4 ms·

Are we meant to take this seriously or we meant to treat this in the same way Tobacco companies told us that cigarettes were good for you? I mean, some of this

Are we meant to take this seriously or we meant to treat this in the same way Tobacco companies told us that cigarettes were good for you? I mean, some of this is kind of stupid >Bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers in that they offer highly flexible and easily interruptible load Is it? Is that at all true. My guess is that the economics of crypto are such that to get an ROI on your huge capital expense (mining boxes that have a limited life and are depreciating quickly), you need to be running your mining rig 100% utilization. My guess is far from being a buyer of last resort the exact opposite happens - you build your mining farm next to a wind farm and instead of acting as a buyer of last resort your miner soaks up almost the entire supply of cheap energy pushing all the actual useful activity back onto non-renewables. What happens when China changes their regulations, a load of miners fall off the network, the reward shoots right up and miners cause brown outs around the world because they're suddenly no longer buyers or last resort but instead are incredibly incentivized to mine as much as possible. And I say guess in all this because the white paper offers literally no justification for why BTC miners would be a buyer of last resort instead of what they are demonstrably doing right now - which is crowding out useful energy uses in markets where energy costs are artificially low.

kelp 6y ago
First, I worked at Square from 2011 to 2017 and have been very invested in the company and the mission. Second, I was super interested in Bitcoin around 2010-2011. Doing a little bit of small scale mining myself. I've since become very negative on Bitcoin for a few reasons. 1. Insatiable energy needs, and the environmental impact of that. 2. It's a solution looking for a problem, and not a good solution at that 3. It's a world filled with charlatans and get rich quicker. Pump and dump. Overall I think you're exactly right, it's like the Tobacco companies telling us cigarettes are good for you. It's motivated reasoning, or just straight up propaganda, and green washing. And before they published this, I was already seeing people use this exact line of motivated reasoning, that mining encourages green energy development, to justify it. So now I think Square, Jack, and Elon just gave that story more credibility. Here are two takedowns of the Square argument, sorry both are paywalls, but googling the headline got me to both: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/what-musk-and-dorsey-are-missing-about-bitcoin-and-green-energy?sref=HEJ865XK https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/what-musk... https://www.ft.com/content/0448b44d-1d78-48f8-8ca8-6edae7976a5f https://www.ft.com/content/0448b44d-1d78-48f8-8ca8-6edae7976...

kelp 6y ago

First, I worked at Square from 2011 to 2017 and have been very invested in the company and the mission. Second, I was super interested in Bitcoin around 2010-2011. Doing a little bit of small scale mining myself. I've since become very negative on Bitcoin for a few reasons. 1. Insatiable energy needs, and the environmental impact of that. 2. It's a solution looking for a problem, and not a good solution at that 3. It's a world filled with charlatans and get rich quicker. Pump and dump. Overall I think you're exactly right, it's like the Tobacco companies telling us cigarettes are good for you. It's motivated reasoning, or just straight up propaganda, and green washing. And before they published this, I was already seeing people use this exact line of motivated reasoning, that mining encourages green energy development, to justify it. So now I think Square, Jack, and Elon just gave that story more credibility. Here are two takedowns of the Square argument, sorry both are paywalls, but googling the headline got me to both: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/what-musk-and-dorsey-are-missing-about-bitcoin-and-green-energy?sref=HEJ865XK https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-22/what-musk... https://www.ft.com/content/0448b44d-1d78-48f8-8ca8-6edae7976a5f https://www.ft.com/content/0448b44d-1d78-48f8-8ca8-6edae7976...