phocion

3 ms·

1.
by phocion 3y ago
Doesn't Signal do all of this, minus the profit? > Maybe charge people to use the app? Who will pay for a service that's offered for free by at least 3 major messaging apps?
2.
by phocion 3y ago
I mean, it's not like there is a literal $150B pile of cash sitting in a vault anywhere. In practice "sitting in cash" means holding short-term Treasury bills / bonds, i.e. effectively loaning that money to the governmen
3.
by phocion 3y ago
> profits made from the myriad of wholly owned businesses such as insurance, railroads and utilities Genuinely curious where you would rather that capital be allocated?
4.
by phocion 6y ago
The computing power used for proof-of-work is not proportional to the number of transactions. Computationally, it's relatively cheap to verify the entire transaction history. The real energy consumption comes from miners who use a craz
5.
by phocion 6y ago
If you only look at the energy cost of running the servers where the banks store their databases, sure. But what about the energy cost of powering air-conditioned and brightly lit office buildings all around the world, thousands of branches
6.
by phocion 6y ago
Securing the integrity of a monetary network that coordinates economic activity at a global level is not a "ridiculous use of power". Christmas lights are a ridiculous use of power
7.
by phocion 6y ago
The internet is a magnet for scams. That doesn't mean there aren't legitimate uses for it
8.
by phocion 6y ago
How is the underlying trust mechanism inefficient? You can run a fully validating Bitcoin node on an old laptop without any issues. Even a raspberry pi can handle it.
9.
by phocion 6y ago
This concern usually stems from the idea that the energy used by the Bitcoin network could be otherwise used for more productive functions. But if, like many, you believe that bitcoin can succeed in becoming a decentralized world currency,