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Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide re

Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide real benefit and utility. But, perhaps power wasted on cloth dryers and Christmas lights are a western frivolity. So, the real argument is Bitcoin useful or not. Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market.

Bitbitcowurgh 3y ago
Lucky enough, we are not living in a free market. Otherwise we would all be fucked. Just in case you don't get it: have you ever seen a company making a high quality, sustainable and save product because of free market? Nope they do it because of laws we as a society make. And in this particular case, i'm absolutly for banning it globally.
- dazc 3y ago
  A true free market would have plane crashes every day and Boeing being hailed for their excellent safety record.
lgleason 3y ago
Except the US electricity market is not a free market. Most people only have one provider to choose from.
raincole 3y ago
It's really hard to gauge how much utility cryptos are providing. After all, people who need cryptos the most are those who can't use "proper" channels to transfer money.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  PoW is stupid and currencies need to evolve off of this. Within Crypocurrency world there are Bitcoin maximalists who believe it is the only true coin and probably like PoW. However other ones are moving to PoS which is better for the environment. Can’t comment on security but reckon they can make it secure.
- twojacobtwo 3y ago
  Also, some portion of those likely shouldn't be allowed to use any channels of money transfer (criminal organizations and their ilk), as they ultimately provide negative utility to the rest of society.
jkubicek 3y ago
> Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market. Except Bitcoin mining is a perfect example of why these things should NOT be left to the free market.
- psychlops 3y ago
  What better currency competition is out there?
  - acdha 3y ago
    Almost all of them? It hasn’t had much impact on the real economy so clearly most people do not consider it better.
    - alchemist1e9 3y ago
      The entire history of fiat currency is a combination of warfare and currency collapse. Why was the Bank of England created? To wage war. Perhaps “wasting” 2% of the world’s electricity supply will look a lot better when civilization scale money laundering and currency collapse is a thing of history, not to mention the curb on national budgets being allocated to war machines!
      - acdha 3y ago
        Are you seriously arguing that money laundering or military spending will go away if Bitcoin is more widely used? Continuing this, “fiat currency” has a specific meaning in economics: it’s a currency not backed by a commodity. Bitcoin is a fiat currency because the only value it has is based on social consensus, making it exceptionally volatile, but at the time the Bank of England was founded the pound sterling was based on silver (hence the name) as it had been for a millennium and it transitioned to gold for a couple centuries. The reason the Bank of England was founded wasn’t due to the choice of currency but rather credit, and as with war I find it unpersuasive that humanity will discontinue either.
bdcravens 3y ago
> Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market. The free market is often at odds with society at large, which is why we have regulations to protect society from the free market.
- twojacobtwo 3y ago
  I was just trying to think of how to put this succinctly. Well said! In addition, it tends to become more at odds with society as wealth inequality grows and that is at an all-time high and growing. Perhaps a signal that more people need to point out, as you did, every time the free market is tossed out as a universal solve-all.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Except it's not a free market. Those same regulators also give tax breaks to large inefficient corporations and tell small businesses they must close down for arbitrary intangible public health reasons, while the large corporations can remain open. In both examples, it's the regulators whom are detrimental to society, not the free market. Virtually everyone that champions regulations are not for regulation, but for imposing political will in a way favorable to them. I know this because these people freak out and think it's the end of the world when there's a seat change in politics and the very same regulators they loved are now imposing political will in a way that's unfavorable to them. They also seem to believe in democracy, but only if when they win.
  - stanleykm 3y ago
    The free market cant solve big societal issues we are staring down the barrel of. We need coordination at the highest levels of human civilization and not some handy wavey hope a million monkeys will reach the answer.
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      You might want to prepare for the worst then. That's probably not what you were expecting, but if that's really the case, it probably doesn't help that society is hyper-polarized. It also doesn't help that the main political opponent in the next election is being railroaded by the court system. If the idea is to unify and coordinate to solve problems, alienating and demonizing 70M voters and half of the country is not the way to do so. The message half the country hears and thinks is: when push comes to shove, the other half prefer crushing political competition by any means necessary rather than find common ground and work together. Those are the rules one side is playing by, and it shouldn't be a surprise when the other side does the same, or takes their ball and goes home.
delecti 3y ago
Implicit in this kind of headline is the presumption that bitcoin is not useful. After more than a decade of scams, I think the burden of proof is on bitcoin to demonstrate utility.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cenamus 3y ago
Clothes dryers save time, allow people to dry their clothes in their cramped apartments without the humidity going through the roof, calling that a western frivolity is a bit over the top. Bitcoin however provides what? A tiny fraction of the transactions per second that visa does, without all the consumer protection that credit cards encompass, with orders of magnitude more power consumed. All the while providing 'freedom' to a handful of activists, but most of all money launderers, drug sellers and all sorts of shady businesses.
titzer 3y ago
> probably be left to the free market. Ah yes, the mythical free market that no one ever questions, the unassailable arbiter of value in this world. This underpinning assumption needs to be pointed out. Clearly, the free market is not infallible. The question is how do mixed economies make best use of markets, regulation, taxation, and have a functioning justice system so that we don't shovel raw human souls into the profit machine. Most people recognize a role for regulation in matters that concern everyone, particularly when there are large negative externalities that markets can't price in appropriately. I know HN conversations are necessarily curtailed for brevity, but generally, no, wasting vast amounts of energy for temporary profit doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should go unregulated when such waste produces large-scale environmental consequences for us all.
- tgv 3y ago
  Indeed, many people seem to think the market solves all problems. In a sense it does, but only in a very specific sense. Like, if we there was some loophole in the law that allowed killing people with a pistol, the market would respond by making bullet-proof vests expensive, and by producing cheap, but bad protection vests. And guns, of course. It wouldn't solve the killing, but it would solve the question "how much can you spend to protect your life"? Perhaps it would make food cheaper. The market is a sick joke. In this case, the free market can solve the problem: how high can the electricity price go, or how many power outages can there be, until people are sick and tired of this Bitcoin bullshit?
  - titzer 3y ago
    I have found that HN sentiment (not just in the case of my comment above) does not suffer criticism of markets well.
bitcurious 3y ago
Bitcoin could be a very market-efficient means of meeting demand for money laundering, extortion, etc., and we could still declare it a useless waste.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
quickthrower2 3y ago
Bitcoin is hardly used in day to day life. It is designed so that energy use increases with coin price. If Bitcoin became a mainstream currency used even by one country for a lot of things energy usage goes up even more. I am ignoring a lot of things here: transactions per second can’t support it but let’s assume LN works well and also energy required to keep expanding may not be available (only one nearby star) which makes POW more Proof of Asic but potentially makes the network vulnerable.
spookie 3y ago
Given the current geopolitical landscape, I'm not sure it's utility is overall positive. Now, I'm myself torn on this, but I wonder.
realreality 3y ago
> Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. In a world of dwindling EROI and exponential carbon emissions, all data centers are bad. If we cared about the future at all, we'd be switching them off and triaging our energy use.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  ... like calling out BTC's egregious waste of electricity? Where 75,502,165,623,893/75,502,165,623,894th of the work is literally thrown away.
  - realreality 3y ago
    Yes, crypto miners should be among the first servers to switch off.
ncallaway 3y ago
> Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. No, but lots of people think the amount of energy they consume is bad, and lots of people and spent on trying to reduce the amount of energy.
eli 3y ago
Plenty of people think the data centers for AWS are bad.
o39245o9qw34u5 3y ago
I think AWS data centers are bad.

Bitbitcowurgh 3y ago

Lucky enough, we are not living in a free market. Otherwise we would all be fucked. Just in case you don't get it: have you ever seen a company making a high quality, sustainable and save product because of free market? Nope they do it because of laws we as a society make. And in this particular case, i'm absolutly for banning it globally.

dazc 3y ago
A true free market would have plane crashes every day and Boeing being hailed for their excellent safety record.

lgleason 3y ago

Except the US electricity market is not a free market. Most people only have one provider to choose from.

raincole 3y ago

It's really hard to gauge how much utility cryptos are providing. After all, people who need cryptos the most are those who can't use "proper" channels to transfer money.

quickthrower2 3y ago
PoW is stupid and currencies need to evolve off of this. Within Crypocurrency world there are Bitcoin maximalists who believe it is the only true coin and probably like PoW. However other ones are moving to PoS which is better for the environment. Can’t comment on security but reckon they can make it secure.
twojacobtwo 3y ago
Also, some portion of those likely shouldn't be allowed to use any channels of money transfer (criminal organizations and their ilk), as they ultimately provide negative utility to the rest of society.

jkubicek 3y ago

> Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market. Except Bitcoin mining is a perfect example of why these things should NOT be left to the free market.

psychlops 3y ago
What better currency competition is out there?
- acdha 3y ago
  Almost all of them? It hasn’t had much impact on the real economy so clearly most people do not consider it better.
  - alchemist1e9 3y ago
    The entire history of fiat currency is a combination of warfare and currency collapse. Why was the Bank of England created? To wage war. Perhaps “wasting” 2% of the world’s electricity supply will look a lot better when civilization scale money laundering and currency collapse is a thing of history, not to mention the curb on national budgets being allocated to war machines!
    - acdha 3y ago
      Are you seriously arguing that money laundering or military spending will go away if Bitcoin is more widely used? Continuing this, “fiat currency” has a specific meaning in economics: it’s a currency not backed by a commodity. Bitcoin is a fiat currency because the only value it has is based on social consensus, making it exceptionally volatile, but at the time the Bank of England was founded the pound sterling was based on silver (hence the name) as it had been for a millennium and it transitioned to gold for a couple centuries. The reason the Bank of England was founded wasn’t due to the choice of currency but rather credit, and as with war I find it unpersuasive that humanity will discontinue either.

bdcravens 3y ago

> Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market. The free market is often at odds with society at large, which is why we have regulations to protect society from the free market.

twojacobtwo 3y ago
I was just trying to think of how to put this succinctly. Well said! In addition, it tends to become more at odds with society as wealth inequality grows and that is at an all-time high and growing. Perhaps a signal that more people need to point out, as you did, every time the free market is tossed out as a universal solve-all.
infamouscow 3y ago
Except it's not a free market. Those same regulators also give tax breaks to large inefficient corporations and tell small businesses they must close down for arbitrary intangible public health reasons, while the large corporations can remain open. In both examples, it's the regulators whom are detrimental to society, not the free market. Virtually everyone that champions regulations are not for regulation, but for imposing political will in a way favorable to them. I know this because these people freak out and think it's the end of the world when there's a seat change in politics and the very same regulators they loved are now imposing political will in a way that's unfavorable to them. They also seem to believe in democracy, but only if when they win.
- stanleykm 3y ago
  The free market cant solve big societal issues we are staring down the barrel of. We need coordination at the highest levels of human civilization and not some handy wavey hope a million monkeys will reach the answer.
  - infamouscow 3y ago
    You might want to prepare for the worst then. That's probably not what you were expecting, but if that's really the case, it probably doesn't help that society is hyper-polarized. It also doesn't help that the main political opponent in the next election is being railroaded by the court system. If the idea is to unify and coordinate to solve problems, alienating and demonizing 70M voters and half of the country is not the way to do so. The message half the country hears and thinks is: when push comes to shove, the other half prefer crushing political competition by any means necessary rather than find common ground and work together. Those are the rules one side is playing by, and it shouldn't be a surprise when the other side does the same, or takes their ball and goes home.

delecti 3y ago

Implicit in this kind of headline is the presumption that bitcoin is not useful. After more than a decade of scams, I think the burden of proof is on bitcoin to demonstrate utility.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cenamus 3y ago

Clothes dryers save time, allow people to dry their clothes in their cramped apartments without the humidity going through the roof, calling that a western frivolity is a bit over the top. Bitcoin however provides what? A tiny fraction of the transactions per second that visa does, without all the consumer protection that credit cards encompass, with orders of magnitude more power consumed. All the while providing 'freedom' to a handful of activists, but most of all money launderers, drug sellers and all sorts of shady businesses.

titzer 3y ago

> probably be left to the free market. Ah yes, the mythical free market that no one ever questions, the unassailable arbiter of value in this world. This underpinning assumption needs to be pointed out. Clearly, the free market is not infallible. The question is how do mixed economies make best use of markets, regulation, taxation, and have a functioning justice system so that we don't shovel raw human souls into the profit machine. Most people recognize a role for regulation in matters that concern everyone, particularly when there are large negative externalities that markets can't price in appropriately. I know HN conversations are necessarily curtailed for brevity, but generally, no, wasting vast amounts of energy for temporary profit doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should go unregulated when such waste produces large-scale environmental consequences for us all.

tgv 3y ago
Indeed, many people seem to think the market solves all problems. In a sense it does, but only in a very specific sense. Like, if we there was some loophole in the law that allowed killing people with a pistol, the market would respond by making bullet-proof vests expensive, and by producing cheap, but bad protection vests. And guns, of course. It wouldn't solve the killing, but it would solve the question "how much can you spend to protect your life"? Perhaps it would make food cheaper. The market is a sick joke. In this case, the free market can solve the problem: how high can the electricity price go, or how many power outages can there be, until people are sick and tired of this Bitcoin bullshit?
- titzer 3y ago
  I have found that HN sentiment (not just in the case of my comment above) does not suffer criticism of markets well.

bitcurious 3y ago

Bitcoin could be a very market-efficient means of meeting demand for money laundering, extortion, etc., and we could still declare it a useless waste.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

quickthrower2 3y ago

Bitcoin is hardly used in day to day life. It is designed so that energy use increases with coin price. If Bitcoin became a mainstream currency used even by one country for a lot of things energy usage goes up even more. I am ignoring a lot of things here: transactions per second can’t support it but let’s assume LN works well and also energy required to keep expanding may not be available (only one nearby star) which makes POW more Proof of Asic but potentially makes the network vulnerable.

spookie 3y ago

Given the current geopolitical landscape, I'm not sure it's utility is overall positive. Now, I'm myself torn on this, but I wonder.

realreality 3y ago

> Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. In a world of dwindling EROI and exponential carbon emissions, all data centers are bad. If we cared about the future at all, we'd be switching them off and triaging our energy use.

FireBeyond 3y ago
... like calling out BTC's egregious waste of electricity? Where 75,502,165,623,893/75,502,165,623,894th of the work is literally thrown away.
- realreality 3y ago
  Yes, crypto miners should be among the first servers to switch off.

ncallaway 3y ago

> Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. No, but lots of people think the amount of energy they consume is bad, and lots of people and spent on trying to reduce the amount of energy.

eli 3y ago

Plenty of people think the data centers for AWS are bad.

o39245o9qw34u5 3y ago

I think AWS data centers are bad.