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Goes to show you that energy is the real base metal of the world. Whether you are mining bitcoin or gold, or drilling oil - the power rests in the hands whoever

Goes to show you that energy is the real base metal of the world. Whether you are mining bitcoin or gold, or drilling oil - the power rests in the hands whoever controls the energy to pull it out of the ground/air.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
Exactly. You could use anything as currency. Prisoners use cigarettes or ramen. Its not about the product being mined so much as work being done, and therefore work being stored. Replace any currency with any power generation you want. In prison, its the work of smuggling that stores economic value in cigarettes. In a gold based system, its the work of mining elements out of the earth that stores economic value in base metals. In a peer to peer network, its the work of electricity(of any kind whatsoever, clean or polluting) that stores economic value on a fair distributed ledger. Money is about storage of work, and quite frankly the weaker the money used to store energy, the more lethargic and rusted the whole economic system gets. Fiat, i.e. "proof of wasted energy" just does a lot of work and lets it evaporate in economic terms leaving the entire society that uses it in constant need of more and more fiat because that energy, that work done, keeps dissipating. It doesn't matter what money is: seashells, carved rai stones, arrowheads, cigarettes, ramen, non-livable apartment homes sold solely for wealth storage, luxury cars, art, gold, printed paper with your uncle sam's face and "guarantee" stamped on it, centralized entry in a private database, decentralized entry on a public blockchain. Society needs money in order to achieve higher levels of cooperation. Might as well use the strongest form of money that exists. And as far as I know, it aint proof of wasted electricity, i.e. fiat.
- otterley 5y ago
  I don’t think anyone disagrees that money is an exchange medium for work. The question is whether the practice of mining Bitcoin is work worth valuing for its own sake. Nobody is getting fed, housed, or clothed when mining cryptocurrencies, nor is it improving business productivity in some way. In other words, it’s a question of “useful work,” not just “work.” And this is an especially important question in light of the fact that a lot of energy used to mine cryptocurrency is produced in environmentally harmful ways.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    You asked a very good and important question. I don't want to share the answer, but know that it explains a very important topic on economic systems. Since I'm not going to be giving away the answer, I want you to at least ask yourself: Does the practice of pressing buttons and printing dollars provide value at the value the units represent? And since your concern seems to be the environmental cost of bitcoin mining, what are the environmental costs to pressing buttons on a computer adding dollars into a digital dollar network along with running printers to create a few sheets of paper money? Are there any environmental costs beyond the electricity that runs the printers and the computer and the trees cut down to print the money on? If so what would those environment costs be and where would they be coming from? If not, where is the value of that dollar coming from to begin with?
    - otterley 5y ago
      Can you get to your point, please?
      - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
        From my previous comment: > I don't want to share the answer I'm not here to win arguments. No. I wont be "getting to the point" because I'm going to keep it for later.
  - CTDOCodebases 5y ago
    It definitely isn't improving business productivity. Nothing improves business productivity like fiat which has an ever expanding supply. If inflation was non existent or radically less than what it is today would people be so keen to invest their money in companies or spend so much time and effort trying to hoard money for the future? People who are into Bitcoin talk about inflation like it's a bug but I think it is a feature.
    - kayamon 5y ago
      Bitcoin has inflation. One coin every ten minutes. Tic toc next block. There's the question of when new money enters the world, who gets to have it? Should it be randomly distributed, or should one guy in charge of the money printer get to keep most of it for himself and all his friends, lie about having done that, and then gaslight people to say all of that was okay anyway?
Thorentis 5y ago
Energy has always been the real measure of wealth, whether that be in the form of human Labor: number of slaves or peasants you owned, number of workers you employed, amount of power you can generate from coal, and so on.
marvinblum 5y ago
I really like that they use Energy as currency in Stellaris (the game made by Paradox). I think it shows what really matters.
snovv_crash 5y ago
The problem with cryptocurrency, unlike eg. gold, is that you can't melt it down and get the energy back somehow. It's just wasted entropy somewhere. This means that when the music stops, someone ends up holding a big bag of nothing, since there's no backstop.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  > when the music stops When the music stops, your account in the global open distributed ledger is stored in hundreds of thousands of harddrives distributed evenly throughout the entire free world. And when the music starts again, your account is still exactly where it was when it stopped, available to you wherever you want to go in the free world.
  - rcxdude 5y ago
    Assuming the music starts again. Not just in terms of whether anyone ever decides they want the money in your account again, but also in terms of whether you can actually restart the network again, if the music stopped particularly abruptly.
    - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
      It only takes one guitarist to start a song, and I can play a few chords.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Sure, you can have tons of BTC. Just like right now you could buy a lot of Luna. Maybe you can even find someone to buy it from you. Maybe.
  - xeyownt 5y ago
    Account stay the same, actual value not.
    - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
prox 5y ago
Aren’t you just describing “labour” ie “work” , which is indeed energy.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

Exactly. You could use anything as currency. Prisoners use cigarettes or ramen. Its not about the product being mined so much as work being done, and therefore work being stored. Replace any currency with any power generation you want. In prison, its the work of smuggling that stores economic value in cigarettes. In a gold based system, its the work of mining elements out of the earth that stores economic value in base metals. In a peer to peer network, its the work of electricity(of any kind whatsoever, clean or polluting) that stores economic value on a fair distributed ledger. Money is about storage of work, and quite frankly the weaker the money used to store energy, the more lethargic and rusted the whole economic system gets. Fiat, i.e. "proof of wasted energy" just does a lot of work and lets it evaporate in economic terms leaving the entire society that uses it in constant need of more and more fiat because that energy, that work done, keeps dissipating. It doesn't matter what money is: seashells, carved rai stones, arrowheads, cigarettes, ramen, non-livable apartment homes sold solely for wealth storage, luxury cars, art, gold, printed paper with your uncle sam's face and "guarantee" stamped on it, centralized entry in a private database, decentralized entry on a public blockchain. Society needs money in order to achieve higher levels of cooperation. Might as well use the strongest form of money that exists. And as far as I know, it aint proof of wasted electricity, i.e. fiat.

otterley 5y ago
I don’t think anyone disagrees that money is an exchange medium for work. The question is whether the practice of mining Bitcoin is work worth valuing for its own sake. Nobody is getting fed, housed, or clothed when mining cryptocurrencies, nor is it improving business productivity in some way. In other words, it’s a question of “useful work,” not just “work.” And this is an especially important question in light of the fact that a lot of energy used to mine cryptocurrency is produced in environmentally harmful ways.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  You asked a very good and important question. I don't want to share the answer, but know that it explains a very important topic on economic systems. Since I'm not going to be giving away the answer, I want you to at least ask yourself: Does the practice of pressing buttons and printing dollars provide value at the value the units represent? And since your concern seems to be the environmental cost of bitcoin mining, what are the environmental costs to pressing buttons on a computer adding dollars into a digital dollar network along with running printers to create a few sheets of paper money? Are there any environmental costs beyond the electricity that runs the printers and the computer and the trees cut down to print the money on? If so what would those environment costs be and where would they be coming from? If not, where is the value of that dollar coming from to begin with?
  - otterley 5y ago
    Can you get to your point, please?
    - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
      From my previous comment: > I don't want to share the answer I'm not here to win arguments. No. I wont be "getting to the point" because I'm going to keep it for later.
- CTDOCodebases 5y ago
  It definitely isn't improving business productivity. Nothing improves business productivity like fiat which has an ever expanding supply. If inflation was non existent or radically less than what it is today would people be so keen to invest their money in companies or spend so much time and effort trying to hoard money for the future? People who are into Bitcoin talk about inflation like it's a bug but I think it is a feature.
  - kayamon 5y ago
    Bitcoin has inflation. One coin every ten minutes. Tic toc next block. There's the question of when new money enters the world, who gets to have it? Should it be randomly distributed, or should one guy in charge of the money printer get to keep most of it for himself and all his friends, lie about having done that, and then gaslight people to say all of that was okay anyway?

Thorentis 5y ago

Energy has always been the real measure of wealth, whether that be in the form of human Labor: number of slaves or peasants you owned, number of workers you employed, amount of power you can generate from coal, and so on.

marvinblum 5y ago

I really like that they use Energy as currency in Stellaris (the game made by Paradox). I think it shows what really matters.

snovv_crash 5y ago

The problem with cryptocurrency, unlike eg. gold, is that you can't melt it down and get the energy back somehow. It's just wasted entropy somewhere. This means that when the music stops, someone ends up holding a big bag of nothing, since there's no backstop.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
> when the music stops When the music stops, your account in the global open distributed ledger is stored in hundreds of thousands of harddrives distributed evenly throughout the entire free world. And when the music starts again, your account is still exactly where it was when it stopped, available to you wherever you want to go in the free world.
- rcxdude 5y ago
  Assuming the music starts again. Not just in terms of whether anyone ever decides they want the money in your account again, but also in terms of whether you can actually restart the network again, if the music stopped particularly abruptly.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    It only takes one guitarist to start a song, and I can play a few chords.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Sure, you can have tons of BTC. Just like right now you could buy a lot of Luna. Maybe you can even find someone to buy it from you. Maybe.
- xeyownt 5y ago
  Account stay the same, actual value not.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

prox 5y ago

Aren’t you just describing “labour” ie “work” , which is indeed energy.