8 ms·
Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
by startupsfail 2y ago
Bitcoins are clearly negative sum game (resources used, GPUs burned, CO2 emitted, money changed hands). Wish we could do less of it.
- jsheard 2y agoAt least the broader crypto ecosystem mostly moved over to proof-of-stake, even if Bitcoin will probably always be proof-of-work, so at least most of their Ponzi schemes aren't boiling the oceans in the process anymore. Small victories.
- pants2 2y agoBitcoin can't always be proof-of-work. Given the capped supply, the mining rewards will eventually diminish to the point that the network is no longer secure. It will have to transition to proof-of-stake or some other mechanism long before that happens.
- tromp 2y agoIt intends to rely on fees, i.e. to have a constant backlog of high fee paying transactions. We'll see how that plays out within a few decades as the block subsidy becomes insignificant.
- rvz 2y agoWe are still waiting for AI (Deep Learning) to do the same and move to efficient alternatives without incinerating the environment and consuming the oceans to cool their GPUs whilst training and doing inference on their AI models. So many years, yet no practical efficient solutions currently in production to reduce the emissions AI is producing. Much more urgent than crypto since that already has largely moved to proof-of-stake.
- earnesti 2y agoBinance was not really about Bitcoin, it was more like a shitcoin casino and a money laundering machine.
- matrix2003 2y agoI’m just curious - if you were to try making a decentralized currency as a fun project, what mechanism would you use instead? I’m someone who doesn’t really use it, but was fascinated with it before “blockchain” became a buzzword. edit: proof-of-work. I have been out of the loop for years :) My next question is are there downsides to proof-of-stake, and why has bitcoin not moved towards it?
- wmf 2y agohttps://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html
- _heimdall 2y agoI've also been fascinated by bitcoin but never made the leap. The problem I always come back to is that it isn't a currency, a store of value, private, and I disagree with bitcoin's approach to decentralization. (A long list, I know. Every couple years I get the itch then rediscover all my complaints). Attempting to create a decentralized currency based on anything other than a supply-constrained natural resource is simply a losing game as far as I see it. The currency will be based only on promises, belief, and trust. A decentralized network is more akin to a Mexican standoff, trust and belief aren't what keep everyone from pulling the trigger.
- woodrowbarlow 2y agobut most national currencies have long since abandoned of the idea of being backed by physical resources, and have shifted towards promises, belief, and trust. are you saying that de-centralization introduces unique aspects that make physical backing a necessity?
- Yiin 2y agobluntly put you can pay taxes only in that currency and governments have power to enforce it, meanwhile btc has only as much power as currencies you can exchange it to. If you couldn't exchange btc to fiat, it would lose value rapidly.
- slavboj 2y agoAll currencies are negative sum when you only consider minting and transaction costs.
- nativeit 2y agoSo where’s the productive output?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThis is correct, All currencies have transaction costs, but compete on having lower transaction cost than the alternative. The theoretical maximum is zero transaction cost for a transaction. It cant go positive. Components of transaction cost are triangulation, transfer, and trust. Currencies attempt to lower the cost of the transfer and trust components. Any positive value a currency claims to have as method for settling transactions is just a differential with another method. There is a cost to going to an ATM and carrying USD cash, but it is lower than carrying around 100lbs of cabbages to barter with.
- Mathnerd314 2y agoDon't forget externalities. E.g. you can get a fee-free bank account with fee-free cash withdrawals, courtesy of the bank being able to loan out that money under fractional-reserve restrictions. In that sense transactions can pay for themselves. Presumably nobody would print money if it wasn't being put to use. Hence, novel currencies can enable novel business models and potentially do more than just lower transaction costs in a zero-sum way. (Admittedly the value of such business models at present, e.g. crypto scams, is somewhat debatable)
- s1artibartfast 2y agoIm not sure I follow what you are saying. What externalities are you talking about? What does do you mean by a transaction to paying for itself? What does it mean to lower transaction costs in a zero-sum way? This seems like a contradiction
- ada1981 2y agoIf you think crypto is a zero sum game, try fiat!
- rvz 2y agoAt least they don't take people's jobs away or threaten / replace them. Unlike AI, which also burns GPUs, emits CO2 and the money is all evaporated into inference and training costs with little to no efficient alternatives to reduce it and also wasting tons of water. Cryptocurrencies at least have alternative efficient methods of consensus, such as proof-of-stake making it possible to reduce the said resources as much as 95%. AI (Deep Learning) still does not have practical efficient and viable greener alternatives to neither inference or training in production.
- n_ary 2y agoWhile you may see that I vigorously comment against all the AI hype, I do not believe AI is as useless and wasteful as crypto currencies. Beyond the LLM fad, AI is also being used in other pharmaceutical and scientific research as well as modern weather and disaster forecasting. Also, I believe LLMs will get better over time and far cheaper to operate once they become more widely adapted. Think the super computers of our grand-dad era vs your Android/iPhone. AI will get better over time and become more beneficial to us, but not in the form of current over hype fad that is flying because Sama needs to protect his investment and exit, he is a businessman above all else. AI innovation will come from the silent group who are busy with actual development and less hype generation. There is a saying that empty whistle makes most noise etc. My IDE(mostly jetbrains products) make me 10x more productive. Claude/Phind saves me immense amount of time not having to sort through 100 garbage SEO spam results or try to waste time reading incoherent out dated documentation(followed by having to look through the source code) to find an important concept or reference to some third party library/application. These are real values that not only makes my day less stressful, it also makes my employer benefit accordingly by having me available to other important stuff with my freed time during working hours. Crypto currency did not help anyone, only helped some grifters get rich, some ignorant people to lose money and numerous crooks to run ransomware attacks and easier time moving the loot.
- SkyMarshal 2y ago> GPUs burned Bitcoin doesn't use GPUs, just ASICs. You may be thinking of Ethereum or others.
- lagniappe 2y agoEthereum doesn't use GPUs. You may be thinking of others.
- 127 2y agoAccording to the same logic, life is also a negative sum game.
- jameslk 2y agoSeems like a privileged point of view if you live somewhere with a mostly stable currency (ie not rapidly inflating currency) and easy access to banking
- nativeit 2y agoCan you point to an example where cryptocurrency has directly alleviated either of those systemic problems? I wouldn’t think that it’s the currency itself that would cause, exacerbate, temper, or resolve the underlying root problems that contribute to the instability of a sovereign currency or its citizens access to it. To use a practical example, if I was struggling to maintain my finances as a citizen of Argentina, I understand that I can purchase Bitcoin and that may (or maybe not) be more stable than the the domestic fiat currency, but then…how do I spend that Bitcoin without encountering many/all of the same problems I’d hoped to avoid? How do I purchase routine goods and services? How do I pay for my home or utilities? In what way, specifically, does Bitcoin empower an average Argentinian to extend their self-determination and protect themselves from their country’s financial instability? Can Insafely and reliably exchange cash for Bitcoin, and vise versa? If not, then we’re back to inaccessible banking services as the first stumbling block. Assuming I managed to exchange my cash for Bitcoin, how am I storing it safely? If an offline wallet is vulnerable to being lost due to defective storage devices, and an online wallet is vulnerable to malicious actors within and without of the most popular exchanges, and maybe I don’t have great access to the internet? I have always been skeptical of this idea that cryptocurrency is the solution to uncontrolled inflation/deflation, and an accessible alternative to the unbanked/underbanked people of the world. It seems naive, at best.