Bitcoin discussion and news

[mauvais]

It is though.

If the energy is not going to waste, why care that we're using loads of it? That's what energy is for.

What percentage increase in world energy consumption would be acceptable to, say, complete a distributed genome computation? 0.1%, like Bitcoin? At least until some imaginary time when we are fully on renewables, and not warming the planet with them, all this stuff has a cost - and I'm not just talking money, I'm talking energy supply/demand and what it does to people who can least afford the increases, etc etc. How do you decide what's worth it?

This is the difference between leveraging existing waste, like @Home projects at least used to, and creating a load more consumption in its own right.

 

[kabbes]

The first video you posted, he opened his talk by addressing money laundering. His points in their entirety for 20 minutes were:

a) Objections to bitcoin are moral, not evidenced, and the morality is based on the fact that money should be visible. This is "unscientific" (his word)
b) Existing governance is not good enough to prevent money laundering

This in and of itself is not necessarily controversial, but the entirety of his justification for this was:

a) A few anecdotes about dodgy types turning up to banks in South America with money in suitcases.
b) Governments engage in money laundering -- he doesn't explain what the fuck he means by this, by the way, or give examples.
c) He thinks transactions should all be anonymous, on the grounds that it ties in with his own morality.
d) And that's it.

So let's unpack that. We need a "scientific" approach to governance... but his objections are based only on anecdotes and unverified claims based on undefined terms. And no argument for what his replacement is. And a system based on morality is bad when other people do it, but brilliant when he does it.

And that's it.

Can you see why I gave up bothering with him at that point?

He can define himself as whatever he likes, by the way, but when his arguments are based around right-wing liberterian rhetoric, I will call it as I see it.

 

[Fez909]

What percentage increase in world energy consumption would be acceptable to, say, complete a distributed genome computation? 0.1%, like Bitcoin? At least until some imaginary time when we are fully on renewables, and not warming the planet with them, all this stuff has a cost - and I'm not just talking money, I'm talking energy supply/demand and what it does to people who can least afford the increases, etc etc. How do you decide what's worth it?

This is the difference between leveraging existing waste, like @Home projects at least used to, and creating a load more consumption in its own right.

It's not an easy question to answer, I agree. And it's all theoretical at the minute as we don't have a suitable PoUW candidate for coin mining.

To put things in perspective, though, Cern uses about 1.3TWh of electricity a year. I don't remember anyone complaining about the energy use there, because it was a Good Thing.

Bitcoin uses about 15 times more than that (at the higher estimates), and yet it does nothing useful.

I'm not comparing starting a crypto-coin to do useful work with having no coins. I'm comparing it with the current state of how things are. We're already using 15 times more energy than Cern on this shit, and it doesn't benefit anyone except miners and investors. If we're going to waste that much energy anyway, why not put it to use? That's all I'm saying.

 

[mauvais]

I'm not comparing starting a crypto-coin to do useful work with having no coins. I'm comparing it with the current state of how things are. We're already using 15 times more energy than Cern on this shit, and it doesn't benefit anyone except miners and investors. If we're going to waste that much energy anyway, why not put it to use? That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I understand. But my perspective is that not only should we not be wasting that much energy, we probably won't be wasting it for very long if the Bitcoin bubble is the only thing sustaining it, so the induced demand is not immutable. Trying to do something useful with it risks legitimising the volume of wastage & making it permanent - the 'could' without ever asking the question of whether we should.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And who needs this new super-currency? Unless you're planning on something dodgy, why not just use Visa. It's far easier, quicker and more convenient. The arguments against fiat currency are incredibly weak, imo, combining absurd paranoia with some pretty fundamental misunderstandings of what money is.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

It is though.

If the energy is not going to waste, why care that we're using loads of it? That's what energy is for.

Because much as we might wish it not to be so, generating el

And who needs this new super-currency? Unless you're planning on something dodgy, why not just use Visa. It's far easier, quicker and more convenient. The arguments against fiat currency are incredibly weak, imo, combining absurd paranoia with some pretty fundamental misunderstandings of what money is.

Strongest argument I've heard for people who "need" it are those living in countries with very unstable currency. But seeing as how unstable bitcoin could be that that would have to be an economy is a serious mess.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Strongest argument I've heard for people who "need" it are those living in countries with very unstable currency. But seeing as how unstable bitcoin could be that that would have to be an economy is a serious mess.

What makes bitcoin preferable to just picking a stable currency? People in places with unstable currency tend to prefer using things like US dollar or euro, no?

 

[Fez909]

What makes bitcoin preferable to just picking a stable currency? People in places with unstable currency tend to prefer using things like US dollar or euro, no?

There are some valid reasons. Whether you care about them or not is another matter.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

There are some valid reasons. Whether you care about them or not is another matter.

Not all of those are valild reasons. The stuff about inflation is simply nonsense.

 

[bimble]

The stuff about inflation is simply nonsense.

Why do you say that in particular is nonsense? I thought that was one of the main things about it, that makes it different from fiat currencies.

 

[kabbes]

Why do you say that in particular is nonsense? I thought that was one of the man things about it, that makes it different from fiat currencies.

Because nobody pegs prices to it, which means the cost of something in bitcoin is totally dependent on the exchange rate of bitcoin on that day. Suppose bitcoin halves in value (and it if can double in a few weeks, it can halve). Then bitcoin inflation is effectively 100% over that time period.

The thing that keeps fiat currencies stable is that they are money, which includes them being a unit of account. Things are actually priced in GBP and if GBP changes in value against CHF, the price of the thing in GBP doesn't change (at least in the short term). This is inherently linked to the fact that your taxes are priced and taken in GBP. The government's requirement to pay them in GBP creates stability in the relationship between the things being taxed and the value of the currency used to pay the tax.

Bitcoin doesn't have any of this. Nobody uses bitcoin in their ledger, nobody prices in it, nobody requires it as their unit of account. Inflation as a concept is effectively meaningless for it. The inflation is whatever the exchange rate shift happens to be that day (and specifically, we generally mean the exchange rate shift of bitcoin to USD).

 

[mauvais]

Also inflation is driven by many complex factors, not merely the product of quantitative easing (printing money) which is all the article talks about.

 

[kabbes]

Unless by “printing money” they mean the creation of a currency on the ledger books, in which case that is mostly done by private banks via debt. I don’t technically see why that wouldn’t be just as possible in bitcoin, though, anyway!

 

[bimble]

This stuff does confuse me a lot but I get that bitcoin is not money, so isn't pegged to real world currencies or accepted as legal tender by governments etc. But at the same time if you lived in Venezuela and your fiat currency savings had lost 96% of its value this year (?) how much help would it be to be told that

The thing that keeps fiat currencies stable is that they are money, which includes them being a unit of account.

?
Big in Venezuela: Bitcoin Mining

 

[UnderOpenSky]

This stuff does confuse me a lot but I get that bitcoin is not money, so isn't pegged to real world currencies or accepted as legal tender by governments etc. But at the same time if you lived in Venezuela and your fiat currency savings had lost 96% of its value this year (?) how much help would it be to be told that ?
Big in Venezuela: Bitcoin Mining

Slightly unique there, It's big in Venezuela as you can pass most of the cost of mining (the electricity) on to the government, rather then its just a more stable way to hold value.

 

[kabbes]

This stuff does confuse me a lot but I get that bitcoin is not money, so isn't pegged to real world currencies or accepted as legal tender by governments etc. But at the same time if you lived in Venezuela and your fiat currency savings had lost 96% of its value this year (?) how much help would it be to be told that ?
Big in Venezuela: Bitcoin Mining

It surely goes without saying that the stability of a currency does rather depend on its ability to function in the wider economic and global trade environment. It’s not that inflation (and hyperinflation) doesn’t exist, it’s just that it is nonsense to pretend bitcoin is immune from such things.

 

[bimble]

Yep. But it was designed to be immune from the quantitative easing kind, that’s why theres a set limit of total number of bitcoins, isn’t it.

 

[kabbes]

Yep. But it was designed to be immune from the quantitative easing kind, that’s why theres a set limit of total number of bitcoins, isn’t it.

QE is such a microscopic element of inflation, you might as well encase yourself in a hypoallergenic bubble as a precaution against catching Ebola.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Also, QE was undertaken as an attempt to prevent deflation, which is the real enemy of a capitalist economy. If money can grow in value buried under a bed, the incentive to lend disappears. More people were paying back loans than taking them out, even with nearly zero interest rates, which reduces the money supply. QE was a response to that, and a perfectly defensible one.

That's one of the misconceptions here - that money is a thing that is printed by governments. It's not. It's a set of obligations that are created by loans. It's more or less the same mistake that Friedman and the monetarists made - and they soon managed to disprove their theory when they tried to put it into practice and the money supply kept growing. The only difference is that a central bank/govt can essentially lend to itself, which is what QE was in effect.

In some ways, bc resembles gold - hard to get hold of, virtually impossible to alter. In others it doesn't - no aesthetic value whatever, no prestige associated with its ownership or display. Gold rushes were also at root a collective madness in pursuit of a mostly useless endeavour, of course.

As for the fact that the number of bc is limited, that is simply irrelevant to anything, except fuelling the delusional behaviour. If its value doubles, it doubles. If its value halves, it halves. And if its value collapses to nothing, it collapses to nothing. Nothing whatever to do with inflation. The idea that it is a store of value is also absurd. It literally burns value through the mining, and that will have to be accounted for at some point by somebody. Also, if I buy some premium bonds and forget about them for 30 years, then find them at the bottom of a drawer, that doesn't mean the money has done nothing in that time. Buying those bonds put the money right back into circulation. BC isn't like that. If you leave a bc on the ledger, it just sits there, not circulating. That's not money, and it's not storing value because it is not contributing towards the creation of value. It has not created an obligation.

It's a shame lovedetective doesn't post any more. He would have had some good things to say about bc, I think, and would have cut through a lot of this nonsense.

 

[camouflage]

Also, QE was undertaken as an attempt to prevent deflation, which is the real enemy of a capitalist economy. If money can grow in value buried under a bed, the incentive to lend disappears. More people were paying back loans than taking them out, even with nearly zero interest rates, which reduces the money supply. QE was a response to that, and a perfectly defensible one.

That's one of the misconceptions here - that money is a thing that is printed by governments. It's not. It's a set of obligations that are created by loans. It's more or less the same mistake that Friedman and the monetarists made - and they soon managed to disprove their theory when they tried to put it into practice and the money supply kept growing. The only difference is that a central bank/govt can essentially lend to itself, which is what QE was in effect.

In some ways, bc resembles gold - hard to get hold of, virtually impossible to alter. In others it doesn't - no aesthetic value whatever, no prestige associated with its ownership or display. Gold rushes were also at root a collective madness in pursuit of a mostly useless endeavour, of course.

As for the fact that the number of bc is limited, that is simply irrelevant to anything, except fuelling the delusional behaviour. If its value doubles, it doubles. If its value halves, it halves. And if its value collapses to nothing, it collapses to nothing. Nothing whatever to do with inflation. The idea that it is a store of value is also absurd. It literally burns value through the mining, and that will have to be accounted for at some point by somebody. Also, if I buy some premium bonds and forget about them for 30 years, then find them at the bottom of a drawer, that doesn't mean the money has done nothing in that time. Buying those bonds put the money right back into circulation. BC isn't like that. If you leave a bc on the ledger, it just sits there, not circulating. That's not money, and it's not storing value because it is not contributing towards the creation of value. It has not created an obligation.

On thebus thumb- posting now, so will just say that if you leave btc in a drawer for 30 years then your holding it off the market for all that time has increased the value/exchange rate of all the coins out there actually doing the rounds. So effectively it has done something in that draw over 30 years.

 

[newbie]

I agree with him though about the invisible cost of everything we do on the internet... honestly, how many of us have ever wondered at the energy foot-print of a credit card transaction or twitter post? I certainly hadn't.... and I've seen the humming always-on datacentres that represent the basis of all this posting and clicking and swiping that we do. It's an important discussion to be had.

all over the web there are people such as yourself making excuses, trying to prove, or pretend, that somehow something else is an issue and therefore the monstrous energy consumption of Bitcoin is justifiable. Complete nonsense as a proposition, of course.

But just for context


and, of course, the 80 billion Visa transactions are actually useful, they enable almost the whole national population (and an increasing proportion of the global population) to function.

If GCHQ poisoned Bitcoin tomorrow, and killed it completely, only a few thousand hobbyists and speculators worldwide, your Bitcoin community, would really care. The rest of us would grunt and move on. GOK what would happen if the Visa system completely died, worldwide looting within 24 hours at a guess.

 

[camouflage]

all over the web there are people such as yourself making excuses, trying to prove, or pretend, that somehow something else is an issue and therefore the monstrous energy consumption of Bitcoin is justifiable. Complete nonsense as a proposition, of course.

But just for context
View attachment 122992

and, of course, the 80 billion Visa transactions are actually useful, they enable almost the whole national population (and an increasing proportion of the global population) to function.

If GCHQ poisoned Bitcoin tomorrow, and killed it completely, only a few thousand hobbyists and speculators worldwide, your Bitcoin community, would really care. The rest of us would grunt and move on. GOK what would happen if the Visa system completely died, worldwide looting within 24 hours at a guess.

Externalization - the point he made about the costs that underpin the Visa column but are not reflected in your graph are still real costs that do exist. In my opinion that Visa column should therefore include the cost of every last Nimitz Class Carrier and every last massive sky-scraper belonging to some bank. Wholesale prices maybe but still costs. Bitcoin has no central authority to fund to give it value.

GCHQ? Have at at, they'd have to attack Bitcoins gateway services to effectively attack it and to do that would require an assault on property law, trade and innovation, human rights- perhaps the internet itself. By the way I am not a bitcoin maximalist, I don't use credit cards but don't hope for the downfall of Visa, world is better with both fiat and crypto in my opinion but energy-sustainability is pretty fucking important in all things. If bitcoin cannot be sustainable in those terms it will fail, if society in general cannot be sustainable it will fail. Nobody wins arguments with Physics, at least on this side of an event horizon.

 

[kabbes]

In my opinion that Visa column should therefore include the cost of every last Nimitz Class Carrier and every last massive sky-scraper belonging to some bank.

And there we see the libertarian attitudes start to make themselves felt. Society is reduced to a series of transactions. The existence of nation-states and the protection of same is nothing more than an externality imposed on transaction cost. Infrastructure and the jobs and lives it represents is nothing more than overhead.

 

[butchersapron]

And there we see the libertarian attitudes start to make themselves felt. Society is reduced to a series of transactions. The existence of nation-states and the protection of same is nothing more than an externality imposed on transaction cost. Infrastructure and the jobs and lives it represents is nothing more than overhead.

I blame sci-fi.

 

[newbie]

Externalization - the point he made about the costs that underpin the Visa column but are not reflected in your graph are still real costs that do exist. In my opinion that Visa column should therefore include the cost of every last Nimitz Class Carrier and every last massive sky-scraper belonging to some bank. Wholesale prices maybe but still costs. Bitcoin has no central authority to fund to give it value.

keep deflecting. I've read a few of the blog posts out there that want to add in all the fuel used by all the bank employees because, well, because. I get it, propping up the project is important, so every possible argument should be made to deflect criticism of energy wastage: it's mostly green electricity, it's renewable, it's comparable with something else, so therefore acceptable. utter nonsense..

in my opinion but energy-sustainability is pretty fucking important in all things. If bitcoin cannot be sustainable in those terms it will fail, if society in general cannot be sustainable it will fail. Nobody wins arguments with Physics, at least on this side of an event horizon.

If Bitcoin fails the real consequences are minimal. However it provides a significant contribution to global warming, thereby increasing the probability of real society failure.

 

[camouflage]

And there we see the libertarian attitudes start to make themselves felt. Society is reduced to a series of transactions. The existence of nation-states and the protection of same is nothing more than an externality imposed on transaction cost. Infrastructure and the jobs and lives it represents is nothing more than overhead.

Externalization is more applied to the life-style of a corporation in seeking profits. Yes there are costs, on the environment for example and I'm not talking about money. But if I can shift those costs to society or the sustainability of life on Earth off my balance sheet than what do I care right? For me, that's what newbie's graph shows when something like Visa gets to pass itself off as a mere sliver, a harmless little sliver next to that big horrible bully that is Bitcoin (fuck it- next to anything really).

Look, if bitcoin all comes crashing down then fine, it was tried and it didn't work. The crater it leaves behind won't shake the foundations of society or anything, stuff gets tried and fails after billions of money all the time. The energy footprint thing is in my opinion a real problem that needs to be solved and it looks like people on this thread now take bitcoin seriously enough to consider it a threat because of the energy demand whereas previously all one could get was a "lol, wut?"

I consider that progress. Don't ascribe libertarian value systems to me thanks.

 

[butchersapron]

keep deflecting. I've read a few of the blog posts out there that want to add in all the fuel used by all the bank employees because, well, because. I get it, propping up the project is important, so every possible argument should be made to deflect criticism of energy wastage: it's mostly green electricity, it's renewable, it's comparable with something else, so therefore acceptable. utter nonsense..


If Bitcoin fails the real consequences are minimal. However it provides a significant contribution to global warming, thereby increasing the probability of real society failure.

I think imagining that these people think there's a real society is always going to be a big stumbling block.

 

[kabbes]

Externalization is more applied to the life-style of a corporation in seeking profits. Yes there are costs, on the environment for example and I'm not talking about money. But if I can shift those costs to society or the sustainability of life on Earth off my balance sheet than what do I care right? For me, that's what newbie's graph shows when something like Visa gets to pass itself off as a mere sliver, a harmless little sliver next to that big horrible bully that is Bitcoin (fuck it- next to anything really).

So if bitcoin were the only transaction method in town, there would, what, be no corporate externalities? No nation state defending its interests? No capital power resulting in environmental effects beyond those of the pure transaction?

I consider that progress. Don't ascribe libertarian value systems to me thanks.

You are ascribing the environmental costs of an aircraft carrier (and all of those costs, at that) to the transaction system of the nation state that owns it. That's what you just did in your attempt to whatabout. That's the point you've reached in your apparent studied indifference to defending bitcoin.

 

[mwgdrwg]

I want to preface this by stating that Bitcoin is a waste of useless energy which is contributing to climate change.

But it's not going to be THE thing that kills us. Have a look at how it compares to fossil-fuel powered MURICA for example:

 

[kabbes]

I want to preface this by stating that Bitcoin is a waste of useless energy which is contributing to climate change.

But it's not going to be THE thing that kills us. Have a look at how it compares to fossil-fuel powered MURICA for example:

View attachment 123004

You're comparing the energy use of a tiny fraction of a microcosm of 0.000001% of the world's transactions to ALL THE ENERGY USED BY THE BIGGEST SUPERPOWER. I don't even know where to start in making meaning from that.

However, I would point out that bitcoin's energy use is growing exponentially and, at the current rate of growth, it will actually overtake MURICA at some point in the coming decades unless something is done to prevent it.