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'Bitcoin Could Cost Us Our Clean-Energy Future' (grist.org)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Bitcoin wasn't intended to be an investment instrument. Its creators envisioned it as a replacement for money itself -- a decentralized, secure, anonymous method for transferring value between people. But what they might not have accounted for is how much of an energy suck the computer network behind bitcoin could one day become. Simply put, bitcoin is slowing the effort to achieve a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. What's more, this is just the beginning. Given its rapidly growing climate footprint, bitcoin is a malignant development, and it's getting worse. Digital financial transactions come with a real-world price: The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has created an exponential demand for computing power. As bitcoin grows, the math problems computers must solve to make more bitcoin (a process called "mining") get more and more difficult -- a wrinkle designed to control the currency's supply. Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the U.S. for one day. And miners are constantly installing more and faster computers. Already, the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the world's 500 fastest supercomputers combined. The total energy use of this web of hardware is huge -- an estimated 31 terawatt-hours per year. More than 150 individual countries in the world consume less energy annually. And that power-hungry network is currently increasing its energy use every day by about 450 gigawatt-hours, roughly the same amount of electricity the entire country of Haiti uses in a year.
Lots of computing is done, and few people complain about the energy consumption. It's only when it's computation for the sake of expensive computation that it becomes offensive. Is there any way to do some kind of real work in the process of generating this data, or would that inherently compromise the security of the system (or render it impossible?)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only value they have, is the value you place on them. Sure, you can say the same about any currency, if you're willing to ignore governments. So you're ultra rare gold hologram charazard card might be worth a lot today (lets pretend those words make sense), but you're a fool if you think that will be the case tomorrow. Just look at Beenie Babbies.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There have been utopian no-government proposals in the past.
People always show up, and when enough people have arrived, they need to be governed.
No, it won't "cost us our clean-energy future." As the article points out itself, the growth rate in the energy cost of bitcoin is unsustainable. Eventually bitcoin transactions are going to become more and more infeasible.
I can't see how anyone expects that Bitcoin will be able to maintain its value if you can't transfer it to other people. And if its value goes down, then so will the demand for energy to keep it running.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Oh, you summer child. You are so naive.
Proverbs 21:19
If you actually do the comparison, you see that bitcoin transaction costs (per $1,000 equivalent) is CHEAPER than dollar. It wouldn't work any other way.
Citation, please? I can hand someone $1000 without electricity. What numbers are you talking about?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
More and more people are using Rube Goldberg logical arguments to derive some kind of statement that X is Bad.
The argument usually has an excessive number of premises, each premise depending on the previous, and bordering on, if not explicitly, being a non sequitur.
Somewhere, someone probably has created a proof that shows that the likelihood of an argument being correct diminishes with the number of premises it requires.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ummm no, each mined coin might take a large amount of energy, but the transaction costs are pretty much fixed and are nowhere near as onerous.
The mining takes a tremendous amount of energy (.296 Watts per GH/s), and the transaction costs are the opposite of fixed: they grow higher with every transaction, by definition.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Depending on the denomination ,the cost of printing a US dollar note is between 5.4 cents and 15.5 cents:
https://www.federalreserve.gov...
>Bitcoin wasn't intended to be an investment instrument. Its creators envisioned it as a replacement for money itself -- a decentralized, secure, anonymous method for transferring value between people.
Bitcoin was a marginally successful experiment in creating a trustless secure distributed public ledger. It was initially used for a few fun purchases, then the crazy cryptoanarchists and libertarians took up the banner and it just started getting weirder. But hey, I'm pretty sure the mining craze drove improvements in gaming video cards, so we did get that out of it before it morphed into an 'investment' pyramid scheme.
However secure the ledger itself may theoretically be... in practical use Bitcoin is about as secure as having a wad of cash hanging out the back pocket of your pants. It's only anonymous until a person can be linked to a ledger entry, and then it's the least anonymous way in the world to transfer wealth.
And Bitcoin was never going to replace money, which quickly became obvious once you looked at the scaling issues. I'm sure the original coder was well aware of that and didn't worry about it because they never expected it to grow beyond a small circle of friends using it for shits and giggles. Or not.
Bitcoin was also never going to replace money because it enforces some basic economic policies on its use that have been proven disastrous by history; the coder was obviously neither an economist nor a historian.
As an investment, Bitcoin's a lottery ticket. If you're lucky and you get in and out at the right times, Bitcoin may still make you some money - but odds are pretty good it won't. Just ask the last round of people who invested in tulips or beanie babies.
Sorry, no, that's the equivalent of coin MINING. We are talking about the TRANSACTION costs right now.
.000125 house-days per transaction. The numbers I have access to indicate that each BTC transaction uses 8.5 house-days per transaction.
USA Today fluff piece indicates that a Visa payment processing center uses 50,000 house-days of power every day, but they use that to process 400 million transactions per day. That works out to
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
The two alternatives available.
1. You can decide you're going to prioritize preventing the government from "controlling" currency, even if that means switching to a nonsensical "currency" whose value fluctuates between dramatic extremes and makes billionaires and paupers of people simply due to luck. Almost nobody ends up financially where they are due to luck. The government will continue to have the same problems you're concerned about, can still prosecute you for unfair reasons, can still benefit those with power and harm those without.
2. You can decide you're going to prioritize fixing the government by improving accountability. The currency remains more or less stable, with its value fluctuating only slightly, generally losing value by a tiny amount each year. Fewer people owe their financial status to luck. The government is less likely to prosecute you for unfair reasons, and less likely to benefit those with power and harm those without.
The Bitcoin way is (1). It's stupid, it's papering over a problem and pretending it only affects one thing. Worse, the cure is worse than the disease.
The correct thing to do is (2).
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
People who want to get rid of government generally imagine themselves as being more successful once that government is gone, and rarely consider what other people just like them will do in order to be the winners in the new system.
You get rid of the current system, it will be quickly replaced with tens of thousands of little vicious despotic governments practicing feudalism, with all the reductions in quality of life that implies.
Depending on the denomination ,the cost of printing a US dollar note is between 5.4 cents and 15.5 cents: https://www.federalreserve.gov... [federalreserve.gov]
Some things to take into consideration:
1: The cost does not scale linearly. $50,000 does not cost 50,000 times as much as $1. With bitcoin, it does scale linearly.
2: Most of the US dollars are never printed, but only exist as numbers in banks. Loro clearing houses haven't operated by sending truckloads of bank notes for a long long time.
3: This is production cost, not environmental cost. In some cases, there may be a correlation, but I do not believe this is one of them.
4: Transaction costs are enormously higher with bitcoin. If I give you $10, the cost is minimal. If I transfer $10 in bitcoin to your wallet, the computational costs are staggering.
If it creates a worldwide non-government controlled currency, it will be worth the struggle. A day when no government can create or destroy money is a win for the world.
Its not really on a path to do so. Yes it was designed to do so but designs often lose to reality. The reality of bitcoin is that we do NOT have decentralized mining.
In 2014 a mining pool reached 50% of the hashrate, IF they made it to 51% and had bad intentions there could have been a successful attack on the blockchain.
Today Chinese mining pools control 70% of all the hashrate, that seems vulnerable to the wishes of a single government.
Bitcoin was designed so that individuals and their computers did the mining. Instead we have mining performed by exotic and expensive ASIC hardware that it under the control of only a few. Even when individuals "own" the hardware they often have it colocated somewhere where there are inexpensive fees and low cost electricity. Their bitcoin mining rig is not really under their control and may be in a different country.
People who want to get rid of government generally imagine themselves as being more successful once that government is gone, and rarely consider what other people just like them will do in order to be the winners in the new system.
And if anyone needs proof of this, just point them to a Home Owners' Association.