Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps it should be called "cockroach-coin," because it has survived again and again and again.

Bitcoin's price rose from $1 to $29 in its early years, then dropped to $2 in 2011... and Bitcoin survived. Price then gradually rose from $2 to $269, and subsequently dropped to $68 in 2013... and Bitcoin survived again. Price then rose from $68 to $1147, and then dropped to $177 in 2015, and Bitcoin kept on surviving. Price then rose from $177 to $19891 (wow!) and promptly dropped to $3625 in 2018, and yes, Bitcoin survived yet again. Price is now at around $7200.

Tensions escalate between the US and China, Bitcoin survives. North Korea launches new test missiles, Bitcoin survives. Venezuela's economy implodes, Bitcoin survives. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq escalate in unpredictable ways, Bitcoin survives. Geopolitical crises flare up. Entire economies implode. Nations may cease to exist. Bitcoin somehow keeps on surviving.

I wonder, could Bitcoin have greater staying power than most nations and currencies in history?

> Could Bitcoin have greater staying power than most nations and currencies in history?

"The average life expectancy for a fiat currency is 27 years, with the shortest life span being one month." [0]

[0] http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2011/01/23/time-different-do...

That's surprising and quite alarming, I would've expected it to be at least a century

There aren't many (any?) century old fiat currencies so no way that would be the average.

Clearly that's the case, but I didn't expect it to be.

Nearly all the times when a fiat currency "dies", it does so by people simply converting all their money into its replacement. More often than not, there's even a nominal equivalence between the old and new currencies. Describing this process as "death" is just sensationalist.

The cases where a fiat currency disappeared and left its holders without nothing are so rare that they make it into high-school history books.

> Bitcoin appears to have greater staying power than most nations and currencies in history.

I would not make that statement so soon. Bitcoin has only existed for 10 years. Most nations and currencies, at least in recent history, have lasted for much longer than that.

Agree! I edited this sentence so it would be a question, which better reflects what I actually intended to write.

Ten years down, millennia to go.

NO currency has survived a millennia.

Almost all currencies backed only by their governments, and not by physical gold, are at most a century old.

Not true. The pound sterling has been in continuous use since around 800 CE.

That's a ship-of-Theseus fallacy.

The pound sterling of 2019 is more related to the American dollar of 2019 than it is to the pound sterling of even WWII, nonetheless 800CE.

The ship of Theseus isn't a fallacy, it's a thought experiment.

And additionally the American dollar is not the same as it was pre bretton woods, or pre federal reserve, etc.

Not really. It’s just a matter of changing times and prices. Pounds and pennies have been a thing for 1200 years. What they buy has changed dramatically.

And lost 99% of its value!

Countries and currencies cease to exist regularly. Here's an incomplete list of countries that have disappeared in recent history:

https://www.thoughtco.com/missing-countries-1435425

So let’s go down the list of some of those currencies:

1. USD ~ is markedly different post breaking from gold standard so 40-50 years

2. EUR - created 1999

3. Russian ruble - post fall of Soviet Union.

I mean what’s the standard here? One way or another maybe the longest running one is the British pound but even then, one can easily argue like with the USD that breaking from the gold standard is a different currency altogether. But if “age” is what we’re talking about, it has to be closing in to what the Euro was at on 2009!

> at least in recent history

That's precisely the weak point of your argument. Give it another 20-30 years and let's then count again how many currencies are still as strong as they were or merely still exist. The USD is in a special place since it's the default currency for worldwide exchanges, so what matters is all other currencies out there.

Bitcoin miners pollute just enough (or take away just enough green energy capacity) to tip the earth over the edge. Bitcoin dies along with everyone else.

It's a hyperbole, but seriously, while Bitcoin may survive politics, it must die. Let a non-POW cryptocurrency please replace it.

You could say this about mining any other commodity. Modern mining is literally converting fuel into some metal or mineral.

For instance: There's only a finite amount of gold, and until recently (electronics), it had no real applications aside from looking nice. Yet gold has been mined for millennia, historically with slaves (sadly this is still the case in parts of the world) and now with machines. The economic use stems from this, and as gold has always been sort-after, it's desire (value) probably won't change anytime soon. While you can't wear bitcoin, I don't see it disappearing either.

Agreed. And I see the same counterpoint being trotted out for a case against EV vehicles. "Cobolt mining bad!" but I suppose oil drilling and fracking isn't?

If you could summon gold from the ground in a more efficient way, would you?

Bitcoin mining is meant to be inefficient - why not try for a better way with similar guarantees?

wouldnt making gold mining more efficient just mean that you would mine more of it eventually taking the same amount of overall energy use?

Not really, because most of your costs aren’t energy.

Of course you would, this is the same reason ASICs have come onto the market.

I'd say the inefficiency is one of the smartest moves in the design of Bitcoin. Not only does it counter Moores law, it also provides a scarcity; the more bitcoins that are mined (so there must be a demand for them), the harder mining becomes (limiting supply) - Adding inflation into the mix.

Had they just dumped 21 million Bitcoins into the market, it would have never taken off, and it would have probably been written off as a Ponzi scheme.

While you may not like the social or environmental impact of Bitcoin, it is hard to deny there is some brilliance in its design (like how the coins become the product of their own transaction logs).

The difference is that Bitcoin is far more energy intensive than real mining.

Source?

Here’s one: https://coincentral.com/bitcoin-mining-trumps-gold-mining-en...

Amusingly, when I search for the energy consumption of gold mining, the results are all about comparing it to Bitcoin.

Following the methods of the paper I already see a huge flaw.

They calculated energy per coin using hashpower from 2016-2018, ignoring all mining and coins from 2009-2016. Basically cherry picking their data and ignoring all the coins that were minted with lower hash power.

Surely the current cost of mining is what’s relevant when comparing the two today. Are we also supposed to go back and calculate the energy use for all the gold that was mined centuries or millennia ago?

It's different because the block reward is very biased at the beginning. By 2016-07-09, 75% of ALL bitcoin that will ever exist has already been mined. I doubt that's the same for gold reserves on earth. Furthermore, mining serves a dual purpose of also securing transactions, so for a fair comparison, you'd also need to factor in the costs of securing gold for storage/transport.

You think fiat currencies carry zero cost and zero energy footprint?

They have substantially less, especially on a per-transaction or total value basis.

Bitcoin layer 2 solutions (i.e. lightning network) don't have this "per transaction" issue, though

Petrodollar powers the war machine, so it’s not even close.

Comparisons to Bitcoin's per-transaction energy use is not valid. It could use 100x or 1/100th of the energy and process the same amount of transactions. Transaction throughput is a separate problem.

I don't think anyone was suggesting it was 0. It is a many orders of magnitude less per transaction though.

How do you compare a traditional transaction to one that is uncensorable by anyone?

Cash is the same.

And how much does it cost to transport cash to some company across the country?

I agree with your sentiment. Unfortunately, exhortations to "do the right thing" never, ever seem to work.

And efforts to ban or control the trading of a liquid, globally used asset also never seem work. (It would be like trying to ban the buying and selling of, say, US dollars.)

Perhaps the best way to address the very real environmental issues you raise will be with the development and adoption of more cost-efficient, less polluting, more environmentally-sustainable energy production technologies?

But look! https://twitter.com/khannib/status/1116352595537403905?s=19

> Let a non-POW cryptocurrency please replace it.

I hope this will happen naturally because all the electricity that is expended with PoW needs to be paid for somehow, either through fees or inflation.

> Bitcoin appears to have greater staying power than most nations and currencies in history.

WTF?

I edited this sentence so it would be a question, which better reflects what I actually intended to write.

This is one of the reasons Bitcoin has won the crypto wars.

Slow and expensive transactions? But it's reliable, only 21,000,000 Bitcoin ever ever.

Fiat cannot say the same.

Here is an anecodete against Bitcoin as a currency. A Friend was buying bulk food from me and for the second time, he insisted on USD instead of Bitcoin. Why? Bitcoin is undervalued.

I had found myself saying the same thing when buying party supplies from a different friend. I asked to pay in USD, because Bitcoin was undervalued. (2019)

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