- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- technology
- nytimes@rss.ponder.cat
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Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, which are far more energy efficient than Bitcoin
Calling those that don’t depend on proof-of-work “more energy efficient” is understating it to the point of being dishonest. The difference is not that they’re more efficient in any conventional way. It’s that they don’t have the amazing bitcoin feature of relying for their operation on the practice of deliberately wasting enormous amounts of energy for the purpose of being able to prove that you’ve wasted enormous amounts of energy.
All the way through the cryptocurrency crash which the average reader of headlines might’ve thought had put an end to it by now, the bitcoin network has kept on burning up absurd amounts of power.
the practice of deliberately wasting enormous amounts of energy for the purpose of being able to prove that you’ve wasted enormous amounts of energy.
C’mon, that’s being disingenuous. Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use. A consequence of proof-of-work is wasted energy, but a focus on low-power modalities and throttling have been developed in the intervening years. The prevailing paradigm at the time was, “your C/GPU is going to be burning energy anyway, you may as well do something with it.”
It was a poor design decision, but it wasn’t a malicious one like you make it sound. You may as well accuse the inventors of the internal combustion engine of designing it for the express purpose of creating pollution.
It’s absolutely not the case that nobody was thinking about computer power use. The Energy Star program had been around for around 15 years at that point and even had an EU-US agreement, and that was sitting alongside the EU’s own energy program. Getting an 80Plus-certified power supply was already common advice to anyone custom-building a PC which was by far the primary group of users doing Bitcoin mining before it had any kind of mainstream attention. And the original Bitcoin PDF includes the phrase “In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.”, despite not going in-depth (it doesn’t go in-depth on anything).
The late 00s weren’t the late 90s where the most common OS in use did not support CPU idle without third party tooling hacking it in.
The Energy Star program had been around for around 15 years at that point
And, for computers, was almost exclusively limited to monitors. In 2009, the Energy Star specification was version 4.0, released in 2006. In that specification, the EPA’s objective was to get 40% of the computers on the market to have power management capabilities 2010 – 40% by the year after Bitcoin was introduced. Intel’s 2009 TCO-driven upgrade cycle document mentions power management, but power use isn’t included in any of the TCO metrics.
All of the focus on low-power processing units in 2009 was for mobile devices and DSPs. Computer-oriented energy savings at the time was focused on processes, e.g. manually powering down computers or use of suspension and hibernation - there was very little CPU clock scaling available for desktop computers – you turned them off to save power. DVFS didn’t become widely available – or effective – until 2006, and a study published in 2009 (again, the same year Bitcoin was introduced) found that “only 20% of initiatives had measurable targets.”
So, yes: technically, there were people thinking about these sorts of things, but it wasn’t a common consumer consideration, and the tools for power management were crude: your desktop was on and consuming power – always the same amount of power – or it was off. And people did power down their computers to save energy. But, like I said, if your desktop was on, it was consuming the same amount of energy whether you were running a miner or weren’t. There was a motto at the time bandied about by SETI@home, that your computer was using energy anyway, so you might as well do science with the spare CPU cycles. That was the mindset of most people who had computers at the time.
Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use.
It didn’t take long before people saw that energy was a major factor in cost of operations of the network.
It was a poor design decision
One that is fiercely defended by people who invested into the implementation. So it may not have started with it being anticipated, but not it is and people are actively choosing to perpetuate this use of energy.
If I were looking to assign blame, I’d start with the coal and gas operators who are digging up fossil fuels that would otherwise remain in the ground just to fuel their bitcoin mining rigs, those who peddle specious arguments claiming that it somehow isn’t a problem, those who turned the whole thing into a machine for separating the gullible from their money, and those who’ve built the shaky, buggy, mostly proprietary, convoluted, half-finished, untrustworthy, horrible mess that is the software ecosystem surrounding the whole cryptocurrency sphere. Perhaps none of that could have been foreseen by whoever designed bitcoin. On them we can instead put the blame for the failure to make it anywhere near sufficiently scalable, and the ridiculous choice of mechanism for the bitcoin monetary policy which serves to make it function only as a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and not a durable currency. Regardless of who’s to blame, it’s got to go.
Perhaps there’s already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype, but if so it’s currently hidden under such an enormous pile of shitcoins that it’s impossible to identify. At least the internal combustion engine was good at doing the thing it was supposed to do.
Perhaps there’s already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype
The USD… /jk 🤣🤣
No currency or money system can avoid those, they are intrinsic features of capitalism, which is an intrinsic consequence of “whoever hoards more X, gets more of most things in life”.
And can you blame people for wanting to hide their cards when hoarding X? Have you tried consulting real-time stock values, with market depth, and a list of market orders? Have you checked the pricing plans for a Bloomberg terminal?
Crypto is a world of transparency and freedom, compared to non-crypro markets.
What asset would you consider a good value reserve?
A small plot of land with good soil and a steady supply of fresh water, a good education, and a sturdy pair of boots.
I don’t think you got it. So everything you get extra from this work would be used to multiply the same work? Also, you got me curious: why a small plot, not more?
If you can afford more than a small plot of land in this economy, you’ve probably been hoarding too much wealth. I know it’s a very popular hobby, but it’s quite bad for you if taken to excess. But this is getting somewhat off-topic.
Some kind of technology that resembles today’s cryptocurrencies may or may not have a future. As they exist right now none of them are anything like a good investment opportunity or a safe store of value.
So, something the majority of people can never attain. Awesome.
Or are you going to hand me a plot of land that isn’t as big as a thimble? If so, sign me up. I want it.
Unless you can defend that plot of land against a few of the largest superpowers combined… that land is only yours as long as your country wants to defend your ownership of it.
Water is already not yours in most places, and supplies are not guaranteed to last. Education gets lost with age, amnesia, dementia, and death. A sturdy pair of boots rarely lasts as much as a single lifetime.
Back when Bitcoin was released, nobody was giving a thought to computer energy use.
VT for long term
Money Market Funds for short termAmmo. It keeps appreciating, too. /s
It also comes first in the alphabet.
“B is for bourbon!”
This whole article is dishonest nonsense. So many lols.
Apparently unwilling to put their full faith in a trustless technology,
Just like people are unwilling to put their money under their mattress.
Moreover, it has become clear that risks could spill over from decentralized finance to traditional finance,
Maybe “traditional finance” is an unstable scam too. But these people would never hint in that direction.
Its volatile value, which is evident in its wild price swings in the last few days,
How does Bitcoin look over the long term though? If going from $0 to $60,000 is volatile, then I’ll take it. It’s doubled since the past year. These articles that extrapolate from a “few days” are just opportunistic sleaze.
Don’t get me wrong. Bitcoin is a bad “investment” versus other cryptos. But these articles are dishonest trash.
Wasn’t fooled by crypto in the first place.
…or were you?
Depending on whether some of it becomes, or not, a reasonably popular means of value exchange in the future, “being fooled” will mean having bought some when it was cheap, or not. 😉
Most people who got fooled once will get fooled twice. Thats just what fools do.
Fool me once…
You can’t get fooled again?
No no
This is 100% why it’s good to have a small chunk of your portfolio in crypto. It’s hit all-time-highs four times in the last ten years, and now that you can buy into Bitcoin ETF’s, you can get dividends as well.
It’s hard to argue that it won’t again after that, but I wouldn’t put any more than 10% of your investment capital into it.
Statistically, yes. But they’re not fooled by crypto, but by other people, or just by their own not understood feelings.
Yes, crypto people keep getting fooled by record breaking prices. So sad.
The prices don’t mean anything if no one is paying it, which if something is at said ‘record breaking’ levels, means there is at least 1 fool out of the 2 involved.
It’s still just a pyramid scheme in the end, because if I’m trading ammo or a sandwich or pigs or something, at the end of the day if no one wants to buy them from me I can still use them myself.
With crypto, there will by definition be someone holding a valueless and unusable item at some point. Whether or not the opportunity to make money in the time before that happens outweighs being involved in a pyramid scheme, is what everyone has to ask themselves (and be judged for depending on their answer).
You can argue about whether all money is the same in this regard, but there have been hundreds of crypto coins that have failed since the last fiat currency died.
Don’t be fooled by the 20000th round of “crypto is dead” articles.
I agree that BTC is trash but it’s still up 100% from last year.
The people who write these articles have no clue.
edit: The Brookings Institute lmao. Right-wing boomer nonsense.
What does it mean for bitcoin to double in value?
Has bitcon’s utility or usefulness doubled?
Or has bitcoin behaved as a highly volatile speculative asset?
It means that despite being fifteen years old, it still takes more electricity for a single bitcoin transaction than to drive an electric SUV from Florida to California, cost per single transaction has still spiked over 50 USD twice in the last six months, and it remains too prone to wild inflation and deflation for any serious business to actually price anything in.
In other words, it has the same inherent value it always has, none at all.
Why not both?
zero usefuless x 2 = zero usefulness
What is the inherent value of 50 USD?
Transactions on Bitcoin’s lightning network are still worth pennies, who cares about what some millionaires pay to settle them quickly.
Yes lightning, the network of centralized trusted third party banks that are needed to make bitcoin useable so long as you deposit all the bitcoin you want to use into one of these centralized banks first, at which point they can make bank to bank transfers without having any involvement with the actual bitcoin network at all.
Or you could do basically the same process with an actual Debit card, which does the same thing but can be used in actual stores.
You also need to note that for something posturing itself as a currency, the fact that you either have to wait hours or days for the price per transaction to come down or spend an even more absurd transaction fee on you’re cup of coffee before you can check out is actually a rather fundamental problem.
Lightning Network is not centralized, anyone can run a node with their own wallet. Not everyone will want to, since there are management and safety tasks involved, but that’s up to each one.
Funds are stored in your own wallet… but again, you can use some bank’s wallet if you want to, up to each one.
Transactions are almost instantaneous, no need to wait for the channels to settle. You only need to wait when moving Bitcoin between non-LN and LN wallets or, if running your own node, when a channel closes.
You can find a list of physical stores accepting LN… mostly in El Salvador, but still.
It’s a great platform for being able to transfer money that would otherwise be under sanctions and for storing criminal profits. And that’s probably what it will always be for.
It’s a bit too traceable for that though.
It’s traceable but also possible to hide your identity, especially if you are a major criminal or government under sanctions. Especially when compared to the traditional finance system (in which they also tend to be pretty good at hiding their identities and transactions).
You can hide your identity on Monero, not so much on Bitcoin. BTC either gets linked to a series of identities, or is freshly mined, both of which can be allowed or denied by exchanges via law enforcement.
In the traditional finance system, hiding relies on bribery, mules, and straight up hacking. Those are common to both systems, and law enforcement knows how to deal with them.
They wrote in the article that it rose. That was part of what they wrote about.
I don’t see your point.
I never understood the crypto hype. There was even an article by protonmail detailing its history and all. Yet, I remain oblivious.
Do you know anything about financial markets? It’s there for you to make money out from it. Study and you’ll understand everything you could do with it. Also, on crypto, the hype respects a cycle.
Do you know anything about financial markets?
I’m at a beginner level in Investments and stock market.
Study and you’ll understand everything you could do with it.
I’m already learning about Investments and stock market. Maybe, once I finish that I could consider this. But, I don’t see much value in crypto so won’t bother.
Perhaps, if my perception changes in the future I could reconsider. Just not in the near future.
But crypto is just like the stocks: you can buy it because you believe on the project or just because it’s what’s delivering the best results at the moment. Consider cryptocurrencies as a little portion of your portfolio, intended for risk. You can operate it via ETFs, and thus don’t expose yourself to the risks (and benefits) of the blockchains.
A stock is based on the profits and production of real companies that offer real goods and services. Crypto is based entirely on hype and sunk cost fallacies.
This is simply not true. I’ve been a fulltime software dev in the crypto space for 3 years. Moved to crypto after 25 years in the financial sector. My work in the crypto space is a near parallel to the legacy financial sector wrt products and services I’m delivering.
Sure crypto has a scammer and hype and meme angle but I operate in none of those.
Think of NASDAQ without all the rules. Where anyone can list and trade anything, even complex financial derivatives. It’s so freeing for the little guy. It levels the playing field of the financial system and access to capital quite a bit.
You realize that the things listed on the NASDAQ actually represent more than just an entery in a database, right? Like the groups listed on there tend to make physical objects and software that does things beyond move things that can be traded for currency around?
You also realize that the NASDAQ, without all the protections and basic rules the public forced it to adopt after vast numbers of little guys got screwed out of all their money, isn’t actually that great of a pitch? At least not to anyone but the far right uber rich libertarians that hold majority control of the crypto space.
We are talking about a technology that is about as old as smartphones, but which has still yet to see any widespread use to solve a problem it did not itself create.
I spent 25 years in tradfi as mentioned previously. I’m not delusional or a grifter/scammer.
You realize that some of the things listed on crypto markets actually represent more than just an entry in a distributed ledger, right? I live in Solana (a distributed ledger) world and there’s dozens of tokens which represent true products. Sure most are financial related themselves - but that’s no different than tradfi where banks and exchanges are themselves listed on the exchanges. Others are depin models and governance things for example. It’s a real industry which gets a bad rap since it does enable bad people to do bad things too, and that gets most the press.
First off, our securities regulation is ancient and much is based on a pre internet global world. There’s many changes that can be made to give consumers access to private equity and capital efficiency which currently the rich have guarded for themselves.
Secondly, there are far bigger and badder scams under the current regulation. Enron, worldcom, madoff, tyco, healthsouth, centennial, bre-x etc.
Bad people do bad things under either model, but the free, permissionless model sure opens the door to allow little guys to have a chance.
Raising capital for a small venture in a free global market is a tough nut to crack. And yeah thar be dragons there. But it’s such a freeing concept once you see it in action. I believe in freedom of money, and the global revolution it can bring.
No it’s not.
Stocks are based on the “valuation” people give them, for whatever reason they want. Check Gazprom’s recent stock valuation for a reality check; it doesn’t matter what “real goods or services” it keeps providing, everyone who held Gazprom stock, got exactly $0 for it. For further information, check how much company shares are worth.
(Spoiler: they’re ALL based on “hype and sunken cost”)
Cryptocurrencies are not like stocks, stock is partial ownership of an enterprise which has the ultimate goal of generating more revenue, stocks are not a trading currency.
Most people when starting out are, or at least should be, very uneasy about putting money into things with no underlying value or feasible purpose beyond being bought by a greater fool in the future.
What about cash?
I’ve rarely heard it suggested as an investment, but it can actually be realisticly used to goods and services outside of itself and as such does have an actual purpose, which is more than can be said for any crypto currency.
Cash is inflationary, “by definition” as per current monetary theories, meaning it is designed to lose value over time. Not much of an investment.
Also, I can’t use USD, GBP or AUD for “goods and services outside of itself”… unless I exchange them for EUR first, same as any Crypto.
There are several cryptocurrencies which are regularly used for purchases. Just because BTC and meme-coins get the media coverage and speculation doesn’t stop others being used for transactions.
I can use cash to pay my taxes. I cant pay my taxes with cryptocurrency.
Sure but you can liquidate cryptocurrency to pay your taxes using fiat.
Is there anything more bullish than a big media organisation warning their readers not to buy? Top signal is when the NYT says it’s great and everyone should buy in. Seems there’s a way to go yet.
This is an opinion piece… It’s clearly marked as being an opinion. Even though it has solid arguments, and probably hold some truth, it’s not an actual news article written by NYT staff, it’s not pretending to be a factual reporting by a journalist nor an objective truth.
Everyone is free to agree or disagree with it. To buy, sell, or hold.
It would be wise however to consider the argument themselves, and not decide go to in one direction just because the author/publisher is someone you like or dislike.
Is it actually viable for ordinary people to purchase small amounts of cryptocurrency for the sole purposes of making more private purchases online or taking advantage of cryptocurrency discounts? All the coverage on them is about large-scale investing which makes me feel like no one buying and selling actually has any interest in cryptocurrencies as an alternative currency. Instead it’s just about getting rich, which is a massive turn off.
Bitcoin is not practical for small purshases, because transaction takes several minutes, and have around 50USD per-transaction fee. Note the cost of fees and value of bitcoin vary wildly, so the same amount of bitcoin may be enough to pay rent in August, but not in September.
On a more ethical level, it’s also quite bad because of the insane energy cost of bitcoin transactions.
$50 per transaction fee is on the exceptionally high end.
The average fee for the last 24 hours was $0.81 per transaction according to https://mempool.space/mining
I agree with your other points.
I mean, I know I do it, but yea, not a lot of people do. Most see it as investing or gambling
Sadly we’re not really well represented, which leads to a lot of people calling all cryptos a “scam” which is just blatantly false.
Monero!
