Bitcoin & PoW is a waste of energy & destroys nature

[Thylacine]

Grunching, but I'm pretty sure the resource expenditure of the world banking systems is much greater than that of bitcoin.

[waldox]

a big pos attack is if a govt announces it will buy out pos coins to kill it, then people will flood out as the govt slowly controls more and more percentage of the coins

in pos the rich get richer, less incentive to spend since you get less shares next block

[jbreher]

I am pretty sure that the world banking system doesn't consume that kind of power.

Pretty sure, or very sure? I wouldn't be so sure.

In the US, the financial industry is on the order of 10% of GDP, and the share has been doubling every 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

Simple-minded fractions tells me that the financial industry might plausibly consume 5-10% of the total power. We can quibble over efficiencies and whatnot, but not without first quibbling more intently over your assertion that Bitcoin consumes about as much as US nuclear power generation.

[jbreher]

I said that IF some day one bitcoin is worth one hundred thousand dollars THEN the bitcoin network will consumes as much as US nuclear power generation.

Indeed you did. So I guess the next layer of the onion is to estimate how small a percentage of GDP would the non-bitcoin financial industry be reduced to, in an environment where bitcoin is $100,000 each?

[jbreher]

Why does it matter ?

The "financial industry" will still exists.

It will matter because in a world where bitcoin is $100,000 per, the 'legacy' financial industry will be significantly downsized. I assume, of course, that use of bitcoin will as a matter of course displace portions of the legacy financial industry. To assume otherwise seems rather preposterous.

[findftp]

Everybody is familiar with those large door heaters at the entrance of stores?
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?

Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.

Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.

You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.

[mgburks77]

Grunching, but I'm pretty sure the resource expenditure of the world banking systems is much greater than that of bitcoin.

What about after mass adoption?

[OROBTC]

...

Mining gold and mining really almost anything uses large amounts of energy and destroys (at least some) nature too.  Yet, we wish to lead modern lives.  No mining = crappy lives...

Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.

[mgburks77]

Everybody is familiar with those large door heaters at the entrance of stores?
You, these electrical heat monsters which make it able to let the door open to attract customers into a store?

Why not produce some asic heaters for this purpose. 99% of the energy is wasted on heat anyway.
You would earn money while heating your house.

Why not put these heaters in other electrical heating components, like water cookers and stuff.

You should concern about all electrical heaters instead of crypto mining.
Crypto mining is 0,00000000000000000001% of all electrical energy used.

That is kind of a rube goldberg type solution

[mgburks77]

Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.

How can high costs of energy be a minor issue when it is easily eliminated by using PoS?

[mgburks77]

The OP is nonsense, and here is why:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5146060#msg5146060

I wonder if readers have comprehended my upthread posts wherein I explained that democracy = fiat. We can't eliminate fiat if we retain voting (tallied by and to create a top-down authority) and reputation systems of control, because top-down control over money is the definition of fiat. A top-down controlled digital fiat can be technically secure, but the security is vacuous in the sense it is not protecting us from the power vacuum boogeyman that we were trying to eliminate in the first place. We might as well just continue to use Paypal, VISA, and Mastercard.

Money itself is nothing other than a ledger accounting of the societal consensus regarding how to dispose of the products and services that human society produces in relation to the various degrees of social status that are prevalent among the individuals whom comprise society. Individuals do not produce these things in a vacuum, all production is a consequences of all the moving parts of society working together to serve a greater purpose, to enforce and perpetuate the social contract between the individual and society.

 The purpose of top down control is to institute a system that abrogates the consensus of society at large for the consensus of a few who can profit by the situation by imposing the external costs of production on society at large without fair recompense. This is exactly what wasting energy to mine cryptocurrency does. It imposes a cost to society without recompense to society.


That theory is bass ackards.  

[superresistant]

PoW is a waste since PoS exist.

Mining is obsolete but this mining-scheme is still alive because people find it fun to waste electricity and lose money on expensive hardware.

[superresistant]

The OP is nonsense, and here is why:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5146060#msg5146060

Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.

[mgburks77]

The OP is nonsense, and here is why:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5146060#msg5146060

Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.

That too. Great point.

[devt]

Energy is there to be used. If you think that every bit helps, then stop driving a car, stop using a computer, use candles instead of light and so on. Because if you don't you are just a hypocritical hippie.

Reminds me of people who buy lots of RAM, then do everything to make sure the computer never uses more than 10% of it...

[MoonShadow]

The OP is nonsense, and here is why:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5146060#msg5146060

Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.

That too. Great point.

Maybe if it were true, but it's not.

[MoonShadow]

Energy costs of mining BTC appear to be a minor issue to me.

How can high costs of energy be a minor issue when it is easily eliminated by using PoS?

PoS doesn't really work.  It's subject to a trusted node being hacked, or otherwise turning opprotunisticly malicious.  PoW doesn't have that problem, and that is part of the point of it all, because it's truely trustless.  PoS cannot be trustless.

[jsgayo]

Energy spent on BitCoin is a fraction of the energy spent on fiat currencies.

[superresistant]

The OP is nonsense, and here is why:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5146060#msg5146060

Mining is centralisation through pools and specialised hardware.

That too. Great point.

Maybe if it were true, but it's not.

Well maybe I'm wrong but I don't see how PoW is not centralised so you have to explain me instead of saying "it's not true".

No one is solo mining. Everyone is on pools. People tend to chose the biggest pool.

There is a high competition for specialised hardware. When Bitcoin started, everyone could mine it on CPU, then GPU, then FPGA and now only an elite can afford the $10K ASIC. The production of the hardware is highly centralised and the people that have access to it are decreasing everyday.

[notbatman]

Sounds like the issue here is with the source of electrical power not how its used.

OPs argument is like scolding the fat dude for eating too much soylent green because it's made from people and therefore needs to be rationed.  

http://www.examiner.com/article/buckminster-fuller-says-there-is-no-energy-food-or-environmental-crises

Bon appetit fat boy!