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This [1] is worth watching in full. Crypto, to me, has shown three things: 1. Its only use case is bypassing laws; 2. Crypto thrives on desperation and hopele
by jmyeet 4y ago
This [1] is worth watching in full. Crypto, to me, has shown three things:
1. Its only use case is bypassing laws;
2. Crypto thrives on desperation and hopelessness. I think more and more people are realizing that their circumstances (or "material conditions" if you prefer) are awful. So many people are bordering on food and housing insecurity. So many people feel like they'll never "get ahead". Everyone saw Bitcoin's meteoric rise and don't want to miss out on the next Bitcoin; and
3. Despite crypto having no use cases and being a giant Ponzi scheme, it's amazing how long something can persist when people want it to be true.
So is it dead? Not yet. It may never die. But it should. It's worth noting Weaver's Iron Law of Blockchain [2]
> When somebody says you can solve X with blockchain, they don’t understand X, and you can ignore them.
I'll also note that apparently the Bitcoin network used 200TWh in 2022. It came up in another thread the other day that Google in 2020 used 15TWh. Now compare the utility.
Think about that.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirg
[2]: https://twitter.com/Kellblog/status/1532756678596124673 https://twitter.com/Kellblog/status/1532756678596124673
- hiq 4y ago> 1. Its only use case is bypassing laws; > 3. Despite crypto having no use cases You're contradicting yourself here.
- hossbeast 4y agoIf you think 200TWh is too much to operate the Bitcoin network, is there a smaller number you would find reasonable?
- jmyeet 4y agoLet's compare to Visa [1]: > According to VISA corporate responsibility and sustainability report in 2017, the company consumed a total amount of 680,560 GigaJoules of energy globally for all its operations (1). We also know VISA processed 111.2 billion transactions in 2017 (2). Rely on these numbers, VISA ECPT is 0.0017 kilowatt-hours and for simplification 100,000 VISA transactions consume 170 kWh. 680,000 GJ is roughly 190GWh (0.1%). But it gets worse. In 2017 Visa executed ~111B transactions. Bitcoin peaks at about ~90M. So 1000x the energy for 1/1000 of the transaction volume. So each Bitcoin transaction uses ~1,000,000 times the energy of a Visa transaction. [1]: https://medium.com/@a.abbaszadeh.s/measuring-iota-pow-s-energy-consumption-and-comparing-with-other-payment-systems-413f4de50274 https://medium.com/@a.abbaszadeh.s/measuring-iota-pow-s-ener...