5 ms·

It’s the long date concept, promoted by the Long Now foundation [1] which promotes long-term thinking and gives a nod to this by writing years in 5-digit format

by NamTaf 5y ago

It’s the long date concept, promoted by the Long Now foundation [1] which promotes long-term thinking and gives a nod to this by writing years in 5-digit format. The irony with the GP’s post is that I can’t see using Bitcoin, with its current incredibly-high power usage and associated environmental destruction, as long-term thinking in any way, shape or form. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

kragen 5y ago
Bitcoin doesn't have associated environmental destruction right now that I know of. I assume you're referring to its energy consumption, but at the moment it's a subsidy to renewable energy, because nuclear energy and fossil fuels (except for flare gas) are too expensive to compete with super-cheap wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and photovoltaic energy. https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall... Now, at some point in the future, Bitcoin might become an environmental problem; the cheapest ways to get energy have been environmentally destructive in the past, and they may be so again. Maybe in 50 years we'll have to campaign against Bitcoin miners who want to convert the mass of Jupiter into energy with their fusion reactors or black-hole clusters. But right now the only places that Bitcoin is causing environmental damage are places where some government has unwisely subsidized fossil-fuel consumption, and Bitcoin itself is what puts an end to those subsidies.
- roca 5y ago
  It is simply not true that if governments removed all fossil-fuel subsidies today then electricity production would become 100% carbon-free overnight. There are massive issues around supplying base load (requiring cheap energy storage tech that doesn't exist yet), construction lead time, limited materials, workforce, and so on and so on. Then the non-fossil-fuel energy sources have their own environmental costs, e.g. we aren't able to recycle grid-scale batteries or turbine blades yet and those produced today may never be recycled. For the forseeable future energy production cannot be carbon-free. All uses of energy, including Bitcoin mining, will continue to impose an environmental cost. For those of us who believe Bitcoin achieves nothing useful that can't be done better some other way, that cost translates into a pure negative.
  - kragen 5y ago
    > It is simply not true that if governments removed all fossil-fuel subsidies today then electricity production would become 100% carbon-free overnight. Certainly not, but that isn't what I claimed. Electricity production using fossil fuels is too expensive for Bitcoin miners; like aluminum smelters, they are forced to move their operations to places with cheaper renewable electricity in order to remain profitable, and governments subsidizing fossil-fuel consumption are forced to eliminate those subsidies in order to remain solvent, which drives the Bitcoin miners elsewhere. None of the issues of base load and construction lead time and so on are relevant to this process at all. The Harvard Business Review article I linked above goes into some detail about how this happens. > we aren't able to recycle grid-scale batteries or turbine blades yet and those produced today may never be recycled. This is basically nonsense. It isn't the Carboniferous Period any more, and even the wastes of the Carboniferous are getting recycled now. In fact, that's sort of the whole problem with global warming: that in the eyeblink since salt miners in the Song Dynasty started drilling for oil, we have recycled a significant fraction of the carboniferous wastes of the Carboniferous Period. > those of us who believe Bitcoin achieves nothing useful Well, that's basically the issue, isn't it? Because you judge our lives useless, you engage in motivated reasoning to find excuses to sweep us away, like your genocidal rapist namesake*, regardless of whether your arguments make any sense objectively or not. _____ * You thought nobody here would know who Roca was, didn't you? You thought that by naming yourself after a less famous white supremacist mass murderer than Hitler, you'd get away scot-free? You thought wrong.
    - roca 5y ago
      > The Harvard Business Review article I linked above goes into some detail about how this happens. It doesn't make the argument you have just elucidated, which is an interesting one. I'll think about it. > Because you judge our lives useless, you engage in motivated reasoning to find excuses to sweep us away, "Bitcoin not useful" != "your life is useless". I think you have invested rather too much of your identity into Bitcoin. Regarding "Roca", please check my HN bio. My real name is "Robert O'Callahan" and 'roca' is a handle I've used online since 1990. I have never heard of your "Roca" before.
- doom 5y ago
  Patently false. Bitcoin put a dollar value on under-utlized energy. That can be coal, hydro, whatever. If you believe that Bitcoin is just a more wasteful version of Paypal or ACH, then it matters a lot that this subsidized energy is being converted into waste heat by a bunch of special-purpose ASICs that have no use outside of *coins, and take a lot of metals and energy to create and ship, on limited-capacity fabs. I ctrl-F "subsid" in your link and don't see any source for your claim. Bitcoin puts a dollar value on (subsidizes) -ALL- energy. If there's a dirty coal plant you can run in your backyard without the government shutting you down, Bitcoin wants to know about it. Your claim is (1) bitcoin takes energy (2) renewable is cheaper than nonrenewable (3) bitcoin is causing tons of new renewable capacity. If that were true, why isn't every power plant in the US renewable? How on earth did Bitcoin manage to get this capacity that nobody else has? Money talks, right? Why aren't the mayors of San Francisco, New York, Chicago etc. trumpeting their new 100% renewable grids? Then you might say that Bitcoin is tech-enabled and decentralized, you can run a mining rig near any energy+internet source. But that's equally true of a cloud compute farm. The fact that bitcoin is pointless hashes and not cloud compute is a historical quirk. Any Bitcoin node/farm could be replaced with an identical-power-usage server farm and do more good for society. I'd like a source on your Bitcoin only uses renewable claim. I think if I run a miner on my home PC, which I believe has some natural gas in the energy mix, that argument fails. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f... > But right now the only places that Bitcoin is causing environmental damage are places where some government has unwisely subsidized fossil-fuel consumption, and Bitcoin itself is what puts an end to those subsidies. I wrote this whole comment without getting to the end of your inane post. We agree that implicit subsidies are bad (burning fossil fuels creates externalities, failing to tax them is a subsidy). But your wordsmithing here is bad faith. Your argument is basically "governments thought people wouldn't be complete jerks, and Bitcoin sure proved them wrong!" Yeah it's human nature and perhaps inevitable, but 50+ years for some of these hydro dams without a problem until Bitcoin came in and ruined everything. Bitcoin is an ongoing real time climate catastrophe. Get back to me when China and the US ban all forms of carbon-emitting energy production. Until then, those "subsidies" continue, and it matters quite a lot what use for the subsidized energy we find. I suggest cloud computing as a baseline. "environmental destruction right now" is exactly the current state of things.
- imtringued 5y ago
  There are cases of Bitcoin mines stealing electricity and fossil fuel powerplants being retrofitted for Bitcoin mining there is no way miners care about the source of their energy.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  That’s why I leave my fridge open at night. It is good for the environment!

by NamTaf 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

Bitcoin doesn't have associated environmental destruction right now that I know of. I assume you're referring to its energy consumption, but at the moment it's a subsidy to renewable energy, because nuclear energy and fossil fuels (except for flare gas) are too expensive to compete with super-cheap wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and photovoltaic energy. https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall... Now, at some point in the future, Bitcoin might become an environmental problem; the cheapest ways to get energy have been environmentally destructive in the past, and they may be so again. Maybe in 50 years we'll have to campaign against Bitcoin miners who want to convert the mass of Jupiter into energy with their fusion reactors or black-hole clusters. But right now the only places that Bitcoin is causing environmental damage are places where some government has unwisely subsidized fossil-fuel consumption, and Bitcoin itself is what puts an end to those subsidies.

roca 5y ago
It is simply not true that if governments removed all fossil-fuel subsidies today then electricity production would become 100% carbon-free overnight. There are massive issues around supplying base load (requiring cheap energy storage tech that doesn't exist yet), construction lead time, limited materials, workforce, and so on and so on. Then the non-fossil-fuel energy sources have their own environmental costs, e.g. we aren't able to recycle grid-scale batteries or turbine blades yet and those produced today may never be recycled. For the forseeable future energy production cannot be carbon-free. All uses of energy, including Bitcoin mining, will continue to impose an environmental cost. For those of us who believe Bitcoin achieves nothing useful that can't be done better some other way, that cost translates into a pure negative.
- kragen 5y ago
  > It is simply not true that if governments removed all fossil-fuel subsidies today then electricity production would become 100% carbon-free overnight. Certainly not, but that isn't what I claimed. Electricity production using fossil fuels is too expensive for Bitcoin miners; like aluminum smelters, they are forced to move their operations to places with cheaper renewable electricity in order to remain profitable, and governments subsidizing fossil-fuel consumption are forced to eliminate those subsidies in order to remain solvent, which drives the Bitcoin miners elsewhere. None of the issues of base load and construction lead time and so on are relevant to this process at all. The Harvard Business Review article I linked above goes into some detail about how this happens. > we aren't able to recycle grid-scale batteries or turbine blades yet and those produced today may never be recycled. This is basically nonsense. It isn't the Carboniferous Period any more, and even the wastes of the Carboniferous are getting recycled now. In fact, that's sort of the whole problem with global warming: that in the eyeblink since salt miners in the Song Dynasty started drilling for oil, we have recycled a significant fraction of the carboniferous wastes of the Carboniferous Period. > those of us who believe Bitcoin achieves nothing useful Well, that's basically the issue, isn't it? Because you judge our lives useless, you engage in motivated reasoning to find excuses to sweep us away, like your genocidal rapist namesake*, regardless of whether your arguments make any sense objectively or not. _____ * You thought nobody here would know who Roca was, didn't you? You thought that by naming yourself after a less famous white supremacist mass murderer than Hitler, you'd get away scot-free? You thought wrong.
  - roca 5y ago
    > The Harvard Business Review article I linked above goes into some detail about how this happens. It doesn't make the argument you have just elucidated, which is an interesting one. I'll think about it. > Because you judge our lives useless, you engage in motivated reasoning to find excuses to sweep us away, "Bitcoin not useful" != "your life is useless". I think you have invested rather too much of your identity into Bitcoin. Regarding "Roca", please check my HN bio. My real name is "Robert O'Callahan" and 'roca' is a handle I've used online since 1990. I have never heard of your "Roca" before.
doom 5y ago
Patently false. Bitcoin put a dollar value on under-utlized energy. That can be coal, hydro, whatever. If you believe that Bitcoin is just a more wasteful version of Paypal or ACH, then it matters a lot that this subsidized energy is being converted into waste heat by a bunch of special-purpose ASICs that have no use outside of *coins, and take a lot of metals and energy to create and ship, on limited-capacity fabs. I ctrl-F "subsid" in your link and don't see any source for your claim. Bitcoin puts a dollar value on (subsidizes) -ALL- energy. If there's a dirty coal plant you can run in your backyard without the government shutting you down, Bitcoin wants to know about it. Your claim is (1) bitcoin takes energy (2) renewable is cheaper than nonrenewable (3) bitcoin is causing tons of new renewable capacity. If that were true, why isn't every power plant in the US renewable? How on earth did Bitcoin manage to get this capacity that nobody else has? Money talks, right? Why aren't the mayors of San Francisco, New York, Chicago etc. trumpeting their new 100% renewable grids? Then you might say that Bitcoin is tech-enabled and decentralized, you can run a mining rig near any energy+internet source. But that's equally true of a cloud compute farm. The fact that bitcoin is pointless hashes and not cloud compute is a historical quirk. Any Bitcoin node/farm could be replaced with an identical-power-usage server farm and do more good for society. I'd like a source on your Bitcoin only uses renewable claim. I think if I run a miner on my home PC, which I believe has some natural gas in the energy mix, that argument fails. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f... > But right now the only places that Bitcoin is causing environmental damage are places where some government has unwisely subsidized fossil-fuel consumption, and Bitcoin itself is what puts an end to those subsidies. I wrote this whole comment without getting to the end of your inane post. We agree that implicit subsidies are bad (burning fossil fuels creates externalities, failing to tax them is a subsidy). But your wordsmithing here is bad faith. Your argument is basically "governments thought people wouldn't be complete jerks, and Bitcoin sure proved them wrong!" Yeah it's human nature and perhaps inevitable, but 50+ years for some of these hydro dams without a problem until Bitcoin came in and ruined everything. Bitcoin is an ongoing real time climate catastrophe. Get back to me when China and the US ban all forms of carbon-emitting energy production. Until then, those "subsidies" continue, and it matters quite a lot what use for the subsidized energy we find. I suggest cloud computing as a baseline. "environmental destruction right now" is exactly the current state of things.
imtringued 5y ago
There are cases of Bitcoin mines stealing electricity and fossil fuel powerplants being retrofitted for Bitcoin mining there is no way miners care about the source of their energy.
UncleMeat 5y ago
That’s why I leave my fridge open at night. It is good for the environment!