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Bitcoin is a beautiful concept that has been bastardized by economies of scale. The mining concentration is decreasing its security over time. The centralized b

by gnrlst 6y ago

Bitcoin is a beautiful concept that has been bastardized by economies of scale. The mining concentration is decreasing its security over time. The centralized block structure and exorbitant fees will afflict it more and more as it grows. Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. I truly believe in a decentralized means of exchange, but Bitcoin is the Encarta equivalent. There already is a Wikipedia equivalent, all it takes is a little research. Once you find it, you will know. I won't shill here, as I don't want that to dilute the points of Bitcoin's increasingly problematic issues due to its growing scale. That being said, the cryptoverse is drowning in sh*tcoins, and I completely understand anyone even remotely mentioning an alternative to Bitcoin being inevitably categorized as a shiller and therefore not worth listening to.

agumonkey 6y ago
I see some ideas maybe having real usefulness. Large scale inventory/tracking/monitoring (part production, transport, etc) could lubricate a big portion of the world. A big secure unified store of tracking in a way. Am I the only one thinking this ?
- gnrlst 6y ago
  There's definitely a lot of use-cases for decentralized blockchains, I agree. If implemented correctly they could fight corruption, improve accountability and traceability and whole lot of other good things. The thing is, blockchain =/= cryptocurrency and therefore blockchain =/= bitcoin. Btc is a cryptocurrency that happens to use blockchain as a decentralized way of signing and keeping track of transactions.
bingbong70 6y ago
>Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? The more remote the energy source, the higher the cost to deliver it to a centralized grid, meaning it will probably be wasted anyway if it can't easily be converted into an easier to transmit form, BTC. Rather beam internet through space than attempt to beam energy.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? Well first of all you used a ton of energy to get it to space. But yes, I would definitely worry about it. There are a ton of other CPU intense jobs you could do with a rig like that that would be more beneficial to humanity. Medical research for example. It doesn't matter where you do the computation, that energy could always be used to do something more meaningful. The same is true about a lot of computation that is done now. But bitcoin is far more "wasteful" of compute than most other things.
  - albertgoeswoof 6y ago
    The point is that without btc the energy wouldn’t have been captured anyway. In theory if all btc miners used only renewables, the price of renewables would drop, and become more affordable for others, and the net impact on the environment would be positive. Renewables are infinite, we are constrained by our ability to capture them efficiently enough to beat fossil fuels. There are probably other factors at play that prevent this from working in reality though
    - cmdli 6y ago
      Renewables aren't infinite; they are constrained, just as you said, by our manufacturing and natural resources to build vehicles to collect them. Unless BTC somehow manufactures more solar panels or provides more natural resources, then any resources consumed by BTC are resources that aren't used for other purposes. Ultimately, we are always limited in how much we can accomplish, and devoting resources to BTC necessarily takes away resources from other uses. The only question, then, is if BTC is a better use for those resources than other things.
      - albertgoeswoof 6y ago
        The idea is that economies of scale and increased incentives drive forward new innovation in technology that increase the amount of renewable energy that can be captured. Eg if we need to manufacture 100x more solar panels than last year, the cost per solar panel will drop dramatically, and the efficiency will rise due to the volume of investment in solar panels. We are not limited in how much we accomplish as technology provides efficiencies that allow us to grow, it’s not a zero sum game.
olalonde 6y ago
> Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. That argument itself is not great either because it assumes the fixed pie fallacy.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  A growing pie doesn't refute the opportunity cost argument. Even if you grow the energy supply, you have to consider what else that energy could be invested it, be it food, or housing construction, or transportation, or even space travel. Energy is the real currency in this world, convertible between different forms, and mining bitcoin is sort of like an unavoidable thermodynamic loss for doing any work -- a high cost one.

by gnrlst 6y ago

agumonkey 6y ago

I see some ideas maybe having real usefulness. Large scale inventory/tracking/monitoring (part production, transport, etc) could lubricate a big portion of the world. A big secure unified store of tracking in a way. Am I the only one thinking this ?

gnrlst 6y ago
There's definitely a lot of use-cases for decentralized blockchains, I agree. If implemented correctly they could fight corruption, improve accountability and traceability and whole lot of other good things. The thing is, blockchain =/= cryptocurrency and therefore blockchain =/= bitcoin. Btc is a cryptocurrency that happens to use blockchain as a decentralized way of signing and keeping track of transactions.

bingbong70 6y ago

>Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? The more remote the energy source, the higher the cost to deliver it to a centralized grid, meaning it will probably be wasted anyway if it can't easily be converted into an easier to transmit form, BTC. Rather beam internet through space than attempt to beam energy.

jedberg 6y ago
> If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? Well first of all you used a ton of energy to get it to space. But yes, I would definitely worry about it. There are a ton of other CPU intense jobs you could do with a rig like that that would be more beneficial to humanity. Medical research for example. It doesn't matter where you do the computation, that energy could always be used to do something more meaningful. The same is true about a lot of computation that is done now. But bitcoin is far more "wasteful" of compute than most other things.
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  The point is that without btc the energy wouldn’t have been captured anyway. In theory if all btc miners used only renewables, the price of renewables would drop, and become more affordable for others, and the net impact on the environment would be positive. Renewables are infinite, we are constrained by our ability to capture them efficiently enough to beat fossil fuels. There are probably other factors at play that prevent this from working in reality though
  - cmdli 6y ago
    Renewables aren't infinite; they are constrained, just as you said, by our manufacturing and natural resources to build vehicles to collect them. Unless BTC somehow manufactures more solar panels or provides more natural resources, then any resources consumed by BTC are resources that aren't used for other purposes. Ultimately, we are always limited in how much we can accomplish, and devoting resources to BTC necessarily takes away resources from other uses. The only question, then, is if BTC is a better use for those resources than other things.
    - albertgoeswoof 6y ago
      The idea is that economies of scale and increased incentives drive forward new innovation in technology that increase the amount of renewable energy that can be captured. Eg if we need to manufacture 100x more solar panels than last year, the cost per solar panel will drop dramatically, and the efficiency will rise due to the volume of investment in solar panels. We are not limited in how much we accomplish as technology provides efficiencies that allow us to grow, it’s not a zero sum game.

olalonde 6y ago

> Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. That argument itself is not great either because it assumes the fixed pie fallacy.

cromwellian 6y ago
A growing pie doesn't refute the opportunity cost argument. Even if you grow the energy supply, you have to consider what else that energy could be invested it, be it food, or housing construction, or transportation, or even space travel. Energy is the real currency in this world, convertible between different forms, and mining bitcoin is sort of like an unavoidable thermodynamic loss for doing any work -- a high cost one.