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> Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy Or a little more precisely a bitcoin is a provable record that a significant quantity of free energy was once t

> Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy Or a little more precisely a bitcoin is a provable record that a significant quantity of free energy was once turned into heat. So it does use energy, in the creation and once it is created, that energy is wasted unless the created also needed to heat something.

keymone 8y ago
energy would be wasted if it wasn't possible to prove the thing you said bitcoin proves. proof is the product of spent energy, therefore it's not wasted.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  ...which is a trivial result, and could be reproduced by simple trust (which is essentially free)
  - keymone 8y ago
    that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Trust is dangerous, we’ve been dealing with trust based financial system failures for hundreds of not thousands of years.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      And the other 'whole point' is, its ridiculously expensive to the planet. Its playing mind-games with the ecosystem, burning terawatt-hours to enable imaginary points to be traded without imaginary safeguards.
      - antidesitter 8y ago
        Why do you say “imaginary points”? Do you consider your bank account balance to be “imaginary points”?
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Of course they are just like religion, law, right and wrong and on and on. You can tell what is real, and what is all in Sapiens' heads - ask your dog. They know what real is.
      - keymone 8y ago
        It costs way less than current financial system costs even normalized for market cap or transaction volume because it involves politics and military.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        The internet depends on politics and the military too. Don't be fooled.
        keymone 8y ago
        oh yeah, they have so much control, they've totally fixed the problem of torrenting, child porn and illegal markets. don't be naive, you can't block bitcoin any more than you can block porn. besides, internet is no longer the only information transfer medium bitcoin can work over.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      > that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Well that's nonsense for a start. Bitcoin simply shifts trust from a middleman to a vendor I am interacting with. A middleman that is highly regulated, with all sorts of protections and restrictions in place to protect me. A vendor who has a financial incentive to rip me off, and thousands of years of history to show us just how much they do when given the chance. The trustlessness of cryptocurrencies is a lie. They move trust from a small number parties you can actually trust most of the time, to a huge number of unknown entities with perverse incentives.
      - keymone 8y ago
        nope, you're the one talking nonsense. when your bank tells you you have $100 on your account - it's a lie, all you have is a record in a database and never actual $100 in a safe to back that up. all you have is trust that the bank will provide you $100 when you ask for it. when you have 100BTC, you actually have 100BTC. how is that hard to understand?
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Missed the 'vendor' part. Most folks dealing in bitcoin, don't trade a whole coin at a time (which is what, $20K?) They use an exchange. Which is the same as now, except without any federal safeguards. In fact bitcoin exchanges have infamously been hijacked and abscond with everybody's coins. So where's the safety there? Its imaginary.
        jki275 8y ago
        Not how it works. You can trade any fraction of a coin with or without an exchange. Exchanges facilitate trading, but they aren't required. And btc hasn't been 20k for over a year -- in fact it never got there as I recall. It's been trading around 3k for the last few months.
        keymone 8y ago
        oh boy.. not your keys - not your bitcoin. that's the mantra in crypto world. you're just repeating nonsense you've heard somewhere. whether exchange gets hacked is irrelevant to bitcoin i own if i'm the only owner of the keys. not true for any money you're currently holding (if we judge from the position you're arguing for), those are completely imaginary indeed.
hndamien 8y ago
My miner dries my washing.

keymone 8y ago

energy would be wasted if it wasn't possible to prove the thing you said bitcoin proves. proof is the product of spent energy, therefore it's not wasted.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
...which is a trivial result, and could be reproduced by simple trust (which is essentially free)
- keymone 8y ago
  that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Trust is dangerous, we’ve been dealing with trust based financial system failures for hundreds of not thousands of years.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    And the other 'whole point' is, its ridiculously expensive to the planet. Its playing mind-games with the ecosystem, burning terawatt-hours to enable imaginary points to be traded without imaginary safeguards.
    - antidesitter 8y ago
      Why do you say “imaginary points”? Do you consider your bank account balance to be “imaginary points”?
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Of course they are just like religion, law, right and wrong and on and on. You can tell what is real, and what is all in Sapiens' heads - ask your dog. They know what real is.
    - keymone 8y ago
      It costs way less than current financial system costs even normalized for market cap or transaction volume because it involves politics and military.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        The internet depends on politics and the military too. Don't be fooled.
        keymone 8y ago
        oh yeah, they have so much control, they've totally fixed the problem of torrenting, child porn and illegal markets. don't be naive, you can't block bitcoin any more than you can block porn. besides, internet is no longer the only information transfer medium bitcoin can work over.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    > that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Well that's nonsense for a start. Bitcoin simply shifts trust from a middleman to a vendor I am interacting with. A middleman that is highly regulated, with all sorts of protections and restrictions in place to protect me. A vendor who has a financial incentive to rip me off, and thousands of years of history to show us just how much they do when given the chance. The trustlessness of cryptocurrencies is a lie. They move trust from a small number parties you can actually trust most of the time, to a huge number of unknown entities with perverse incentives.
    - keymone 8y ago
      nope, you're the one talking nonsense. when your bank tells you you have $100 on your account - it's a lie, all you have is a record in a database and never actual $100 in a safe to back that up. all you have is trust that the bank will provide you $100 when you ask for it. when you have 100BTC, you actually have 100BTC. how is that hard to understand?
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Missed the 'vendor' part. Most folks dealing in bitcoin, don't trade a whole coin at a time (which is what, $20K?) They use an exchange. Which is the same as now, except without any federal safeguards. In fact bitcoin exchanges have infamously been hijacked and abscond with everybody's coins. So where's the safety there? Its imaginary.
        jki275 8y ago
        Not how it works. You can trade any fraction of a coin with or without an exchange. Exchanges facilitate trading, but they aren't required. And btc hasn't been 20k for over a year -- in fact it never got there as I recall. It's been trading around 3k for the last few months.
        keymone 8y ago
        oh boy.. not your keys - not your bitcoin. that's the mantra in crypto world. you're just repeating nonsense you've heard somewhere. whether exchange gets hacked is irrelevant to bitcoin i own if i'm the only owner of the keys. not true for any money you're currently holding (if we judge from the position you're arguing for), those are completely imaginary indeed.

hndamien 8y ago

My miner dries my washing.