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This repeats the same mistaken belief that "energy is precious". In reality, there's lots of energy that is either worthless or has negative value. There curren
by incrudible 6y ago
This repeats the same mistaken belief that "energy is precious". In reality, there's lots of energy that is either worthless or has negative value. There currently is no economical solution for storing this energy and it's the biggest impediment for renewable energy.
Many bubbles have left lasting improvements to infrastructure. The railroad bubble brought railroads. The telegraph bubble wired up the country. The internet bubble made internet connectivity mainstream.
I believe that proof-of-work can bring lasting improvements to both energy infrastructure and semiconductor processes that are unaccounted for in all the naive calculations that make for a good headline.
- notahacker 6y agoDemand for energy efficiency improvements already exists. All PoW adds is a new form of demand designed to scale up to consume all energy efficiency improvements; every time energy prices fall miners are incentivised to increase the rate of mining (unless the block rewards or coin market price also falls) The Internet bubble was people making infrastructure available in the hope people would use it, not people converting DDoS attacks into money and claiming that stopping others using that bandwidth would be worth it in the long run if it lead to the invention of servers and cables that scaled to infinite capacity
- incrudible 6y ago> ...unless the block rewards or coin market price also falls At least one of these is guaranteed to happen, so that kind of makes your argument moot.