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What a sad, sorry state we as a species are in when energy is used for such purposes. Greed does know no bounds.
by nathanaldensr 9y ago
What a sad, sorry state we as a species are in when energy is used for such purposes. Greed does know no bounds.
- andrepd 9y agoAs opposed to: gold/silver/diamonds mining (greater energy and human cost), arms manufacturing (orders of magnitude larger industry), etc. Why single out bitcoin (which is actually offering a useful service that critically needs PoW to work)?
- onychomys 9y agoWell, offering a service, anyway. We could have a long debate about "useful".
- jonknee 9y agoWhat useful service? Scams as a service?
- waynecochran 9y agoIf it wasn't for all the speculation and grotesque scams surrounding it could actually be useful as a decentralized currency. But we can't have nice things.
- ianai 9y agoThis might be a learning moment. Without government, aka anarchy, society would quickly devolve into bitter, cruel chaos.
- unknown_apostle 9y agoLong ago given up on cryptocurrency, at least as long as current technical problems exist. But that without government we'd devolve into "bitter, cruel chaos" is definitely not a lesson. That's "not even wrong" level stuff.
- ianai 9y agoAlright, you want me and the majority of society to take cryptocurrency seriously? Find a way to disallow or at least police illicit uses of it. Until you do that, I refuse to even entertain the idea that it’s a valuable asset and certainly not currency. This is not a technical challenge I’m making. This is a political demand. You would also still have to prove it’s more efficient and has a smaller carbon and energy footprint than traditional currency.
- sokoloff 9y agoHave we effectively disallowed or policed the illicit use of $100 bills for drugs, weapons, or other trade? I agree with you that cryptocurrency is not currently particularly intrinsically useful, but I don't believe that "let everyone use it in a decentralized tamper-proof manner" fundamentally requires "and simultaneously restrict it from the following uses, which a subset of the global population deems undesirable". (In that regard, it's similar to "regular" crypto. I don't mind that people I don't particularly like are also able to use crypto to secure their communications. It's essential to my use case that they not be able to intercept my comms, and I accept in return that I can't intercept their comms either.)
- ianai 9y agoThere are genuine attempts made to police those uses. In the case of USD, the US enjoys being the default global currency. That bad actors also use it is more of a side note alongside everyone using it.
- mjlangiii 9y agoWhat about cultures that didn't have centralized government like native Americans?
- TheSoftwareGuy 9y agoThey had various forms of government, depending on which particular tribe you are thinking of. Many had a theocracy, and some, like the Iroquois were part of a federation.
- netsharc 9y agoBefore blockchains, I wondered about how to prove something on the internet. I thought about an authority that could hash any piece of data and you could query it. For example if someone claimed someone tweeted "X", the authority website could show that the hash is really from that Twitter account and is the sentence "X", or disprove it. I didn't really think about distributed cryptographic "proof" and the chaining so you can't delete B from A - B - C and chain up A - C, indeed the authority would just have to be trusted and be somehow tamper proof. Blockchain would be interesting to record the sequence of events you want to make sure people can't change retroactively, making it distributed means it's ecologically disastrous though.
- groby_b 9y agoBefore Blockchains, most people who cared about cryptography were well aware of Merkle Trees. They date back to 1979. Yes, there's also the proof-of-work part. We had that in 1999 with Hashcash. The only thing bitcoin brought to the table was moving proof-of-work from a trusted hardware module to a P2P network.
- mywittyname 9y agoEasily moving money between countries. Not every country makes this as easy as it is in Europe.
- jonknee 9y agoThere are a lot of ways to transfer money between countries and Bitcoin is one of the worst (sketchy exchanges, slow, huge spreads, etc). If you want easy try something like TransferWise.
- thedaemon 9y agoI would really like to upgrade my GPU, but currently it's impossible as the bitcoin miners have caused the prices to sky rocket into unobtainable pricing.
- DarronWyke 9y agoI had to buy mine direct from the manufacturer for MSRP for a new build. Still cheaper than Newegg/Amazon/etc.
- samueldavid 9y agohow did you do it?
- DarronWyke 9y agoBought direct from EVGA. Check their websites, many of them offer them direct for sale. They may be out of stock so you'll have to do a notify.
- feintruled 9y agoI know! I was browsing for one and all the mid-range cards are out of stock, only low-end and super high-end are available. What a ridiculous situation.
- walrus01 9y agoto be more specific bitcoin mining is not driving up your GPU pricing (bitcoin has been uneconomical on GPUs for years, since the advent of dedicated purpose hashing ASICs), but it's ethereum mining and other cryptocurrencies that can still be mined on GPUs that are influencing the price.
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- croon 9y agoI could of course be wrong or ignorant, but I have yet to see a single application that isn't speculation, save a few that uses it as currency transfer but using centralized nodes, meaning they could just use any much cheaper sharded data storage. I don't doubt theoretical applications, I'm just saying everything thus far has been hype and cluster"%#&s.
- ryanlol 9y ago>meaning they could just use any much cheaper sharded data storage. There are a plenty of regulatory reasons why this is simply not true. Cryptocurrencies may sound stupid from a technical point of view, but clearly they have a bunch of very real advantages over e.g. liberty reserve. Edit: I guess I'll be waiting for Show HN: MongoDB based money laundering platform. :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- scotty79 9y agoPeople need something to put money in. They work, they run a surplus. They need to keep it somewhere. You could keep your local currency or buy some other but hyperinflation is a thing and also plain inflation can eat your money in few decades. You could buy property but it can be bothersome to pick, buy, hold and sell. You may end up with a loss if you are unlucky or need money back quick. You could buy gold but it can be easily stolen. People need gold but better. Bitcoin is just that assuming bitcoin network survives.
- croon 9y ago> You could buy gold but it can be easily stolen. So can your bitcoin wallet, or you could forget your key or lose your hard copy. > People need gold but better. Debatable. > Bitcoin is just that assuming bitcoin network survives. No, you can fork bitcoin, or create a thousand slightly different blockchains, and you can replace it in the blink of an eye. However weird gold is, it is a finite resource with real world applications (albeit not unique for most of them). And I'm sure you can buy a number of funds or stocks backed by gold, if that's your thing. But you also have thousands of other stocks and funds, and real estate, and micro financing, etc where your money can both work for you while also potentially benefiting the world. Bitcoin without any application is a pyramid scheme, by definition. You put money in, to take money out later when more people have entered the system.
- wffurr 9y agoClearly the parent doesn't believe Bitcoin to be a useful service. I agree with you that precious metal mining and arms manufacturing are also not useful services, except insofar as some precious metals are used to make useful things. I think it's fair to say "Bitcoin is wasting energy" does not necessarily imply other useless things don't also waste energy given that this whole conversation and article are about Bitcoin. The fact that huge sums of money, energy, and human time is also wasted on arms manufacturing doesn't make Bitcoin mining somehow a good thing. Your kind of argument is called "Whataboutism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- breatheoften 9y agoI generally find 'Whataboutism' to be an incredibly annoying form of argument. Sometimes though there are useful arguments about priorities of the form: 'x is a problem but y is such a larger problem that spending time and energy on x instead of y is actually an additional problem'. Is there a useful strategy to help distinguish such an argument from 'Whataboutism' when constructing such an argument? (Note: I don't think the grandparent's argument is of this form as there don't seem to be any obvious shared constrained resources which could be applied to reduce precious metal mining that are instead directed at reducing bitcoin mining ... I'm curious though if you have any suggestions for how to shift one's thinking when _trying_ to make an argument about priorities so as to help prevent oneself from making arguments that amount to whataboutism ...)
- pharke 9y agoAnd yet an argument such as this does serve a purpose. It draws attention to the larger follies we commit. It may even give a better perspective from which we might see a common cause for such behaviour. Rather than shutting a conversation down with cries of "off topic" or "fallacy" (I'm addressing the crowd moreso than you in particular) maybe we should all be looking towards the question of why all of us have a propensity for wastefulness? Surely, some waste is necessary when figuring out new processes or keeping old ones up to date but is there a way we can reduce waste without reducing or putting limits on innovation?
- 9y ago
- pjc50 9y agoYes, those things are also bad. And entrenched and hard to stop.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago"which is actually offering a useful service that critically needs PoW to work" That's hugely debatable.
- sockgrant 9y agoOh Jesus. Get off your high horse. They’re using cheap energy to make money. There’s plenty plenty plenty of worse ways people are willing to make a buck. How about Martin Shkreli? Or the diamond business? Or oil? Or cigarettes? Or... a million other things. You’re being dramatic.