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> A bitcoin transaction wastes ^H^H^H^H^H^Hcosts -- FTFY. It's not a waste if you actually got something for it. e.g. your chemical ICE in your car produces

> A bitcoin transaction wastes ^H^H^H^H^H^Hcosts -- FTFY. It's not a waste if you actually got something for it. e.g. your chemical ICE in your car produces heat that is useful in cold weather. Not waste heat if it has utility. Electric cars have to spend electrical energy to generate the same heat. That said, the fact that this keeps coming up would indicate that there's definitely a marketplace for a coin that costs less energy/emissions for the same features.

wbkang 9y ago
Waste: use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  IMO it's none of those, and I think I'm being honest and fair here -- not just a bitcoin fanboy. What's the baseline for a corresponding transaction? Maybe that's a credit card which will cost (not waste here either) 1-2% of the purchase price. But even that's not quite fair because the merchant is taking some risk on this purchase that usually amounts to some additional cost. Also credit cards can't be used to secure transactions of >= millions of USD (and if they did it would be at a significantly higher cost). Bitcoin transactions at the low end of that spectrum are prohibitively expensive, though.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    Bitcoin doesn't replace credit card transactions or system. You have to judge it by it's actual value, not what it pretends to want to be
    - wyldfire 9y ago
      Yes, fair enough -- it is truly unique and difficult to compare w/credit cards. But to further the debate, how would you evaluate it in these terms ("waste"/"extravagance")? Would you stipulate that it has value or that it at least has utility? What sort of analogy or baseline would you compare it to, so that we could evaluate how efficient or wasteful it is?
      - mrguyorama 9y ago
        My personal opinion is that bitcoin originally was meant as a transaction medium, and that could have been very valuable. However, as it stands, it's obvious to me that bitcoin cannot become that, as scaling is proving to be very difficult, and for more reasons than technical. Also bitcoin has heavily failed in its "decentralized" dream, as most of the hashing power is under the control of very few individuals. This seems to leave its only purpose as some sort of strange "HODL" and speculation machine, and I don't believe that is worth burning an entire small nation's worth of power to promote. In fact, my opinion is that such a system is actively harmful. Even if you believe that bitcoin is not some eternal pump and dump, that just leaves it as a valid investment vehicle. I don't consider a single investment vehicle to be worth the energy spent to maintain "trust" in the chain
  - wmf 9y ago
    What's the baseline for a corresponding transaction? A proof of stake system that consumes virtually no energy and charges negligible fees (if it works)?
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Bitcoin would work just fine with 1/1000th the mining activity. Mining costs round to 100% extravagance. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is still the best way to spend money ever. The mining is a waste, a tragedy of the commons.
- solotronics 9y ago
  see the interesting part here is that if you can come up with a less wasteful way to mine BTC anyone is welcome to do that. You would become rich beyond your dreams for this.
- jkdufair 9y ago
  If we use the assumption is that the energy is carbon-based and we consider externalities, extravagant may well be the right term.
mej10 9y ago
Personally, I think it would be morally reprehensible to use energy to keep BTC alive if there are vastly more efficient alternatives that achieve the same goal. Though I am interested in counter-arguments.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  I don't think "reprehensible" applies here. We keep running old computers and old cars and we replace them as the old ones wear out. Bitcoin's ubiquity will be hard to unseat but all you can do is try to convince individual wallet-holders and merchants to use [the new more efficient coin]. Other coins have been proposed that either reduce the amount of computation (PPC) or increase the utility of the calculations (XPM). Note that those have existed for a long time and don't require an ICO. Using storage space as a (hopefully?) less energy-intensive contest to replace PoW is interesting although I suspect that Chia isn't truly novel here either.
- vorotato 9y ago
  Renewable energy exists yknow. We're not going to use up the sun's fusion energy with some dinky solar panels.
Karrot_Kream 9y ago
I like your ICE analogy, but likewise ICEs have gone through a century of constant innovation to make them more efficient. Likewise, Bitcoin may be the first example of a distributed consensus blockchain, but isn't the only way to implement one. We're just in the process of coming up with alternative ways of doing what Bitcoin does in a more efficient manner, much like what ICE innovation has done and continues to do.

wbkang 9y ago

Waste: use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.

wyldfire 9y ago
IMO it's none of those, and I think I'm being honest and fair here -- not just a bitcoin fanboy. What's the baseline for a corresponding transaction? Maybe that's a credit card which will cost (not waste here either) 1-2% of the purchase price. But even that's not quite fair because the merchant is taking some risk on this purchase that usually amounts to some additional cost. Also credit cards can't be used to secure transactions of >= millions of USD (and if they did it would be at a significantly higher cost). Bitcoin transactions at the low end of that spectrum are prohibitively expensive, though.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't replace credit card transactions or system. You have to judge it by it's actual value, not what it pretends to want to be
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    Yes, fair enough -- it is truly unique and difficult to compare w/credit cards. But to further the debate, how would you evaluate it in these terms ("waste"/"extravagance")? Would you stipulate that it has value or that it at least has utility? What sort of analogy or baseline would you compare it to, so that we could evaluate how efficient or wasteful it is?
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      My personal opinion is that bitcoin originally was meant as a transaction medium, and that could have been very valuable. However, as it stands, it's obvious to me that bitcoin cannot become that, as scaling is proving to be very difficult, and for more reasons than technical. Also bitcoin has heavily failed in its "decentralized" dream, as most of the hashing power is under the control of very few individuals. This seems to leave its only purpose as some sort of strange "HODL" and speculation machine, and I don't believe that is worth burning an entire small nation's worth of power to promote. In fact, my opinion is that such a system is actively harmful. Even if you believe that bitcoin is not some eternal pump and dump, that just leaves it as a valid investment vehicle. I don't consider a single investment vehicle to be worth the energy spent to maintain "trust" in the chain
- wmf 9y ago
  What's the baseline for a corresponding transaction? A proof of stake system that consumes virtually no energy and charges negligible fees (if it works)?
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  Bitcoin would work just fine with 1/1000th the mining activity. Mining costs round to 100% extravagance. It doesn't matter if bitcoin is still the best way to spend money ever. The mining is a waste, a tragedy of the commons.
solotronics 9y ago
see the interesting part here is that if you can come up with a less wasteful way to mine BTC anyone is welcome to do that. You would become rich beyond your dreams for this.
jkdufair 9y ago
If we use the assumption is that the energy is carbon-based and we consider externalities, extravagant may well be the right term.

mej10 9y ago

Personally, I think it would be morally reprehensible to use energy to keep BTC alive if there are vastly more efficient alternatives that achieve the same goal. Though I am interested in counter-arguments.

wyldfire 9y ago
I don't think "reprehensible" applies here. We keep running old computers and old cars and we replace them as the old ones wear out. Bitcoin's ubiquity will be hard to unseat but all you can do is try to convince individual wallet-holders and merchants to use [the new more efficient coin]. Other coins have been proposed that either reduce the amount of computation (PPC) or increase the utility of the calculations (XPM). Note that those have existed for a long time and don't require an ICO. Using storage space as a (hopefully?) less energy-intensive contest to replace PoW is interesting although I suspect that Chia isn't truly novel here either.
vorotato 9y ago
Renewable energy exists yknow. We're not going to use up the sun's fusion energy with some dinky solar panels.

Karrot_Kream 9y ago

I like your ICE analogy, but likewise ICEs have gone through a century of constant innovation to make them more efficient. Likewise, Bitcoin may be the first example of a distributed consensus blockchain, but isn't the only way to implement one. We're just in the process of coming up with alternative ways of doing what Bitcoin does in a more efficient manner, much like what ICE innovation has done and continues to do.