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We do need digital gold to be able to have market of cryptocurrencies that are actually in use and not just being speculated on with fiat. Sidechains enable tha

by comboy 6y ago

We do need digital gold to be able to have market of cryptocurrencies that are actually in use and not just being speculated on with fiat. Sidechains enable that. The whole waste argument is ridiculous on so many levels. I imagine these people shouting at people houses - turn off that AC! You are wasting energy for which you have paid! We could have made so many aluminum cans with that! And if you say that sure, let's have digital gold, but not Bitcoin, let's use Foo. Then without sidechains all value in Bitcoin gets destroyed. And I assure that there will be Bar that's going to be pareto optimal to Foo. It just doesn't work. To have a currency, it needs to represent some value. If it's not coming from a government, then people must trust the value will stay there (there's almost always a lot of trust involved in our value assignments). Bitcoin is sooo far from perfect. But you can't have crypto future without it if you think long enough about it. Also on the long run, with everything being connected to the Internet and silicon being cheap, I think many heating elements will also be doing some computation. The fact that they are not - that is a waste.

azernik 6y ago
Cutting down A/C usage is, in fact, an important climate change mitigation.
- comboy 6y ago
  Climate change doesn't care if I use my 1kWh for gaming on a console, using dryer, A/C or computing digits of pi which have already been computed because I wanted to do it on my super inefficient old computer. There are many ways to mitigate climate change but I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. Perhaps focus more on how the energy gets produced, not how it is consumed.
  - effie 6y ago
    > I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. If the advice is sound, maybe we should be telling people about it. For example, we could recommend to replace cheap ineffective ACs with effective but expensive heat pumps and some small percentage of people will do that. But this won't do much to mitigate CO2 production. AC energy consumption isn't a major driver of CO2 pollution, fossil-fueled transport and coal/gas power plants are.
- effie 6y ago
  It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval transport, etc. Everybody can have an AC if we have CO2-free electric energy production.
  - azernik 6y ago
    1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone can have A/C, but we need to keep our usage as low as is feasible.
    - effie 6y ago
      Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume. We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.
      - azernik 6y ago
        BTC is particularly egregious because it produces a lot less social value in exchange for its energy usage than A/C
jonhendry18 6y ago
A/C is useful, and can save lives. Bitcoin is speculative masturbation. And you could do that with a less obscenely wasteful crypto asset.
globular-toast 6y ago
I get what you're saying. Energy price is set by the market so it's irrelevant what it gets used for. But the free market will happily destroy the environment. This is what you learn on day 2 of economics, which is after the majority of the population left the class, it seems. We account for externalities using governments which are able to "correct" the free markets using various strategies like taxation and regulation. Energy is not taxed anywhere near as highly as it should be because it's not taxed according to use. If it were taxed naïvely you'd find many people couldn't afford to boil water because others drove up the price with less essential usage, so that's just not possible. Bitcoin is taking advantage of this. If it were possible to tax energy according to use (and therefore taking into account the external costs), then I'd agree completely with your argument. > I think many heating elements will also be doing some computation. The fact that they are not - that is a waste. This is very interesting. But something doesn't seem quite right to me if everyone was passively mining Bitcoin by heating their home. This requires more thought. The trouble with thinking about any of this too much, though, is it's all completely absurd in the end. All of this: money, gold, other elements we dig out of the ground just to store in vaults somewhere. Buying commodities we never intend to own, much less use. It's layers upon layers of absurdity just to make sure our neighbour doesn't get a larger slice of the pie than we do. Adults tell children to stop arguing and share their toys. This is surely the greatest source of hypocrisy there is. The only way out of madness, I think, is just to accept that for whatever reason our current systems work somehow. We aren't cold or hungry. In fact, we have access to hundreds of times more than we really need. The only thing that really needs fixing is sustainability. That's the only thing! What we currently have isn't fair; some people do get bigger slices of the pie. But we all get enough. So just quit your whining, enjoy your pie, and work on sustainability. If we can make this whole thing sustainable, then you can start trying to hyper-optimise your pie allocation, but before that time you're just decorating a sinking ship.
- comboy 6y ago
  You're right that the cost moves to the consumer and that it hurts those most in need. Maybe UBI, maybe tax on consumers can be nonlinear and be higher when the usage is higher ("fake accounts" are not that simple in the real world). I don't know. I'd like to think that punishing those who produce energy from non-renewable resources should be enough to make those renewable ones become more popular and cost efficient, but it's true that in the real world there are some difficult problems to solve. The last point would be beautiful if it only was true. I would be somewhat ok with banks and funds stealing poor people money through FED if it was the case. But it is not. We are not cold and hungry, but many people are. Even if you are not thinking globally, just US only, just look at COVID-19 and the overall state of healthcare. But the last point brings one valid criticism of Bitcoin that I don't see mentioned practically ever. Money is a positive feedback loop. Bringing real money to the world, one that cannot be easily taken by force, can be scary (don't xkcd wrench me, I mean scenario that's much further, there were many entities throughout human history that acquired a lot of wealth giving them a lot of power, at some point other people become fed up enough that they just took it by force. But in this case, it would not be in any physical place, not necessarily associated with specific individuals). Fiat currencies system is rigged, but the problem is that money itself is somewhat rigged. When you don't have enough of it, you just sell your time and sell it cheap and you don't have enough of it left to find how you could sell it better. With enough money, it just works like a magnet. Better lawyers, research done for you, being able to take high risk bets etc. I'd love to have a state of world that you described in your last paragraph. I wouldn't care much about Bitcoin in such scenario.

by comboy 6y ago

azernik 6y ago

Cutting down A/C usage is, in fact, an important climate change mitigation.

comboy 6y ago
Climate change doesn't care if I use my 1kWh for gaming on a console, using dryer, A/C or computing digits of pi which have already been computed because I wanted to do it on my super inefficient old computer. There are many ways to mitigate climate change but I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. Perhaps focus more on how the energy gets produced, not how it is consumed.
- effie 6y ago
  > I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. If the advice is sound, maybe we should be telling people about it. For example, we could recommend to replace cheap ineffective ACs with effective but expensive heat pumps and some small percentage of people will do that. But this won't do much to mitigate CO2 production. AC energy consumption isn't a major driver of CO2 pollution, fossil-fueled transport and coal/gas power plants are.
effie 6y ago
It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval transport, etc. Everybody can have an AC if we have CO2-free electric energy production.
- azernik 6y ago
  1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone can have A/C, but we need to keep our usage as low as is feasible.
  - effie 6y ago
    Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume. We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.
    - azernik 6y ago
      BTC is particularly egregious because it produces a lot less social value in exchange for its energy usage than A/C

jonhendry18 6y ago

A/C is useful, and can save lives. Bitcoin is speculative masturbation. And you could do that with a less obscenely wasteful crypto asset.

globular-toast 6y ago

I get what you're saying. Energy price is set by the market so it's irrelevant what it gets used for. But the free market will happily destroy the environment. This is what you learn on day 2 of economics, which is after the majority of the population left the class, it seems. We account for externalities using governments which are able to "correct" the free markets using various strategies like taxation and regulation. Energy is not taxed anywhere near as highly as it should be because it's not taxed according to use. If it were taxed naïvely you'd find many people couldn't afford to boil water because others drove up the price with less essential usage, so that's just not possible. Bitcoin is taking advantage of this. If it were possible to tax energy according to use (and therefore taking into account the external costs), then I'd agree completely with your argument. > I think many heating elements will also be doing some computation. The fact that they are not - that is a waste. This is very interesting. But something doesn't seem quite right to me if everyone was passively mining Bitcoin by heating their home. This requires more thought. The trouble with thinking about any of this too much, though, is it's all completely absurd in the end. All of this: money, gold, other elements we dig out of the ground just to store in vaults somewhere. Buying commodities we never intend to own, much less use. It's layers upon layers of absurdity just to make sure our neighbour doesn't get a larger slice of the pie than we do. Adults tell children to stop arguing and share their toys. This is surely the greatest source of hypocrisy there is. The only way out of madness, I think, is just to accept that for whatever reason our current systems work somehow. We aren't cold or hungry. In fact, we have access to hundreds of times more than we really need. The only thing that really needs fixing is sustainability. That's the only thing! What we currently have isn't fair; some people do get bigger slices of the pie. But we all get enough. So just quit your whining, enjoy your pie, and work on sustainability. If we can make this whole thing sustainable, then you can start trying to hyper-optimise your pie allocation, but before that time you're just decorating a sinking ship.

comboy 6y ago
You're right that the cost moves to the consumer and that it hurts those most in need. Maybe UBI, maybe tax on consumers can be nonlinear and be higher when the usage is higher ("fake accounts" are not that simple in the real world). I don't know. I'd like to think that punishing those who produce energy from non-renewable resources should be enough to make those renewable ones become more popular and cost efficient, but it's true that in the real world there are some difficult problems to solve. The last point would be beautiful if it only was true. I would be somewhat ok with banks and funds stealing poor people money through FED if it was the case. But it is not. We are not cold and hungry, but many people are. Even if you are not thinking globally, just US only, just look at COVID-19 and the overall state of healthcare. But the last point brings one valid criticism of Bitcoin that I don't see mentioned practically ever. Money is a positive feedback loop. Bringing real money to the world, one that cannot be easily taken by force, can be scary (don't xkcd wrench me, I mean scenario that's much further, there were many entities throughout human history that acquired a lot of wealth giving them a lot of power, at some point other people become fed up enough that they just took it by force. But in this case, it would not be in any physical place, not necessarily associated with specific individuals). Fiat currencies system is rigged, but the problem is that money itself is somewhat rigged. When you don't have enough of it, you just sell your time and sell it cheap and you don't have enough of it left to find how you could sell it better. With enough money, it just works like a magnet. Better lawyers, research done for you, being able to take high risk bets etc. I'd love to have a state of world that you described in your last paragraph. I wouldn't care much about Bitcoin in such scenario.