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I 'll also notice what the whole experiment proved: That money can perverse moral incentives. The electricity/wasted energy issue you mention is just one of the

by return0 11y ago

I 'll also notice what the whole experiment proved: That money can perverse moral incentives. The electricity/wasted energy issue you mention is just one of them. The amount of time spent on building and specializing the hardware is another. All this was in the hope of the abstract goal of creating money, not wealth. People weren't so zealous in building specialized hardware for, say, protein folding. Bitcoin advocates usually put forward "the good of humanity" argument, yet the product by design puts individual interests above all other interests.

nebw 11y ago
In that vein, I'd like to point out Gridcoin[1], a crypto-currency that rewards you for throwing your computing power at a BOINC project (basically scientific data crunching) [2] instead of wasting it on pointlessly solving crypto problems. It's certainly not perfect, but an interessting idea nonetheless. [1] http://gridcoin.us/ http://gridcoin.us/ [2] http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
- Nursie 11y ago
  That's quite cool, I like that idea a lot more. I think I'd still rather a currency that didn't rely on burning power as fast as possible, but using that power for good is, well, good :)
  - STRML 11y ago
    Well, there needs to be some proof of work, something that is hard to do at scale but easy for individuals. To that degree, Bitcoin has failed, because massive SHA256 crunching is now easy to do at scale and hard for individuals. More varied challenges, like BOINC, or PoW that is bandwidth, connectivity, latency, or disk-space based, will provide a lot more value to the community and make it easier for individuals to contribute. I eagerly await the day that one of these alternatives becomes mainstream.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      Alternatives are good but.... well, disk-space based would push up the price of hard drives. Bandwidth connectivity and latency could again be owned by big players... I don't know. What I do know is that in a centralised crypto-currency system you don't need any of this as the issuing authority merely signs the transactions and we're away. I hope that some bright spark comes up with a way to make a decentralised one almost as simple...
  - mywittyname 11y ago
    The current system for USD is pretty close to ideal. Short term money is creating through lending, long term money through bonds. It's a great mechanism and could be readily adapted to digital currencies. Have a group of banks that may issue loans in the currency and have a central authority that will issue bonds and pay interest on them in the currency. Set the lending rate to under the bond rate to "bootstrap" the initial currency flow, then manage it from there. Management could be automated by computers to constantly find the optimal rates for loans and bonds.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sebastianconcpt 11y ago
  I like the moral of this idea
diabeetusman 11y ago
> That money can perverse moral incentives This isn't something newly discovered, I hope.
- thecrazyone 11y ago
  Haha, I like the satire :-)
  - newjersey 11y ago
    I was hoping gp was being sarcastic > limited supply with weighting in favour of early adopters How is that not true for the royal families of Europe or pretty much all the billionaires in China/India/Russia? Of course, it is not a desirable feature as we've discussed in criticism of pg's essay but what option do we have?
    - kaonashi 11y ago
      Money itself is a legal phenomenon, the laws can be changed to amend how money functions.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      >> How is that not true for the royal families of Europe or pretty much all the billionaires in China/India/Russia? While I agree there are problems when individuals can accrue control of such a disproportionate amount or influence and economic output... I don't think it's quite the same. 2/3 of all the Bitcoin that there will ever be already exist. The number of people involved in Bitcoin is comparatively small. Were it to become a mainstream world currency, on the scale of the dollar, some of these folks would likely become trillionaires. Those oligarchs in India, Russia and China are wealthy, but they haven't got such a huge proportion of all currency sewn up. And because of the nature of 'fiat' currency, we can always make more. With BTC this isn't the case.
ryandrake 11y ago
> I 'll also notice what the whole experiment proved: That money can perverse moral incentives. The electricity/wasted energy issue you mention is just one of them. The amount of time spent on building and specializing the hardware is another. The existence of high frequency trading already proved this. All that technology built and maintained, all that electricity wasted, merely so that one company's bots could play a zero-sum game nanoseconds faster than another company's bots, undermining them.

by return0 11y ago

nebw 11y ago

In that vein, I'd like to point out Gridcoin[1], a crypto-currency that rewards you for throwing your computing power at a BOINC project (basically scientific data crunching) [2] instead of wasting it on pointlessly solving crypto problems. It's certainly not perfect, but an interessting idea nonetheless. [1] http://gridcoin.us/ http://gridcoin.us/ [2] http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Nursie 11y ago
That's quite cool, I like that idea a lot more. I think I'd still rather a currency that didn't rely on burning power as fast as possible, but using that power for good is, well, good :)
- STRML 11y ago
  Well, there needs to be some proof of work, something that is hard to do at scale but easy for individuals. To that degree, Bitcoin has failed, because massive SHA256 crunching is now easy to do at scale and hard for individuals. More varied challenges, like BOINC, or PoW that is bandwidth, connectivity, latency, or disk-space based, will provide a lot more value to the community and make it easier for individuals to contribute. I eagerly await the day that one of these alternatives becomes mainstream.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    Alternatives are good but.... well, disk-space based would push up the price of hard drives. Bandwidth connectivity and latency could again be owned by big players... I don't know. What I do know is that in a centralised crypto-currency system you don't need any of this as the issuing authority merely signs the transactions and we're away. I hope that some bright spark comes up with a way to make a decentralised one almost as simple...
- mywittyname 11y ago
  The current system for USD is pretty close to ideal. Short term money is creating through lending, long term money through bonds. It's a great mechanism and could be readily adapted to digital currencies. Have a group of banks that may issue loans in the currency and have a central authority that will issue bonds and pay interest on them in the currency. Set the lending rate to under the bond rate to "bootstrap" the initial currency flow, then manage it from there. Management could be automated by computers to constantly find the optimal rates for loans and bonds.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sebastianconcpt 11y ago
I like the moral of this idea

diabeetusman 11y ago

> That money can perverse moral incentives This isn't something newly discovered, I hope.

thecrazyone 11y ago
Haha, I like the satire :-)
- newjersey 11y ago
  I was hoping gp was being sarcastic > limited supply with weighting in favour of early adopters How is that not true for the royal families of Europe or pretty much all the billionaires in China/India/Russia? Of course, it is not a desirable feature as we've discussed in criticism of pg's essay but what option do we have?
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    Money itself is a legal phenomenon, the laws can be changed to amend how money functions.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    >> How is that not true for the royal families of Europe or pretty much all the billionaires in China/India/Russia? While I agree there are problems when individuals can accrue control of such a disproportionate amount or influence and economic output... I don't think it's quite the same. 2/3 of all the Bitcoin that there will ever be already exist. The number of people involved in Bitcoin is comparatively small. Were it to become a mainstream world currency, on the scale of the dollar, some of these folks would likely become trillionaires. Those oligarchs in India, Russia and China are wealthy, but they haven't got such a huge proportion of all currency sewn up. And because of the nature of 'fiat' currency, we can always make more. With BTC this isn't the case.

ryandrake 11y ago

> I 'll also notice what the whole experiment proved: That money can perverse moral incentives. The electricity/wasted energy issue you mention is just one of them. The amount of time spent on building and specializing the hardware is another. The existence of high frequency trading already proved this. All that technology built and maintained, all that electricity wasted, merely so that one company's bots could play a zero-sum game nanoseconds faster than another company's bots, undermining them.