3 ms·
Decentralized currencies rely on proof of economic waste. It's possible to imagine forms of economic waste that have different externalities, e.g. different en
by JackC 5y ago
Decentralized currencies rely on proof of economic waste.
It's possible to imagine forms of economic waste that have different externalities, e.g. different environmental impacts.
But we don't have evidence yet (that I know of?) that introducing one decentralized currency reduces waste in another one -- if you did introduce a new currency that wasted economic value in a new way, there's no evidence that crypto as a whole would waste less of the existing things, it would just start wasting that thing too.
In this model crypto is like ... an emergent antipattern of networked civilization, where the network starts to waste every economic resource that it can "see" and provably waste.
- rjbwork 5y ago>In this model crypto is like ... an emergent antipattern of networked civilization, where the network starts to waste every economic resource that it can "see" and provably waste. Exactly. As I've said to a number of people I've discussed crypto with, I'm happy to advocate for making PoW systems illegal. They'll happily gobble up a Dyson sphere of energy and a solar system of hardware in service of running a payment system with a tiny fraction of the throughput of any credit card company or bank. They are a complete waste of resources, energy, and human endeavor and society would be better off without them. I'll reserve judgement on PoS and other non-PoW systems until they're more widespread and I actually understand them better.
- xxs 5y agoIsn't PoS just limiting the amount of work done based on the share of the total 'wealth'?
- NortySpock 5y agoProof-of-Stake? I thought that PoStake still cranked out blocks at a fixed rate (say, every few minutes), and presumably the block size could be increased to increase throughput, if not latency.
- rjbwork 5y agoI think that's right. Like I said I reserve judgement until they're more prevalent and I've learned more about them. I have read that Ethereum's PoS implementation will use <1% of it's current PoW energy.
- Nullabillity 5y ago> Decentralized currencies rely on proof of economic waste. See also: the gold standard.