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No one has yet mentioned bitcoin?

• user-the-name 5y ago
  The good thing about Bitcoin is that we can just ban it, since nobody actually uses it for anything important. It could be turned off tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost.
  • 0thgen 5y ago
    except all the goods and services that it currently stands in as a reference for (given people had to buy it with their own money, which they provided some service to obtain)
  • 0thgen 5y ago
    except all the goods and services that it currently stands in as a reference for (given people had to buy it with their own money, which they provided some service to obtain) but hey,
    • user-the-name 5y ago
      Literally nobody buys goods with bitcoin. Any services you buy tend to exchange to real money as soon as they get the payment.
      • 0thgen 5y ago
        just because bitcoin wasn't directly involved in a transaction doesn't mean it isn't standing in for economic value if I steal an ancient coin worth $10,000 dollars from you, and you're upset about it, am I making a good rebuttal by saying: "it's not like you could buy anything at the grocery store with it anyways"
        • user-the-name 5y ago
          It stands in for a gambling token, that is all. Speculators like to gamble using it. That is bringing actual value to society. We can get rid of it and it will be a net positive.
• floatboth 5y ago
  Exactly… the projection that datacenters' demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is somewhat speculative; the projection that Bitcoin's demand for computing power won't be offset by silicon efficiency improvements is obvious and is by design of the fucking system.
  • 0thgen 5y ago
    bitcoin mining provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to convert their computing resources into value. the competitive pressure is to have more efficient energy usage than your competitors so in reality, bitcoin provides an direct incentive for more efficient computing (the kind that can't be handle with by building smaller, more efficient processors). it might do more to boost computational efficiency (and reduce emissions) than all the millions of pages of blogger platitude-ing flooding the internet
    • user-the-name 5y ago
      Absolute bullshit. Bitcoin does not even use processors for mining, it uses massively specialised hardware that is absolutely useless for anything else. No advances in bitcoin mining will translate to gain in anything else. It also massively increases emissions and does nothing to decrease them. The difficulty adjustment algorithm of bitcoin will ensure that you always have to keep wasting more resources to mine, and will cancel out any gains you ever make. By design. Bitcoin is explicitly built to waste resources.
      • 0thgen 5y ago
        by specialized hardware, you mean GPUs? which are extremely useful for graphics, machine learning, and large-scale mathematical calculations? the gains to society that GPUs brought can't be understated. how do you think they run the climate-projection models? [1] and my argument is about second-order effects. even if bitcoin mining remains inefficient, the technological gains of directly incentivising lower energy usage than your competitors carries over to other markets / enterprises plus, bitcoin is scheduled to run out. so eventually the mining issue is moot a second-order prediction is obviously more noisy and holds less weight without any direct evidence, but 'lack of direct evidence' characterizes much of this debate [1]: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/07/17/clima-climate-model/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/07/17/clima-climate-model...
• Steltek 5y ago
  Harping on about how individuals can reduce energy usage in computing but not talking about Bitcoin is directly comparable to pushing lame individual recycling efforts but ignoring coal power plants and industrial scale methane leaks.