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Imagine that bitcoin is a bubble, and then I don’t think humanity would have had ever spent such a huge amount of energy and resources for such a « useless » pu

by bsaul 9y ago

Imagine that bitcoin is a bubble, and then I don’t think humanity would have had ever spent such a huge amount of energy and resources for such a « useless » purpose.

sebleon 9y ago
"We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like." - Fight Club I'd venture to say that the majority of human effort today is spent on useless things. Consumerism is the base of our entire economic system, Bitcoin mining doesn't seem all that different to me.
- bsaul 9y ago
  Except people don’t buy anything with bitcoin ( and i’ve read about potential millionaires, but never about people having actually made millions of usd, since nobody sells). For the moment it’s only the most gigantic and cpu intensive distributed number increment algorithm.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    There are absolutely people who have cashed out significant non-crypto money from BTC. In fact crypto has allowed multiple people I know to retire. Bitcoin also offers the very real value of enabling monetary transactions without government involvement. That’s a huge deal to some of us who value individual liberty and/or live under corrupt regimes.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    I transact in BTC all the time. And while I haven't made millions of USD, it's a considerable sum. My friends have cashed out plenty of BTC into USD/EUR; well into the millions.
  - gomox 9y ago
    You haven't read enough then. There is, quite literally, an app for that. People are getting real bank transfers of "real" money all the time out of bitcoin & co.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
We are talking about and learning a lot from Bitcoin. A lot. this is a valuable experiment. Especially if you consider what could have been, but isn’t, which we couldn’t know in advance. [edit: and still could be—who knows? Only one way to find out :)] We could do worse than Bitcoin. Diamonds, for example… [edit 2: disclosure: I have no stake in either :p ]
- maoistinquisitr 9y ago
  It seems well past the experiment stage. The question I have is if the ideas presented in Hashgraph have already rendered the whole Blockchain approach obsolete. I think Bitcoin may be dead already and not know it yet.
rangibaby 9y ago
Nuclear weapons? Their existence is a blight on humanity. MAD hasn’t prevented wars, only caused them to be outsourced to countries no one cared about like Vietnam and Afghanistan. It is only through dumb luck that a superpower has not destroyed the world by accident The military-industrial complex: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- unabridged 9y ago
  >MAD hasn’t prevented wars I disagree. While yes there were still proxy wars for the last 50 years, there has been no all out world war. Considering that for the 500 years before WW2 there was wars nearly every 20 years between major powers, this is an improvement.
  - Synaesthesia 9y ago
    That’s because Europe realized it could not sustain another war of that destructiveness. So there have been no wars in Europe, but I don’t think it’s impossible that another WW1 like crisis could occur again, especially with tensions high between China, The US and Russia.
    - Ixio 9y ago
      > That’s because Europe realized it could not sustain another war of that destructiveness. That's what people in Europe thought after WW1, yet WW2 happened. I hope this time you're right.
    - unabridged 9y ago
      Tensions aren't really high between China, US, and Russia. We are all huge trading partners, and no one wants to see the money stop flowing. In any time besides modern history they would be considered friendly.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
We have spent a lot of money, energy, and lives in order to give glory to and protect the importance of an imaginary being in the sky....
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
icelancer 9y ago
Plenty of wars fit that description far better than mining cryptocurrency.

by bsaul 9y ago

Imagine that bitcoin is a bubble, and then I don’t think humanity would have had ever spent such a huge amount of energy and resources for such a « useless » purpose.

sebleon 9y ago

"We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like." - Fight Club I'd venture to say that the majority of human effort today is spent on useless things. Consumerism is the base of our entire economic system, Bitcoin mining doesn't seem all that different to me.

bsaul 9y ago
Except people don’t buy anything with bitcoin ( and i’ve read about potential millionaires, but never about people having actually made millions of usd, since nobody sells). For the moment it’s only the most gigantic and cpu intensive distributed number increment algorithm.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  There are absolutely people who have cashed out significant non-crypto money from BTC. In fact crypto has allowed multiple people I know to retire. Bitcoin also offers the very real value of enabling monetary transactions without government involvement. That’s a huge deal to some of us who value individual liberty and/or live under corrupt regimes.
- icelancer 9y ago
  I transact in BTC all the time. And while I haven't made millions of USD, it's a considerable sum. My friends have cashed out plenty of BTC into USD/EUR; well into the millions.
- gomox 9y ago
  You haven't read enough then. There is, quite literally, an app for that. People are getting real bank transfers of "real" money all the time out of bitcoin & co.

nothrabannosir 9y ago

We are talking about and learning a lot from Bitcoin. A lot. this is a valuable experiment. Especially if you consider what could have been, but isn’t, which we couldn’t know in advance. [edit: and still could be—who knows? Only one way to find out :)] We could do worse than Bitcoin. Diamonds, for example… [edit 2: disclosure: I have no stake in either :p ]

maoistinquisitr 9y ago
It seems well past the experiment stage. The question I have is if the ideas presented in Hashgraph have already rendered the whole Blockchain approach obsolete. I think Bitcoin may be dead already and not know it yet.

rangibaby 9y ago

Nuclear weapons? Their existence is a blight on humanity. MAD hasn’t prevented wars, only caused them to be outsourced to countries no one cared about like Vietnam and Afghanistan. It is only through dumb luck that a superpower has not destroyed the world by accident The military-industrial complex: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
unabridged 9y ago
>MAD hasn’t prevented wars I disagree. While yes there were still proxy wars for the last 50 years, there has been no all out world war. Considering that for the 500 years before WW2 there was wars nearly every 20 years between major powers, this is an improvement.
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  That’s because Europe realized it could not sustain another war of that destructiveness. So there have been no wars in Europe, but I don’t think it’s impossible that another WW1 like crisis could occur again, especially with tensions high between China, The US and Russia.
  - Ixio 9y ago
    > That’s because Europe realized it could not sustain another war of that destructiveness. That's what people in Europe thought after WW1, yet WW2 happened. I hope this time you're right.
  - unabridged 9y ago
    Tensions aren't really high between China, US, and Russia. We are all huge trading partners, and no one wants to see the money stop flowing. In any time besides modern history they would be considered friendly.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

We have spent a lot of money, energy, and lives in order to give glory to and protect the importance of an imaginary being in the sky....

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

icelancer 9y ago

Plenty of wars fit that description far better than mining cryptocurrency.