| to result in a glut of older, less efficient cars, so
| it's not a cut and dry issue.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Just wear a mask while you ride your horse, feed and
| brush them daily, you'll also feel better for doing so.
| perfect_kiss wrote:
| Same with electrobikes. Also electrobike can use multiple
| horse powers, instead of just one.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Will an electrobike take you home when you are blind
| drunk? What do we do when you run out of charge on your
| electrobike? what happens when there is a blackout? I
| don't think you've thought through all the problems
| properly.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Will an electrobike take you home when you are blind
| drunk?
|
| Is this really the USP of horses? Do they even do this?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I live in NYC, in 50 story apartment building next to
| several other similarly sized high rises.
|
| Our cars need about 75 sq. ft each (they're on stacked up
| 3 levels high in the garage)
|
| How many sq. ft. would we need for all of our horses? How
| many people would be needed to take care of them full
| time?
|
| Actually yeah... outside of cities who'd be taking care
| of these horses? Because cars need mechanics when
| something goes wrong obviously, but likewise horses need
| vets.
|
| The day-to-day stuff like refueling a car is dead easy,
| meanwhile you can't just ignore your horse in the stable
| for a week because you didn't feel like going anywhere
| then fill it up on the way to your destination...
|
| Edit response because I'm rate limited:
|
| It seems you're not joking with the tone you're taking. I
| feel bad for you.
|
| Our world would be much better off if we all lived in
| cities like NYC. _Ten years ago_ average New Yorker
| generated 30% less CO2 than the average, and greenhouse
| emissions from the city were trending downward as
| economic activity trended upwards.
|
| But yeah, I guess you're just enlightened past living
| near other people and shame on anyone who's comfortable
| enough with human contact to live in a city.
|
| For all your posturing it's ironic you'd balk at "living
| in a crowded place"... the 30% in CO2 we'd save by living
| in cities like NYC is _more_ than if we got rid of _all
| forms of transportation in the US_. Meaning simply by
| living in a city I don 't really need to play ridiculous
| mental gymnastics like, but it's fun to tear down a bad
| argument.
|
| -
|
| You're privileged enough to have an existence where
| taking care of a horse is easy and "therapeutic" I'm sure
| all the people barely making ends meet working 2 jobs
| would have just as easy a time filling up their car in 5
| minutes as taking care of a horse.
|
| I wonder what percentage of Americans have and additional
| 2 to 4 hours every single day just burning a hole in
| their pockets
|
| And let's not forget the fact a car requires operating
| two pedals and a wheel. We can even modify them to
| require less for people who are physically impaired.
|
| Good luck with _taking care of an actual horse_ with a
| physical impairment. I 'm sure you'll just say it's good
| exercise though, and woe onto you if you're someone with
| something like limited mobility trying to muck a horse
| stall.
|
| It's always funny how the people who lived in the most
| privileged little bubbles seem to think those big city
| sheeple just don't get it
| fredfoobar wrote:
| So, you're telling me you want less responsibility and
| want to live in a crowded place. I feel bad for you.
|
| Taking care of a horse is easy, it's therapeutic even.
| Besides, if you don't want to own a horse, you can always
| hitch a ride from a friendly neighborhood horse-carriage
| operator.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _you want less responsibility and want to live in a
| crowded place. I feel bad for you._
|
| You are not the rugged individualist yeoman you imagine
| yourself to be.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| I don't live in a crowded city, I own horses (for real).
| I have a mini farm at home that grows some micro-greens
| and veggies, I'm also trying my hand at aquaponics, I
| have a solar powered home. What more do you want??
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| _they wrote, on the internet using a computer in a
| discussion about cryptocurrency._
| kenniskrag wrote:
| lol. still a bike :D
| cyberlurker wrote:
| An electro bike doesn't require someone to pick up all
| the crap and won't throw you when it hears a loud bang. I
| don't think you've thought through the problems with
| horse transportation properly.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| You're being sarcastic, but honestly you've converted me. :)
| nwah1 wrote:
| Same.
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Horses are
| fredfoobar wrote:
| Finally, I'm being recognized for my wisdom. Welcome to the
| horse club.
| silasdavis wrote:
| The idea you could be downvoted on hacker news for being anti-
| crypto is a novel one
| jakupovic wrote:
| I do remember when Linux was the useless technology and
| didn't have any use case, we already had all the OSes we
| needed. This wasn't the story on this forum, but it was
| popular. Same thing here.
| knodi wrote:
| Bitcoin has turned in a joke.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| When, if ever, was it serious?
| moralsupply wrote:
| I'm certainly laughing with how much purchase power Bitcoin
| provided me so far.
|
| I'll be laughing at your comment in 5 years time once a single
| Bitcoin will be valued above $1M USD while your fiat currency
| savings will have lost at least 50% of its current purchase
| power.
|
| Screenshot this.
| blobster wrote:
| You're predicting >12% yearly inflation? That seems like a
| pretty bold prediction. I'm curious if you have any sources
| that would back your prediction.
| moralsupply wrote:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
| joshsyn wrote:
| A 1.5 trillion dollar joke. Thanks to the Fed who pumped
| trillions of dollars back in 2008
| ypeterholmes wrote:
| Time is money.. proceeds to write a 3hr read
| [deleted]
| anthropodie wrote:
| That was an excellent read!
|
| Every time I read about Bitcoin here, I see the "Energy"
| arguments. Bitcoin was designed to solve a specific problem and
| it solves that. Even Satoshi himself would not have foreseen the
| energy requirements for PoW.
|
| If we had argued about energy requirements in late 60s we would
| have never reached Moon or built the LHC. Technological
| advancements will always need energy. We should be discussing
| about how to efficiently harness that big fiery ball in space
| instead of shutting down technological advancements.
| zepto wrote:
| > If we had argued about energy requirements in late 60s we
| would have never reached Moon or built the LHC.
|
| This is not even close to true.
|
| The energy requirements for the Saturn program and for the LHC
| were calculated and understood in precise detail, and did not
| depend on any assumption that there would be new energy sources
| in the future.
| anthropodie wrote:
| The study that raised concerns regarding Bitcoin's energy
| usage also suggests the amount of electricity consumed every
| year by always-on but inactive home devices in the US alone
| could power the entire Bitcoin network for a year[1].
|
| I am not trying to undermine Bitcoin's energy problem. We
| need more discussion and awareness on this than just labeling
| "Bitcoin bad" because it consumes more energy.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right.
|
| No amount of whataboutisms will offset the fact that
| Bitcoin's energy usage is additive on top of everything
| else. We don't get to choose between vampire device energy
| use or Bitcoin. We have to deal with both.
|
| The very nature of Bitcoin incentivizes ever-increasing
| competition to spend more energy on mining. As long as the
| price continues to rise (as Bitcoin proponents hope) then
| the incentive to mine continues to rise.
|
| Meanwhile, improving energy standards and improving power
| conversion technology continue to push energy consumption
| of vampire consumer devices down.
| anthropodie wrote:
| I see now how my comment can be labelled as whataboutism.
| But I am trying to point out how "Bitcoin is Bad" is the
| agenda here.
|
| Can the energy problem be solved? I had like a discussion
| on that rather than "It's bad" arguments.
| zepto wrote:
| > Can the energy problem be solved? I had like a
| discussion on that rather than "It's bad" arguments.
|
| That's not what it looked like when you made your comment
| about the LHC and the moon missions. Your position then
| was that we should not be arguing about the energy usage.
|
| > If we _had argued about energy requirements_ in late
| 60s we would have never reached Moon or built the LHC.
|
| Now you are saying you would like such a discussion. This
| is a complete change in your position.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Well you guys did a nice job in changing my position! But
| if you are saying I should not change my position based
| on discussion that goes no here then I have no idea what
| to say to you. The whole point of discussion is to point
| out flawed thinking of others.
|
| Are we expecting people not to change their position and
| make them feel guilty if they did? No wonder communities
| are more polarized than ever.
|
| Edit: Besides if you read my original comment it already
| says
|
| >We should be discussing about how to efficiently harness
| that big fiery ball in space instead of shutting down
| technological advancements.
| zepto wrote:
| > Are we expecting people not to change their position
| and make them feel guilty if they did?
|
| Nobody is trying to make you feel guilty.
|
| However, having earlier attempted to shut down the kind
| of discussion you now say you want, it's not surprising
| people aren't available to have that discussion with you
| now.
|
| > No wonder communities are more polarized than ever.
|
| I don't see this as encouraging people to discuss solving
| the Bitcoin energy problem.
|
| > We should be discussing about how to efficiently
| harness that big fiery ball in space instead of shutting
| down technological advancements.
|
| Here it seems like you are making another attempt to
| close discussion of Bitcoin's energy problem by saying we
| should be discussing solar energy instead.
|
| This is probably part of why you got accused of
| whataboutism.
| anthropodie wrote:
| > However, having earlier attempted to shut down the kind
| of discussion you now say you want,
|
| I am encouraging since beginning to have discussion other
| than "Bitcoin is bad because of its energy". I suggested
| Solar you could have come up with some thing else. But I
| don't see any suggestion from your end.
|
| > It's not surprising you aren't getting it.
|
| Projecting on me maybe?
|
| > I don't see this as encouraging people to discuss
| solving the Bitcoin energy problem.
|
| I am just pointing out that it's the behavior like yours
| that encourages polarization. I don't see how that
| prevents people from discussing?
|
| > This is probably part of why you got accused of
| whataboutism.
|
| You don't read the full comments, do you? I actually
| thought you were making some sense when you pointed out
| the flaw in my argument in your first comment but now I
| think you just want to troll.
| anthropodie wrote:
| @zepto I do agree with the last section of your child
| comment to this thread. I can't reply to it. I had no
| idea that there is limit to hierarchy of comments in HN.
| zepto wrote:
| There isn't - but I think there is a delay in the comment
| box appearing at certain times.
|
| Try clicking on the time/age of my comment, you will
| probably get a reply box.
| zepto wrote:
| >> It's not surprising you aren't getting it.
|
| > Projecting on me maybe?
|
| By 'it' I mean the discussion you say you want.
|
| >> I don't see this as encouraging people to discuss
| solving the Bitcoin energy problem.
|
| > I am just pointing out that it's the behavior like
| yours that encourages polarization.
|
| Is it?
|
| > I don't see how that prevents people from discussing?
|
| It doesn't but when you accuse people of causing
| polarization, you discourage them from wanting to do so
| _with you_.
|
| > This is probably part of why you got accused of
| whataboutism.
|
| > You don't read the full comments, do you?
|
| You don't explain why you think this.
|
| > I actually thought you were making some sense when you
| pointed out the flaw in my argument in your first comment
| but now I think you just want to troll.
|
| I'm just pointing out that you didn't act like someone
| who wanted to discuss the bitcoin energy problem, and so
| people aren't likely to do so with you.
|
| The fact that you changed your position isn't enough for
| you to win back any trust on this, especially since you
| haven't offered anything to the discussion except that.
|
| My suggestion is that if you really want to discuss the
| energy problem, you try again later somewhere else, but
| this time:
|
| 1. start out by saying that, rather than the opposite.
|
| 2. Keep the focus on the energy problem with Bitcoin,
| rather than _how to generate more energy_.
|
| That will help you to avoid being accused of
| whataboutism.
|
| 3. Avoid accusing people of trolling or 'causing
| polarization'.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Got it. Thanks.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| What problem did bitcoin solve?
| aeternum wrote:
| It allows one to store a relatively liquid form of wealth
| using only one's mind
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Which is not at all what the vast majority of Bitcoin users
| are using Bitcoin for.
| aeternum wrote:
| Lots of people use the internet to watch cat videos, does
| that diminish its utility?
| anthropodie wrote:
| Did you read the article?
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Bitcoin solved the double-spending problem. A problem long
| ago solved by centralized banking at significantly lower
| energy costs.
|
| You speak of continuing to allow wasteful energy
| expenditures in analogy to going to the moon and building
| the LHC, but if we already know how to solve double-
| spending problem at lower energy costs, why should we allow
| bitcoin?
|
| So I ask in good faith, what problem did bitcoin solve that
| nothing else has?
| georgesC wrote:
| Bitcoin solved the double spending problem _in a
| decentralized system_. This has numerous consequences,
| among them the possibility of creating a currency that
| doesn 't rely on a centralized authority, trust
| minimization, immutability, etc. To me this has the
| potential to automate many jobs.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Not relying on a centralized authority, trust
| minimalization, and immutability are all _bad things_ for
| a monetary system. The ability to dispute and undo
| transactions and track fraud is a crucial feature of
| banking systems that blockchain eliminates by design.
|
| Blockchain will not automate any jobs because it is
| technologically no different from a database. The fact
| that transactions are recorded digitally is not a new
| invention, banks have been doing that since the 60s.
| georgesC wrote:
| A blockchain is a database. But a regular database
| doesn't really minimize trust, that's the point of public
| blockchains.
|
| The need of not relying on a centralized entity or third
| parties in the digital space does exist.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Minimizing trust is not a good thing. I don't understand
| where this obsession with it comes from.
|
| EVERY transaction requires trust. I sell you a pair of
| shoes, you pay in bitcoin, oops! the box is actually full
| of cat poop, too bad, sucks to be you, you can't get your
| bitcoin back, _shouldn 't have trusted me_.
|
| Trust in the transaction system is not a dangerous
| component of commerce. Sure, you can trust Paypal to do
| the transaction for you (and also get benefits like
| chargebacks, disputes, and ID verification in return, not
| to mention the sub-second transaction speed), and what
| happens if they betray that trust? Well that's what
| governments are for, the two-ton hammer of the law will
| make sure you get your money back.
|
| Not to mention, blockchain is the _least_ trustworthy
| transaction system of the modern age. Over a billion
| dollars in crypto has been stolen out of people 's
| accounts via exchange hacks and smart contract exploits
| in the last ten years. This has never happened to any US
| bank since the introduction of FDIC in 1933.
| georgesC wrote:
| Trust minimization doesn't equal no trust. Also the trust
| that a currency works as intended and that a transaction
| goes through isn't the same kind of trust than trusting a
| vendor, which is why there will probably always be other
| systems in place for that particular issue. Some people
| are interested in that because their trust has been
| abused by a centralized authority. And we're not only
| talking about the transaction systems, but also about
| currency.
|
| All in all it's all about the choice and preferences of
| individuals.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| When has the centralized authority, the banking system,
| ACH, Visa, Paypal, etc. _ever_ "abused trust" by failing
| to record a transaction?
|
| And why is that very minimal trust in the ability of your
| money to get from one account to another worth risking
| all your money by putting it in an account with a single
| point of failure with no recourse in the event of a
| breach?
|
| In 88 years, no bank in the Untied States has ever lost a
| customer's money. To date, there are more bitcoin
| exchanges that have lost their users' money than there
| are that haven't.
| Vecr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point was a
| thing, trying to get banks to not "record transactions"
| in your words.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Did you actually read any of that article?
|
| The allegations in Choke Point were that banks were
| _approving_ transactions they shouldn 't have, without
| doing enough investigation to check for fraud, not that
| they were failing to move money from one account to
| another, the "problem" that blockchain is supposed to
| "solve".
|
| In what way is blockchain supposed to prevent fraudulent
| transactions? It is impossible in blockchain to even
| check for fraud, because every transaction is
| automatically irrevocably approved by-design, no matter
| how fraudulent.
| georgesC wrote:
| Those entities can abuse your trust if they decide to
| censor or cancel the transaction for some arbitrary
| reasons. Same can apply in the context of money, rules of
| said money can change, a person won't be necessarily
| always ok with that (we're talking about your own
| currency/savings), you don't have much control and much
| choice.
|
| As a developer I appreciate the ability to skip the use
| of a third party, I just wish there were more users in
| this network, but the network grows.
|
| And this is not about the united states in particular.
| I'm not from the US, I'm glad if you didn't had any
| problems with your monetary system and banks, and I hope
| it continues for the good of everyone.
| boc wrote:
| Bitcoin was a brilliant technical solution to a problem
| that was already solved centuries ago by legal
| institutions and contracts. The introduction of bitcoin
| has had basically zero real economic impact on the macro
| economy, which to me is the surest indicator that it's a
| dead end. When the internet and PCs became mainstream,
| the economy exploded over the next decade. When crypto
| was invented, the only wealth being created so far has
| been from people trading it back and forth with fiat,
| funding companies that turn that funding into crypto,
| etc. I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone has
| compelling evidence, but it's been years and I haven't
| been convinced.
| openfuture wrote:
| The Byzantine generals problem.
| seph-reed wrote:
| IMO, the energy requirement aspect is tragic because it scales.
| Even as we unlock greater and greater sources of power, Bitcoin
| will scale to take more and more energy. It's almost like a
| parasite for electricity.
|
| Right now it's not so bad, but the trajectory is a real
| problem.
| [deleted]
| delaaxe wrote:
| I'd really like to read a similar write-up about proof of stake
| tromp wrote:
| With an emission of 1 per second forever, Grin is more like time
| (I make the case for uncapped supply in [1]).
|
| [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-
| su...
| [deleted]
| bswen wrote:
| Have fun staying poor haters
| option_greek wrote:
| HN comments on articles like this remind me of a fun t-shirt
| quote:
|
| There are 10 kinds of people in the world. The ones who
| understand binary and the ones that do not.
|
| You can obviously replace binary with bitcoin :). The ones who do
| not get bitcoin, will continue to not get bitcoin.
| mdoms wrote:
| Yes you can replace "binary" with "bitcoin", if you absolutely
| don't understand the joke, at all.
| greggturkington wrote:
| And hopefully we can keep the discussion a bit more
| insightful than "a fun t-shirt quote" prior to Eternal
| September
| kozak wrote:
| If you liked this article, you will probably also enjoy
| "Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time" by Sean Carroll (I listened
| to it as an audiobook, I don't know what other formats it is
| available in).
| o_p wrote:
| So the propaganda machine is now trying to smear Bitcoin because
| of energy, ridiculous! I guess that the smearing it by
| associating it with criminlals didnt worked well enough.
|
| T
| geraldbauer wrote:
| Reminder: Bitcon is a ponzi. Learn how the investment fraud
| works. [1]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/openblockchains/bitcoin-ponzi
| arbawk wrote:
| The very first line is flawed as mining companies are
| increasingly not selling their mined bitcoin. Why would they?
| They are obviously mining because they are bullish.
|
| In fact, who is selling bitcoin? Only those that don't believe
| it won't be an upgrade to base-layer money. Those that would
| call themselves bitcoiners don't want to sell it. I've never
| heard of a Ponzi where some people just won't sell!
|
| This page is an embarrassing collection of misinformation.
| drazulay wrote:
| Did you mean: bitcoin is _timestamped_? ;)
|
| If I might chip in with my freshly minted 1 karma account..
| Bitcoin/"Satoshi" was an incubator of sorts. It brought the
| brightest minds together to build a new internet that is
| resistant to tampering by your neighbour or the government. It
| will in due time make way for the rising stars in that sector
| (IOHK I'm looking at you!) that will incrementally work toward
| perfect balance, until it itself is superseded some day.
| smt88 wrote:
| Isn't Bitcoin a combination of processing hardware and
| electricity?
|
| Time, in the human sense, seems somewhat irrelevant because
| humans can't/don't hash manually.
|
| Disclaimer: This site doesn't work in Firefox on Android for some
| reason, so I'm asking in total ignorance of the article's
| content.
| u678u wrote:
| One thing that always bothers me about BTC is that the whole
| blockchain is kept, its like half a terabyte by now. Will they
| ever agree to just trim off everything older than XXX days or
| similar? It seems hugely inefficient.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| If its trimmed and only last xxx blocks are kept (there are no
| days in bitcoin as the article nicely puts it) then the people
| who have bitcoins and just hold it before the trimming happened
| will lose bitcoins or won't be able to spend them.
|
| Every time somebody does a transaction involving bitcoins mined
| from a long time ago the entire ledger is need it to see the
| origins of those bitcoins.
| u678u wrote:
| OK I see, thanks for the reply. Seems like it'll remain huge
| for a long time yet.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Bitcoin is time, bitcoin is love, bitcoin is life.
| moralsupply wrote:
| Underrated comment
| xtracto wrote:
| I'm ready to be downvoted but... nah just following the stupid
| memes.
|
| The article made thing an interesting point regarding how
| information cannot be "moved" itself but only copied and then the
| previous copy destroyed.
|
| I think RIAA, MPAA and other virtual goods creators could benefit
| from the non-fungible tokens things that are just raising as a
| use of the blockchain.
| sova wrote:
| >Time is the only thing we will never be able to make more of. It
| is The Ultimate Resource, as Julian Simon points out. This makes
| Bitcoin the ultimate form of money because its issuance is
| directly linked to the ultimate resource of our universe: time.
|
| All things equal, BTC has a limited supply, making it unusable as
| a currency (but great as a deflationary store of value). I
| suppose the definition of "money" is less specific than
| "currency," but this notion of "money" goes contrary to the
| nomenclature of the human realm. Yes, technically anything that
| is tradable is "money," but then the term becomes rather
| meaningless.
|
| Money must be backed by a creative asset, such as an orchard or
| labor or technology. Time alone a currency does not make.
| A12-B wrote:
| The article implies bitcoin could be something other than money,
| in that it is just a really useful ledger.
| teatree wrote:
| A few questions I need help with -
|
| If bitcoin becomes a store of value / digital gold and people
| increasingly hold their wealth in Bitcoin countries will lose the
| ability control and regulate their own economy.
|
| 1) Why would any country hand over the reins of its economy to
| others ? India is already thinking of banning cryptocurrencies,
| China has similar thoughts too, if many large countries ban it
| how would Bitcoin sustain ?
|
| 2) US has fought wars to retain dollar as the global reserve
| currency. Why would the US give up this advantage ?
|
| 3) Presently, economic sanctions are used to push interests and
| disincentivize bad behavior. How would this play out in a world
| of Bitcoin ?
|
| 4) If bitcoin exists with fiat and exchange points can be
| controlled and blocked by governments, what's the point of
| Bitcoin ?
| arbawk wrote:
| 1) Countries economies consist of the individuals within them.
| In India, where Bitcoin is banned, its exchange rate has since
| increased. Same in Pakistan. Hyperinflation occurs frequently
| despite a governments' best efforts. The market is the master
| and the government is only an actor.
|
| 2) This is probably the best piece on that point:
| https://quillette.com/2021/02/21/can-governments-stop-
| bitcoi.... The summary is that unlike another country's
| currency, Bitcoin is significantly harder to attack.
|
| 3) Economic sanctions can still exist. You still have to pay
| your taxes even though many avoid them. What sanctions are you
| referring to specifically?
|
| 4) Look into the Lightning Network to see one among various
| ways Bitcoin is scaling outside of exchanges. It will continue
| to develop in interesting ways. In the meantime, governments
| that enable what a growing number of people want will be
| rewarded while those that attempt to ban it will suffer. The
| incentives to do so are not in their favor (also argued in the
| article above).
| krupan wrote:
| 1. They won't hand it over. Bitcoin and it's participants are
| taking it.
|
| 2. This is the same question as 1, isn't it? Again, Bitcoin is
| people voting with their feet (so to speak) to take power away
| from governments.
|
| 3. Economic sanctions punish the common folk more than the evil
| governments. Bitcoin simultaneously takes power away from evil
| governments (see 1 and 2) and gives power to common folk.
|
| 4. I think you are alluding to one way governments can try to
| fight what is happening in 1, 2, and 3. If governments really
| try and crack down on exchanges, people will simply transact
| directly in Bitcoin. Those who have accumulated it pre-
| crackdown will purchase goods and services using Bitcoin,
| people who did not obtain any pre-crackdown and want it will
| offer goods and services to those who are offering Bitcoin.
|
| In all honesty, these extreme scenarios are far fetched.
| Governments all ultimately get their authority from the people.
| If the people are choosing Bitcoin, the governments won't fight
| it for long.
| joshsyn wrote:
| Buying bitcoin early would have put me 10 years ahead. Missed,
| maybe bitcoin cash isn't bad as everyone taints it to be.
| [deleted]
| hodder wrote:
| This is the most nonsense article Ive read in a long time. The
| leap after leap of bias is amazing.
| afc wrote:
| I agree. I believe strongly in Bitcoin, but I think this
| article was just a bunch of pompous poetry without any
| substance. "The difficulty adjustment makes sure that the ticks
| of Bitcoin's internal metronome are somewhat constant. It is
| the conductor of the Bitcoin orchestra. It is what keeps the
| music alive." Blah blah blah blah! So much fluff to say so
| little...
| capableweb wrote:
| I feel like your expectations are a bit off. What did you
| expect from a blogpost titled "Bitcoin Is Time"? A serious
| whitepaper on how Bitcoin actually is what we consider time?
| Of course it's gonna be fluffy poetry, it's right there in
| the title!
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you're here to discuss, you
| might as well do it properly. I'd love to hear what exactly is
| nonsense (or if it's easier for you, what's not nonsense). Also
| pointing out the exact flaws regarding "leap of bias" would be
| helpful.
| iamcurious wrote:
| He presents bitcoin as a way of knowing if some event happened
| after some other event, that is a clock, where are all the bias
| leaps?
| jeofken wrote:
| Are there any users of Offset [0] here on HN?
|
| [0] https://www.freedomlayer.org/offset/
| joosters wrote:
| Time is money. Bitcoin is wasted time. And wasted money. And
| wasted energy.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Absolute lies. @ Jooster's parent comment.
|
| Furthermore, there are not "blockchains," there is one
| blockchain, and then there are a thousand or more scams trying
| ride Bitcoin's shoulders. They are entirely pointless systems
| that are not made to solve anything, they don't solve anything,
| and they were not made by mathematicians or cryptographers.
| joosters wrote:
| To be less glib, I think the article makes it clear just how
| inordinately difficult blockchains make their lives when they
| have to build, from scratch, a reliable definition of time.
|
| If you could have a trusted time source, you could at a stroke
| get rid of one of the most egregious flaws in bitcoin, its vast
| wastage of energy, because of its 'proof of work' mining.
| Bitcoin miners are running at full pelt 24/7, picking random
| numbers and doing math on them in the hope of striking lucky
| and discovering the next block. The mining difficult is
| artificially picked so that blocks are discovered about every
| ten minutes.
|
| However, imagine if bitcoin miners could all declare a cease-
| fire, for 9m59s of those ten minutes, i.e. they just do nothing
| for that long, consuming virtually no energy, and then they all
| furiously mine at full speed for the last second (with the
| difficulty adjusted so the global mining should take a second).
| This process would be just as fair as the current one; if you
| have more/faster hardware, you will still mine more, in the
| same proportion as before. The total energy usage would be
| reduced 600-fold!
|
| But - the reason you can't do this is that there's no way of
| stopping cheating. Who can tell if the other miners are really
| idling for those 9:59? This is where the time source comes in.
| Imagine you have a trusted time source: it could, every ten
| minutes, broadcast a random number. Miners would have to listen
| for this number, then mine a block containing it, to prove that
| they didn't start work early. Problem solved!
|
| Back to the real world: just about everyone can agree on time;
| we have NTP and can even use certificates to authenticate clock
| sources, we can even use multiple sources to make it harder for
| time to be faked. So why can't blockchains do the same thing?
| Why don't they use multiple time oracles to stop the colossal
| energy wastage?
|
| And, when bitcoiners tell you that relying on a centralised
| source, or even a quorum of sources, is completely
| unacceptable, why then are the same people happy to use smart
| contracts where the use of centralised oracles is apparently
| both acceptable and commonplace?
| wanderingstan wrote:
| This is the problem claimed to be solved by Solana
| blockchain; proof of ordering, proof of time:
|
| https://solana.com/solana-whitepaper.pdf
|
| The core insight, I think, is this:
|
| > Proof of History is a sequence of computation that can
| provide a way to cryptographically verify passage of time
| between two events. It uses a cryp- tographically secure
| function written so that output cannot be predicted from the
| input, and must be completely executed to generate the
| output. The function is run in a sequence on a single core,
| its previous output as the current input, periodically
| recording the current output, and how many times its been
| called. The output can then be re-computed and verified by
| external computers in parallel by checking each sequence
| segment on a separate core. Data can be timestamped into this
| sequence by appending the data (or a hash of some data) into
| the state of the function. The recording of the state, index
| and data as it was appended into the sequences provides a
| timestamp that can guarantee that the data was created
| sometime before the next hash was generated in the sequence.
| This design also supports horizontal scaling as multiple
| generators can synchronize amongst each other by mixing their
| state into each others sequences. Horizontal scaling is
| discussed in depth in Section 4.4
| cwkoss wrote:
| > And, when bitcoiners tell you that relying on a centralised
| source, or even a quorum of sources, is completely
| unacceptable, why then are the same people happy to use smart
| contracts where the use of centralised oracles is apparently
| both acceptable and commonplace?
|
| I think you're largely describing two separate camps within
| bitcoin hodlers. Some are 'gold-bug' types that value
| security and individual liberty above all else, and so are
| very conservative in their attitude towards Bitcoin
| development. Others are 'cyberpunk' types that value
| technological capability and functionality, and are much more
| liberal and exploratory in what they'd like to see Bitcoin
| become.
|
| When you say "same people", I think they are rare, and this
| statement makes a bit of a false lack-of-dichotomy.
| tromp wrote:
| > The total energy usage would be reduced 600-fold!
|
| It wouldn't. If X$ worth of bitcoin is handed out every
| block, then miners competing for that prize are willing to
| collectively spend up to X$ per block on average.
|
| If they could only mine for part of the time, then they'd
| simply acquire more hardware and mine at a higher hashrate
| during the shorter time.
| joosters wrote:
| Good point! We'd be living in a world where the lights
| flicker every ten minutes as gigawatts of power are
| momentarily switched on and off :) Or miners would have to
| install gigantic capacitors to fill with charge, just to
| power their machines for the brief instant of usage!
|
| My example is also missing the obvious next step though -
| once you are using a trusted source of data (or even a wide
| selection of trusted sources), the whole blockchain idea
| becomes pointless, you don't need to do any mining at all,
| you can let the trusted sources run a distributed
| database...
| doomroot wrote:
| This is correct.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I think you're right on, but good luck with provable
| timestamps. You're trying to coordinate and validate a
| measurement which in itself denies the reality of space time
| physics at least subtly. Time precision across space is hard
| enough, but adding bad actors and gravitational time dilation
| into the equation means... well I wouldn't want that to keep
| track of my assets.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| The nice thing about relativity (special and general) is
| that all of the weird seeming-paradoxes 'sort themselves
| out' eventually. In particular, whilst we lose a total
| ordering for events, we never lose _causality_ ; i.e. two
| events can only appear in a different order to different
| observers if those two events are _independent_ (no
| information has travelled between them, and hence neither
| one can influence the other).
|
| It's _reasonably_ straightforward to build systems under
| such constraints; e.g. see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_programming
| beaconstudios wrote:
| On the bright side, if approaching the speed of light would
| give you a viable attack on the bitcoin blockchain I'm sure
| our space propulsion technology would transform overnight!
| ryanlol wrote:
| > why then are the same people happy to use smart contracts
| where the use of centralised oracles is apparently both
| acceptable and commonplace?
|
| This just isn't true. Only a vanishingly small fraction of
| these people has ever touched smart contracts.
| kneel wrote:
| Negative yielding debt is literally a waste of time. Money is
| worth less as you move into the future. Fiat is literally a
| black hole.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What percentage of assets are negative yielding?
|
| They can't all be negative in real terms.
| kolinko wrote:
| All cash is, also any investment below inflation - so most
| bonds.
| diab0lic wrote:
| This motivates productive use of that capital.
| Deflationary currencies just guarantee the rich get
| richer as an axiom.
| vntok wrote:
| > This motivates productive use of that capital.
|
| Nah. It motivates rational beings to spend that capital
| on anything at all, as fast as possible, because the
| alternative is a net loss of purchasing power.
|
| Deflationary currencies on the contrary motivate actors
| to think before spending, because any spending has to be
| balanced with the future gains that won't come from
| holding it and seing it accumulate value over time.
| kneel wrote:
| The real solution exists somewhere in between an
| inflationary and deflationary currency. This is a
| balancing act.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Which is by design, to encourage investments elsewhere. The
| rise of Bitcoin and the stock market are probably an
| indication that the policy worked. People indeed are willing
| to burn their money in crypto rather than keeping them in
| savings/bonds
| seibelj wrote:
| I keep reading about how we need to discourage consumerism,
| wastefulness, mindless consumption. Recycle and reuse.
|
| Yet fiat enthusiasts keep parroting that the linear and
| intentional destruction of value through inflation, in
| order to encourage further mindless consumption, is a good
| thing? What is so bad about a currency that maintains its
| value throughout time? This would allow someone to actually
| save, rather than be forced to buy some stupid widget they
| don't need, or become a part-time fund manager trying to
| decide between a series of risky assets. As it stands,
| simple savings accounts pay zero and lose money to
| inflation, so if you _don 't_ become a one-man hedge fund
| or pay someone else to become one for you, you just lose
| your money.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Every currency's goal is to be stable in terms of value.
| The mechanics of achieving so are complicated though
| since you will need to exactly calibrate the supply of
| new money to match your economic activity. We are at the
| point where we don't even agree what economic activity is
| lol.
| seibelj wrote:
| Incorrect - central banks target inflation, such as 2%.
| The official goal is to lose 2% of value every year.
| pydry wrote:
| There's an alternate timeline without ZIRP and Bitcoin is
| nothing more than a curiosity there.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| It takes 1/10th the time to initiate a funds transfer via
| crypto (eg. Bitcoin) as it does to effect the same wire
| transfer or ACH using most banks's treasury management systems.
| This, and the fees can be less depending on the token used; but
| are considerably less if the transfer is cross-currency. The
| transit time is about the same if BTC is used, less if one were
| to use XLM (Stellar) for example.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Where I am from, money transfers are free and instant
| dmak wrote:
| Why are you so salty? Care to elaborate?
| zapdrive wrote:
| He followed the collecting hacker News opinion at the time,
| which was highly negative. And beats himself everyday for not
| investing early on.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Is there a name for the situation where you assume X of
| someone else because that's how you feel? Is that
| projection?
|
| I discussed gambling on Bitcoin, considered it carefully,
| right near the beginning. Didn't bother. Don't regret it. I
| mean, why should I be enriched by Bitcoin? It's not clear
| that Bitcoin is a good thing. I could have invested in
| cigarettes or oil companies but I wouldn't do those things.
| I have no regrets about not buying Bitcoin, just as I have
| no regrets that I haven't gone to work for Facebook and
| accumulated lots of cash.
|
| I find it so odd that people would assume I'd regret it.
| Life isn't about finding easy ways to collect money, why
| would you think it is?
| Dzugaru wrote:
| It's just natural, that people are salty about proof-of-work
| that leads to computation devices scarcity. No one asked for
| this and it's really scary - society can economically decide,
| that distributed ledger protection is more important, than
| gaming and science. Just like we economically can decide that
| global warming is not important.
| doomroot wrote:
| I think it naive to assume we can aggregate the desires of
| all people. Oh wait we can.
| zapdrive wrote:
| I'm sorry you didn't buy when it was cheaper.
| Nursie wrote:
| That's right, all criticism of bitcoin or cryptocurrencies is
| necessarily down to jealousy, and therefore can be safely
| dismissed.
| vntok wrote:
| > That's right, all criticism of bitcoin or
| cryptocurrencies is necessarily down to jealousy, and
| therefore can be safely dismissed.
|
| It all depends on the audience, but on HN in particular you
| are right. The site is rife with people who could not
| fathom the value at launch and who've been in denial since
| without ever putting the work to learn about the ecosystem.
|
| Notice how "debates" around cryptocurrency on HN never
| delve into technical arguments, and compare that
| peculiarity with discussions on Reddit for example.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Some kind of projection, shows that making others jealous
| or at least trying to avoid being jealous is what drives
| some to invest
| mediaman wrote:
| Bitcoin has a strong base of advocacy not based on any logic or
| utility but solely sprung from the mule stubbornness of those
| who profited from their speculation.
|
| 1. Bitcoin is environmentally damaging. It produces 37 megatons
| of CO2 per year and consumes 78 terawatt-hours of electricity
| annually. Much of that electric consumption is powered by coal.
| Not all energy consumption or CO2 output is bad, but value
| should be provided commensurately to society for the damage
| incurred. And yet:
|
| 2. It is a terrible currency. Promoters claimed we could pay
| for things with Bitcoin, that it'd replace fiat currency. But
| the design of Bitcoin in particular makes it an awful currency.
| To prevent deflation, a currency should be able to increase its
| supply to maintain reasonably constant velocity as demand
| increases for it as a medium of exchange. With its limited
| number of coins, Bitcoin cannot increase supply to maintain
| velocity: its only solution is to fractionalize, a form of
| deflation. And deflation is what we get. Massively: everything
| you own, and all your income, constantly becomes worth less
| expressed in Bitcoin, day after day.
|
| 3. It's a terrible currency, part two: currencies should have
| very low transaction costs. Bitcoin transaction costs exceed
| $20. The response to this is to _recentralize_ it in the form
| of services that cheaply transact Bitcoin rights management
| through traditional databases. Eliminating the very value
| proposition of Bitcoin.
|
| 4. After having given up on defending it as a currency, the
| next claim is that it's a "store of value." But stores of value
| should have some degree of consistency of value: volatility is
| not a virtue. Bitcoin supporters are right that fiat currency,
| to the degree it is exposed to inflation, is at risk of not
| being the best store of value, which is why we don't normally
| keep huge amounts of resources piled up as cash. But Bitcoin is
| an awful store of value because it has no fundamental utility
| that moderates its price swings. Normal assets - real estate,
| bonds, gold - have some sort of fundamental utility or cash
| flow that helps to moderate price action over time. The asset
| must have some sort of use first, then it can become a good
| store of value. Because of the above flaws, Bitcoin has no good
| use, which thusly makes it a poor store of value.
|
| None of this is a fundamental problem of crypto, just Bitcoin.
| Crypto could be very useful! But with many millionaires minted
| from a lucky speculation and their entire ego reliant on
| deceiving themselves that their speculation was clairvoyance,
| critiques of Bitcoin are invariably met with a flea market of
| intellectually mangy defenses that ultimately boil down to
| saying "well, look at its price!"
| BTCOG wrote:
| You have many severely fundamentally misunderstood ideas
| about Bitcoin.
|
| Bitcoin is "money" and not a "currency." Bitcoin works very
| wonderfully as money.
|
| Bitcoin is not very wasteful in energy, contrary to the
| pushed narrative by those that want everyone to believe this
| is truth. Bitcoin uses a tiny fraction, currently around 7-9%
| of the electricity that the global banking system currently
| uses. Bitcoin uses a very large portion of renewable energy
| sources, and will continue to balance it's energy use towards
| efficiency and optimizations.
|
| Your part 2/3 etc, it's not a currency. Bitcoin is pure
| money. We also do not really ever use gold for currency. It
| is money. Bitcoin is a better money than gold. Once you stop
| drumming on the wrong path, you'll more easily understand the
| differences and stop banging your head about how it's a bad
| currency. It's not a great currency, while it is the very
| best form of money.
|
| Your whole bit about meandering into defending it's value as
| currency or store of value, is just highlighting your total
| misunderstanding of the value of gold, or the new digital
| version of gold as money. Money IS a store of value.
|
| Lastly, Bitcoin really has no fundamental problems. Nobody
| that knows about bitcoin gives a flying fuck about the price.
| Tenal wrote:
| It's sad reading comments like this from bandwagoners who
| haven't read a single academic or technical whitepaper on
| the technology, let alone the hundreds of them that have
| emerged which prove / annotate / express / clarify, in
| exhausting detail, all of the "fundamental problems" that
| Bitcoin's PoW protocol have, as well as far superior
| approaches that are in the process of being implemented.
|
| But it's cute. You like Bitcoin. You're a good cheerleader.
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| Lots of small though-terminating cliches there. Any comments
| about _this_ article?
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Everything on the planet uses energy. Why are people so
| obsessed with Bitcoin's energy usage in particular?
| ttul wrote:
| Because it's enormous? A colleague just finished putting
| together a 125MW BTC mining operation. That's sheer insanity.
| Nobody has ever been able to explain how Bitcoin saves the
| world from climate catastrophe by using 0.3% of all
| electricity.
| vntok wrote:
| > Nobody has ever been able to explain how Bitcoin saves
| the world from climate catastrophe by using 0.3% of all
| electricity.
|
| Why would you think that Bitcoin needs to accomplish that
| particular task? As far as I know ending climate change has
| never been mentioned as a goal or desirable outcome of the
| project.
| [deleted]
| ttul wrote:
| The maintainers of Bitcoin could make changes to the
| mining protocol that reduce its reliance on energy. By
| choosing to not do so, they are directly contributing -
| in a substantial way - to civilization-ending climate
| catastrophe. I do think that Bitcoin's maintainers have
| an obligation to do their part, considering that they are
| very materially a part of the problem.
|
| Ethereum is at least working hard on other algorithms
| that are energy efficient. But in the Bitcoin space, the
| tremendous investment in energy-intensive mining
| equipment means that the entrenched players have an
| interest in persisting the way that things currently
| work, rather than seeking an energy conserving
| replacement.
| mopsi wrote:
| Concern trolling. A lot of jealousy hides behind
| environmental concerns these days. You went on a trip or
| bought a supercar? But MPG yada-yada-yada...
| Nursie wrote:
| That's not even what concern trolling is
| jsheard wrote:
| It uses orders of magnitude more energy than the "legacy"
| financial institutions it competes with, to process a
| fraction of the transactions, and has tenuous practical
| benefits unless you're a ransomware gang or an early mover
| getting rich from the hype.
| shawnz wrote:
| In an absolute sense it uses much less energy. If you
| divide that by the current rate limit of transactions, it
| looks bad comparatively in that sense, on a per-transaction
| basis. But the energy usage of Bitcoin isn't related to the
| transaction rate, and the rate could be increased without
| affecting the energy consumption at all. There just hasn't
| been enough demand for that increase.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Because Bitcoin requires insane amounts of energy compared to
| alternatives.
| lxgr wrote:
| A lot of resources on our planet are wasted every day, but
| only very little of that waste is intentional (as opposed to
| negligent).
| chriswarbo wrote:
| The core operating principle of Bitcoin is to waste energy.
| That's what "mining" is: wasting electricity to find useless
| numbers, such that the hash of each block starts with a
| certain number of zeros (a useless task).
|
| This silly task (called HashCash
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash ) was chosen _not_
| because those numbers are somehow important to the algorithm
| or network, but rather as a way to _slow down_ the rate of
| block creation: forcing people to waste energy on finding
| these numbers, in order to have their blocks accepted by the
| network.
|
| It is important for bitcoin's security that the block chain
| can only grow slowly, since conflicts (like double-spending)
| are resolved by choosing the longest chain; if someone makes
| their own block chain that's longer than the main bitcoin
| chain, the network will switch to that and any payments on
| the previous chain will be forgotten. Using HashCash to slow
| down block creation makes this harder to pull off.
|
| The difficulty of the HashCash task (the required number of
| zeros for the next block's hash) changes depending on how
| long it took to find the last block, such that it always
| takes about 10 minutes to find a block, _regardless_ of how
| much energy is spent on this task, or any technology
| improvements (e.g. CPU vs GPU vs ASIC). In other words,
| wasting more energy on mining bitcoin, or making more
| efficient bitcoin mining hardware, will _not_ find blocks any
| faster; the mining task will become harder to compensate, so
| it still takes about 10 minutes per block.
|
| Bitcoin allows transactions to contain a 'fee' with a blank
| recipient, and each block can also contain a small payment
| 'from nowhere' as a reward/incentive. Miners create blocks
| which send these fees and rewards to themselves, then try to
| solve the HashCash task to make the block valid. Whoever
| solves it first sends their block to the network, it gets
| accepted as the longest chain, and hence that miner has
| received the fees and reward.
|
| Miners can't make more money by solving HashCash _faster_ ,
| since it always takes about 10 minutes for a block's HashCash
| to be solved, at which point everyone starts looking for a
| _following_ block (since that will form the longest chain),
| which may be _even harder_ to find. Instead, wasting more
| energy on mining makes it _more likely_ that a miner will be
| the one who finds the next block; since, on average, someone
| performing X% of all mining will find X% of all new blocks
| (and hence receive X% of the fees and rewards).
|
| This creates a competition between miners, to try and waste
| more energy on HashCash than each other. This race-to-the-
| bottom breaks even when the energy wasted finding a block
| costs the same as all of the fees and rewards in that block;
| i.e. when all of those wasted megawatts are being spent for
| _literally nothing_ (net).
|
| There are _other_ ways to slow down the creation of blocks,
| or to resolve conflicts which don 't incentivise long chains;
| other cryptocurrencies are experimenting with such things.
| dmm wrote:
| In the winter I ride my bike down streets lined with cars
| idling because their owners don't want to ride in the cold for
| a few minutes.
|
| In a way I appreciate bitcoin for its absurd and unambiguous
| wastefulness. It's sort of the perfect expression of
| consumerism, destroying the precious and irreplaceable earth
| for something immediately disposed of.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| I think people generally want to enjoy their lives. I have a
| friend that keeps his house at 60F in the winter. I think you
| can argue that I'm not going to die at those temperatures or
| experience hypothermia. It's quite unpleasant nonetheless.
| During the summer if it's hot indoors I feel miserable and
| tired.
|
| A lot of us could live a more simple life (i.e. no cars,
| fewer children). But humans are attracted to comfort and the
| ability to pursue their dreams.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Easy with the children. Having children is the one
| immutable thing we as living beings must protect and
| cherish at all costs.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| So we can't analyze the thing using the most resources?
| leppr wrote:
| _> It 's sort of the perfect expression of consumerism_
|
| On the other hand, the finite supply/deflationary aspect of
| it is also the perfect antithesis of consumerism, in that it
| favors hoarding (spending less) instead of spending your
| paycheck as you get it.
| Applejinx wrote:
| And then when an exploit finally gets worked out, OR the
| governments being 'replaced' wage war on bitcoin and its ilk
| sufficient to obliterate its value (largely based on its
| acceptance in whatever form and the promise that it WILL
| replace government currency, in time), all the destruction
| will have been literally for nothing.
|
| It's fiat currency combined with total energy crisis. It only
| retains value as long as people are willing to tolerate
| exponential destruction of resources by the already wealthy
| who can afford to bankroll any possible conversion of energy
| directly into 'money', no matter what workaround is required.
|
| If it becomes 'the miners run for one second every day' and
| there is no way to cheat, these are the people who simply
| take the same amount of energy they were draining before, and
| come up with a way to store it the whole day... that or the
| world blacks out every day, because miners.
|
| Bottom line is unless they get everything they want and dream
| of, including the eradication of government currency, the
| escalation will inevitably lead to a collapse where all the
| work becomes meaningless, valueless. All that energy will
| have been burned for NOTHING.
|
| We just don't know when that will happen. Bitcoin is time,
| all right: time running out. Don't be caught still holding it
| when it pops.
| arbawk wrote:
| Bitcoin is the most durable money we've had, it can never be
| disposed of. Lost, perhaps.
|
| Energy consumption != energy production. Bitcoin is
| incentivizing reusable energy and moving energy to cheaper
| locations, further from cities. I suggest you look into how
| it's actually quite positive for the Earth.
| leppr wrote:
| There's nothing about Bitcoin that incentives mining with
| green energy sources more than dirty one. If coal
| electricity is cheaper, then bitcoin incentives burning
| coal. The only somewhat valid rebutals to the energy
| consumption arguments I know of are:
|
| - a lot of it is spare power that would be wasted otherwise
| (only partially true).
|
| - it uses less energy overall than governments spend
| protecting their fiat money's value (not that comparable
| since fiat can also be used as currency).
|
| - the gold industry uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt
| Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold, it will
| probably just add up).
|
| _EDIT: completed gold mining point following comment_
| Mikester wrote:
| > _gold mining uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt
| Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold mining, it
| will probably just add up_
|
| Why do people keep making the comparison to gold mining?
| It's inappropriate.
|
| Gold mining is bad for the value of gold, because it
| increases the amount of gold in the world. Eventually,
| the gold coffers on Earth will deplete and there will be
| no more gold mining.
|
| Bitcoin mining is necessary for the value of bitcoin,
| otherwise there can be no certainty of the blockchain.
| After most of the bitcoins get minted, the mining will
| still have to continue out of transaction fees.
|
| The cost of mining bitcoin needs to be compared to the
| cost of gold storage and handling of gold transactions,
| not gold mining.
| leppr wrote:
| You're right, amended my comment. Doesn't change the
| argument though.
| cousin_it wrote:
| > _gold mining uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt
| Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold mining, it
| will probably just add up)._
|
| I'm not sure it will add up. It seems to me that
| different stores of value compete directly with each
| other, because you can store value one way or the other
| way.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| You know we have a limited amount of green energy
| production right now, right? It's not exactly green if your
| bitcoin mining is using wind energy, while a bunch of other
| stuff is stuck with coal.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| But it will race to cheaper energy which means using sun
| and wind. And the enormous surplus generated is for the
| bono of all of those who don't mine.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The theory is that it provides demand for green energy,
| which will drive investment, technology, and expertise
| that can be used everywhere.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| We know that is "the theory"
|
| We also know that this theory is really, really stupid:
| The kind of self-justifying idiocy that people don't come
| up with unless they're already deeply committed to a
| point of view come what may, logic and fact need not
| apply.
| snicky wrote:
| So more demand for energy means more green energy? I
| don't quite get the logic.
| mindcandy wrote:
| Supply follows demand is basic economics. Buy up green
| energy and the suppliers will use your money to build
| more supply in order to expand their operations to fit
| the larger market.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| It's not actual logic, it's more of a rationalisation of
| the indefensible.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Are you really going to claim that there isn't a _demand_
| for green energy already?
| chmod600 wrote:
| No, I didn't make any claim really.
|
| I was going to add a disclaimer to my post along the
| lines of "not saying I believe or disbelieve this
| theory", but I was tired of adding disclaimers to all my
| posts.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Are you not able to take a position on this asinine
| theory?
| mindcandy wrote:
| I'll take a position on this:
|
| > Are you really going to claim that there isn't a demand
| for green energy already?
|
| Is a disingenuous argument. Of course there is already
| demand for green energy. Meanwhile, Bitcoin _increases_
| the demand so much that people are apparently outraged by
| the increase.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Of course there is already demand for green energy.
| Meanwhile, Bitcoin increases the demand so much that
| people are apparently outraged by the increase
|
| Assuming that you think you're serious: Increasing the
| demand for energy (and it's not "demand for green energy"
| it's demand for energy, period) is not, has not been and
| never will be a green strategy in itself.
|
| This is easy to understand, unless you choose not to.
|
| https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/03/guest-
| post-t...
| mindcandy wrote:
| My understanding of the situation is:
|
| 1. Wind/solar energy are being trumpeted around the world
| as the cheapest source of electricity available. 2.
| Bitcoin miners' profits are directly `sale price of BTC -
| buy price of electricity`. Other costs are marginal in
| comparison. 3. BTC mining is a extremely competitive,
| trivially mobile, trivially liquid, global market. 4.
| Given 1, 2 & 3 there is a lot of fretting that BTC is
| creating a coal-powered financial system.
|
| With the recent spike, the currently reasonable cost for
| a fast, median-sized transaction is $10.46 [1] [2]
| According to the fretting articles I read, that is enough
| to power an average home for a 23 days and motivates
| sending over 300kg (700lb) of C02 into the air [3] That's
| 35 gallons of gasoline at 20lb CO2/gallon.
|
| :/
|
| For what it's worth, I get the concern. But, I also see
| equal shares of BTC hate|BTC fanboyism everywhere I go.
| Latching on to the environmental concerns of BTC is
| trendy right now. It's hard to argue against without
| sounding like an asshole and it's not entirely false.
| But, it's not entirely honest either. Everything I read
| and calculate shows that BTC makes total sense as a
| defacto green energy subsidy. But, that does not spark
| outrage. So, instead there is a lot of fretting about the
| second rise of a coal-powered economy.
|
| IMHO, the way Ethereum is going is great: Bootstrap with
| POW then switch to POS after enough investment is built-
| up that staking actually means something. It's arguable
| that the best use of BTC at this point is to burn them
| all to bootstrap more POS tokens. We just need
| alternatives that inspire enough confidence to motivate
| people to convert their BTC over.
|
| [1] https://awebanalysis.com/en/convert-satoshi-to-
| dollar-usd/ [2] https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ [3]
| https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
| chmod600 wrote:
| "You know we have a limited amount of green energy
| production right now, right?"
|
| It makes no sense to talk about something being limited
| "right now". Limits are about the future.
|
| Can you please rephrase and clarify?
| cecja wrote:
| Every fucking time some cunt comes with a dumbass reference
| and it's just whataboutism.
| naringas wrote:
| I don't see it as waste, I see it as the cost of decentralized
| trust (no such thing as free lunch).
|
| The way I see it, it's either "burn" the energy in proof of
| work (the machines leave behind only heat and bitcoin) or let a
| closed institution take this energy to provide this trust.
|
| In the end, it's all tradeoffs and incentives decided by
| politics and made possible by technologies.
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