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That's putting it in the best possible light. Mining gold leaves the world with physical blocks of gold, which has no continuous upkeep cost. "Mining" cryptoc

That's putting it in the best possible light. Mining gold leaves the world with physical blocks of gold, which has no continuous upkeep cost. "Mining" cryptocurrency leaves the world with an asset that requires continual upkeep (further "mining") in order to maintain that asset. Any significant drop in the network's hashrate opens it up to attacks. The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, proportional to the value represented by Bitcoin.

tikwidd 6y ago
But the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). In other words, if you just mine a physical gold block, you don't really have an asset without the state's (or your own) continual upkeep that keeps it protected from attacks.
- 23iofj 6y ago
  > But the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. This completely misses the point, which was one of magnitude: >> The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, PROPORTIOANAL TO THE VALUE REPRESENTED by Bitcoin. Also, that upkeep cost is 100.00% to protect the value of existing bitcoin. C.f., gold: > If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). I don't need continuous mining of bitcoin to protect my non-bitcoin stuff. However, I do need the "state apparatus of violence" to protect my non-gold stuff, including things like my house and my body, and oh yeah, my fucking mining rig! If all gold disappeared tomorrow, would anything about the "state apparatus of violence" change? No, of course not. That is absurd.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    I never understood the "violence" argument against government. In that sense of the word "violence", there is no alternative that does not at some level also come down to the threat of force. The "state apparatus of violence" won't look so bad after you've dismantled the state in favor of something approaching anarcho-capitalism and are then close to Hobbe's state of nature: nasty, british, and short.
    - skolsuper 6y ago
      brutish? Although as a Brit myself it's amusing to consider myself some kind of atavistic archetype of humanity
- Retric 6y ago
  Those same apparatus are also needed to maintain a global internet without which Bitcoin is useless. You can also just bury gold to keep people from finding it, which is one of the reasons it’s maintained value throughout history.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Upkeep of gold doesn't scale at the same rate as Bitcoin. If we suddenly had 1000 tons more gold, we could put it in existing vaults and very little increased cost.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >you don't really have an asset without the state's (or your own) continual upkeep that keeps it protected from attacks. This describes Bitcoin too. I think it's facially absurd to claim that the existing financial system (including military, police, etc) costs anywhere near what bitcoin does, but even if it does, it's irrelevant because bitcoin doesn't provide the same things. Bitcoin is a virtual bar of gold or piece of currency, not a financial system. "Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis" "“Even sophisticated investors have been completely incapable of doing any kind of management of private keys,” said Diogo Monica, the co-founder of a start-up called Anchorage, which helps companies handle cryptocurrency security. Mr. Monica started the company in 2017 after helping a hedge fund regain access to one of its Bitcoin wallets." "“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way, ‘Do you make your own shoes?’” he said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.” Like remembering where the money is!" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-12/don-t-forget-your-bitcoins https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-12/don-t-...
mtreis86 6y ago
Gold has an upkeep, Fort Knox doesn't operate for free, neither does a bank.
- minitoar 6y ago
  Plus, gold was created by a supernova so you should take that energy into account as well.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    Nice one Actually though, I wonder if there's an analogy that could be drawn between the real origin of gold (supernova) and bitcoin (mining a block). Both are created as dense byproducts of a large compression event (bitcoin: transactions; supernova: the rest of the star). ?
    - nvader 6y ago
      There's nothing special about gold, every other heavy element is also a by-product of supernovae. So, the analogy only works on a dully contrived poetic level, unless you also want to compare Bitcoin meaningfully with lead.
  - m00dy 6y ago
    I like your comment. May I use it on my daily life without referencing you explicitly ?
    - minitoar 6y ago
      Yes, first one’s free.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    This comment is probably sarcasm, but just in case it was meant seriously, I just want to make it clear that expending the energy of another supernova to create a currency would be, overall, a Bad Thing at this point in time. Unless you've got some dyson spheres lying around that you're not telling me about, I'm going to politely request that bitcoin advocates not expend more energy than we have in the entire world just so that they can diversify their investment portfolios.
kyrieeschaton 6y ago
Did you know that vanilla financial securities also require upkeep? Approximately 0.5% of the value of all financial assets is burned every year (and potentially an order of magnitude more, depending on what asset and packaging you're talking about).
- XorNot 6y ago
  That's a heck of a figure you're not providing a reference or explanation for at all. Or even an explanation of what you mean by financial securities and "burned".
  - lupire 6y ago
    It's the fee you pay to your investment manager.
  - kyrieeschaton 6y ago
    "Securities" is a pretty well understood term. Mutual funds, the most legible way to get an estimate of the holding cost of securities (since they are required to transact at net asset value) routinely charge between 0.2-1% fees, depending on size and asset class. Clearinghouses, transfer agents, and cash management firms don't work for free, which is the problem that cryptocurrencies explicitly solve; neither do compliance, KYC, fraud, etc., which most cryptocurrency protocols elide altogether.
- salawat 6y ago
  They also have an entire corpus of regulation surrounding them and coordination overhead that allows sovereign states to compare apples to apples, and ensure that these respective sovereign State's financial systems are not utilized to facilitate patterns of behavior those respective State's citizens define as criminal. Oh wait.. You don't want that functionality, and you're still using up the energy footprint in the event you are correct. One of these delivers significantly less versatility than the other for the same energy investment.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
judgemcjudgy 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if gold mining is way worse for the environment than Bitcoin mining.
bogomipz 6y ago
>"Any significant drop in the network's hashrate opens it up to attacks." I was curious about this. What would "significant" be? What is it based on - the number of outstanding blocks? Is this vulnerability mentioned anywhere in the protocol spec?

tikwidd 6y ago

But the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). In other words, if you just mine a physical gold block, you don't really have an asset without the state's (or your own) continual upkeep that keeps it protected from attacks.

23iofj 6y ago
> But the upkeep cost of protecting the gold is continuous in the same way as bitcoin mining. This completely misses the point, which was one of magnitude: >> The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, PROPORTIOANAL TO THE VALUE REPRESENTED by Bitcoin. Also, that upkeep cost is 100.00% to protect the value of existing bitcoin. C.f., gold: > If you want to own some gold you need to protect it (usually with the state apparatus of violence, which has massive externalities). I don't need continuous mining of bitcoin to protect my non-bitcoin stuff. However, I do need the "state apparatus of violence" to protect my non-gold stuff, including things like my house and my body, and oh yeah, my fucking mining rig! If all gold disappeared tomorrow, would anything about the "state apparatus of violence" change? No, of course not. That is absurd.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I never understood the "violence" argument against government. In that sense of the word "violence", there is no alternative that does not at some level also come down to the threat of force. The "state apparatus of violence" won't look so bad after you've dismantled the state in favor of something approaching anarcho-capitalism and are then close to Hobbe's state of nature: nasty, british, and short.
  - skolsuper 6y ago
    brutish? Although as a Brit myself it's amusing to consider myself some kind of atavistic archetype of humanity
Retric 6y ago
Those same apparatus are also needed to maintain a global internet without which Bitcoin is useless. You can also just bury gold to keep people from finding it, which is one of the reasons it’s maintained value throughout history.
ineedasername 6y ago
Upkeep of gold doesn't scale at the same rate as Bitcoin. If we suddenly had 1000 tons more gold, we could put it in existing vaults and very little increased cost.
perl4ever 6y ago
>you don't really have an asset without the state's (or your own) continual upkeep that keeps it protected from attacks. This describes Bitcoin too. I think it's facially absurd to claim that the existing financial system (including military, police, etc) costs anywhere near what bitcoin does, but even if it does, it's irrelevant because bitcoin doesn't provide the same things. Bitcoin is a virtual bar of gold or piece of currency, not a financial system. "Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis" "“Even sophisticated investors have been completely incapable of doing any kind of management of private keys,” said Diogo Monica, the co-founder of a start-up called Anchorage, which helps companies handle cryptocurrency security. Mr. Monica started the company in 2017 after helping a hedge fund regain access to one of its Bitcoin wallets." "“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way, ‘Do you make your own shoes?’” he said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.” Like remembering where the money is!" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-12/don-t-forget-your-bitcoins https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-12/don-t-...

mtreis86 6y ago

Gold has an upkeep, Fort Knox doesn't operate for free, neither does a bank.

minitoar 6y ago
Plus, gold was created by a supernova so you should take that energy into account as well.
- infogulch 6y ago
  Nice one Actually though, I wonder if there's an analogy that could be drawn between the real origin of gold (supernova) and bitcoin (mining a block). Both are created as dense byproducts of a large compression event (bitcoin: transactions; supernova: the rest of the star). ?
  - nvader 6y ago
    There's nothing special about gold, every other heavy element is also a by-product of supernovae. So, the analogy only works on a dully contrived poetic level, unless you also want to compare Bitcoin meaningfully with lead.
- m00dy 6y ago
  I like your comment. May I use it on my daily life without referencing you explicitly ?
  - minitoar 6y ago
    Yes, first one’s free.
- danShumway 6y ago
  This comment is probably sarcasm, but just in case it was meant seriously, I just want to make it clear that expending the energy of another supernova to create a currency would be, overall, a Bad Thing at this point in time. Unless you've got some dyson spheres lying around that you're not telling me about, I'm going to politely request that bitcoin advocates not expend more energy than we have in the entire world just so that they can diversify their investment portfolios.

kyrieeschaton 6y ago

Did you know that vanilla financial securities also require upkeep? Approximately 0.5% of the value of all financial assets is burned every year (and potentially an order of magnitude more, depending on what asset and packaging you're talking about).

XorNot 6y ago
That's a heck of a figure you're not providing a reference or explanation for at all. Or even an explanation of what you mean by financial securities and "burned".
- lupire 6y ago
  It's the fee you pay to your investment manager.
- kyrieeschaton 6y ago
  "Securities" is a pretty well understood term. Mutual funds, the most legible way to get an estimate of the holding cost of securities (since they are required to transact at net asset value) routinely charge between 0.2-1% fees, depending on size and asset class. Clearinghouses, transfer agents, and cash management firms don't work for free, which is the problem that cryptocurrencies explicitly solve; neither do compliance, KYC, fraud, etc., which most cryptocurrency protocols elide altogether.
salawat 6y ago
They also have an entire corpus of regulation surrounding them and coordination overhead that allows sovereign states to compare apples to apples, and ensure that these respective sovereign State's financial systems are not utilized to facilitate patterns of behavior those respective State's citizens define as criminal. Oh wait.. You don't want that functionality, and you're still using up the energy footprint in the event you are correct. One of these delivers significantly less versatility than the other for the same energy investment.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

judgemcjudgy 6y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if gold mining is way worse for the environment than Bitcoin mining.

bogomipz 6y ago

>"Any significant drop in the network's hashrate opens it up to attacks." I was curious about this. What would "significant" be? What is it based on - the number of outstanding blocks? Is this vulnerability mentioned anywhere in the protocol spec?