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Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? There are tons of things the society could do without and be b

Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? There are tons of things the society could do without and be better off. Or maybe not, who decides? Surely it shouldn't be majority as then we will approach Idiocracy level of civilization in no time with Kayne designer flip-flops getting a yay and NASA or a new semi-conductor start-up getting a may. I think there are two problems with crypto currencies: 1) Pollution and carbon emission is not taxed but should be. 2) Regulators allowing the situation where magic token is the only way to do certain kind of trades while competition faces insurmountable mountain of regulation and requirements. If it was possible to make fast money transfer system without hiring the army of lawyers in every country you want to operate then BTC would never gain any traction.

spaced-out 6y ago
> Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Even looking at the usage of graphics cards specifically, is Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than playing video games? Than running ML models at Facebook?
- imtringued 6y ago
  >is Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than playing video games? I have done a lot of activities in video games that would require significant CO2 emissions in real life. Potentially millions of tons. So yes, it's much better. There is also a significant population of software developers that picked up programming because of video games. Economic simulation games can help you develop an intuition on how to run a company and how they work without having to risk starting a real company with the potential to fail and ruin you financially. Meanwhile the only worthy claim that Bitcoin has is that it's a middleman for central bank money. Yes it probably funded a lot of good economic activity, but it's the job of the central bank and government to do that. If they didn't fail then Bitcoin would have literally nothing to do.
  - mnouquet 6y ago
    > ... but it's the job of the central bank and government to do that says who ? the central band and governments ? The whole point of crypto is to provide an alternative to arbitrary decisions from unelected officials.
dgellow 6y ago
Given that bitcoin would also work without a Proof of Work, yes, it's a more stupid way to burn resources than pretty much anything else. Bitcoin without the ridiculous amount of energy consumption is possible, though I'm personally doubtful that will happen. As an example Cardano and Tezos are two blockchain based on Proof of Stake, they both require a very low amount of energy compared to bitcoin or ethereum (no mining rigs, a node can run on a raspberry pi 4).
- geogra4 6y ago
  Proof of work needs to go to the gutter. It was a bad idea to begin with. Proof of stake makes more sense and operates like a bank deposit interest rate
  - jwblackwell 6y ago
    Can you elaborate more? It seems to be that a lot of very smart people think the opposite and are investing huge time and money in it
- aeternum 6y ago
  The big problem with proof of stake is that it requires a centralized root of trust. Suppose for example that I takeover the Cardano website. I could create my own root block and generate millions of 'stakers'. Staking requires ownership but since it's my own new chain, I can generate coins easily without expending any real-world resources. As a new user, how could you differentiate the 'real' Cardano chain from mine?
  - jwblackwell 6y ago
    Isn't this basically the case with github now? i.e all the cryptos have their code public on github so if I wanted to start mining, I'd have to go there to get the code
    - aeternum 6y ago
      With Bitcoin, there are quite a few completely independent clients available: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Clients https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Clients, but the beauty of proof-of-work is that you do not need to trust any of them. With proof-of-work chains, one can download the blockchain even without a client and write a simple program/script to calculate the total work (hashes) embedded in the chain. This provides a completely independent measure of trust. With PoS, you must assume you can trust the client or root of the blockchain, which really kills the primary use-case of a decentralized currency.
imtringued 6y ago
>Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Considering the array of competing cryptocurrencies that consume far less energy while providing more transactions per second and additional features like smart contracts, yes it is. For example. Ethereum has twice as many transactions per second while consuming a third of the energy.
mnouquet 6y ago
> Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Or the entertainment industry as a whole, it's pointless.
Closi 6y ago
> If it was possible to make fast money transfer system without hiring the army of lawyers in every country you want to operate then BTC would never gain any traction. I don't know where you get the idea that BTC is being used primarily to transfer money fast between countries without lawyers being involved, because as far as I can tell that's mainly a hypothetical use case rather than one that happens often in reality.

spaced-out 6y ago

> Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Even looking at the usage of graphics cards specifically, is Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than playing video games? Than running ML models at Facebook?

imtringued 6y ago
>is Bitcoin an objectively worse usage of those chips than playing video games? I have done a lot of activities in video games that would require significant CO2 emissions in real life. Potentially millions of tons. So yes, it's much better. There is also a significant population of software developers that picked up programming because of video games. Economic simulation games can help you develop an intuition on how to run a company and how they work without having to risk starting a real company with the potential to fail and ruin you financially. Meanwhile the only worthy claim that Bitcoin has is that it's a middleman for central bank money. Yes it probably funded a lot of good economic activity, but it's the job of the central bank and government to do that. If they didn't fail then Bitcoin would have literally nothing to do.
- mnouquet 6y ago
  > ... but it's the job of the central bank and government to do that says who ? the central band and governments ? The whole point of crypto is to provide an alternative to arbitrary decisions from unelected officials.

dgellow 6y ago

Given that bitcoin would also work without a Proof of Work, yes, it's a more stupid way to burn resources than pretty much anything else. Bitcoin without the ridiculous amount of energy consumption is possible, though I'm personally doubtful that will happen. As an example Cardano and Tezos are two blockchain based on Proof of Stake, they both require a very low amount of energy compared to bitcoin or ethereum (no mining rigs, a node can run on a raspberry pi 4).

geogra4 6y ago
Proof of work needs to go to the gutter. It was a bad idea to begin with. Proof of stake makes more sense and operates like a bank deposit interest rate
- jwblackwell 6y ago
  Can you elaborate more? It seems to be that a lot of very smart people think the opposite and are investing huge time and money in it
aeternum 6y ago
The big problem with proof of stake is that it requires a centralized root of trust. Suppose for example that I takeover the Cardano website. I could create my own root block and generate millions of 'stakers'. Staking requires ownership but since it's my own new chain, I can generate coins easily without expending any real-world resources. As a new user, how could you differentiate the 'real' Cardano chain from mine?
- jwblackwell 6y ago
  Isn't this basically the case with github now? i.e all the cryptos have their code public on github so if I wanted to start mining, I'd have to go there to get the code
  - aeternum 6y ago
    With Bitcoin, there are quite a few completely independent clients available: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Clients https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Clients, but the beauty of proof-of-work is that you do not need to trust any of them. With proof-of-work chains, one can download the blockchain even without a client and write a simple program/script to calculate the total work (hashes) embedded in the chain. This provides a completely independent measure of trust. With PoS, you must assume you can trust the client or root of the blockchain, which really kills the primary use-case of a decentralized currency.

imtringued 6y ago

>Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Considering the array of competing cryptocurrencies that consume far less energy while providing more transactions per second and additional features like smart contracts, yes it is. For example. Ethereum has twice as many transactions per second while consuming a third of the energy.

mnouquet 6y ago

> Is BTC really more stupid way to burn resources than making sports cars? F1 racing? Gold mining? Or the entertainment industry as a whole, it's pointless.

Closi 6y ago

> If it was possible to make fast money transfer system without hiring the army of lawyers in every country you want to operate then BTC would never gain any traction. I don't know where you get the idea that BTC is being used primarily to transfer money fast between countries without lawyers being involved, because as far as I can tell that's mainly a hypothetical use case rather than one that happens often in reality.