Bitcoin Is a Dirty Business
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
This could be true, depending on the balance of mining rewards, the price of Bitcoin, and difficulty. There is wasted energy out there being used to mine Bitcoin, and if it becomes the only profitable way to mine it, then that's all that will be used to mine it.
Right now, it doesn't seem to be the case.
This recent spam of anti btc narrative is getting tiring.
We literally have oil spills that coat massive areas and companies are getting away with not paying for cleanup, but yeah btc is 'dirty' - oh and also 99% of btc is used for crime, and drugs and terrorism, and terrorism-crime!
Is it worth investigating a stolen candy bar? Maybe going after organized crime is more worthwhile.
Both are tangential issues that we shouldn't be talking right now as we have far bigger problems to deal with. That doesn't mean its a free pass, just that priorities should be not hijacked by publicity etc
Do you really not see how that isn't a very smart way to go about things?
No, as a matter of fact I stated that bad thing (pollution, stealing )are bad. And i am not advocating for never focusing on it.
My point is that btc is being targeted as big bad meanwhile same people who demonize it for its environmental damage are perfectly fine with heavy industry causing global warming.
This is just hijacking global warming as a problem to bash btc. Do you really not see how political PR works?
The difference is that with heavy industry, we sacrifice environmental quality in exchange for a product with known utility (gas to make our cars go, energy to light/heat our homes, etc). While industrial products can function as a medium for speculation, and do make a few people very rich, they are still primarily produced for immediate consumption.
Bitcoin does not, per se, provide any utility to anyone other than speculation.
If you are using utilitarian angle then stick to it, and not cherry pick. Whats the difference between wasting energy on btc mining and listening to music via spotify or youtube?
I pick this example as wasteful since you could download music once and listen to it instead using BW every time you listen to a song. The whole wall street is primary waste of energy and resources as they are not creating anything but forcing themselves to be a middleman that suck the wealth out.
Furthermore saying btc having 'no utility' is laughable. Its not a pet rock (which has a stupid utility too if you insist). Its main utility is ability to transfer it between parties securely and quickly. You don't like it and you might have no use for it, as I have no use for spanish soap operas or crystal healing treatments. But that doesnt change the fact that there is some utility in it.
But that's not utility. That's just another form of currency and there are already better, cheaper and more secure ways to transfer currency between two parties. There is literally nothing I can do with a bitcoin other than sell it to someone else.
Like for example...?
BTC is hardly a currency (it was intended purpose but it not capable in its current form), its utility is ease of transfer over to anyone. Try to transfer money from US to EU or African country. Let's see how easy that is going to be.
You have to rely on third party actors and government to facilitate it (just reminding - we are not debating if that good or bad thing, just that btc is more than a worse implementation of a currency).
Venmo/cashapp/paypal are great and basically free for small p2p transfers within the US.
ACH transfers and Wires also work well for larger amounts and have fixed costs, not a fluctuating % of a transaction value like BTC. It's also very easy to send international wires via SWIFT to most countries (including African ones). Most of the countries where it is 'hard' to wire money are under sanctions, a problem that BTC does not solve.
>You have to rely on third party actors and government to facilitate it
Yes, 3rd parties like the FDIC who insure your money for free. You also have to rely on (potentially multiple) 3rd parties if you actually want to spend your BTC on anything. You also have the added complication of price slippage.
If BTC were really better at sending money than fiat-based solutions wouldn't more people use it for that purpose by now?
ugh, yeah sure. Via magical thinking maybe. Not to mention you have to pay bank to have an account in the first place.
You are shifting goalpost of this discussion every post, its pointless to keep on pointing out holes in you 'arguments'.
Btc has a utility therefore your original argument is invalid.
If I want to send a friend money (via BTC) I have to wire fiat from my bank to an exchange, buy BTC, send it to his address and pay a fee. Then he has to do the same in reverse and pay a fee to convert to fiat.
Claiming bitcoin is a problem polluter as it is useless, no utility, no function. A thing people waste energy on without getting anything back.
Now you claim btc is useless since there are 'better' ways.
Well public transport is better way to move people around cities. So why cars and causing huge traffic jams?
Why buy lambo when Fiat will save you more money etc etc.
Also saying 'btc is waste of energy it does nothing but pollute', and 'it might be useful in future' is contradictory. You either want to kill it or develop it.
If Bloomberg wasn't already a billionaire, I would just write the classic ,,good luck staying poor''.
Nobody is saying this.
Framing regulations of Bitcoin in terms of in terms of environmental concerns versus economic ones seems like a potentially effective approach.
While I AM a believer in it, I don't find Bloomberg's articles on it any more trustworthy than hobbiest "moon" posts.
They don't seem to report on anything that hasn't been mentioned many times before. It's all a bit fluffy for my liking.
My guess is Michael Bloomberg is bullish on Ethereum, hence the knocking of PoW in this article.
That said, I do think the core devs will eventually solve it, which I fully support. We have BTC and ETH 1.0 today and that in itself is amazing. I just don't think it will happen as quickly as everyone hopes it will. It can't. There is just too much ever increasing value on the line pushing on both ends of the demand spectrum.
Dan Held has a good thread on power usage:
https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1351235080103096331
Disclosure: I am very large scale eth pow miner that consumes excess hydropower.
ETH is not transitioning because they don't want to transition. As you are a miner making money do you want to have your entire business model turned off?