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> good money tends to drive out bad money

Actually, it's the other way around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law

But otherwise, I agree: rumors of Bitcoin's death have been greatly exaggerated.

See https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

Greham's law only applies where people are forced to treat good and bad money as equivalent. For example, if people are forced to treat coins of the same denomination as equivalent, regardless of how much gold the contain, you'll spend those that contain less gold and keep those that contain more gold.

Yes, that's right. Note that it also applies to fiat currencies. For example, at various times in recent years many Venezuelans would try to hoard USD (the good money), driving it out of circulation, and spend as much as possible in the latest version of the Bolivar -- until the Bolivar failed. Once the Bolivar failed, everyone would stop accepting it. Venezuela has created several versions of the Bolivar in recent years that have subsequently failed.

Interesting.

I was recently reading an essay from Hayek that explained why a better currency tends to drive out a bad one. I might need a refresher, though this seems to be one of those things that are true depending on how you look at it.

What i find especially intriguing is the certainty some people on this forum have of crypto going to zero. The same certainty they had 2, 5 and 10 years ago. Yet here we are. At what stage do they start questioning the strength of their certainty.

I don't subscribe to Bitcoin, I think it was a good Proof of Concept that this "Satoshi Nakamoto" entity released with good ideas that have since been tested and replaced by better ones.

I very well think that Bitcoin itself is going to zero, lest it migrates off PoW technolgoy. I am certain that at some point in the future governments will regulate and maybe even ban that wasteful use of electricity. Particularly when way better double-spending/integrity protection algorithms exist to replace PoW.

Nevertheless, Blockchains and crypto-tokens are here to stay. Ethereum is here to stay and similar networks will keep progressing, as GP said, without regard to scammers, fraudsters, naysayers and skeptics around the world. Technology will keep improving and becoming better performing. This is exciting to me!

I agree that the blockchain is an outstanding achievement in software engineering.

It's a distributed, cryptographically secure, decentralised append-only log. It's a data structure that would have a lot of potential in real-world applications, e.g. auditing public institutions, defending against falsifiability, etc. it provides an impartial proof-of-time, which is huge.

Bitcoin might live or die, but blockchains and digital currencies based on it are here to stay.

Agree! It's a tiring situation. On the one hand you have the idealists who know bitcoin is going to radicalize everything because "the Internet needs it."

On the other you have the "radical anti-crypto(currency) ludites" who is anyone on this forum who holds a different opinion.

And will go brr until self-induced climate change kills off the human race. Proof-of-work coins are obscene and immoral, and you should feel bad.

Yes, Bitcoin is what is causing climate change. Also stop eating meat.

You're repeating the propaganda lines from big corporation and big government, while they keep subsidizing oil companies and ultra-rich take their private jet to have dinner in Paris. Also it feels good to believe climate change is within our (we the people) grasp, and we just have to recycle a bit more.

This is literally putting the masses at each other's throats, while Unilever hopes to make billions if you buy their vegan products, and petrol companies go brrr.

Divide et impera.

--

Bitcoin turns energy into money. The problem is that we need more clean energy, not cry that people are using off-grid energy to mine Bitcoins.

Build more nuclear. Invest in fusion research. But you nor I can't, so we're at each other's throat. Saying we need to consume less energy is misguided and absurd.

No monetary system is worth 703KWh per transaction.[1] Is that propaganda?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...

That's not a very good comparison. Visa is more like the lightning system of bitcoin and ignores the breathtaking energy use of the underlying network. It's a good thing that people can give a decent estimate of bitcoin energy usage.

Try doing that with a fiat currency of your choice. Because it's invisible doesn't make it free.

Yawn. No monetary system works on 7 transactions per second either, this is why we now have Lightning and people are doing something about it, instead of repeating the same tired, exaggerated arguments.

I find it disturbing how engineers in here can only claim for the prohibitionism of an inefficient yet radical technology. This ain't no hacker spirit.

Ok, seeing as you’re not answering my questions, in what way do Bitcoin and other proof-of-work coins get down to even vaguely sensible levels of energy consumption? Fission takes decades to spin up, fusion is a pipe dream, and we need all the renewables we can get to transition away from an oil-based economy.

> fusion is a pipe dream, and we need all the renewables we can get to transition away from an oil-based economy.

That's a load of nonsense but to address your question: with one Bitcoin transaction, with Lightning, you can have millions of transactions with little than hashing a few numbers each. There is no theoretical limit. With one single Bitcoin transaction that you claim is killing the Earth.

This information was just a Google away if you really wanted an answer, but crypto has become like football or party politics: my camp is always good, the other are the literally Satan. Since you started by saying I am immortal and should feel bad for even just talking positively about Bitcoin, there is no intelligent discussion to be had here. I don't even own Bitcoin, for crying out loud.

I'll go back causing climate change or whatever you think I do.

Since you're such a massive lightnight fan, can you answer something very quickly for me?

Imagine Bitcoin gets very popular, so much so that 10% of the world is using it. They all will at least need to open a lightnight channel, and then settle that channel back to Bitcoin. What is the minimum number of Bitcoin transactions needed, and how long would it take to settle all those transactions? For this exercise, assume world population stays fixed at current levels.

(For those not so drunk on the cool aid, it's 6 years. 6 years minimum to settle one meaningful transaction for any reasonable number of people.)

They already know that.

In engineering, when there is a problem, we don't go crying about it or feel good because we have identified a bug, but work to fix it.

What you said is true. What you said will not be true forever. So it's a constant moving of the goalposts with people like you that measure everything in a vacuum and as an absolute unit.

Technology tends to improve over time. But apparently you are able to design perfect global distributed systems that are infinitely scalable from day 1, so chapeau.

As I said elsewhere, I am not invested, but I am an engineer, and I approach it as such. The kool aid is being drunk by the anti-crypto-at-all-costs cult, attacking with dishonest and frankly ridiculous arguments for people working with distributed systems and networks all day.

Please let me know how many times Bitcoin transactions per second has gone up in the last 14 years.

I can tell you how many times iPhone has upgraded their specs in approximately the same time period.

One of those is a cult, another a product of engineering. Don't confuse them.

(Angry posting causes typos. Sorry. I hope my comment is still readable enough.)

Random but, what do you mean by ‘goes brrr’?

Sorry, it's a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/money-printer-go-brrr

It means it keeps chugging along with no care in the world.