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Who gives a shit about energy usage if it is used for a cause that could potentially help humanity overcome adversity? Granted, energy usage is important but it

Who gives a shit about energy usage if it is used for a cause that could potentially help humanity overcome adversity? Granted, energy usage is important but it is a question about trade-offs. If bitcoin helped solve cancer or some genetic diseases, I doubt anyone would say: "yea but it uses too much electricity!". The world is based on trade-offs, so why not have that electricity that the bitcoin network generate be used to solve actual real world problems?

arcticbull 7y ago
It's just unbelievably, mind-bogglingly inefficient, and no credible plans have been put forward to change that. Scaling up the current power consumption and waste generation to Visa-levels of transaction, a Bitcoin powered economy would consume 38X the entire worlds' generation capacity of electricity and yield 132 million metric tons of e-waste per year. All to replace what Visa does today. Just Visa. Not MC, Amex, UnionPay, Discover, etc.
- behringer 7y ago
  That's because a method of solving useful work has not been discovered yet. Are you also incredulous that we don't have flying cars yet and how come Ford hasn't fixed that problem? If you're so concerned, perhaps you should start working on the problem and become the inventor of the next big p2p currency?
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I'd be incredulous if someone had designed a flying car made by taping about ten thousand fans together, pointed them down precariously, and powered them with a little nuclear reactor. Also, it didn't make it more than 3 feet off the ground. Then, had many people talking about how the future of transit had arrived. It clearly hasn't and nobody can point to a single reason their contraption is actually better or does anything novel. But they're all pretttttty sure. > If you're so concerned, perhaps you should start working on the problem and become the inventor of the next big p2p currency? I'm not concerned because the problems identified had already been solved with money. You know, the thing already in your bank account.
    - behringer 7y ago
      Ah I see. Perhaps you should check out https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin some of your points are addressed there.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        I’ve read that before. The core issues are not addressed or are glossed over as of course that’s a pro bitcoin advocacy site. Bitcoin is fundamentally broken at the lowest levels.
        behringer 7y ago
        Which levels and how?
        arcticbull 7y ago
        A single transaction consumes 600kWh of electricity and yields 95 grams of e-waste -- enough to power a US home for 20 days. [1]. This is projected to increase. It's 700,000 times less efficient than Visa. If Visa alone were ported to Bitcoin levels of inefficiency it would consume 38X the entire world's power generation capacity. [2] It's actively anti-efficient and becomes less efficient as the price scales and as technology improves. It has worse wealth distribution than any banana republic. [3] The PoW system creates a net negative drag on any economy approximately equivalent to a 48% rate of inflation [4]. It's slow, taking up to 10 minutes to process. It's inefficient. It allows payments to terrorists and rogue states [5]. It's built to allow scams to thrive. It's not even anonymous, it's pseudonymous and tools will automate deanonymization if it ever manages to make it through the top few issues, which, let's face it, it won't. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://www.cbeci.org/ https://www.cbeci.org/ [3] https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/14/2-of-bitcoin-addresses-control-80-of-wealth-research/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/14/2-of-bitcoin-addresses-co... [4] https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl/source/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl.n.pdf https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl/sou... [5] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/north-korea-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-blockchain-un-report-a8819446.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
bdcravens 7y ago
We could also make an argument that Mark Zuckerberg could solve income inequality by tracking everyone and providing true transparency to a utopian world. I'm pretty certain that if you evaluate mining and exchange activity, very little of it is impacting areas where it can effect real change (like Hong Kong or Venezuela). For example, here's a report from the trenches on Venezuela: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dht1qw/venezuela_update_living_here_1_btc_is_around/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dht1qw/venezuela_u... For the disaster that is that economy, only 0.004% of global BTC volume is taking place there (yes, that's the correct number of zeroes) Put another way, it represents about 0.08% of Venezuela's GDP.

arcticbull 7y ago

It's just unbelievably, mind-bogglingly inefficient, and no credible plans have been put forward to change that. Scaling up the current power consumption and waste generation to Visa-levels of transaction, a Bitcoin powered economy would consume 38X the entire worlds' generation capacity of electricity and yield 132 million metric tons of e-waste per year. All to replace what Visa does today. Just Visa. Not MC, Amex, UnionPay, Discover, etc.

behringer 7y ago
That's because a method of solving useful work has not been discovered yet. Are you also incredulous that we don't have flying cars yet and how come Ford hasn't fixed that problem? If you're so concerned, perhaps you should start working on the problem and become the inventor of the next big p2p currency?
- arcticbull 7y ago
  I'd be incredulous if someone had designed a flying car made by taping about ten thousand fans together, pointed them down precariously, and powered them with a little nuclear reactor. Also, it didn't make it more than 3 feet off the ground. Then, had many people talking about how the future of transit had arrived. It clearly hasn't and nobody can point to a single reason their contraption is actually better or does anything novel. But they're all pretttttty sure. > If you're so concerned, perhaps you should start working on the problem and become the inventor of the next big p2p currency? I'm not concerned because the problems identified had already been solved with money. You know, the thing already in your bank account.
  - behringer 7y ago
    Ah I see. Perhaps you should check out https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin some of your points are addressed there.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      I’ve read that before. The core issues are not addressed or are glossed over as of course that’s a pro bitcoin advocacy site. Bitcoin is fundamentally broken at the lowest levels.
      - behringer 7y ago
        Which levels and how?
        arcticbull 7y ago
        A single transaction consumes 600kWh of electricity and yields 95 grams of e-waste -- enough to power a US home for 20 days. [1]. This is projected to increase. It's 700,000 times less efficient than Visa. If Visa alone were ported to Bitcoin levels of inefficiency it would consume 38X the entire world's power generation capacity. [2] It's actively anti-efficient and becomes less efficient as the price scales and as technology improves. It has worse wealth distribution than any banana republic. [3] The PoW system creates a net negative drag on any economy approximately equivalent to a 48% rate of inflation [4]. It's slow, taking up to 10 minutes to process. It's inefficient. It allows payments to terrorists and rogue states [5]. It's built to allow scams to thrive. It's not even anonymous, it's pseudonymous and tools will automate deanonymization if it ever manages to make it through the top few issues, which, let's face it, it won't. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://www.cbeci.org/ https://www.cbeci.org/ [3] https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/14/2-of-bitcoin-addresses-control-80-of-wealth-research/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/14/2-of-bitcoin-addresses-co... [4] https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl/source/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl.n.pdf https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl/sou... [5] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/north-korea-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-blockchain-un-report-a8819446.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

bdcravens 7y ago

We could also make an argument that Mark Zuckerberg could solve income inequality by tracking everyone and providing true transparency to a utopian world. I'm pretty certain that if you evaluate mining and exchange activity, very little of it is impacting areas where it can effect real change (like Hong Kong or Venezuela). For example, here's a report from the trenches on Venezuela: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dht1qw/venezuela_update_living_here_1_btc_is_around/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dht1qw/venezuela_u... For the disaster that is that economy, only 0.004% of global BTC volume is taking place there (yes, that's the correct number of zeroes) Put another way, it represents about 0.08% of Venezuela's GDP.