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Exactly. We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. It's not waste if it serves a purpose. The service it p

Exactly. We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. It's not waste if it serves a purpose. The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
"It's not waste if it serves a purpose. " It's an open question as if it actually does serve a purpose, though.
tgb 8y ago
It's wasting if it's using more than the alternatives and it is using more than the alternatives.
spookthesunset 8y ago
> We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. All you bitcoin shysters can keep telling yourself that to sleep at night, but you are lying to yourself and you know it. Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for a pathetically small amount of transactions per second. ON a per transaction basis, Bitcoin uses several orders of magnitude more energy than anything used by modern day financial systems. Like, embarrassingly, shamefully large amounts of electricity. Y'all should bow your heads in shame for the harm you are doing to the world. > The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority. The blockchain, whose only use case is to enable rampant speculation and amazingly large quantities of fraud. The whole "space" needs to go away.
- aje403 8y ago
  Bbbut... the blockchain?
- arebop 8y ago
  Your biggest mistake is comparing energy use. You need to compare the total overhead of bitcoin to the total overhead of the competitive financial system. The second mistake is comparing a per-transaction basis; this is of interest when we are comparing suitability for particular applications, but if you want to talk more generally about whether bitcoin is efficient for payments you need to look at things on a value basis (use usd, eur, cny, or gold ounces).
  - hobs 8y ago
    Why? Why does a new system need to be just as bad as the old one?
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      It doesn't. But if the new system is better than the old one, why would comparing it to the old one imply that anyone using the new one should be ashamed of doing so?
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        It wouldn't. But it turns out that the new system is significantly worse than the old one, for little to no practical benefit. That's why people are comparing and complaining.
rpearl 8y ago
it is a waste. Bitcoin is an unqualified environmental catastrophe that is literally erasing any progress we've made to combat climate change. Burning away the future, turning useful energy purely and directly into waste and profit by shouting numbers into the void, not even leaving any artifact of value in its wake. There's not anything wrong with having a central monetary authority. There's not anything wrong with having institutional trust.
- Arbalest 8y ago
  It could be argued that the trust could still be misplaced, but the idea that we can't trust governments for currency is barking up the wrong tree. The fundamental problems of inequality don't stem from Treasury, but rather from the game theory concept of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin making barriers to entry for new players always higher than the incumbents. You can take this all the way down to the bottom, in the example of having no car to be a delivery driver, and to get a loan for a car is a tremendous risk.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    The same people arguing for trusting the Government for currency (the people that say "wasting electricity") are the same people that are also trusting the Government to solve the climate problem. They have obviously failed at the latter - no price on carbon, which ironically would resolve their complaint about the former since "wasting electricity" is code for "contributing to climate change" which is . not priced into the energy production economics the Bitcoin miners choose.
    - Arbalest 8y ago
      Sort of. It does create an opportunity cost, in diverting electricity away from other, arguably more useful causes. The whole matter there is complicated by economies of scale and baseload demand etc though. It could also be seen in terms of finiteness of the source of energy.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"It's not waste if it serves a purpose. " It's an open question as if it actually does serve a purpose, though.

tgb 8y ago

It's wasting if it's using more than the alternatives and it is using more than the alternatives.

spookthesunset 8y ago

> We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. All you bitcoin shysters can keep telling yourself that to sleep at night, but you are lying to yourself and you know it. Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for a pathetically small amount of transactions per second. ON a per transaction basis, Bitcoin uses several orders of magnitude more energy than anything used by modern day financial systems. Like, embarrassingly, shamefully large amounts of electricity. Y'all should bow your heads in shame for the harm you are doing to the world. > The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority. The blockchain, whose only use case is to enable rampant speculation and amazingly large quantities of fraud. The whole "space" needs to go away.

aje403 8y ago
Bbbut... the blockchain?
arebop 8y ago
Your biggest mistake is comparing energy use. You need to compare the total overhead of bitcoin to the total overhead of the competitive financial system. The second mistake is comparing a per-transaction basis; this is of interest when we are comparing suitability for particular applications, but if you want to talk more generally about whether bitcoin is efficient for payments you need to look at things on a value basis (use usd, eur, cny, or gold ounces).
- hobs 8y ago
  Why? Why does a new system need to be just as bad as the old one?
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    It doesn't. But if the new system is better than the old one, why would comparing it to the old one imply that anyone using the new one should be ashamed of doing so?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      It wouldn't. But it turns out that the new system is significantly worse than the old one, for little to no practical benefit. That's why people are comparing and complaining.

rpearl 8y ago

it is a waste. Bitcoin is an unqualified environmental catastrophe that is literally erasing any progress we've made to combat climate change. Burning away the future, turning useful energy purely and directly into waste and profit by shouting numbers into the void, not even leaving any artifact of value in its wake. There's not anything wrong with having a central monetary authority. There's not anything wrong with having institutional trust.

Arbalest 8y ago
It could be argued that the trust could still be misplaced, but the idea that we can't trust governments for currency is barking up the wrong tree. The fundamental problems of inequality don't stem from Treasury, but rather from the game theory concept of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin making barriers to entry for new players always higher than the incumbents. You can take this all the way down to the bottom, in the example of having no car to be a delivery driver, and to get a loan for a car is a tremendous risk.
- hndamien 8y ago
  The same people arguing for trusting the Government for currency (the people that say "wasting electricity") are the same people that are also trusting the Government to solve the climate problem. They have obviously failed at the latter - no price on carbon, which ironically would resolve their complaint about the former since "wasting electricity" is code for "contributing to climate change" which is . not priced into the energy production economics the Bitcoin miners choose.
  - Arbalest 8y ago
    Sort of. It does create an opportunity cost, in diverting electricity away from other, arguably more useful causes. The whole matter there is complicated by economies of scale and baseload demand etc though. It could also be seen in terms of finiteness of the source of energy.