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Nothing you said addresses the core and critical issue that Bitcoin and most blockchain currencies have terrible limitations on transaction-per-second, and are

Nothing you said addresses the core and critical issue that Bitcoin and most blockchain currencies have terrible limitations on transaction-per-second, and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide. And thinking that bitcoin is a terrible idea is not the same as thinking you can predict its market value. When something is as volatile as bitcoin, shorting it is almost as bad as going long; eventually its value will likely drop but being early is the same as being wrong.

mlyle 6y ago
> and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide. As I've said elsewhere: doing one transaction on bitcoin uses approximately the amount of electrical power that an average US household uses in 2 weeks.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  I'm not buying that for a second, unless that calculation includes the power it took to mine the coin in the first place (which is not consumed by the transaction any more than cash changing hands consumes cloth and ink).
  - patmcc 6y ago
    How do you think transactions are verified? There's a limit to the number of transactions per block, and each block takes ~10 minutes to mine. So; ~2000 transactions/block, 600 seconds, 0.3 seconds/transaction. How much energy does the global bitcoin network use in 0.3 seconds? About 700 KwH, far as I can tell. (Based on 76.87 terawatt hours annually in 2020, as an estimate for bitcoin). A house uses ~1000/month, ballpark.
px43 6y ago
Bitcoin doesn't need high transaction volume to provide value to its users, which is obviously apparent by looking at the current transaction volume. PoW is also the most efficient way to do what Bitcoin is doing. Attempts to displace PoW have all failed, because the required trade-offs are always too high, and detract from the value of the network. If you can figure out a fair way to seed value on a network that doesn't require burning energy, then please let the people know, and your new magic cryptocurrency will dominate the crypto-ecosystem overnight. No one would love that more than me. I could talk for hours about the various ideas people have had in the past, and why they failed, but I don't think this is the right place for that rant. It's also important to recognize that there isn't a single watt of PoW power that's wasted. The power utilized reflects exactly amount of value that Bitcoin is providing to the world. Satoshi also made the mining rewards get cut in half every 4 years, so the value to power usage ratio gets better and better over time. I could also go on about how mining facilities overwhelmingly are using excess power produced almost entirely from clean power sources. If the goal is reducing carbon emissions, there are so many serious offenders that are massively more wasteful.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  What issues do you see with Ethereum's upcoming PoS+Sharding system?
  - clarkmoody 6y ago
    Exchanges will provide staking rewards (APR yield) for deposits of ETH. Very quickly they will control enough of the stake to enforce whatever rules they want on the system. As regulated entities, they can be leaned on by the state to change aspects of the system to appease their regulators (KYC, censorship, freezes, etc). Checkmate.
- harikb 6y ago
  > so the value to power usage ratio gets better and better over time. Don't you mean reverse?

mlyle 6y ago

> and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide. As I've said elsewhere: doing one transaction on bitcoin uses approximately the amount of electrical power that an average US household uses in 2 weeks.

fuzxi 6y ago
I'm not buying that for a second, unless that calculation includes the power it took to mine the coin in the first place (which is not consumed by the transaction any more than cash changing hands consumes cloth and ink).
- patmcc 6y ago
  How do you think transactions are verified? There's a limit to the number of transactions per block, and each block takes ~10 minutes to mine. So; ~2000 transactions/block, 600 seconds, 0.3 seconds/transaction. How much energy does the global bitcoin network use in 0.3 seconds? About 700 KwH, far as I can tell. (Based on 76.87 terawatt hours annually in 2020, as an estimate for bitcoin). A house uses ~1000/month, ballpark.

px43 6y ago

Bitcoin doesn't need high transaction volume to provide value to its users, which is obviously apparent by looking at the current transaction volume. PoW is also the most efficient way to do what Bitcoin is doing. Attempts to displace PoW have all failed, because the required trade-offs are always too high, and detract from the value of the network. If you can figure out a fair way to seed value on a network that doesn't require burning energy, then please let the people know, and your new magic cryptocurrency will dominate the crypto-ecosystem overnight. No one would love that more than me. I could talk for hours about the various ideas people have had in the past, and why they failed, but I don't think this is the right place for that rant. It's also important to recognize that there isn't a single watt of PoW power that's wasted. The power utilized reflects exactly amount of value that Bitcoin is providing to the world. Satoshi also made the mining rewards get cut in half every 4 years, so the value to power usage ratio gets better and better over time. I could also go on about how mining facilities overwhelmingly are using excess power produced almost entirely from clean power sources. If the goal is reducing carbon emissions, there are so many serious offenders that are massively more wasteful.

zaptrem 6y ago
What issues do you see with Ethereum's upcoming PoS+Sharding system?
- clarkmoody 6y ago
  Exchanges will provide staking rewards (APR yield) for deposits of ETH. Very quickly they will control enough of the stake to enforce whatever rules they want on the system. As regulated entities, they can be leaned on by the state to change aspects of the system to appease their regulators (KYC, censorship, freezes, etc). Checkmate.
harikb 6y ago
> so the value to power usage ratio gets better and better over time. Don't you mean reverse?