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>>It's not so much an idea as a piece of software, but being predicted on wasting energy it's going to do a lot of harm. That's an example of this class of game

>>It's not so much an idea as a piece of software, but being predicted on wasting energy it's going to do a lot of harm. That's an example of this class of game-theory based ideas. It's not a waste if the product the PoW generates is valued as equal to or greater than the cost of generating the PoW, and the market ensures that is the case, as miners cannot operating at a loss. Where it can be socially harmful is when energy consumers don't pay for the cost of the negative externalities that the energy they purchase created in its generation, but that applies to all energy usage, not just that used in generating PoW. You should know that costly signalling strategies are widely employed in nature because costly signals are reliable: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

nix0n 5y ago
Money laundering is useful but that doesn't mean it's good. A Ponzi scheme can generate wealth but it can't generate value. Wealth without value is maybe not wasteful, but it is harmful. > Where it can be socially harmful is when energy consumers don't pay for the cost of the negative externalities that the energy they purchase created in its generation, but that applies to all energy usage, not just that used in generating PoW. Bitcoin alone uses as much power as a medium-sized nation. The increased power usage has caused old fossil-fuel power plants to come back online.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  1. There is no evidence that cryptocurrency is widely used to launder money 2. Money laundering can improve economic efficiency when the crimes that generate the illicit revenue are socially beneficial, as is the case when people in China escape the Communist government's capital controls, or when people in Venezuela escape their Communist government's steep inflation tax via mandates to use the state's fiat currency. Even in ostensibly free societies, socially harmful laws that repress the right to voluntarily interact, like price controls on N95 masks that prolonged a shortage in them for months, or heavy taxation to pay the pensions of a bloated and over-paid public sector kleptocracy, can be socially beneficial to undermine. So your deduction that money laundering or other forms of escape from institutional rules, is socially harmful, is overly simplistic. In some cases it is harmful, and in some cases it's beneficial. 3. Cryptocurrencies are by definition not ponzi schemes. You could argue they're speculative bubbles, but that is itself speculation. >>Bitcoin alone uses as much power as a medium-sized nation. Because it generates billions of dollars of currency a year, and its production is costly in energy and affordable in labor. The energy consumption of labor-intensive industries obfuscates the real energy requirements of those industries, by effectively outsourcing the energy consumption to the workers.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    It generates zero dollars. Every dollar in all cryptocurrency markets comes directly from someone buying in. Claiming otherwise is basically a blatant lie.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      It's not generating dollars. It's generating a digital asset that is worth something. Of course the value of any commodity is based on what people are willing to buy it for, so your observation in no way discredits the point, that Bitcoin mining is generating something that objectively, based on what the market is paying, has value.

nix0n 5y ago

Money laundering is useful but that doesn't mean it's good. A Ponzi scheme can generate wealth but it can't generate value. Wealth without value is maybe not wasteful, but it is harmful. > Where it can be socially harmful is when energy consumers don't pay for the cost of the negative externalities that the energy they purchase created in its generation, but that applies to all energy usage, not just that used in generating PoW. Bitcoin alone uses as much power as a medium-sized nation. The increased power usage has caused old fossil-fuel power plants to come back online.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
1. There is no evidence that cryptocurrency is widely used to launder money 2. Money laundering can improve economic efficiency when the crimes that generate the illicit revenue are socially beneficial, as is the case when people in China escape the Communist government's capital controls, or when people in Venezuela escape their Communist government's steep inflation tax via mandates to use the state's fiat currency. Even in ostensibly free societies, socially harmful laws that repress the right to voluntarily interact, like price controls on N95 masks that prolonged a shortage in them for months, or heavy taxation to pay the pensions of a bloated and over-paid public sector kleptocracy, can be socially beneficial to undermine. So your deduction that money laundering or other forms of escape from institutional rules, is socially harmful, is overly simplistic. In some cases it is harmful, and in some cases it's beneficial. 3. Cryptocurrencies are by definition not ponzi schemes. You could argue they're speculative bubbles, but that is itself speculation. >>Bitcoin alone uses as much power as a medium-sized nation. Because it generates billions of dollars of currency a year, and its production is costly in energy and affordable in labor. The energy consumption of labor-intensive industries obfuscates the real energy requirements of those industries, by effectively outsourcing the energy consumption to the workers.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  It generates zero dollars. Every dollar in all cryptocurrency markets comes directly from someone buying in. Claiming otherwise is basically a blatant lie.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    It's not generating dollars. It's generating a digital asset that is worth something. Of course the value of any commodity is based on what people are willing to buy it for, so your observation in no way discredits the point, that Bitcoin mining is generating something that objectively, based on what the market is paying, has value.