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"Blockchain" is over-hyped. Bitcoin is the real innovation. The use-case has been clear since its inception: It is censorship resistant digital money with no ex

"Blockchain" is over-hyped. Bitcoin is the real innovation. The use-case has been clear since its inception: It is censorship resistant digital money with no externally-decided monetary policy. There are a lot of people who want it to be something else, or who want to sell you some snake oil because they missed out on the opportunity to accumulate a lot of Bitcoin early on when it was cheap, and think that they'll be able to repeat the process with them at the forefront. It is all utter nonsense. Each project which prints its own token undermines whatever technology they think they've invented, because the fixed monetary supply was one of the key innovations of Bitcoin. Removing that innovation from your own project only makes your project inferior to Bitcoin by design, but bitcoin still remains immutable to changes in its monetary policy. Every "blockchain" idea can actually be implemented as a pegged sidechain to Bitcoin, and avoid the need to print its own currency. This is the simple litmus test of whether or not it is snake oil.

ForHackernews 8y ago
To me, Bitcoin seems like an ecological crime that abets other crimes.
- dane-pgp 8y ago
  To me, the internal combustion engine seems like an ecological crime that abets other crimes.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    Yes, ICEs also needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. Switching off bitcoin is likely the easier of those two transitions.
    - dane-pgp 8y ago
      If you're advocating that we innovate an alternative to bitcoin, which has the same decentralisation and censorship-resistance properties, but a greatly reduced energy footprint (for the same level of security), then I agree and support that transition. If, instead, you're suggesting that some (global?) central planning committing should decide which technologies are allowed to exist, based on some subjective determination that a given technology uses "too much" energy compared to how "useful" it is, then I think such a system of control is likely to be abused. For comparison, 2nd generation cryptocurrencies (like Litecoin and Ethereum) are comparable in their energy usage (per unit of economic value created) to mining rare earth metals, and over 10 times more energy efficient than producing aluminium: https://s3.cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/728accd6772be6566fab7621b469f2da.png https://s3.cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/728accd677...
      - sparkie 8y ago
        No better alternative is going to be found for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's security depends on it being super expensive to attempt to hack. Electricity is perhaps the most in-demand good (aside from food and water) over the globe. Those other systems like PoS do not have the same irreversible commitments as the commitment to exhaust energy. No matter what you do, you aren't going to get the energy back. Bitcoin miners will force innovation in cheap renewable energy sources because without them, they will be out-competed and will not stay in business for long, because someone else will make the investments. Bitcoin mining will eventually be run on low cost, low maintenance renewable sources. Some of it already is. Real business needs end up producing results. Virtue signalling middle classes who won't put their own money where their mouth is do not.
      - ForHackernews 8y ago
        The Chinese government could effectively end bitcoin mining tomorrow if they decided to. Aluminium is useful. Rare earth metals are useful. Bitcoin (see top question) is not useful (citation: after 10 years, almost nobody is using it).
        dane-pgp 8y ago
        > The Chinese government could effectively end bitcoin mining tomorrow if they decided to. So you do want a central planning committee to control which technologies are allowed to exist in the world. ;-) You're right, though, the Chinese government could greatly reduce the global hashing rate of bitcoin, which would make blocks much harder to mine (temporarily), and slow transactions down. The network would continue operating though, and perhaps Iceland would become the predominant location for bitcoin miners: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-became-the-bitcoin-miners-paradise https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-be... With their clean energy supplies and greater internet freedom, that might not be such a bad outcome (except for China's economy, potentially). > Bitcoin (see top question) is not useful (citation: after 10 years, almost nobody is using it). The top comment I see in this discussion is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19146037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19146037 and it contains multiple examples of use cases. Maybe "almost nobody" cares about WikiLeaks, or weed, or porn, or Venezuelans, or privacy, or having an alternative to PayPal, but "almost nobody" needs a cure for a rare illness, that doesn't make it useless. Similarly, nobody actually needs Facebook (or Hacker News, for that matter), which also uses a lot of electricity, so if we're going to start banning technologies for being not useful and using energy, then why don't we start there?

ForHackernews 8y ago

To me, Bitcoin seems like an ecological crime that abets other crimes.

dane-pgp 8y ago
To me, the internal combustion engine seems like an ecological crime that abets other crimes.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  Yes, ICEs also needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. Switching off bitcoin is likely the easier of those two transitions.
  - dane-pgp 8y ago
    If you're advocating that we innovate an alternative to bitcoin, which has the same decentralisation and censorship-resistance properties, but a greatly reduced energy footprint (for the same level of security), then I agree and support that transition. If, instead, you're suggesting that some (global?) central planning committing should decide which technologies are allowed to exist, based on some subjective determination that a given technology uses "too much" energy compared to how "useful" it is, then I think such a system of control is likely to be abused. For comparison, 2nd generation cryptocurrencies (like Litecoin and Ethereum) are comparable in their energy usage (per unit of economic value created) to mining rare earth metals, and over 10 times more energy efficient than producing aluminium: https://s3.cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/728accd6772be6566fab7621b469f2da.png https://s3.cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/728accd677...
    - sparkie 8y ago
      No better alternative is going to be found for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's security depends on it being super expensive to attempt to hack. Electricity is perhaps the most in-demand good (aside from food and water) over the globe. Those other systems like PoS do not have the same irreversible commitments as the commitment to exhaust energy. No matter what you do, you aren't going to get the energy back. Bitcoin miners will force innovation in cheap renewable energy sources because without them, they will be out-competed and will not stay in business for long, because someone else will make the investments. Bitcoin mining will eventually be run on low cost, low maintenance renewable sources. Some of it already is. Real business needs end up producing results. Virtue signalling middle classes who won't put their own money where their mouth is do not.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      The Chinese government could effectively end bitcoin mining tomorrow if they decided to. Aluminium is useful. Rare earth metals are useful. Bitcoin (see top question) is not useful (citation: after 10 years, almost nobody is using it).
      - dane-pgp 8y ago
        > The Chinese government could effectively end bitcoin mining tomorrow if they decided to. So you do want a central planning committee to control which technologies are allowed to exist in the world. ;-) You're right, though, the Chinese government could greatly reduce the global hashing rate of bitcoin, which would make blocks much harder to mine (temporarily), and slow transactions down. The network would continue operating though, and perhaps Iceland would become the predominant location for bitcoin miners: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-became-the-bitcoin-miners-paradise https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-be... With their clean energy supplies and greater internet freedom, that might not be such a bad outcome (except for China's economy, potentially). > Bitcoin (see top question) is not useful (citation: after 10 years, almost nobody is using it). The top comment I see in this discussion is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19146037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19146037 and it contains multiple examples of use cases. Maybe "almost nobody" cares about WikiLeaks, or weed, or porn, or Venezuelans, or privacy, or having an alternative to PayPal, but "almost nobody" needs a cure for a rare illness, that doesn't make it useless. Similarly, nobody actually needs Facebook (or Hacker News, for that matter), which also uses a lot of electricity, so if we're going to start banning technologies for being not useful and using energy, then why don't we start there?