3 ms·

I think a lot of that energy would have otherwise been wasted (e.g. surplus power from times of the day or season), and I remember reading that the vast majorit

I think a lot of that energy would have otherwise been wasted (e.g. surplus power from times of the day or season), and I remember reading that the vast majority of it is at least renewable energy. At least it seems a lot better than assets too? Like take gold, people are happy spending up to the spot price in order to extract it from the earth, environmental damage be damned.

arcticbull 6y ago
There’s no such thing as free magical wasted energy that just happens to only be good for Bitcoin mining lol, there’s plenty of other things that can be done with it. Gold expends energy to mine but is essentially free to store, bitcoin costs money to store proportional to its market price. Socialized across block reward in the form of inflation. When that ends of course nobody will pay the actual $80-100 per transaction in electricity actually required to secure the network making it vulnerable to a 51% attack.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > essentially free to store Ha, no. Theres a thing called "security" and if you don't pay for it your gold evaporates or walks away.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    The cost on a warehouse and security guards for a year is likely as much as a single Bitcoin transaction, in terms of energy anyways.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      how much bitcoin can you transfer for $300k?
- 314 6y ago
  > Gold expends energy to mine but is essentially free to store, bitcoin costs money to store proportional to its market price. It's not really that simple. There is a different breakdown when you look at individual vs global costs. There is a cost to an individual for storing gold - e.g. building a vault, hiring a guard etc. This cost was the original incentive scheme behind the early banks - if we pool our gold storage then we can pool our security costs. Beyond that individual cost there is no additional global cost for storage. Bitcoin is free to store for an individual. Once funds are stored at an address in the blockchain they will stay there. Although the global cost is huge it is invisible at the individual level - nobody needs to participate in mining the chain to hold bitcoin. History suggests that individuals favor situations where the costs have been socialized and are not visible at the individual level.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    The cost to store gold is an empty building and a few kalashnikovs. That scales roughly constant. The cost to store Bitcoin is the cost to secure the network, and its outrageous. Further it scales linearly with the price of Bitcoin as block reward value does.
eecc 6y ago
Well, it’s a special kind of stupid to introduce renewable energy without using it to displace fossil fuels. Science says we’re already pretty much fucked if we don’t go full-on panic mode, and here we are, still wasting this opportunity, if not to keep our feet dry, at least to keep our chin above water...

arcticbull 6y ago

There’s no such thing as free magical wasted energy that just happens to only be good for Bitcoin mining lol, there’s plenty of other things that can be done with it. Gold expends energy to mine but is essentially free to store, bitcoin costs money to store proportional to its market price. Socialized across block reward in the form of inflation. When that ends of course nobody will pay the actual $80-100 per transaction in electricity actually required to secure the network making it vulnerable to a 51% attack.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> essentially free to store Ha, no. Theres a thing called "security" and if you don't pay for it your gold evaporates or walks away.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  The cost on a warehouse and security guards for a year is likely as much as a single Bitcoin transaction, in terms of energy anyways.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    how much bitcoin can you transfer for $300k?
314 6y ago
> Gold expends energy to mine but is essentially free to store, bitcoin costs money to store proportional to its market price. It's not really that simple. There is a different breakdown when you look at individual vs global costs. There is a cost to an individual for storing gold - e.g. building a vault, hiring a guard etc. This cost was the original incentive scheme behind the early banks - if we pool our gold storage then we can pool our security costs. Beyond that individual cost there is no additional global cost for storage. Bitcoin is free to store for an individual. Once funds are stored at an address in the blockchain they will stay there. Although the global cost is huge it is invisible at the individual level - nobody needs to participate in mining the chain to hold bitcoin. History suggests that individuals favor situations where the costs have been socialized and are not visible at the individual level.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  The cost to store gold is an empty building and a few kalashnikovs. That scales roughly constant. The cost to store Bitcoin is the cost to secure the network, and its outrageous. Further it scales linearly with the price of Bitcoin as block reward value does.

eecc 6y ago

Well, it’s a special kind of stupid to introduce renewable energy without using it to displace fossil fuels. Science says we’re already pretty much fucked if we don’t go full-on panic mode, and here we are, still wasting this opportunity, if not to keep our feet dry, at least to keep our chin above water...