If you destroy Bitcoin, another currency would take its place.
Comment on Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin
daniskarma@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Is it not a way in which some governments could collaborate to end this Bitcoin madness?
Genuinely question.
Like maybe some big countries could agree to collaborate and join resources to make a 51% attack and bring Bitcoin price to 0 so people stop wasting resources on it.
2% of enery usage for something that do not add any value go society is INSANE.
WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 4 months ago
BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Good. Most don’t use proof of work anymore because they don’t feel the need to watch the world burn for no reason other than propping up techno bros.
WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 4 months ago
A lot still do, and that’s where the miners would go
ikapoz@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
If governments started regulating bitcoin because it was proof of work based then people aren’t going to pump real money into another proof of work scheme to replace it - why would they take the risk of it happening again when there are alternatives? the mining profit margins would disappear and so would they.
TypicalHog@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Cardano.
makeasnek@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
They have tried, they have all failed. Bitcoin is international. A 51% attack is so implausibly expensive that nobody really has the resources to pull it off. People will see it coming a mile away. And it gets more expensive every year. If you had that much money to put into destroying Bitcoin, it would be much better spent on an ad campaign telling people Bitcoin was bad than doing a 51% attack. A 51% attack doesn’t prove Bitcoin is broken, it proves the protocol is working exactly as expected.
Bitcoin’s value to society is the ability to easily transfer money from point A to B and having a clear fiscal policy it has kept to for 15 years, 365 days a year, 24/7 without a single hour of downtime, a bank holiday, or getting hacked. There’s a reason big money like hedge funds and private banking are investing in it: it’s actually useful and has massive potential. The market cap of Bitcoin is 850 BILLION USD, that’s bigger than the GDP of Sweden or Israel or Vietnam.
Transactions on Bitcoin lightning occur in under a second and cost pennies in fees. Remittance services and bank wires use just as much energy and waste not just energy but human capital as well, we no longer need humans manually sending bank wires like it’s 1910. You just don’t see headlines about the energy impact of bank wires or western union because it’s not novel, we just accept it as a cost of our financial system.
hark@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Skip ad. Bitcoin is pumped through ridiculous leverage and printing of “stable” coins like tether. The scam hasn’t unraveled yet, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
makeasnek@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Do you know that Tether and Bitcoin are different things? Because it seems like you don’t.
hark@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Do you know that tether is printed and used to buy bitcoin? Because it seems like you don’t.
TypicalHog@lemm.ee 4 months ago
People defending Binance and Tether are either:
- Clueless and haven’t done any research
- Brainwashed
- Part of the Binance/Tether cartel
- Paid to do it
- Lying to themselves
- Aware of the truth, but want their bags to continue to be propped up by fraudsters
Which one are you?
doylio@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to establish the precedent that gov’t can decide what you can and cannot do with your energy. You may think it’s a waste of energy, but if the externality is properly taxed, I don’t see the problem with letting it continue
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Agreed, tax what the problem is not just one facet of it.
TypicalHog@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Then it’s just gonna suck up “green energy”. It’s still energy. We have already have provably secure PoS (not Ethereum btw, it’s PoS sucks ass).
doylio@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Yeah I’m pro PoS in general, but I don’t think we should forbid people from running PoW on their own computers. Seems like a step too far.
Side note, what’s wrong with Ethereum’s PoS in your opinion?
TypicalHog@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Oh yeah, I was never for banning PoW. I just don’t like it since I know same or better can be achieved with a well designed PoS.
Ethereum PoS has slashing so people are scared to stake thus causing low participation rate. Also, in Ethereum, you need a minimum amount of 32 ETH to solo stake. Ethereum also doesn’t have a native liquid staking and has locking, unlike Cardano. And you can’t delegate your coins without giving up custody of them. Cardano PoS is designed completely differently and is natively liquid with no locking, no min amount to stake, native delegation and both delegation and self-staking is risk free when it comes to your balance. Worst case - you miss out on those 3.5% rewards for the period your balance is delegated to a pool that’s not doing its job. All of this is the reason staking participation is like 65% in Cardano. Would probably be even higher if it wasn’t for lost coins and large whale wallets that are not staking/delegating for some reason.
makeasnek@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
I’m in favor of cap and trade. Blockchain actually provides a perfect way to build a cap-and-trade system that every country can participate in, transparently, without having to trust one country or group of countries to run it honestly. That’s the essential problem blockchain solves.
Bitcoin miners do by and large use green energy since it tends to be the cheapest (off-peak hours from over-provisioned grids). If electricity gets more expensive, it doesn’t mean it becomes unprofitable to mine, that’s only one side of the equation. The other side is how much people are willing to pay to get transactions added to the blockchain, which is a number, on average, that has increased year after year. Not that you ever need to make an on-chain transaction, with Bitcoin lightning you can do transactions off-chain while getting much of the security of on-chain transactions. You can move money internationally in under a second for pennies in fees. And it works just as easily as venmo.