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And yet Drew hasn't made an exemption for Ethereum, which does not do proof of work.

by exo762 4y ago

arghwhat 4y ago
That a project using proof of work is bad does not meant that a project using proof of stake is good. The ban is cryptocurrencies, and that PoW cooks the planet for no benefit is only one of the listed reasons behind it.
- tossl568 4y ago
  Proof of work isn't "cooking the planet". Get a grip. And Bitcoin is a fantastic benefit for humanity resulting from proof of work.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Turning on shuttered gas and coal plants solely to mine cryptocurrencies is about as close as you can get to pointlessly cooking the planet. The benefits have been relatively modest so far.
    - tossl568 4y ago
      Sounds like you have a problem with fossil fuels.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Indeed I do. I have problems with lots of things, as most people do.
        tossl568 4y ago
        What makes securing hundreds of billions of people's money a less valid use of fossil fuels than playing Call of Duty?
        woodruffw 4y ago
        For one, quantity: video games don’t use as much electricity, and those that do aren’t incentivizing reactivation of old fossil fuel plants. For another, necessity: we have a preexisting financial system that secures orders of magnitude more value than cryptocurrencies do, with actual legal guarantees and recourses. For a final, civic harm: whatever limited negative social ills can be explained by video games are dwarfed by the civic poison of fraud and “easy” money.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Energy isn't fungible. That financial system uses many more magnitudes of energy. This is like blaming dollars for the existence of bank robbers.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        I don’t understand what energy’s fungibility has to do with anything I’ve said. Most economic uses of energy involve exchanging it for productive capacity or consumer demand. Bitcoin definitely is an economic use of energy, just not a good or desirable one. I don’t think the directly comparable elements of the financial system (i.e., storage and settlement) use anywhere near as much power as Bitcoin does. Unless you’re doing that thing where you’re comparing the entire traditional economy to Bitcoin, which is silly: the traditional economy has actually valuable outflows, and Bitcoin does not replace factories and their workers.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Not a good or desirable one in your opinion. It is absolutely good and desirable in my opinion to have neutral money that can be used by anybody but controlled by nobody. The US dollar is secured by military force which has a staggering energy footprint. Bitcoin finally settled roughly the same amount as Fedwire last year and uses exactly as much energy as it needs to.
      - arghwhat 4y ago
        Yes, and thereby those that cause them to keep running (e.g., Bitcoin miners). If we had abundant clean energy everywhere with no unclean power plants, then knock yourself dead. But right now, any power consumed has an unclean component. Even if you use power in a country that is 100% renewable, it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy. And that these miners buy old crap power plants make it worse - it reverses grid-wide improvements to green energy. ... heck even with fully renewable energy for the entire globe, wastefully burning energy so that more renewable power sources need to be deployed is still bad - no power plant is neutral to manufacture. And re: comparison to call of duty, if had the same footprint as Bitcoin, then we could start talking. Bitcoin consumes power like a small country, not like someone forgetting to turn off the lights. All for something that can be done without any of this power draw.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Nope. Energy isn't fungible.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Nothing the GP has said requires a stance on the fungible nature of energy. Where are you getting that from?
        tossl568 4y ago
        "it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy." This idea/delusion that energy that is used for mining should and could have been used for something else. It's just not the case.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        You shouldn’t refer to other commenters as deluded. It’s pretty clear the GP means a demand curve: cryptocurrencies induce demand for energy sources that would otherwise be uneconomical to operate. This doesn’t require fungibility.
      - NoGravitas 4y ago
        Fossil fuels are everyone's problem.
  - arghwhat 4y ago
    It's wasting huge amounts of precious resources, often from buying out old, unclean and otherwise decommissioned powerplants to make it extra bad. All with no immediate benefit. Even if Bitcoin was Proof of Stake, it's still a pretty "eh" technology. The best thing that happened to Bitcoin was when it got banned in China so that the mining capacity was vastly reduced, taking part of the environmental footprint with it. Can't wait for others to do the same. Maybe new Blockchain products will pop up that do something interesting without being a significant contributor to global warming and lung cancer by massively increasing unclean power usage - but maybe not.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - tossl568 4y ago
      No it isn't. If that energy is cheap enough to be used for securing Bitcoin then it can't have been used for something "useful" (in your opinion). Energy isn't fungible and transport costs exist. The immediate benefit is securing and making possible an open, permissionless digital financial system anybody can use. That is an absolutely stunning technological innovation. Proof of stake is the perpetual motion machine scam here. The massive amount of stranded hydro that Bitcoin was soaking up in China, when mining was banned was that energy magically teleported to NYC to power people's TVs and dry their clothes? No, it's now sitting there unused with no buyers of last resort. In fact, that being sitting unused is now subsidising the fossil fuel mining by lowering the relative mining difficulty. Mining is responsible for a rounding error in emissions, if it disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't even make a detectable dent. Fossil fuels are bad. Fossil fuels being used for mining is bad. That doesn't make Bitcoin bad.
      - arghwhat 4y ago
        Sure, when we have a 100% renewable grid where Bitcoin neither takes away renewable quota, add dirty energy, cause grid to have to expand, or causes issues when TWh of heat is vented, and it is then adopted for legitimate reasons and not primarly for speculation and scamming, then Bitcoin goes from extremely harmful to mildly interesting. Yes there are cases where they buy good power plants, but they also power from grid and buy dirty power plants. Even in case of good power, the investment should instead be made to make this power useful. Heck, folding at home or similar would be a hell of lot better usage. But that isn't where we are. We're in a huge energy crunch, and having to go back on green policies because of it. During this time, ANY consumption is bad, and no, regardless of opinions on its usefulness, Bitcoin does not yet contribute in a meaningful enough way to sacrifice other utilities. So yeah - I agree with you that we can waste power when and only when the vast majority of dirty power has been replaced.
  - exo762 4y ago
    Nah, Bitcoin was a thing. But it is an intellectually dead. And without the network the asset itself is barely a thing.
    - tossl568 4y ago
      The best engineering talent works on Bitcoin. Altcoins were intellectually DOA.
      - exo762 4y ago
        Working on what? Smart-contracts? Privacy? The only thing Bitcoin has going is LN, but even than, it will not succeed - simply because a better alternatives exist.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Bitcoin is money, digital scarcity only needed to be invented once. Shitcoins are scams. LN is growing fast on a solid hard money layer 1 foundation.
        exo762 4y ago
        You haven't addressed anything I've said. What they are working on? Definitely not privacy nor smart-contracts.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Privacy on the base layer means the supply isn't auditable. Lightning network has sender privacy and improvements are being made to receiver privacy. I did smart contracts stuff on Rootstock yesterday. I don't need my base layer doing that thanks. I just need it to be money.
        klyrs 4y ago
        they've been sea lioning this thread, the goal isn't to convince, but to exhaust

And yet Drew hasn't made an exemption for Ethereum, which does not do proof of work.

by exo762 4y ago

And yet Drew hasn't made an exemption for Ethereum, which does not do proof of work.

That a project using proof of work is bad does not meant that a project using proof of stake is good. The ban is cryptocurrencies, and that PoW cooks the planet for no benefit is only one of the listed reasons behind it.

tossl568 4y ago
Proof of work isn't "cooking the planet". Get a grip. And Bitcoin is a fantastic benefit for humanity resulting from proof of work.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Turning on shuttered gas and coal plants solely to mine cryptocurrencies is about as close as you can get to pointlessly cooking the planet. The benefits have been relatively modest so far.
  - tossl568 4y ago
    Sounds like you have a problem with fossil fuels.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Indeed I do. I have problems with lots of things, as most people do.
      - tossl568 4y ago
        What makes securing hundreds of billions of people's money a less valid use of fossil fuels than playing Call of Duty?
        woodruffw 4y ago
        For one, quantity: video games don’t use as much electricity, and those that do aren’t incentivizing reactivation of old fossil fuel plants. For another, necessity: we have a preexisting financial system that secures orders of magnitude more value than cryptocurrencies do, with actual legal guarantees and recourses. For a final, civic harm: whatever limited negative social ills can be explained by video games are dwarfed by the civic poison of fraud and “easy” money.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Energy isn't fungible. That financial system uses many more magnitudes of energy. This is like blaming dollars for the existence of bank robbers.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        I don’t understand what energy’s fungibility has to do with anything I’ve said. Most economic uses of energy involve exchanging it for productive capacity or consumer demand. Bitcoin definitely is an economic use of energy, just not a good or desirable one. I don’t think the directly comparable elements of the financial system (i.e., storage and settlement) use anywhere near as much power as Bitcoin does. Unless you’re doing that thing where you’re comparing the entire traditional economy to Bitcoin, which is silly: the traditional economy has actually valuable outflows, and Bitcoin does not replace factories and their workers.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Not a good or desirable one in your opinion. It is absolutely good and desirable in my opinion to have neutral money that can be used by anybody but controlled by nobody. The US dollar is secured by military force which has a staggering energy footprint. Bitcoin finally settled roughly the same amount as Fedwire last year and uses exactly as much energy as it needs to.
    - arghwhat 4y ago
      Yes, and thereby those that cause them to keep running (e.g., Bitcoin miners). If we had abundant clean energy everywhere with no unclean power plants, then knock yourself dead. But right now, any power consumed has an unclean component. Even if you use power in a country that is 100% renewable, it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy. And that these miners buy old crap power plants make it worse - it reverses grid-wide improvements to green energy. ... heck even with fully renewable energy for the entire globe, wastefully burning energy so that more renewable power sources need to be deployed is still bad - no power plant is neutral to manufacture. And re: comparison to call of duty, if had the same footprint as Bitcoin, then we could start talking. Bitcoin consumes power like a small country, not like someone forgetting to turn off the lights. All for something that can be done without any of this power draw.
      - tossl568 4y ago
        Nope. Energy isn't fungible.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Nothing the GP has said requires a stance on the fungible nature of energy. Where are you getting that from?
        tossl568 4y ago
        "it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy." This idea/delusion that energy that is used for mining should and could have been used for something else. It's just not the case.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        You shouldn’t refer to other commenters as deluded. It’s pretty clear the GP means a demand curve: cryptocurrencies induce demand for energy sources that would otherwise be uneconomical to operate. This doesn’t require fungibility.
    - NoGravitas 4y ago
      Fossil fuels are everyone's problem.
- arghwhat 4y ago
  It's wasting huge amounts of precious resources, often from buying out old, unclean and otherwise decommissioned powerplants to make it extra bad. All with no immediate benefit. Even if Bitcoin was Proof of Stake, it's still a pretty "eh" technology. The best thing that happened to Bitcoin was when it got banned in China so that the mining capacity was vastly reduced, taking part of the environmental footprint with it. Can't wait for others to do the same. Maybe new Blockchain products will pop up that do something interesting without being a significant contributor to global warming and lung cancer by massively increasing unclean power usage - but maybe not.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tossl568 4y ago
    No it isn't. If that energy is cheap enough to be used for securing Bitcoin then it can't have been used for something "useful" (in your opinion). Energy isn't fungible and transport costs exist. The immediate benefit is securing and making possible an open, permissionless digital financial system anybody can use. That is an absolutely stunning technological innovation. Proof of stake is the perpetual motion machine scam here. The massive amount of stranded hydro that Bitcoin was soaking up in China, when mining was banned was that energy magically teleported to NYC to power people's TVs and dry their clothes? No, it's now sitting there unused with no buyers of last resort. In fact, that being sitting unused is now subsidising the fossil fuel mining by lowering the relative mining difficulty. Mining is responsible for a rounding error in emissions, if it disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't even make a detectable dent. Fossil fuels are bad. Fossil fuels being used for mining is bad. That doesn't make Bitcoin bad.
    - arghwhat 4y ago
      Sure, when we have a 100% renewable grid where Bitcoin neither takes away renewable quota, add dirty energy, cause grid to have to expand, or causes issues when TWh of heat is vented, and it is then adopted for legitimate reasons and not primarly for speculation and scamming, then Bitcoin goes from extremely harmful to mildly interesting. Yes there are cases where they buy good power plants, but they also power from grid and buy dirty power plants. Even in case of good power, the investment should instead be made to make this power useful. Heck, folding at home or similar would be a hell of lot better usage. But that isn't where we are. We're in a huge energy crunch, and having to go back on green policies because of it. During this time, ANY consumption is bad, and no, regardless of opinions on its usefulness, Bitcoin does not yet contribute in a meaningful enough way to sacrifice other utilities. So yeah - I agree with you that we can waste power when and only when the vast majority of dirty power has been replaced.
- exo762 4y ago
  Nah, Bitcoin was a thing. But it is an intellectually dead. And without the network the asset itself is barely a thing.
  - tossl568 4y ago
    The best engineering talent works on Bitcoin. Altcoins were intellectually DOA.
    - exo762 4y ago
      Working on what? Smart-contracts? Privacy? The only thing Bitcoin has going is LN, but even than, it will not succeed - simply because a better alternatives exist.
      - tossl568 4y ago
        Bitcoin is money, digital scarcity only needed to be invented once. Shitcoins are scams. LN is growing fast on a solid hard money layer 1 foundation.
        exo762 4y ago
        You haven't addressed anything I've said. What they are working on? Definitely not privacy nor smart-contracts.
        tossl568 4y ago
        Privacy on the base layer means the supply isn't auditable. Lightning network has sender privacy and improvements are being made to receiver privacy. I did smart contracts stuff on Rootstock yesterday. I don't need my base layer doing that thanks. I just need it to be money.
        klyrs 4y ago
        they've been sea lioning this thread, the goal isn't to convince, but to exhaust