Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Arden · Jan 23, 2022

Torrid said:
Oh, so bitcoin is 'inefficient', but Blackrock buying up all the houses thereby pricing out an entire generation from home ownership and goldbugs digging massive pits for useless shiny rocks to use as stores of value is just fine, says the know-it-alls.

The US dollar would be worth jack and shit without the trillion dollar a year military and oil deals with psychopathic Arab despots. Why do people think that securing trillions of dollars of crypto assets in a decentralized network would use as much energy as a centralized data center? That's terribly ignorant. The energy use provides the protection to the network: any attack must spend over that amount of energy to succeed. If the energy use was too low, then a bad actor could take over and double spend by temporarily using a large amount of energy. Bitcoin's security is currently higher than it needs to be, but there is no way to know how exactly where the 'good enough' point is (because it's decentralized with no way to bar access) let alone plan in advance or predict the adoption rate. The network schedules a periodic reduction of energy used every 4 years by reducing the mining subsidy, meaning the energy used by the network will likely peak this decade before permanently declining. Furthermore the energy use is a non-issue if it does not pollute, and it's currently powered by about 58.5% sustainable energy and increasing. (bitcoin mining council estimate)

Blackrock is actually getting into the crypto market. That's how you know this shit isn't going anywhere.

$10 Trillion Asset Manager BlackRock Files for Blockchain-Focused ETF

BlackRock Inc., the world's biggest asset management firm, has filed for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that focuses on blockchain technology, according to a Jan. 21 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

beincrypto.com

swayze22 · Jan 24, 2022

sort of a crossover post heh (I still like crypto long-term full disclosure)

Mist · Jan 24, 2022

Torrid said:
Oh, so bitcoin is 'inefficient', but Blackrock buying up all the houses thereby pricing out an entire generation from home ownership and goldbugs digging massive pits for useless shiny rocks to use as stores of value is just fine, says the know-it-alls.

Blackrock really has nothing to do with the overall home inventory situation, that's just a headline grabber from the manipulative media.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/blackrock-ruining-us-housing-market/619224/

We've got a shortfall of about 20 million homes in the US, due almost exclusively to local zoning boards.

Torrid said:
The network schedules a periodic reduction of energy used every 4 years by reducing the mining subsidy, meaning the energy used by the network will likely peak this decade before permanently declining. Furthermore the energy use is a non-issue if it does not pollute, and it's currently powered by about 58.5% sustainable energy and increasing. (bitcoin mining council estimate)

Electricity, unlike NFTs, is fungible. Bitcoin is not pulling from a separate pool of energy, it is taking up energy from the total amount of available energy that could be used for other things, driving up energy prices. Economies are built on energy prices, it is the fundamental throttle of all economies since the dawn of industry (and even beforehand, just substitute food costs instead of energy prices, as everything effectively ran on food before the industrial age.) As economies are bound by energy prices, hence the thermodynamics comment.

khorum for all his many faults, was pretty much an expert on this kind of argument.

LachiusTZ · Jan 24, 2022

Holy shit you butchered that.

Yes, economies, production, are built on energy.

The energy going into mining fucking BTC is not the same energy that would go into building homes.

Is there a magical home building GPU I can buy, and plug in to build me a home?

Is the electricity running out before the contractors can run air compressors for nail guns?

God damn your dumb.

Best case you could say BTC mining is partially run on oil, and oil would be used to fuel vehicles, but its not like lumber cant make it down the road to the job site.

The raw amount of energy or work in a system does not mean that energy is easily convertible from one use case to another, or transferable. You cant turn lumber and man hours into fucking BTC, not without a few hundred or million steps in between.

Yes, making energy free would be amazing for production and the economy, and its damn near feasible if not just flat out doable right now. We just dont give a fuck to do it. Prolly b/c its racist.

Mist · Jan 24, 2022

LachiusTZ said:
The energy going into mining fucking BTC is not the same energy that would go into building homes.

I didn't say anything remotely like that.

The housing thing and the energy thing were two separate, bad arguments from Torrid that I was responding to.

LachiusTZ · Jan 24, 2022

Mist said:
I didn't say anything remotely like that.

The housing thing and the energy thing were two separate, bad arguments from Torrid that I was responding to.

Oh, I ignore posts by people if I dont recognize the name.

Esp if it is lengthy.

Mist · Jan 24, 2022

LachiusTZ said:
Oh, I ignore posts by people if I dont recognize the name.

Esp if it is lengthy.

The response missed a quote somehow, I added it back so it makes more sense.

Ravishing · Jan 24, 2022

Mist said:
Blackrock really has nothing to do with the overall home inventory situation, that's just a headline grabber from the manipulative media.

View attachment 394617

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/blackrock-ruining-us-housing-market/619224/

We've got a shortfall of about 20 million homes in the US, due almost exclusively to local zoning boards.

Electricity, unlike NFTs, is fungible. Bitcoin is not pulling from a separate pool of energy, it is taking up energy from the total amount of available energy that could be used for other things, driving up energy prices. Economies are built on energy prices, it is the fundamental throttle of all economies since the dawn of industry (and even beforehand, just substitute food costs instead of energy prices, as everything effectively ran on food before the industrial age.) As economies are bound by energy prices, hence the thermodynamics comment.

khorum for all his many faults, was pretty much an expert on this kind of argument.

Regarding BTC energy consumption:

Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible? (Published 2021)

The most popular cryptocurrency wastes energy by design. Why is that, and could it ever be greener?

www.nytimes.com

That usage, which is close to half-a-percent of all the electricity consumed in the world, has increased about tenfold in just the past five years.

1/2 a percent of the world's energy consumption.

35.4% of bitcoin is mined in the USA

U.S. officially the top destination for bitcoin miners, beating out China for the first time

The U.S. is now the number one destination for bitcoin miners, eclipsing China for the first time ever.

www.cnbc.com

The USA uses 17% of the world's energy.
So how much is it actually increasing energy prices?
Also consider it's estimated to use 40% - 75% renewables or nuclear

BTC uses a lot of energy, but a lot of the narrative is based on ignorance.
We have the potential to create a lot of energy.
But the grid only supplies the exact amount of energy that is ever needed at any 1 time.
A lot of energy generation never even enters the grid due to demand not being there, but the turbines need to keep spinning.

And renewables either provide energy, or the solar/hydro just gets wasted when demand isn't there.

Mist · Jan 24, 2022

Ravishing said:
Regarding BTC energy consumption:

Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible? (Published 2021)

The most popular cryptocurrency wastes energy by design. Why is that, and could it ever be greener?

www.nytimes.com

1/2 a percent of the world's energy consumption.

35.4% of bitcoin is mined in the USA

U.S. officially the top destination for bitcoin miners, beating out China for the first time

The U.S. is now the number one destination for bitcoin miners, eclipsing China for the first time ever.

www.cnbc.com

The USA uses 17% of the world's energy.
So how much is it actually increasing energy prices?
Also consider it's estimated to use 40% - 75% renewables or nuclear

BTC uses a lot of energy, but a lot of the narrative is based on ignorance.
We have the potential to create a lot of energy.
But the grid only supplies the exact amount of energy that is ever needed at any 1 time.
A lot of energy generation never even enters the grid due to demand not being there, but the turbines need to keep spinning.

And renewables either provide energy, or the solar/hydro just gets wasted when demand isn't there.

That's not factoring in the energy and resources used to produce the mining hardware, and what impact that has on other industries like taking chips away from automotives, etc.

That's also the amount of energy it uses now when it's still basically a small network. To expand the transaction capacity to something the size of something as large as say, Paypal or Square would require much more energy.

swayze22 · Jan 24, 2022

Mist said:
The response missed a quote somehow, I added it back so it makes more sense.

that's up for debate.

Mist said:
That's not factoring in the energy and resources used to produce the mining hardware, and what impact that has on other industries like taking chips away from automotives, etc.

That's also the amount of energy it uses now when it's still basically a small network. To expand the transaction capacity to something the size of something as large as say, Paypal or Square would require much more energy.

Bitcoin Processed 62% More Transactions Than PayPal in 2021

A Blockdata report shows that bitcoin has processed 62% more transactions, in terms of dollar value, than PayPal in 2021.

beincrypto.com

this is in dollar amounts but I don't want to spend too much time responding to whatever the hell you are talking about.

if you are arguing crypto takes away chips from automotives etc, than it has zero impact on overall "sustainability" because , as you say, those chips (pollutants,energy consumed) are being created anyways.

eth and btc are some of the least efficient cryptos in terms of TPS. V MA PYPL will stay the same, crypto will continue to evolve and supersede, while continuously reducing the energy footprint per transaction and increasing transaction per second capability.

energy prices in a mature market aren't typically passed directly onto the consumer 1:1, pending competitive landscape, but merely affect the margins

Ravishing · Jan 24, 2022

Mist said:
That's not factoring in the energy and resources used to produce the mining hardware, and what impact that has on other industries like taking chips away from automotives, etc.

That's also the amount of energy it uses now when it's still basically a small network. To expand the transaction capacity to something the size of something as large as say, Paypal or Square would require much more energy.

Not counting other crypto, just BTC:

As long as the limit is 1 block per 10 minutes, the only variable will be the Difficulty. And difficulty is related to the # of mining nodes & the speed at which they can confirm a transaction.

# of transactions is a constant concern for BTC but only because each BTC block is limited to 1MB.
SegWit is meant to allow up to 4MB per block.
Right now the block avg size is 1.08 MB

Blockchain.com | Blockchain Charts

The most trusted source for data on the bitcoin blockchain.

www.blockchain.com

BTC will probably never scale to the level needed due to the current hard limits in place.
But as long as BTC is locked into those 2 variables, energy consumption will not scale exponentially based on # of transactions or anything.
Currently BTC is theoretically only using 25% of it's transaction capacity based on the above #s.

So yes, BTC will always look inefficient when speaking in raw transactions, only because of the hard limit for storing transactions in a block. These are things that can possibly change, though changing the protocol is going to be extremely difficult, or you fork it, which has already been done numerous times.

Kiroy · Jan 24, 2022

Flobee · Jan 24, 2022

A lot of incorrect energy arguments in here. Electricity attenuates when sent over long distances. It also attenuates over time, and due to battery tech being mediocre does not get stored well during low demand periods of time (like overnight). Bitcoin mining is largely using energy that is a) located in a place where demand is not sufficient for supply or b) mining is run during lower demand time periods.

This is not universally true, but will continue to become more common as competition increases and only the most efficient miners survive. Stop getting your mining data from MSM they dont know WTF they're talking about. Why do you believe these clowns on this type of topic but know they're full of shit on politics?

Rajaah · Jan 24, 2022

Flobee said:
A lot of incorrect energy arguments in here. Electricity attenuates when sent over long distances. It also attenuates over time, and due to battery tech being mediocre does not get stored well during low demand periods of time (like overnight). Bitcoin mining is largely using energy that is a) located in a place where demand is not sufficient for supply or b) mining is run during lower demand time periods.

This is not universally true, but will continue to become more common as competition increases and only the most efficient miners survive. Stop getting your mining data from MSM they dont know WTF they're talking about. Why do you believe these clowns on this type of topic but know they're full of shit on politics?

It always gets me when people who rail on the MSM for their dishonest bullshit turn around and cite the MSM when it agrees with them. "They're wrong in everything else, but not on this one thing".

Regardless, looks like the crypto markets took a massive dump early this morning, probably in anticipation of the stock market opening, and have now bounced back a bit. This morning was a great buying opportunity for anyone who wasn't asleep when it happened.

Rajaah · Jan 24, 2022

I'm kind of pissed that I missed 1.31 MATIC this morning. It's 1.51 now which would still be a deal, but 1.31 would have been *chef's kiss*.

Solana has absolutely nosedived, down to 93 which is the lowest I've seen it. 82 this morning. Has taken by far the biggest dumpus of any of the major coins that I pay attention to. Not sure what is going on there.

Arden · Jan 24, 2022

Rajaah said:
I'm kind of pissed that I missed 1.31 MATIC this morning. It's 1.51 now which would still be a deal, but 1.31 would have been *chef's kiss*.

Solana has absolutely nosedived, down to 93 which is the lowest I've seen it. 82 this morning. Has taken by far the biggest dumpus of any of the major coins that I pay attention to. Not sure what is going on there.

Solana's system goes down more often than your mom

Lightning Lord Rule · Jan 24, 2022

Rajaah said:
I'm kind of pissed that I missed 1.31 MATIC this morning. It's 1.51 now which would still be a deal, but 1.31 would have been *chef's kiss*.

Solana has absolutely nosedived, down to 93 which is the lowest I've seen it. 82 this morning. Has taken by far the biggest dumpus of any of the major coins that I pay attention to. Not sure what is going on there.

Apparently they're having network issues that cause it to go down for some periods. Haven't looked too in depth at it cause it looks like junk to me, but having what amounts to outages spooks people methinks.

Torrid · Jan 24, 2022

I didn't mean literally that ONLY Blackrock was responsible for home prices rising; the idea that rich people use real estate as a store of value which results in homes becoming overpriced is not only limited to the US and happens everywhere.

Secondly as others have said, electricity is not actually 'fungible' simply because it cannot be transported long distances without significant loss or stored easily. There is in fact a lot of waste electricity generated from renewables, which usually must overprovision so as to meet the demand at peak times. Hydro dams have a rather constant output and are often located in the middle of nowhere for example. China could not utilize all of their dam energy because it was too far way, so bitcoin miners did. Flared natural gas is also a completely wasted source of energy and that alone could power the entire bitcoin network if it were instead burned in generators and result in less greenhouse gas emissions due to more complete combustion, resulting in carbon negative energy use. Bitcoin mining's portability and ability to turn on/off instantly is something nothing else can do. Mining from waste energy effectively subsidizes renewable energy generation.

Torrid · Jan 24, 2022

Oh, and regarding semiconductors: TSMC prioritizes reliable customers because they're not stupid. Hence why Apple gets to use new nodes first. They prioritize Bitmain dead last because they're not a reliable customer. Mining ASICs aren't displacing phones and cars.

The e-waste argument you see in articles is also based on a terribly incorrect assumption that mining rigs are thrown out in a year which is complete nonsense. Actual use time is more like 5 years. How long do people keep their phones?

Lightning Lord Rule · Jan 24, 2022

If you're watching the stonk market today, ETH basically mirrored the moves of the market (particularly the NASDAQ) almost exactly. I'm still skeptical that we're not in for more moves down in the next couple of days, from both the market and for crypto, but who knows? Bouncing off of ~2150 almost immediately wasn't one of the major supports listed in all of the technical charts I see, but then again I'm not sure those technical charts notice the fact that ETH (BTC too? Haven't been looking as much) is so closely following the NASDAQ.

I'd much rather buy back in closer to 2k or lower, but if we suddenly gap up to ~2700 by the end of Wednesday, that might be a signal that we're on the move back up.

Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

Blackwing Lair Raider

Elite

Eeyore Enthusiast

Rogue Deathwalker Box

Eeyore Enthusiast

Rogue Deathwalker Box

Eeyore Enthusiast

Uninspiring Title

Eeyore Enthusiast

Elite

Uninspiring Title

Marine Biologist

Vyemm Raider

Honorable Member

Honorable Member

Blackwing Lair Raider

Il_Duce Lightning Lord Rule

Lightning Fast

Molten Core Raider

Molten Core Raider

Il_Duce Lightning Lord Rule

Lightning Fast