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I think the people who are critical of the wastefulness of Bitcoin fail to factor in the usefulness of a store of value. Whether you like it or not, human bein
by runeks 6y ago
I think the people who are critical of the wastefulness of Bitcoin fail to factor in the usefulness of a store of value.
Whether you like it or not, human beings find a need to store value. In countries without a proper store of value -- due to e.g. government intervention -- they start hoarding commodities (e.g. wheat, cotton) or productive assets like cars.
So the question becomes whether having something like Bitcoin as a replacement for hoarding useful assets is actually environmentally preferable. Hoarding millions of cars as a store of value -- as they do in e.g. Argentina -- also impacts the environment, as we need to produce more cars to account for it. So if hoarding bitcoins replaces this practice, perhaps it will become a net benefit for the environment.
Of course, this point of view assumes the inevitability of hoarding. As far as I can see, it's a survival instinct, which cannot be suppressed -- we can only control which goods are hoarded. Ban money and people will start hoarding less saleable goods.
- kaonashi 6y agoLots of things can be used as stores of value that don't require the electrical output of a medium sized country.
- runeks 6y agoI disagree. The only asset that falls into this category is credit. And credit is not a good -- it's a promise that someone will deliver a good to you when you demand it. And this type of promise tends to be broken just when you need it the most.
- ericb 6y agoProof of stake coins exist and work just fine. Tezos. Ethereum.
- runeks 6y agoProof-of-stake has different properties than proof-of-work. For example, given n different chains, proof-of-work (PoW) reaches consensus simply by choosing the chain with the most work — irrespective of block contents. Proof-of-stake (PoS), on the other hand, requires granting special meaning to a particular public key (in the first block) in order to reach consensus. So PoW reaches consensus without granting special meaning to any public key while PoS requires this in order to work.
- moralsupply 6y agoFiat currencies proof-of-work is taxation, inflation and interest rate control. That accounts for 1/2 of your productivity, just so that governments can have a monopoly on their currencies. Not to say that managing fiat money is tremendously wasteful. Credit cards alone take 3% of every transaction on fees that barely make sense. Banks charge ridiculous taxes on pretty much everything they do, and don't even guarantee your money can be withdrawn. Gold and silver on a per unit-of-value basis require more energy to mine than Bitcoin. When you compound all of that, you'll realize that Bitcoin energy expenditures are overall not so much of a big deal. But if they are a big deal for you, at least be consistent and go after gold and silver mining, to start with, and do fight against governments' monopolies on currencies, as those are a lot less "green" and more widespread than Bitcoin. Additionally, you can come up with new blockchain technologies that don't require PoW, and/or support the existing ones that don't require PoW by parking your money on them. You can also short Bitcoin in a futures market in order to protest against it.