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An article about blockchain where the thesis is that it doesn't solve any problems and it doesn't even mention Ethereum? This article is extremely poorly resear

by Sargos 6y ago

An article about blockchain where the thesis is that it doesn't solve any problems and it doesn't even mention Ethereum? This article is extremely poorly researched (maybe on purpose) and reads like clickbait.

bschwindHN 6y ago
It does mention ethereum: > So much energy that the two biggest blockchains in the world – bitcoin and Ethereum – are now using up the same amount of electricity as the whole of Austria.
- ikt 6y ago
  Ethereum developers have been working extremely hard to move to proof of stake to remove this massive power requirement. It's too bad that wasn't mentioned in the article.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    Slide side track but I never get the complaints about power usage. It’d be great if crypto used less energy obviously but doesn’t fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      No. Proof of work is insane and uses too much energy by design.
    - coolgod 6y ago
      Can you explain why you think fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?
      - vageli 6y ago
        Transporting physical currency requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure.
        rainbow-road 6y ago
        The same physical infrastructure that is also used for transporting just about everything else? Anyway, most currency transfer these days is digital, so even that doesn't hold much water.
        vageli 6y ago
        We use armored cars and people licensed to carry firearms for the transport of "just about everything else"? Also, most currency transfer being digital is a non-sequitor Businesses still need to move the money from their location to the bank regardless of the volume of transfers done digitally.
        _fq4v 6y ago
        You are conflating fiat currency and physical dollars. The total sum value of physical currency is much less than the total amount of dollars in existence. Most dollars exist only as entries in a ledger.
    - scoopertrooper 6y ago
      A centralised system built around reputational trust will always use less energy than one where trust is derived from compute time.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - viraptor 6y ago
      Fiat also uses crazy amount of energy in absolute terms. But per-transaction costs are much lower for fiat.
      - coolgod 6y ago
        Can you give some examples of ubititous systems in the real world which don't use crazy amount of energy in absolute terms? It would be helpful if you could provide an estimate for your notion of "crazy amount of energy" in terms of powers of ten kWh.
        viraptor 6y ago
        They pretty much all do, I didn't claim otherwise. This is not the argument you're looking for :)
        redis_mlc 6y ago
        I know you're sealioning, but I've worked in payments and here's some examples for you: - the largest bank in Canada used one Tandem computer for all banking transactions until 2000 - ebay used one E10K for all auction transactions until 2000. (I actually worked in the data centers for those, and could have touched them if I wasn't concerned about possible grounding issues.) You're looking at a few kilowatts each for billions of transactions per day. So any comparison of bitcoin mining vs. banking is simply stupid.
    - bjo590 6y ago
      I'd like to point you to this Vice article titled "One Bitcoin Transaction Consumes As Much Energy As Your House Uses in a Week". Meanwhile swiping a credit card uses slightly more electricity than a google query. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-ele...
      - seibelj 6y ago
        Does it not seem strange to you that if a BTC transaction costs $1 to $5 in fees, yet supposedly uses $50 or more in “actual” electricity costs, there must be a disconnect there? There is energy in certain places (underground, hydro) that cannot be transported to wherever journalists are writing their papers as they spitball electricity calculations.
        robjan 6y ago
        Miners don't just receive the fees. They also receive the mined bitcoins.
      - ikt 6y ago
        So the first article doesn't mention Ethereum and another article doesn't mention Hydro. This is why journalism has a bad wrap. https://news.bitcoin.com/how-big-hydro-power-partners-with-bitcoin-miners-to-prevent-energy-waste https://news.bitcoin.com/how-big-hydro-power-partners-with-b... China’s southwestern Sichuan province, a mountainous region that is estimated to have over 50% of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-rainstorms-china https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-rainstorms...
        robjan 6y ago
        The amount of hydro electricity that can be produced is fairly static, so increasing hydro consumption means that other energy sources (mostly coal) are needed to pick up the rest of the demand.
    - FuckButtons 6y ago
      No, it does not, visa for example uses about 500,000 times less energy per transaction.
- Sargos 6y ago
  Yeah, that's the only spot. Literally just an "and" next to Bitcoin when talking about electricity usage. No mention of what it does, what's currently being built, or the use cases people are using today. I guess that doesn't fit the author's narrative so they ignore it or maybe don't even know it exists. I don't know which is worse in this case.
  - donohoe 6y ago
    Can you explain it then, because when I dig into it I don’t see much?
    - Sargos 6y ago
      That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information. Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't. You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of. DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets. There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.
graeme 6y ago
Could you elaborate on what problems Ethereum has solve? Genuinely curious, as I shared this article’s preconceptions.
- Sargos 6y ago
  I wrote this below but copying here as it's hard to write a huge comment twice. That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information. Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't. You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of. DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets. There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    I'm not seeing any solved problems here.
  - CobrastanJorji 6y ago
    > Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. Ah, yes, that was Amazon's mistake. Accepting Internet money has meant that I've been able to just email them photocopies of the same money over and over. Hahaha, it has been the perfect crime. I hope Amazon never embrances Ethereum and I can keep getting free merchandise forever.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ulfw 6y ago
And yet it is oh so true.
dk8996 6y ago
I complete agree. Not mentioning ICOs (a way for projects and companies to raise money) and not mentioning DeFi (a way to lend and borrow money). I can't really take this publication seriously.

by Sargos 6y ago

bschwindHN 6y ago

It does mention ethereum: > So much energy that the two biggest blockchains in the world – bitcoin and Ethereum – are now using up the same amount of electricity as the whole of Austria.

ikt 6y ago
Ethereum developers have been working extremely hard to move to proof of stake to remove this massive power requirement. It's too bad that wasn't mentioned in the article.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Slide side track but I never get the complaints about power usage. It’d be great if crypto used less energy obviously but doesn’t fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    No. Proof of work is insane and uses too much energy by design.
  - coolgod 6y ago
    Can you explain why you think fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?
    - vageli 6y ago
      Transporting physical currency requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure.
      - rainbow-road 6y ago
        The same physical infrastructure that is also used for transporting just about everything else? Anyway, most currency transfer these days is digital, so even that doesn't hold much water.
        vageli 6y ago
        We use armored cars and people licensed to carry firearms for the transport of "just about everything else"? Also, most currency transfer being digital is a non-sequitor Businesses still need to move the money from their location to the bank regardless of the volume of transfers done digitally.
      - _fq4v 6y ago
        You are conflating fiat currency and physical dollars. The total sum value of physical currency is much less than the total amount of dollars in existence. Most dollars exist only as entries in a ledger.
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    A centralised system built around reputational trust will always use less energy than one where trust is derived from compute time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Fiat also uses crazy amount of energy in absolute terms. But per-transaction costs are much lower for fiat.
    - coolgod 6y ago
      Can you give some examples of ubititous systems in the real world which don't use crazy amount of energy in absolute terms? It would be helpful if you could provide an estimate for your notion of "crazy amount of energy" in terms of powers of ten kWh.
      - viraptor 6y ago
        They pretty much all do, I didn't claim otherwise. This is not the argument you're looking for :)
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        I know you're sealioning, but I've worked in payments and here's some examples for you: - the largest bank in Canada used one Tandem computer for all banking transactions until 2000 - ebay used one E10K for all auction transactions until 2000. (I actually worked in the data centers for those, and could have touched them if I wasn't concerned about possible grounding issues.) You're looking at a few kilowatts each for billions of transactions per day. So any comparison of bitcoin mining vs. banking is simply stupid.
  - bjo590 6y ago
    I'd like to point you to this Vice article titled "One Bitcoin Transaction Consumes As Much Energy As Your House Uses in a Week". Meanwhile swiping a credit card uses slightly more electricity than a google query. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-ele...
    - seibelj 6y ago
      Does it not seem strange to you that if a BTC transaction costs $1 to $5 in fees, yet supposedly uses $50 or more in “actual” electricity costs, there must be a disconnect there? There is energy in certain places (underground, hydro) that cannot be transported to wherever journalists are writing their papers as they spitball electricity calculations.
      - robjan 6y ago
        Miners don't just receive the fees. They also receive the mined bitcoins.
    - ikt 6y ago
      So the first article doesn't mention Ethereum and another article doesn't mention Hydro. This is why journalism has a bad wrap. https://news.bitcoin.com/how-big-hydro-power-partners-with-bitcoin-miners-to-prevent-energy-waste https://news.bitcoin.com/how-big-hydro-power-partners-with-b... China’s southwestern Sichuan province, a mountainous region that is estimated to have over 50% of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-rainstorms-china https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-rainstorms...
      - robjan 6y ago
        The amount of hydro electricity that can be produced is fairly static, so increasing hydro consumption means that other energy sources (mostly coal) are needed to pick up the rest of the demand.
  - FuckButtons 6y ago
    No, it does not, visa for example uses about 500,000 times less energy per transaction.
Sargos 6y ago
Yeah, that's the only spot. Literally just an "and" next to Bitcoin when talking about electricity usage. No mention of what it does, what's currently being built, or the use cases people are using today. I guess that doesn't fit the author's narrative so they ignore it or maybe don't even know it exists. I don't know which is worse in this case.
- donohoe 6y ago
  Can you explain it then, because when I dig into it I don’t see much?
  - Sargos 6y ago
    That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information. Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't. You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of. DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets. There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.

graeme 6y ago

Could you elaborate on what problems Ethereum has solve? Genuinely curious, as I shared this article’s preconceptions.

Sargos 6y ago
I wrote this below but copying here as it's hard to write a huge comment twice. That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information. Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't. You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of. DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets. There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.
- mdoms 6y ago
  I'm not seeing any solved problems here.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  > Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. Ah, yes, that was Amazon's mistake. Accepting Internet money has meant that I've been able to just email them photocopies of the same money over and over. Hahaha, it has been the perfect crime. I hope Amazon never embrances Ethereum and I can keep getting free merchandise forever.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ulfw 6y ago

And yet it is oh so true.

dk8996 6y ago

I complete agree. Not mentioning ICOs (a way for projects and companies to raise money) and not mentioning DeFi (a way to lend and borrow money). I can't really take this publication seriously.