> At each time step, CO2e emissions for the given number of transactions were estimated based on the emissions generated to mine that number of transactions in 2017.
Bitcoin network does not work that way. Energy is spent securing the blockchain, not per transaction.
This is completely wrong. Most mining happens currently on underutilized hydropower stations, because grid energy or fossil fuels wouldn't be as profitable. Because of the mining difficulty adjustment and diminishing returns in improving ASIC hardware, the only way to profit is to find cheaper energy sources than all other miners.
In the long term, Bitcoin mining accelerates the development of abundant and cheap energy, which is not fossil fuels.
Yes, but does it reduce the total reliance on fossil fuels? If we start with X coal plants and build a Y hydro plants to support btc mining, we're still running the original X coal plants.
It incentivises stealing electricity because you can't beat free.
Energy is finite on the grid, so yes mining takes energy which could have been used for (arguably) better purposes
Could you provide a source for this?
Where are you seeing evidence of this?
Almost nowhere accepts bitcoin anymore because they failed to solve the issue that transactions cost on the level of dollars to process so its only useful as a speculative investment and not a practical currency.
Cryptos have basically burned the idea and the general public will probably not care of any future solution since all of the previous ones were scams or not very useful.
These cryptos all promise the world and deliver nothing.
For example, Uniswap is a decentralized exchange living on top of Ethereum that frequently has volume higher than Coinbase. A couple years ago that was the "end vision". Now it's an everyday reality.
Loans, mutual fund like assets, lending etc. The ecosystem is booming.
Ethereum is absolutely fulfilling it's mission.
I even see it myself, and I don't speak for anyone in that community. I bought some BTC ~4 years ago to buy something and did the math on current value. It's kind of shocking.
It’s got that sweet hype-commodity power though.
Although what can I say, when I saw my non-tech family talking about it I assumed it was dead. That was at $3000. I know nothing.
I have no idea if or when that circle will break but I can't believe that it will last I definitely.
However I don't think institutions of this size and nature buy millions of dollars worth without some sort of analysis and strategy.
Instead it's basically $186 million from Square and $5 billion from a questionable Microstategery investment decision.
JPMC has trillions under management, seems like they would want to invest, right? Or are they worried that Tether is currently untethered to reality?
Fuck tether though.
To fail, all of the 2nd layer networks have to fail, and it has to keep its position of a store of value, keeping transaction costs out of reach of regular folk.
If tomorrow there was a big price crash back to $1, and all transactions dried up, it would have a 2nd shot at being a payment network.
It's not that simple. As I recall the last time a block size change was proposed it fractured the entire community and produced a splinter "currency".
An example would be that me not driving to the beach saves some fuel but bitcoin is just a train constantly driving to the beach and back regardless of how much I use it. You could grab the number of trips and the power usage and calculate a power usage per trip but its not an entirely useful metric since the power usage does not scale up as more people use the service.
While price is the main factor affecting profits, fees/volume and the constantly decreasing block reward also play a part.
Now "Nature" (the publisher) has many journals, and many of them has a name that starts with "Nature", but they are different journals, with different teams and different qualities. https://www.nature.com/siteindex#journals-N
Then anyone can correct mistakes
Is that a joke? Have you ever been in academia? Bias is everywhere. Bias towards certain hypotheses, political outlooks, methods, etc. The more senior someone is in a field, the more biased they tend to be! I've seen the founder of a field vote to reject a paper because it was "already known" because he skimmed the paper and misread it. There are entire fields of Alzheimer's research that are suppressed because they don't work with the Field's Favorite Aggregating Protein. I've witnessed people add spin to the conclusion section of a paper so that it looks less politically incorrect, and I've also witnessed that this step is both necessary and effective for getting a "dicey" paper published. Get out of here if you're going to assert that scientists are these objective Vulcan types that are "above the fray". They are some of the most "biased" and opinionated people in existence!!
Yes, did several studies and also a PhD with a Nobel laureat and some publications. I don't claim our present system is perfect; it's far from it; but I don't know a better one; thus my question: Do you have a better concept?
EDIT: Preprints are actually not a replacement, but essentially loosen the submission deadline and increase the number of (potential) reviewers. But even with this, many disadvantages you criticise still exist; the public reviewers not appointed by the publisher can also be wrong, and the outcry of indignation can be so loud that the author's superiors enforce a withdrawal of the publication.
Publishing is taken far too importantly in academia
>Reviewer are expected to have a suitable qualification and experience and no bias
But they do not. My last paper was rejected when the reviewers hardly understood the basics of the topic. And I have been assigned papers to review about topics I have never worked on
>In a wiki, where anyone can publish or change anything without control, the scientific level - at least in certain areas - will inevitably level down.
Not every edit needs to be approved
Open source with pull requests was not so bad for software quality
>There is no perfect system, but there are many worse than we already have.
The current system is especially bad. It takes to much time to find the papers, read the papers, write the papers, and review the papers
If you're polite and respectful to people, they respond better. Give it a try. :-)
It’s a mistake to assume that the ratio is the thing that’s fixed. Energy expenditure is related to fees and the blockchain reward.
This is true of pretty much every industrial process. The idea of running production only when the sun is shining to absorb excess solar seems like a universally poor idea.
The capital expenditure argument makes sense when mining is the primary business. Using old and otherwise unprofitable (but cheap) hardware makes sense where there is intermittent excess energy.