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1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error. I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to Po
by pcthrowaway 5y ago
1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error.
I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to PoS, and newer PoW projects aren't getting the same kind of traction.
- nefitty 5y agoWhat do you consider the potential of cryptocurrency to be? Specifically, which of those potentials excites you?
- john2x 5y agoTwo words: “cha ching!”
- pcthrowaway 5y agoJust a few: - Decentralized payment infrastructure that can't be taken down. - Currency that isn't issued by a government - Open financial applications - Pseudonymous payments (depending on the crypto) - Infrastructure for fully transparent payments and analysis of value flows (governments and institutions should be using these) - applications whose source can be verified. Even if a web application you use promises they handle your data securely and publish source code, there's no guarantee what they're running is actually what they've published. Decentralized applications can be interacted with and viewed by anyone (even if compiled to bytecode, you can verify the contracts they've published are accurate) - Decentralized governance (the potential of this is massive, even moreso when coupled with decentralized identity) - Access to financial instruments typically only accessible to institutions. - A global, border-agnostic payment network
- toomim 5y agoMicropayments
- doopy1 5y agoThe most aggressive estimates I've seen are below 1% (maybe around half), which is quite literally a rounding error. Don't get me wrong I agree it's a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket on the global scale. What about the fact that china is pumping out something like 1/3rd of the world's emissions? What about excess livestock? FWIW - I do agree that PoW is not ideal and will largely be phased out, but there are lower hanging fruit with regards to our climate change crisis than cryptocurrencies.
- pcthrowaway 5y agoThere are things within our control and things that aren't. Driving up the price of bitcoin will lead to more energy consumption, so I don't buy it, even though it might lead to juicy gains. Livestock also lead to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, so I don't buy it either, even if it could lead to juicy steak. Lots of lower cap proof of stake cryptos (and Ethereum, which is moving to Proof of Stake) are likely to outperform bitcoin in terms of percentage gains anyway.
- doopy1 5y agoI agree with you. I'm not talking about bitcoin, but crypto as a whole.
- refenestrator 5y agoIn the neighborhood of 1 percent of all energy consumption, for literally nothing, is a colossal waste. Try to think of it in tons of coal. You proud of that?
- doopy1 5y ago"literally nothing" is your opinion.
- refenestrator 5y agoIt's a fact at the macro level. Individual speculators may profit but there's no benefit to the species. They don't even work as currencies because the transaction costs are so high.
- pcthrowaway 5y agoThere are cryptocurrencies where transaction fees (I'm assuming that's what you meant by 'costs') are actually very low, if not zero (see Nano). The 'costs' of proof of work are indeed high though. The amount of energy consumed for one bitcoin transaction to happen is astounding. My point above is that there are numerous alternatives (which in my opinion are poised to topple bitcoin), which don't have these costs. I disagree with 'no benefit to the species' (even bitcoin has many benefits). But the costs of bitcoin are also high, and the benefits can come without those costs.