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> I'm not a crypto proponent per se Yet you rolled out the standard crypto talking points flawlessly. > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give

by boc 3y ago

> I'm not a crypto proponent per se Yet you rolled out the standard crypto talking points flawlessly. > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist Again, I suspect you aren't an environmentalist either. Please just be straightforward with your motivations here.

digging 3y ago
Your suspicions are wrong, but you're welcome to add to the debate if you have anything to contribute.
- boc 3y ago
  I'll be upfront with you: bitcoin is probably the worst "tech" ever mass-adopted. That's my bias. 1. The banking industry is thousands of times more important that crypto for everyday Americans. It's what literally makes our entire economy run. Crypto is used for speculation. What you should be comparing bitcoin against is the energy it takes to list a few ETFs on an exchange, which is essentially the cost of a few hundred servers, aka nothing. Bitcoin is ungodly inefficient and will only become more inefficient. 2. "It could be less, much less, or much less," This is a filler argument. Study says "around" a number, so you're arguing it could be a really broad definition of "around"? Not a serious take. 3. The absolute number matters because it's showing the economic activity is being concentrated in the pockets of just 137 entities. This is NOT a broad-base economic phenomenon that helps employ people in communities around the country, like say running gas stations (another polluting industry). If you're going to use 2% of the nation's electricity, you'd want the benefits spread across at least 2% of the population. Not 0.00002%. 4. Net energy consumption pulls from our current energy grid. Within a grid, if you use more clean electricity in one area, it'll pull more supply from dirtier sources elsewhere. Saying that bitcoin mining helps "green" the grid is a myth because you have to mine it 24/7/365, which means intermittent sources like wind and solar are at a big disadvantage. Battery storage tech is not there yet, thus gas plants and dirtier sources have to kick-in to keep up with 24/7 consumption.
  - digging 3y ago
    I'm not sure if I was unclear or if the people debating me are too charged to read my precise meaning, or both. > "It could be less, much less, or much less," This is a filler argument. Actually my argument is, "This article claims it could be much less, and that we aren't even sure of the range given, but the title definitively claims the maximum value." I'm saying this article is bad and is FUD, that's why I said the thing about specifically criticizing the article. (Yeah I don't think I was that unclear actually.) I'm actually ambivalent on the rest of your arguments. They would have made good talking points in TFA, which made none of them.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    I disagree with your first point mainly because this is more of a symptom of what Americans want, not necessarily some sort of virtuous result of the banking industry. I'd also argue that it doesn't "make our entire economy run." What makes the economy run is people going to work and performing work, producing goods and services. Banking is merely an aspect of that, and it's perhaps propped up into a bigger piece than it may need to be because people prefer being able to (or in some cases need to) access credit to buy stuff. I also somewhat disagree with (3) because it's ambiguous how many people constitute these mining facilities referenced in the article. You write it as though it means 137 individuals. But overall I only dislike crypto because it has become a space for charlatans and people who want to get rich quick. Any original principles behind creating a new currency outside of fiat and actually using that for transactions have been forgotten since then and crowded out by people who pretend those principles still mean something but really just want XCOIN to moon.
rglullis 3y ago
The standard talking points from Bitcoin proponents.
- boc 3y ago
  Yeah that's a fair correction. Proof of Work appears to be a much, much better solution from an energy standpoint, although I'm less informed about the nitty-gritty.
  - digging 3y ago
    You mean Proof of Stake. POW is the wasteful one.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Proof of Stake is the widely deployed consensus model which isn't designed to waste energy. Actually, there are lots of other ones, but Proof of Work is the only one that is designed to add security by requiring a lot of hashrate (which translates to a bunch of energy) to submit blocks ("mining" in proof of work) Proof of work was a brilliant innovation at the time, but as it turns out, smart people iterate on technology over time to improve it. The fact that bitcoin didn't sink like a stone after being improved upon (just from a resource-usage perspective) by most other blockchains really highlights the greed and single-mindedness of most crypto speculators.
    - FabHK 3y ago
      > Proof of Stake is the widely deployed consensus model which isn't designed to waste energy. Nicely put. PoS is still around a million times more wasteful than the effective work it does, though.
      - pcthrowaway 3y ago
        Different PoS chains will have different characteristics, but I was curious about this claim so I dug up some numbers for Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Visa: Transactions in 2023: Bitcoin: 174310000 Ethereum: 583530000 Visa: 212600000000 Energy consumption: Bitcoin: 167.8 TWh/yr Ethereum: 0.0067479963 TWh/yr Visa: 197.57 TWh/yr (2021?) Energy consumption/tx Bitcoin: 962.652745 kWh Ethereum: 0.011564 kWh Visa: 0.929304 kWh It's entirely possible some of these numbers are wrong or off so please check my math, but it looks like Ethereum is the most energy-efficient of the 3 on a per-transaction basis, maybe an order of magnitude better than Visa. Bitcoin on the other hand is 3 orders of magnitude worse than visa on a per-transaction basis. I suspect both Bitcoin and Ethereum also transact more value in USD per transaction (if you're willing to consider funny crypto money at spot prices) on average, than Visa, by virtue of them having a much higher transaction fee which is also borne by the address making the transaction. If you don't consider Ethereum transactions to be "effective work" than this isn't a relevant metric of course, but I'm curious how you're arriving at your figure.
jakupovic 3y ago
Your comment added 0 to the discussion and was a personal attack. This site is not for this kind of stuff as I was reminded previously. Also just get some Bitcoin :)

by boc 3y ago

digging 3y ago

Your suspicions are wrong, but you're welcome to add to the debate if you have anything to contribute.

boc 3y ago
I'll be upfront with you: bitcoin is probably the worst "tech" ever mass-adopted. That's my bias. 1. The banking industry is thousands of times more important that crypto for everyday Americans. It's what literally makes our entire economy run. Crypto is used for speculation. What you should be comparing bitcoin against is the energy it takes to list a few ETFs on an exchange, which is essentially the cost of a few hundred servers, aka nothing. Bitcoin is ungodly inefficient and will only become more inefficient. 2. "It could be less, much less, or much less," This is a filler argument. Study says "around" a number, so you're arguing it could be a really broad definition of "around"? Not a serious take. 3. The absolute number matters because it's showing the economic activity is being concentrated in the pockets of just 137 entities. This is NOT a broad-base economic phenomenon that helps employ people in communities around the country, like say running gas stations (another polluting industry). If you're going to use 2% of the nation's electricity, you'd want the benefits spread across at least 2% of the population. Not 0.00002%. 4. Net energy consumption pulls from our current energy grid. Within a grid, if you use more clean electricity in one area, it'll pull more supply from dirtier sources elsewhere. Saying that bitcoin mining helps "green" the grid is a myth because you have to mine it 24/7/365, which means intermittent sources like wind and solar are at a big disadvantage. Battery storage tech is not there yet, thus gas plants and dirtier sources have to kick-in to keep up with 24/7 consumption.
- digging 3y ago
  I'm not sure if I was unclear or if the people debating me are too charged to read my precise meaning, or both. > "It could be less, much less, or much less," This is a filler argument. Actually my argument is, "This article claims it could be much less, and that we aren't even sure of the range given, but the title definitively claims the maximum value." I'm saying this article is bad and is FUD, that's why I said the thing about specifically criticizing the article. (Yeah I don't think I was that unclear actually.) I'm actually ambivalent on the rest of your arguments. They would have made good talking points in TFA, which made none of them.
- brvsft 3y ago
  I disagree with your first point mainly because this is more of a symptom of what Americans want, not necessarily some sort of virtuous result of the banking industry. I'd also argue that it doesn't "make our entire economy run." What makes the economy run is people going to work and performing work, producing goods and services. Banking is merely an aspect of that, and it's perhaps propped up into a bigger piece than it may need to be because people prefer being able to (or in some cases need to) access credit to buy stuff. I also somewhat disagree with (3) because it's ambiguous how many people constitute these mining facilities referenced in the article. You write it as though it means 137 individuals. But overall I only dislike crypto because it has become a space for charlatans and people who want to get rich quick. Any original principles behind creating a new currency outside of fiat and actually using that for transactions have been forgotten since then and crowded out by people who pretend those principles still mean something but really just want XCOIN to moon.

rglullis 3y ago

The standard talking points from Bitcoin proponents.

boc 3y ago
Yeah that's a fair correction. Proof of Work appears to be a much, much better solution from an energy standpoint, although I'm less informed about the nitty-gritty.
- digging 3y ago
  You mean Proof of Stake. POW is the wasteful one.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Proof of Stake is the widely deployed consensus model which isn't designed to waste energy. Actually, there are lots of other ones, but Proof of Work is the only one that is designed to add security by requiring a lot of hashrate (which translates to a bunch of energy) to submit blocks ("mining" in proof of work) Proof of work was a brilliant innovation at the time, but as it turns out, smart people iterate on technology over time to improve it. The fact that bitcoin didn't sink like a stone after being improved upon (just from a resource-usage perspective) by most other blockchains really highlights the greed and single-mindedness of most crypto speculators.
  - FabHK 3y ago
    > Proof of Stake is the widely deployed consensus model which isn't designed to waste energy. Nicely put. PoS is still around a million times more wasteful than the effective work it does, though.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      Different PoS chains will have different characteristics, but I was curious about this claim so I dug up some numbers for Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Visa: Transactions in 2023: Bitcoin: 174310000 Ethereum: 583530000 Visa: 212600000000 Energy consumption: Bitcoin: 167.8 TWh/yr Ethereum: 0.0067479963 TWh/yr Visa: 197.57 TWh/yr (2021?) Energy consumption/tx Bitcoin: 962.652745 kWh Ethereum: 0.011564 kWh Visa: 0.929304 kWh It's entirely possible some of these numbers are wrong or off so please check my math, but it looks like Ethereum is the most energy-efficient of the 3 on a per-transaction basis, maybe an order of magnitude better than Visa. Bitcoin on the other hand is 3 orders of magnitude worse than visa on a per-transaction basis. I suspect both Bitcoin and Ethereum also transact more value in USD per transaction (if you're willing to consider funny crypto money at spot prices) on average, than Visa, by virtue of them having a much higher transaction fee which is also borne by the address making the transaction. If you don't consider Ethereum transactions to be "effective work" than this isn't a relevant metric of course, but I'm curious how you're arriving at your figure.

jakupovic 3y ago

Your comment added 0 to the discussion and was a personal attack. This site is not for this kind of stuff as I was reminded previously. Also just get some Bitcoin :)