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What the hell is is with cryptocurrency proponents and trying to redefine words to suit their narrative? First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one

• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  You need to have a triadic understanding of bitcoin, this is what allows it to be a flat currency, a store of value, and a battery at both one and the same time, through the act of transubstantiation of the coin a quantum state is triggered that allows the individual coin to choose which form it will manifest itself as.
  • funkychicken 6y ago
    I wish I could give this comment HackerNews Gold.
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      I'm actually surprised at the reception, I was expecting a -3, but I wanted to say it anyway.
      • bob1029 6y ago
        Parody & sarcasm are very effective tools for illustrating how hyperbolic a situation has become.
  • sgt101 6y ago
    You had me there!
  • pyinstallwoes 6y ago
    You're spot on, in fact, the superposition is key. You see, bitcoin is actually a time machine. Every block entangles itself with a coordinate in spacetime. This allows anyone in the future to relive any moment in the past by just entering the block number they want to visit. Unfortunately, this same architecture gave birth to both artificial intelligence because of the way it mimics DNA, and a black hole. The inevitable faith of a configuration of matter permeating all spacetime is the end of the universe. Thank you bitcoin, the worst ecological disaster, like, ever! At least we got AI and a Blackhole.
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      I agree 100%, but wait - is this theory following the Bitcoin Time Machine Cryptocurrency Adventist Council of 2020 or the Bitcoin Time Machine Cryptocurrency New Revelation of 2019?
      • pyinstallwoes 6y ago
        Was it only two options? I thought the Vogon's branched into "Catuskoti as a Non-Deterministic Way to Handle Options Deterministically" - I thought there was at _least_ the "Council of A New World: 0 BCAD" and "Council of Thoth was First" Oh well, on my timeline I hung out with Thoth.
  • viklove 6y ago
    It's interesting how your comment hasn't been flagged into the ground and garnered a response from dang. I guess sarcastic flamebait is OK when it agrees with the HN hivemind. (meanwhile, my comment will be flagged in 3... 2... 1...)
• berkes 6y ago
  'Pure waste' is very much a point of view. If you dislike porn, the entire energy to create and distribute that, is 'pure waste' in your view (last time I looked, streaming porn consumes about the same amount of energy as Bitcoin. This probably changed by now). If, like me, you dislike billboards, all those giant flaring screens, burning neon, or LCD pixels, screaming to make you buy Pepsi, is 'pure waste'. If you dislike Bitcoin, obviously any kilowatt used by it is 'pure waste'.
  • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    A waste by most societal measures. Purely imaginary point backed by nothing that is easily defrauded and highly volatile. With no societal or personal value. And we've chosen to burn gigawatts of energy on this foolish game. Its easy to see it as enormous waste.
    • WinstonSmith84 6y ago
      A waste by your societal measures. It's easy to see it as enormous waste, for you Speaking of "burnt gigawatts", if our society is still using coal to produce energy, are you blaming also Bitcoin for this? Too easy, sorry.
      • africanboy 6y ago
        it's a waste for 99.9% of the World population, assuming that bitcoin's 6 million wallets represent 6 million different people. So yes, it's arithmetically a total waste.
  • IMTDb 6y ago
    The vast difference here is that the energy consumption required by Bitcoin is integral to its model. The stated goal is to make massive amount of otherwise useless computations. If there was any way to stream porn using less electricity, we would consume less electricity for that. If there was any way to make those billboards consume less electricity, we consume less electricity. As soon as there is a new way to do bitcoin related operations using less electricity (eg: ASICS), the security of the network decreases. And everyone moves to the new model, in order to go back to consuming a lot of electricity, in order to restore trust in the network. On a macro scale, Bitcoin has to consume lots of electricity, any possible improvement in that area needs to be wiped out by just people going back to consuming more electricity, otherwise the model fails. The whole bitcoin trust model revolves around people being ready to waste a ton energy for it. That's not the case of porn, or billboards: the energy consumption is just a side effect and not a requirement, they have value outside of the consumed electricity. Bitcoin entire value is only dependent on how much people are willing to invest in it, which roughly translates on how much electricity is wasted.
• hackernudes 6y ago
  You don't think bitcoin should be valuable. Your point is fine, but it really doesn't address the article at all! Assuming bitcoin stays valuable, does it make sense to use bitcoin mining to augment some power projects? Like using otherwise wasted energy to mine or to mine in places where it might not be easy to transmit the electricity?
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • verdverm 6y ago
    Actual batteries would be a better choice than consuming the energy at the time it is created. Investing in better transmission infrastructure would increase this benefit.
    • mr_woozy 6y ago
      This doesn't hold for places like Iceland (where I live) as there will never be transmission of power to either continent due to distance impedance losses.
      • jcrben 6y ago
        These are perfect places to do heavy industry, and in fact that's what happens now https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/american-companies-still-make-aluminum-in-iceland.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/politics/american-comp... Hydrogen production is another possible use in addition to aluminum. Renewable energy like that provided by Iceland is a relatively rare and precious resource
• TheBlight 6y ago
  >First Bitcoin was NOT fiat currency (despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition) What is your working definition for fiat currency? Mine is: "Fiat money is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold." Government doesn't issue bitcoins. Stopped reading after that as you seem uneducated on the subject.
  • mattnewton 6y ago
    I think of the government part as largely an accident; my definition of fiat money is “money that has value solely because the transacting parties say it has, and not intrinsic uses” - historically the way to get people to agree something intrinsically value-less has value was by government decree, but there are lots of exceptions. I think of the Yapannese rei stones as fiat money, for example (though there is some question about them having inherent value). Basically any money that isn’t commodity money (or directly redeemable for commodities) is a fiat money. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
    • Empact 6y ago
      I think your definition is faulty: are you aware of shell money? This served as money enabling international trade for thousands of years[1], and can you say these shells have intrinsic uses?[2] These shells had value because of their properties: compact, scarce, unforgeable. In contrast, fiat value is held because an authoritative party says value is held, e.g. Chucky Cheese tokens, or the USD. Fiat requires this authority, as in its definition: “An arbitrary order or decree.” There are no authoritative parties declaring that Bitcoin has value, rather the market is arriving at that conclusion through decentralized operation, just as has occurred for thousands of years with gold, shells, etc. [1] https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/ [2] To say that a store of wealth also has uses as jewelry is redundant, IMO - storing and displaying wealth are age-old desires.
      • mattnewton 6y ago
        Shell money began as commodity money according to most sources- shells were inherently valuable because of body ornamentation as you mention (similar to how gold was useful to easily work into soft metal jewelry). If Chucky cheese tokens are money at all, they are “representative money” because they can be readily exchanged for various commodities by the issuer (the prizes and games). A central authorities decree is not required for money to be fiat, it just simply can’t have intrinsic uses like commodity money or be directly redeemable for commodities like representative money. It has value purely because we have confidence it will have value in the future - and historically the most reliable way to do that is by government decree, but it could also be by a mass consensus that a particular crypto coin will still be used in the future.
• capableweb 6y ago
  > I really do think cryptocurrency and block-chain technology is cool. But the level of hype and double-think is getting insane. I agree with this, the amount of hype makes it hard to find the true innovations in the space, because most of it is honestly shit. > There are plenty of ways to do digital transactions Yes, but Bitcoin was not initially made to just "do digital transactions". It was made to be able to do digital transactions without any trusted 3rd party. The distinction is important, because that's why Proof of Work exists and is energy intensive in the first place. Now a couple of years into blockchain technology, we have some alternatives that _might_ work as well as Proof of Work (Proof of Stake for example) but we've yet to see if it actually can work on the scale that Bitcoin operates in. Time will tell.
  • danShumway 6y ago
    > It was made to be able to do digital transactions without any trusted 3rd party. Which is what makes it even more absurd that people are claiming that adding centralized layers on top of Bitcoin is a valid solution to the cost and speed of transactions. They're devoted to Bitcoin itself above any of the reasons why the technology was built in the first place. But if people don't actually care about having distributed payments, and if they're perfectly willing to buy into payment processors that are only using Bitcoin as a store-of-value in the backend, then Proof of Work doesn't matter. Proof of Work/Stake only matter if Bitcoin is actually being used as a trustless and anonymous payment system for regular transactions, which is ironically the task that (among most other cryptocurrencies on the market) it's perhaps least suited for technologically. I'm not saying there's no innovation here. I am saying that I don't see any evidence that Bitcoin's largest proponents care about that innovation. I don't see any evidence that any of this matters beyond giving them an excuse to hype a speculative asset. If they did care, they would have abandoned Bitcoin and moved to basically any other coin -- anything at all that did Proof of Stake to reduce transaction fees and environmental costs, or that fixed its price to the dollar, or that had better privacy. I firmly believe at this point that the technology of Bitcoin matters to the majority of its investors about as much as the technology of Beanie Babies mattered to its investors. That's not to say the technology isn't interesting or that it can't be used in useful ways, but most of the time that people talk about Bitcoin's success, they're not talking about technology.
• deleted 6y ago
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• smashem 6y ago
  > ...Aluminum has value to everyone in some way, not just those invested in it... A sound monetary system has more value than anything else on this planet. There's a lot of information out there, but here's one article to illustrate my point: https://breedlove22.medium.com/masters-and-slaves-of-money-255ecc93404f https://breedlove22.medium.com/masters-and-slaves-of-money-2... > The energy is burned forever. Wrong. I can use it to pay someone to do work, for example. "Work" in both societal and physical senses. That means the energy is not lost in a bitcoin.
  • albntomat0 6y ago
    > Wrong. I can use it to pay someone to do work, for example. "Work" in both societal and physical senses. That means the energy is not lost in a bitcoin. That moves the definition of battery far away from normal usage. That means anything of monetary value is a battery, whether it’s cryptocurrency, a $20 bill, or a piece of gold. Paying someone to do work has the actual energy come from another source, such gasoline or food.
    • smashem 6y ago
      It just depends on which parts of the system you're focused on. We'll continue to bridge the gap between monetary -> electrical energy. A bitcoin is a store of monetary energy, and the bitcoin network is readily available. We're building solutions on top of the network to more quickly and easily convert that monetary energy to electrical energy. It's somewhat analogous as converting readily available wind (kinetic energy) to electrical energy. There is a large gap between the two forms of energy, but we're continuing to close it.
      • Monitorio 6y ago
        Its still wrong what you are saying. A battery stores PRODUCED ENERGY and gives out the SAME PRODUCED ENERGY with loss. You might not care but the problem is ENERGY which would not be needed to be PRODUCED to save co2 and our planet. And you can play around with the idea how Bitcoin can be useful on supporting this stuff but honestly? No one needs btc for sustainable energy investment. No one. And about this excess energy garbage: Either its so much excess energy that the system ooptimizes itself and reduces the co2 output by shutting down or prices are so different than someone is building a REAL Battery to make money out of this. Bitcoin would just put that energy segment onto the global market by some arbitrary decoupled btc value.
• atmosx 6y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but this part is way off: > [...] despite being one of the most fiat currencies by definition [...] FIAT currencies are by design inflationary to enhance spending. Bitcoin is deflationary _by design_. Since there's no bank or state backing Bitcoin, the only way that bitcoin makes sense was/is deflation. This quality makes BTC an asset and that's what it is, a digital asset. As a currency BTC has already failed.
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    how would you quality VISA and Tesla accepting bitcoin ? does it qualify as asset tranfer or currency ? (open question)
    • Consultant32452 6y ago
      Governments want you to think of crypto primarily as an asset and not a currency, because they don't want to give up control over currency creation. The fact that you have to file capital gains for every crypto will be the giant silent hurdle that stimies wide spread use. The only way to overcome this is if so many people ignore the law that it becomes unenforceable. Only time will tell.
      • atmosx 6y ago
        > Governments want you to think of crypto primarily as an asset and not a currency, because they don't want to give up control over currency creation. According to Adi Shamir[1] 98% of bitcoins belonged to 2% of portfolios in 2012. So... The government is "bad" because you can actually express your opinion in monetary policy, you know who's who, etc. and BTC (or any other crypto) is good because you have absolutely no idea who the 2% is? I'm not following... Regarding the gov and BTC. The government will tax BTC the same will tax any other asset, so in reality, the gov doesn't care. You can choose to hide profits from BTC and you'd choose to hide profits from any other financial activity. I don't really see the US Gov fighting bitcoin, if anything the gov tries to put BTC into perspective. If you are anti-gov because "gov is bad (by default)" I get the feeling but has little to do with BTC. [1]: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf
• ftlio 6y ago
  Bitcoin is P2P software. Every model that doesn't start there is wrong. Certainly most hype pieces start somewhere else. All critiques do. It's easy to ignore them.