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To put this in perspective, there are hundreds of thousands of validators already online and the amount of energy consumed by them while running is less than th

To put this in perspective, there are hundreds of thousands of validators already online and the amount of energy consumed by them while running is less than the energy consumed by videogame consoles around the world while idling. Every gamer (PC or console) that has used the "look at how much energy is being wasted" argument to be anti-crypto will have to eat their GPUs after the merge.

belltaco 4y ago
>"look at how much energy is being wasted" argument to be anti-crypto Bitcoin will be still wasting a crap load of energy, proportional to its value and has no plans to stop doing that.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Then it is an issue of bitcoin and all the PoW blockchains, not of crypto in general. You can be pro-crypto without being in favor of Bitcoin, you know? In fact, those who oppose crypto due to environmental concerns would help immensely if they stopped generalizing and became more specific about their arguments.
  - belltaco 4y ago
    Bitcoin is the largest and most popular crypto by far and was also the first successful one.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      And Friendster was once the largest social network and the first successful one. Your point? Bitcoin was a good first prototype, but it is clearly a failed experiment. It's not used as a currency, the "store of value" narrative is bogus. All it took was the first asset bubble to pop to demonstrate how BTC is only correlated with other stock prices. It already loses to Ethereum in many metrics: transaction volume, number of wallets, decentralization (number of nodes participating in block validation) and so on. Layer-2 systems in Ethereum hold more Wrapped Bitcoin than lightning by orders of magnitude. Even if you really want to use BTC, the best way to transact bitcoin today is by wrapping it and using it on Ethereum.
      - rcxdude 4y ago
        The point being the criticism of crypto as a whole as a tremendous waste of energy will still be valid until bitcoin is a small fraction of crypto.
        rglullis 4y ago
        Bitcoin is not going to go away just because lots of people criticize it. Bitcoin is only going to go away when we build an alternative that has (most) of its (perceived) benefits and fewer of its drawbacks. IOW, stop criticizing "crypto" and start focusing on criticizing "Bitcoin". Be specific about your arguments, otherwise everyone will feel like they are on a Mexican standoff and you will never get the support to win the good fight.
        petmon 4y ago
        The chief perceived benefit of Bitcoin is its speculative asset value. We may try to unseat this with a new, less environmentally harmful speculative asset, but it's unethical to deliberately attempt to suck people into a negative-sum scheme, plus it won't work: crypto coins move in tandem with each other.
        rglullis 4y ago
        You are reversing cause and effect. The original promise of Bitcoin was to become a p2p payment system that could be an alternative (not a replacement) for cash. All of the speculation around it comes from that. The unethical thing is to keep BTC around just because there are so many sunk costs associated with it.
      - belltaco 4y ago
        Friendster isn't currently the largest social network. The point is that people associate the biggest product of the category with the category itself. Like web search is synonymous with Google.
        4y ago
- baby 4y ago
  Regulations will take care of that. I expect that bitcoin will either be banned, or miners will be forced to reduce their computations, or users will be required to pay a pollution tax at exchanges. Move to greener chain if you have bitcoin, that’s my advice
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    If the Merge works (and PoS chains remain secure), then it'll be proof in practice that PoW is unnecessarily wasteful, so regulators have extra incentive to scrutinize Bitcoin.
deleted 4y ago
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belltaco 4y ago

>"look at how much energy is being wasted" argument to be anti-crypto Bitcoin will be still wasting a crap load of energy, proportional to its value and has no plans to stop doing that.

rglullis 4y ago
Then it is an issue of bitcoin and all the PoW blockchains, not of crypto in general. You can be pro-crypto without being in favor of Bitcoin, you know? In fact, those who oppose crypto due to environmental concerns would help immensely if they stopped generalizing and became more specific about their arguments.
- belltaco 4y ago
  Bitcoin is the largest and most popular crypto by far and was also the first successful one.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    And Friendster was once the largest social network and the first successful one. Your point? Bitcoin was a good first prototype, but it is clearly a failed experiment. It's not used as a currency, the "store of value" narrative is bogus. All it took was the first asset bubble to pop to demonstrate how BTC is only correlated with other stock prices. It already loses to Ethereum in many metrics: transaction volume, number of wallets, decentralization (number of nodes participating in block validation) and so on. Layer-2 systems in Ethereum hold more Wrapped Bitcoin than lightning by orders of magnitude. Even if you really want to use BTC, the best way to transact bitcoin today is by wrapping it and using it on Ethereum.
    - rcxdude 4y ago
      The point being the criticism of crypto as a whole as a tremendous waste of energy will still be valid until bitcoin is a small fraction of crypto.
      - rglullis 4y ago
        Bitcoin is not going to go away just because lots of people criticize it. Bitcoin is only going to go away when we build an alternative that has (most) of its (perceived) benefits and fewer of its drawbacks. IOW, stop criticizing "crypto" and start focusing on criticizing "Bitcoin". Be specific about your arguments, otherwise everyone will feel like they are on a Mexican standoff and you will never get the support to win the good fight.
        petmon 4y ago
        The chief perceived benefit of Bitcoin is its speculative asset value. We may try to unseat this with a new, less environmentally harmful speculative asset, but it's unethical to deliberately attempt to suck people into a negative-sum scheme, plus it won't work: crypto coins move in tandem with each other.
        rglullis 4y ago
        You are reversing cause and effect. The original promise of Bitcoin was to become a p2p payment system that could be an alternative (not a replacement) for cash. All of the speculation around it comes from that. The unethical thing is to keep BTC around just because there are so many sunk costs associated with it.
    - belltaco 4y ago
      Friendster isn't currently the largest social network. The point is that people associate the biggest product of the category with the category itself. Like web search is synonymous with Google.
      - 4y ago
baby 4y ago
Regulations will take care of that. I expect that bitcoin will either be banned, or miners will be forced to reduce their computations, or users will be required to pay a pollution tax at exchanges. Move to greener chain if you have bitcoin, that’s my advice
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  If the Merge works (and PoS chains remain secure), then it'll be proof in practice that PoW is unnecessarily wasteful, so regulators have extra incentive to scrutinize Bitcoin.

deleted 4y ago

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