Bitcoin is the worst waste of resources and energy in human history. It is solely used for financial speculation, with no genuine utility.
This is a call to ethical hackers: through targeted and repeated computer attacks, we could undermine the confidence of speculators and burst this irrational and destructive financial bubble.
So whole argument is “lol”? Do I need to post even more examples than provided by Human Rights Foundation member?
It’s already 12 years of operation, thousands of alternative altcoins-“killers” (being generous calling them just altcoins), still no one provided more open, more decentralized, more neutral, more censorship resistant, more secure (hash power here is security) alternative. You can create faster, less energy-consuming alternative, but that will likely be more centralized, as example.
“Would” is assumption. But I posted fact that gas are leaked for hundred of years, and Bitcoin miners started to tap it.
Why would someone burn gas/electricity “for free” to do number crunching? Go, lunch million of FoldingAtHome instanced, beat the Bitcoin miners!
Bitcoin allows to tap remote energy sources. These miners using these remote, untapped energy sources increases mining difficulty, in that way outperforming miners with “conventional” electricity, in that way using, as mentioned above, “waste” natural gas. Miners also subsidize renewable energy providers as hydro-power, sucking excess electricity in flood seasons, for example.
The market will provide answer. If you someone provides better alternative to Bitcoin and users will switch to it - OK then. But to distroy it by hacking it…?
Yeas, we should not assume numbers are accurate. But again, miners are incentivized to get cheapest electricity, and one of the cheapest electricity is excess one, as provided example before - hydro power. And now also reducing pure methane released into atmosphere. That’s “free” energy (minus capital needed for generator, it’s maintenance, etc, of course).
Actually useful for whom? For you? So if you don’t find it useful, nobody should? So all these “freedom money” examples are not use cases? Protecting purchasing power, battling inflation hidden-tax is not use case? See https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ too. Exiting low-time-preference fiat system is pretty important mission.
Also, as hat reason.com article said:
So keep using fiat system, and let as do our thing. If you create better alternative to Bitcoin, we might switch to it.
The argument was in the part you cut out because you’re a fucking ass.
Yes, your whole argument is an assumption. That’s the point.
Because money and value are entirely different concepts. Producing knowledge is actually valuable. Producing wealth usually just means you’re exploiting someone else. I provide an example of a use case for the wasted energy that would actually be valuable, but not profitable, and contrasting that with bitcoin mining which might be profitable, but is not valuable.
Jesus fucking christ, you inbred Anarcho-Capitalist dildo.
There is no excess clean energy in the grid. We burn fossil fuels like crazy to keep up with demand, and any use of renewable energy for mining useless bitcoins means we have to burn more fossil fuels to replace it. Not that it really makes sense to talk about specific energy use being renewable or not, as it’s all mixed in the grid and we haven’t yet invented RFID tags small enough to attach to electrons in order to identify their source.
For covering basic needs for the majority of the world’s population who barely get by, for example? It’s of course an exaggeration to say that bitcoin is entirely useless, but considering its scale and ecological footprint it’s really not much of an exaggeration. While there are some legitimate uses, it is mostly used by criminals and as gambling for the wealthy. To say that this is less useful than pretty much anything else we could do with the same amount of resources should not be very controversial.
Please dont insult other users, this is against rule 2 (Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here). This is your first warning.
OK, sorry, so to clarify, your argument basically was “lol, it’s top notch propaganda”. How/why it’s propaganda? How this information could have been produced to not look (or be) a propaganda? Any my argument is probably also a propoganda? So there’s no way to discuss this, it’s decided by you it’s all propaganda and that’s it?
Where’s mu assumption? I showed facts that people use bitcoin to overcome government oppression, censorship, to get back control of their money AND it utilized instead-untapped energy, reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Where’s assumption here?
And value is subjective. Some people buys used panties for Christ sake…!
Meanwhile, more and more institutions are starting to use Bitcoin as inflation-resistant reserve asset, they see value in it as being digital gold:
https://youtu.be/NoobUKNttmw?t=2267 (whole video is recommended) https://bitcointreasuries.org/
Others use it for (again) “freedom stuff”, they value it as cache (bearer asset that allows exchange without third parties, without censorship).
Others use it for just trading, they see value in it it as speculative asset.
Or as uber fast (using Lightning Network) final international settlement: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/strike-is-bringing-the-lightning-network-to-more-than-200-countries
Or who knows what more.
So we’re starting using names? Is this your argument? You say something might create better “thing”, I agree, someone might. As someone created Bitcoin, a better “gold”, go organize create something better to replace it, instead of destroying currently best thing we have “in advance”.
There’s limit how far electricity can be transported efficiently, so building local mining farm in the industrial park near water dam (because miners are portable and can be moved anywhere), or oil drill site, as in these natural-gas-flaring sites mentioned earlier, utilizes untapped resources INSTEAD of conventional. This capital can be use to invest into more power generation projects, etc, etc.
Imagine some poor African nation that has a waterfall. It’s too far from civilization to be cost effective to build power lines, to transport electricity. Meanwhile, local generator and mining farm could provide income in terms of hashes, and transport it (as it is information) wirelessly via internet. You wouldn’t use that remote electricity otherwise, and it moves other “conventional” miners out of competition, reducing pollution.
It’s a comment, not an argument. The argument is in the part that you insist on cutting out: “But yeah, cryptocurrencies do have some uses. And fortunately Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency. It therefore ought to be killed off in favour of less asinine alternatives.”
But since you’re so obsessed with my propaganda comment, “freedom <whatever>” is perhaps the most cliched propaganda phrase in existence. And the Human Rights Foundation is a right-wing propaganda organization, which won’t disclose its funding sources and is headed by a member of the Venezuelan elite whose father collaborated with the CIA, and is trying to use his Norwegian heritage as a cover. That doesn’t mean the information is false, but it likely has certain ideological bias.
I challenged both assumptions and your response is basically: wHy WOuLd AnyoNe do ANyThinG “fOr FrEE”?
Only after basic needs have been met, which most of the world’s population have not. There’s also a lot of projection of value going on. No-one really wants used panties, but some use it as a substitute for something else they can’t get, like real human relationships. And money is of course the ultimate substitute, because it can be used to buy whatever we want! Except anything that actually matters (beyond basic biological needs), of course, like real human relationships. Look into the concept of alienation as it relates to capitalism, if you want to learn more.
When warranted, such as when you try to insult my intelligence by spouting cultish Invisible Hand bullshit.
It’s about on the level of “the market will decide”, I’d say. Whether or not that should count as a real argument I’ll leave for you to decide.
There’s very few places where there’s excess power generation lasting more than a few hours at a time. That is especially true with water dams where the reservoirs basically function as batteries that can be tapped when needed. One exception is if the reservoir is full and there’s a lot of rain, but even that rarely lasts more than a few days.
But in any case, how much of current bitcoin mining infrastructure would you say is portable? And to what degree is it portable? Like, how long would it take to tear down, move and put up a mining facility of decent size?
For the purpose of mining more Bitcoin, of course… Alternatively we could simply not do that, and use the energy saved from not mining bitcoin instead of using even more resources to build more power plants that we wouldn’t really need if not for all the bitcoin mining.
Maybe we should just leave it alone then. Perhaps we don’t have to ruin untouched nature and disturb fragile ecosystems just to run a printing press for monopoly money. Maybe nature has inherent value, and maybe we depend on ecosystems being in balance to provide us the food we need to eat and the air we need to breathe. Maybe the biggest crises our civilization has ever faced is caused by us messing with nature to the point that it’s about to collapse. And you suggest we should do more of that?
You can google/duckduck these use cases yourself, if you don’t like the messenger.
But it is wasted, i.e. vented / burned into air (https://twitter.com/Beetcoin/status/1120277815058944001), it’s happening NOW and for many years. And only Bitcoin provides alternative, at least profitable so that it incentivizes to use that vented energy. You can’t force anyone to buy generators and run FoldingAtHome. Well, you can do fundraiser, non-profits or whatever, there’s lot’s of flared gas to use! But none one does that, so they will mine Bitcoin.
Not sure where this comes from. I mean, companies are deploying these systems RIGHT NOW, this is not a hypothesis: https://www.upstreamdata.ca/products
https://www.crusoeenergy.com/
Or you believe that they deploy theses systems with loses?
Yes, and Bitcoin, so far, is hardest money ever created, moving people into low time preference mode, allowing to save, escape government’s easily inflatable “shitcoins”, and actually reducing waste as they don’t have to spend “by force” for things that they don’t actually need to capture ever inflating fiat value. Users value that, and use it. If you don’t value it, just don’t use it; but destroying it because in your view it’s “wasteful” is insincere.
I don’t believe in Invisible Hand. But things just happen. There was warning that world will go down in mass starvation - but someone discovered way to capture nitrogen and create fertilizer. Money printer goes brrr and someone arrived at solution to created Bitcoin. It just happens. It might happen that some one will change Bitcoin with the better alternative - I can’t deny that in the same way as no one knew for sure that Bitcoin will appear “from nowhere”.
I don’t know the details, but they do move around: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-power-sees-short-term-fallback-as-rainy-season-ends-in-china :
Maybe for Bitcoin, maybe for else, who known, it’s for owners to decide. Yes, they could not do that and vend natural gas as they are doing for the 100 years…
Yes we should take care of nature as much as possible, and using that flared gas is one of the methods.
Introducing hard money also helps a lot, as it moves thinking into low time preference (See Bitcoin Standard book from Saifedean Ammous), reducing malinvestments (because you can’t bailout Bitcoin owner, there’s no file->print, so three’s actual risk and actual responsibility) and actually wasteful over-consumption. Without printing press there would be no subsidies for “fiat food” - agriculture that destroys ecosystems (grasslands, prairies, event forests and jungles) by eroding soil, and also destroying human health with all these oxidizing carbs and industrial seed oils (“vegetable oils” lol), which also costs a lot in various terms (there was info about how much USA health care produces CO2, for example, sorry don’t have a link, but it’s hudge).
No one really would want to spend precious satoshis on gadget that will break in few months, or just get bored of it (like fidged spinners as silly example). That would be responsible economy.