3 ms·

Old news. The far more interesting question is what to do about it. The OP has some suggestions, but I have some more radical ones: - put carbon taxes on BTC/f

by corty 6y ago

Old news. The far more interesting question is what to do about it. The OP has some suggestions, but I have some more radical ones: - put carbon taxes on BTC/fiat exchanges - outlaw mining - outlaw BTC transactions - put economic pressure on other countries to do the same Basically, there is no benefit to the world that cannot be done with far more energy-efficient means, e.g centralized currency or proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies. Proof of work needs to go, sooner rather than later.

shawnz 6y ago
Would proof-of-stake systems ever have been developed if proof-of-work systems didn't come around first to build widespread trust in cryptocurrencies? If not, then you could say that the energy consumed up til now by proof-of-work systems was essential to the development of proof-of-stake systems. I think that OP is strawmanning Bitcoin as it exists today into being the end goal of all cryptocurrency technology when really it's just the very first stepping stone.
- corty 6y ago
  Coal was burnt to get to our current level of industrialisation. A lot of steel for wind turbines was smelted with coke. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find better ways and get rid of the old polluting methods. And no, I'm not strawmanning to get rid of all cryptocurrencies. I'm naming a concrete problem with a part of them (the older, legacy, proof-of-work ones) that needs to be corrected by changing to better ones. That your investments might suffer is tragic of course. But the same goes for all the coal miners...
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Agreed, I am eager to see the widespread adoption of proof-of-stake technologies to improve the efficiency of cryptocurrencies. The inefficiencies of proof-of-work aren't something to be happy about obviously, except insofar as they enabled cryptocurrency technology that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. And to be clear, I was referring to OP the author of the twitter thread.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
What about a carbon tax on... well, carbon!! I mean, carbon extraction. Carbon, the thing that pollutes in so many ways, so more terrible ways than just electricity generation? Let's start with the bad things first. Then the others. Then the others. And then, finally, we can talk about Bitcoin. </rant>
- corty 6y ago
  No. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are really just a waste of electricity. Even if you put your miners next to a hydro plant it is wasteful. You could just use proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies and do something productive with the electricity, like smelt steel or produce hydrogen. Bitcoin is the equivalent of heating your house with the body heat of cows. Yes, its possible, yes, it works, yes, it used to be done this way. But it isn't really efficient and while a few cow-merchants and fleas might object, the world is better now.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Bitcoin is the equivalent of heating your camp by setting a forest on fire. "Look ma, radiative heat bouncing off the hills will keep us warm for couple of days, and when we come around here next year, the animals living here will be easier to hunt!". Sure, we used to do that, before we learned how to write. But holy hell does it not scale.
- xondono 6y ago
  Yeah, until you realize that in a lot of places Bitcoin is far more profitable than any other activity, meaning that any use other than Bitcoin mining would be priced out of the market.
BenoitP 6y ago
> put carbon taxes on BTC/fiat exchanges Almost the best solution that preserves bitcoin, which is: put a tax on BTC mining. The Bitcoin consensus rules rely on miners proving their faith in Bitcoin up to the amount of resources they are prepared to (provably) burn. Since this is about 'wasting' resources, having it taxed 99% globally would let the faith proof stay intact while the environmental cost would go down by 100x. You do can 'burn' resources by giving it to your local government. And it would actually benefit the local population. Caveat: it has to be global, and at about the same rate everywhere. Can it happen without a world government? I don't know. But governments could start to trace transaction compositions up to a distribution over block rewards; and back-collect a tax on them accordingly. That is if they can control transactions; but governments do have a fair amount of leverage over the average joe's daily activity. But all this presupposes that Bitcoin has gone mainstream and is used in the daily life, and we're definitely not quite there yet. ---- On another note, it is a bit sad the article does not mention halvings, which are quite relevant to that topic.

by corty 6y ago

shawnz 6y ago

Would proof-of-stake systems ever have been developed if proof-of-work systems didn't come around first to build widespread trust in cryptocurrencies? If not, then you could say that the energy consumed up til now by proof-of-work systems was essential to the development of proof-of-stake systems. I think that OP is strawmanning Bitcoin as it exists today into being the end goal of all cryptocurrency technology when really it's just the very first stepping stone.

corty 6y ago
Coal was burnt to get to our current level of industrialisation. A lot of steel for wind turbines was smelted with coke. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find better ways and get rid of the old polluting methods. And no, I'm not strawmanning to get rid of all cryptocurrencies. I'm naming a concrete problem with a part of them (the older, legacy, proof-of-work ones) that needs to be corrected by changing to better ones. That your investments might suffer is tragic of course. But the same goes for all the coal miners...
- shawnz 6y ago
  Agreed, I am eager to see the widespread adoption of proof-of-stake technologies to improve the efficiency of cryptocurrencies. The inefficiencies of proof-of-work aren't something to be happy about obviously, except insofar as they enabled cryptocurrency technology that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. And to be clear, I was referring to OP the author of the twitter thread.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

What about a carbon tax on... well, carbon!! I mean, carbon extraction. Carbon, the thing that pollutes in so many ways, so more terrible ways than just electricity generation? Let's start with the bad things first. Then the others. Then the others. And then, finally, we can talk about Bitcoin. </rant>

corty 6y ago
No. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are really just a waste of electricity. Even if you put your miners next to a hydro plant it is wasteful. You could just use proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies and do something productive with the electricity, like smelt steel or produce hydrogen. Bitcoin is the equivalent of heating your house with the body heat of cows. Yes, its possible, yes, it works, yes, it used to be done this way. But it isn't really efficient and while a few cow-merchants and fleas might object, the world is better now.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Bitcoin is the equivalent of heating your camp by setting a forest on fire. "Look ma, radiative heat bouncing off the hills will keep us warm for couple of days, and when we come around here next year, the animals living here will be easier to hunt!". Sure, we used to do that, before we learned how to write. But holy hell does it not scale.
xondono 6y ago
Yeah, until you realize that in a lot of places Bitcoin is far more profitable than any other activity, meaning that any use other than Bitcoin mining would be priced out of the market.

BenoitP 6y ago

> put carbon taxes on BTC/fiat exchanges Almost the best solution that preserves bitcoin, which is: put a tax on BTC mining. The Bitcoin consensus rules rely on miners proving their faith in Bitcoin up to the amount of resources they are prepared to (provably) burn. Since this is about 'wasting' resources, having it taxed 99% globally would let the faith proof stay intact while the environmental cost would go down by 100x. You do can 'burn' resources by giving it to your local government. And it would actually benefit the local population. Caveat: it has to be global, and at about the same rate everywhere. Can it happen without a world government? I don't know. But governments could start to trace transaction compositions up to a distribution over block rewards; and back-collect a tax on them accordingly. That is if they can control transactions; but governments do have a fair amount of leverage over the average joe's daily activity. But all this presupposes that Bitcoin has gone mainstream and is used in the daily life, and we're definitely not quite there yet. ---- On another note, it is a bit sad the article does not mention halvings, which are quite relevant to that topic.