3 ms·

Sure it does, if they own all the money they can just buy all the miners. PoS just elides the step of wasting all the world's resources.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> wasting all the world's resources Not even 0.5% of global energy usage.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Writing a few bytes into a ledger is consuming 0.5% of global energy, but of course it's also consuming a country worth of power and generating a country of e-waste. So far, and that's just limited by the current price. Its trajectory is clear. [1] [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    That energy is supposed to buy us something. A distributed ledger which is supposed to provide us valuable qualities such as anonymity, uncensorability, total economic freedom in general. The problem is bitcoin has failed to deliver on these promises. It truly is a tragedy that so much energy is being wasted on BTC specifically. It should be redirected towards Monero.
- acdha 5y ago
  It's a small fraction of the global energy usage but that's far more than the traditional banking system _despite_ being used by an infinitesimal fraction of people. This is like saying RISC-V manufacturing generates less pollution than x86 without noting the difference in marketshare.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Energy use by traditional banking is not at all comparable. Banks have none of the properties Bitcoin was envisioned to provide. Fundamentally, bitcoin is not even a bank, it's more like cash. It makes no sense to compare the two. That energy usage is supposed to buy us a monetary system that's completely independent of government. Uncensorable, untraceable, unsanctionable, anonymous, the works. It literally doesn't matter how much energy it uses, as long as those properties are achieved. The problem is BTC failed at all of them. It really is a waste to spend all this energy mining BTC when better projects like Monero exist.
    - acdha 5y ago
      How is it not directly comparable? People use cash, checks, wire transfers, credit cards, etc. to make or receive payments all of the time. There's no reason why you can't compare those from the user's perspective — if I want to buy a cup of coffee, how long does it take, how much does it cost, how hard is it, etc.? > It literally doesn't matter how much energy it uses, as long as those properties are achieved. This is like saying it doesn't matter how slow it is as long as your computing machine is Turing complete. It doesn't matter if you achieve those properties on an unworkable system and it especially isn't true that more than a tiny fraction of people value them above cost or utility — a drug deal might care a lot about untraceable but the average person doesn't care enough to pay more or use something inconvenient.
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        > How is it not directly comparable? Because banks were never supposed to provide untraceable, uncensorable, unsanctionable, anonymous transactions. They do the opposite. Cryptocurrencies are not banks. They're coins. Analogous to cash which also allows for private transactions. Cryptocurrency is an attempt to create a digital cash system. It has nothing to do with banks. > the average person doesn't care enough to pay more or use something inconvenient Yes, this is why bitcoin failed. Normal people can't transact with it. The world will not change until everyone is transacting in cryptocurrency, leaving USD and all other currencies behind.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    Don't forget that "the traditional banking system" requires large standing armies and navies. The reason random countries can't print dollars is that there are 20 aircraft carriers floating around the world ready to bomb them back into the barter age. That cost has to be factored in.
    - acdha 5y ago
      That's a very reductive view ignoring all of the other things which depend on governments. For example, most cryptocurrency users depend on having functional police and court systems, the open internet, etc. — do we add that to their costs as well?
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      No, it really doesn't. The army defends the nation and currency is an emergent property of the nation, but the army isn't out there with guns making sure people accept dollars. If you switched to Bitcoin and killed the US dollar, the army would still be needed to protect the country, to protect America's business interests abroad, its political interests abroad and its people. That would be true even if the currency was old shoelaces. The US army long predates the fiat dollar by about 200 years and there is absolutely, indisputably, no path to reducing cost or energy expenditure on the army when switching to a different currency. Countries that use other countries currencies (in the way El Salvador uses the US Dollar) still have armies and some countries that use their own fiat dollars (Japan, Iceland) have no armies. These two are uncorrelated. Unless there's some straight line between, say, switching to Bitcoin and Xi Jinping realizing Taiwan was always its own country and grabbing some Baijiu with Tsai Ing-wen. I'm very excited to find out how Bitcoin solves the Hong Kong situation too! And I suppose it'll take care of business in the Sudan? Finally that trip to Yemen is back on the table. C'mon now...
jessebarton 5y ago
You should watch This Machine Greens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRN4089qufw&ab_channel=SwanSignal-ABitcoinChannel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRN4089qufw&ab_channel=SwanS...
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Manufacturing solar panels and giant wind turbines, then generating a bunch of power, and then wasting it isn't green. It's greenwashing. However, that wasn't really the question at issue.
  - jessebarton 5y ago
    Bitcoin incentivizes miners and energy companies to use otherwise wasted energy. It incentivizes them to innovate in the energy industry unlike other networks bitcoin is able to pay the people that innovate and build better technologies in the space.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      No, it really doesn't. It incentivizes the use of the cheapest energy. That's why PE firms are re-opening coal power plants. Burning waste coal is about the worst thing you can do with it. Flaring needs to stop, too. Transmission of power is about 97% efficient within the current network, and there's a whole world of things we can do with that energy - desalination, metalworking. [edit] Given a choice between reliable power coming out the back of a coal furnace in town and unreliable power in the middle of nowhere coming out the back of a waste plant and a solar farm, for probably 50% more, I know which I'd pick if I were running a business. This is again greenwashing.
  - panarky 5y ago
    > However, that wasn't really the question at issue. Weren't you the one who brought up the question in the first place? > wasting it isn't green The point is that renewable energy sources tend to produce maximum power at off-peak times. So to serve peak times, we need more wind and solar generation than is required for off-peak times. Since we don't have good ways to store and time-shift electricity, intermittent Bitcoin mining is one way to soak up the excess capacity off-peak to make the generation capacity economical. Should we just turn the windmills and solar panels off during off-peak times? Or should we leave them on and get clean energy at a price that's cheaper than coal?

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> wasting all the world's resources Not even 0.5% of global energy usage.

arcticbull 5y ago
Writing a few bytes into a ledger is consuming 0.5% of global energy, but of course it's also consuming a country worth of power and generating a country of e-waste. So far, and that's just limited by the current price. Its trajectory is clear. [1] [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  That energy is supposed to buy us something. A distributed ledger which is supposed to provide us valuable qualities such as anonymity, uncensorability, total economic freedom in general. The problem is bitcoin has failed to deliver on these promises. It truly is a tragedy that so much energy is being wasted on BTC specifically. It should be redirected towards Monero.
acdha 5y ago
It's a small fraction of the global energy usage but that's far more than the traditional banking system _despite_ being used by an infinitesimal fraction of people. This is like saying RISC-V manufacturing generates less pollution than x86 without noting the difference in marketshare.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Energy use by traditional banking is not at all comparable. Banks have none of the properties Bitcoin was envisioned to provide. Fundamentally, bitcoin is not even a bank, it's more like cash. It makes no sense to compare the two. That energy usage is supposed to buy us a monetary system that's completely independent of government. Uncensorable, untraceable, unsanctionable, anonymous, the works. It literally doesn't matter how much energy it uses, as long as those properties are achieved. The problem is BTC failed at all of them. It really is a waste to spend all this energy mining BTC when better projects like Monero exist.
  - acdha 5y ago
    How is it not directly comparable? People use cash, checks, wire transfers, credit cards, etc. to make or receive payments all of the time. There's no reason why you can't compare those from the user's perspective — if I want to buy a cup of coffee, how long does it take, how much does it cost, how hard is it, etc.? > It literally doesn't matter how much energy it uses, as long as those properties are achieved. This is like saying it doesn't matter how slow it is as long as your computing machine is Turing complete. It doesn't matter if you achieve those properties on an unworkable system and it especially isn't true that more than a tiny fraction of people value them above cost or utility — a drug deal might care a lot about untraceable but the average person doesn't care enough to pay more or use something inconvenient.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > How is it not directly comparable? Because banks were never supposed to provide untraceable, uncensorable, unsanctionable, anonymous transactions. They do the opposite. Cryptocurrencies are not banks. They're coins. Analogous to cash which also allows for private transactions. Cryptocurrency is an attempt to create a digital cash system. It has nothing to do with banks. > the average person doesn't care enough to pay more or use something inconvenient Yes, this is why bitcoin failed. Normal people can't transact with it. The world will not change until everyone is transacting in cryptocurrency, leaving USD and all other currencies behind.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Don't forget that "the traditional banking system" requires large standing armies and navies. The reason random countries can't print dollars is that there are 20 aircraft carriers floating around the world ready to bomb them back into the barter age. That cost has to be factored in.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That's a very reductive view ignoring all of the other things which depend on governments. For example, most cryptocurrency users depend on having functional police and court systems, the open internet, etc. — do we add that to their costs as well?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    No, it really doesn't. The army defends the nation and currency is an emergent property of the nation, but the army isn't out there with guns making sure people accept dollars. If you switched to Bitcoin and killed the US dollar, the army would still be needed to protect the country, to protect America's business interests abroad, its political interests abroad and its people. That would be true even if the currency was old shoelaces. The US army long predates the fiat dollar by about 200 years and there is absolutely, indisputably, no path to reducing cost or energy expenditure on the army when switching to a different currency. Countries that use other countries currencies (in the way El Salvador uses the US Dollar) still have armies and some countries that use their own fiat dollars (Japan, Iceland) have no armies. These two are uncorrelated. Unless there's some straight line between, say, switching to Bitcoin and Xi Jinping realizing Taiwan was always its own country and grabbing some Baijiu with Tsai Ing-wen. I'm very excited to find out how Bitcoin solves the Hong Kong situation too! And I suppose it'll take care of business in the Sudan? Finally that trip to Yemen is back on the table. C'mon now...

jessebarton 5y ago

You should watch This Machine Greens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRN4089qufw&ab_channel=SwanSignal-ABitcoinChannel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRN4089qufw&ab_channel=SwanS...

arcticbull 5y ago
Manufacturing solar panels and giant wind turbines, then generating a bunch of power, and then wasting it isn't green. It's greenwashing. However, that wasn't really the question at issue.
- jessebarton 5y ago
  Bitcoin incentivizes miners and energy companies to use otherwise wasted energy. It incentivizes them to innovate in the energy industry unlike other networks bitcoin is able to pay the people that innovate and build better technologies in the space.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    No, it really doesn't. It incentivizes the use of the cheapest energy. That's why PE firms are re-opening coal power plants. Burning waste coal is about the worst thing you can do with it. Flaring needs to stop, too. Transmission of power is about 97% efficient within the current network, and there's a whole world of things we can do with that energy - desalination, metalworking. [edit] Given a choice between reliable power coming out the back of a coal furnace in town and unreliable power in the middle of nowhere coming out the back of a waste plant and a solar farm, for probably 50% more, I know which I'd pick if I were running a business. This is again greenwashing.
- panarky 5y ago
  > However, that wasn't really the question at issue. Weren't you the one who brought up the question in the first place? > wasting it isn't green The point is that renewable energy sources tend to produce maximum power at off-peak times. So to serve peak times, we need more wind and solar generation than is required for off-peak times. Since we don't have good ways to store and time-shift electricity, intermittent Bitcoin mining is one way to soak up the excess capacity off-peak to make the generation capacity economical. Should we just turn the windmills and solar panels off during off-peak times? Or should we leave them on and get clean energy at a price that's cheaper than coal?