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If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power. It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% incr
by sillysaurus3 9y ago
If Bitcoin reached 2 trillion dollars, it would use about 2% of the world's power.
It seems tough to argue that a 2 trillion dollar GDP doesn't merit a 2% increase in power output.
- kiddico 9y agoSolid point. Unless of course we can do it with 1% of the world's power, which is what I hope something like proof of space would allow.
- txcwpalpha 9y agoBitcoin's total value being 2 trillion dollars is not the same thing whatsoever as bitcoin being responsible for 2 trillion dollars of GDP. There is no "merit" here. We can have $2 trillion in GDP with paper money, too, and that uses 0% of the world's power.
- yayitswei 9y agoNot 0% if you count the resources required to enforce that paper money.
- simplify 9y agoTo be fair, paper money requires banks & bank employees, bullet-proof transportation trucks, government regulation, anti-counterfeit research & technology, and perhaps more.
- rspeer 9y agoWhataboutism is a form of propaganda, not of fairness.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y agoComparing the consequences of alternative solutions to a problem is not whataboutism.
- UncleMeat 9y agoMarket cap and GDP contribution are different things. The market cap for the USD is very very high, but we don't consider all of those dollars to count as GDP nor would it justify a comparably large power cost.
- notahacker 9y agoDo you mean a 2 trillion dollar market cap? That's not the same as GDP. I mean, Apple is close to a 1 trillion dollar market cap. I'd argue a 1% increase in world power output simply for Apple to store its money and make transactions would be a remarkably poor use of power.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoUnfair comparison. Bitcoin benefits all who hold it, not a single corporation. If anything, my "GDP" comparison was off the mark because GDP typically represents a country's total wealth, and bitcoin can't have a GDP. But it's a useful abstraction that comes pretty close. Those bitcoin paper millionaires are investing in startups like Pinkapp, and Pinkapp is hiring programmers. All of this is happening outside the legal system. What does that say to you about bitcoin's ability to affect the world?
- maxerickson 9y agoOh man, the legal system is gonna surprise anyone who thinks they are operating outside of it. And not in a good way.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoLook up pinkapp. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=the_stc https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=the_stc https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15389364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15389364 https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for-anonymity-and-other-techniques-815ee21c6da4 https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for-ano...
- maxerickson 9y agoSure. But also look up all the dark markets the FBI busted.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
- wpietri 9y agoGDP is (hopefully) creation of value per unit time, so as others point out, comparing it with the notional value of a currency at a point in time is not sensible. It's like comparing watts versus KWh, or your annual income with your bank balance. But there's a bigger mistake here. The point of the economy is to create value for humans. There is plenty of non-value-creating activity that can be denominated in dollar terms, but that doesn't make it actually valuable. For example, this season's hurricanes will cause something like $200bn in economic activity. But that doesn't mean we should have more hurricanes. [1] People bet at least tens of billions annually on sports, but getting people to double or triple that doesn't actually make anybody richer. Similarly, Bitcoin is only a true economic positive to the extent that it actually creates new value for humans. If Bill Gates went on a Bitcoin buying spree, he could easily drive the nominal market cap way up. But we'd have no more economic value in the world. If Bitcoin enthusiasts got bored and turned off all the servers, we'd have little less economic value in the world. That's because most Bitcoin use is not economically productive. Most of it is, like gambling, just moving existing economic value around between people. I go on at length like this because it's vital that startup people understand the difference between creating value and just shuffling who controls existing value. Only the former is sustainable. [1] To think otherwise is the broken window fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window