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.
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.