[moneytide1]

The electricity consumption is a red flag, but perhaps it could be cheaper than the cost to build and maintain Guarda/Loomis trucks that carry physical currency, energy to melt metal to mint coins, and all the costs of building brick&mortar banks (even then, bankers provide auxiliary services like loans and advisement).

We are all spending time talking about it as a collective effort to determine whether or not it should be adopted in order to optimize the transfer of value. Ultimately it could flush out the middlemen who just seek rent by being a financial gatekeeper. Bitcoin isn't entirely different from that.

Many folks see it as a slot-machine. Buy, sit on it, cash out back to federal reserve notes. Profit. The question here is - what will those proceeds be spent on? If people are still conditioned from an early age to seek out excessive hedonistic experiences, what are we gaining by implementing bitcoin?

Part of me sees bitcoin explanations as a Rorschach test - you can observe some character traits of the person through their explanation or prediction of bitcoin.

I am wary of the entire thing because we are starting to spend more time talking about money. Or making money on money. It just has nothing to do with what we actually DO with our time/resources. But that is content for a different thread.

I am not a financial expert. Just working-class trying to invest surplus cash. I want to use simple terms and concepts and condense the complex discussion.

[spookthesunset]

> but perhaps it could be cheaper than the cost to build and maintain Guarda/Loomis trucks that carry physical currency, energy to melt metal to mint coins, and all the costs of building brick&mortar banks

On a per-transaction basis? I don't even need to work out the math to tell me it isn't even close. Bitcoin can at most handle 4 transactions per second. By virtue of its very design it will never get much more than that. Our existing financial institutions process tens or even hundreds of thousands of transactions every second. Even if the entire worldwide financial industry consumed as much power as bitcoin, on a per-transaction basis (or even a per-dollar/euro/yen basis) our existing system is much, much, much, much, much more efficient.

Just to again emphasise, Bitcoin (and hence the blockchain) by design cannot scale much more than it already has. It is simply impossible without giving up all of Bitcoin's attributes that people consider important (decentralization, trustless trust, etc...)

[em3rgent0rdr]

The Lightning Network (which has just reached version 1.0 and demonstrated successful transaction) doesn't have such transaction limits.

[sandworm101]

These numbers are far beyond the energy required for trucks hauling cash. And they dont fully account for the truck-type energy to build and manage the bcoin mining industry.

[jackpeterfletch]

We're starting to stop using cash anyway though right? Regardless of blockchain.

[Joeboy]

> truck-type energy

I think "embodied energy" is the technical term for that.

[lawlessone]

There's also the creation of the cash, printing or melting. and the resource extraction for it.

The losses due to counterfeiting.

[knocte]

> I am wary of the entire thing because we are starting to

> spend more time talking about money. Or making money on

> money. It just has nothing to do with what we actually DO

> with our time/resources.

It's funny you say this because back before I got into bitcoin I used to see the entire finance/banking industry this way. Now that I'm a bitcoin user/developer, I think this technology will make the finance industry diminish to the levels of where other industries are, because it's basically removing the middle men. It's actually doing the opposite of what you think is doing.

[nathan_f77]

> I am wary of the entire thing because we are starting to spend more time talking about money. Or making money on money.

You can also have positive discussions about money, for example: inequality, altruism, basic income.

I've been thinking about a hypothetical "altruistic" cryptocurrency that could have some rules to combat inequality. It might even be possible to provide a basic income to everyone based on a web of trust, although there's probably a million ways to cheat that kind of system.

Here's an interesting simulation that shows what happens when every person gives a dollar to another random person: https://en.yaronshemesh.com/inequality/

So the algorithm wouldn't do that. But it could have some built-in taxation rules for every transaction, and the taxes would be distributed fairly. A portion could also go towards "effective altruism", such as charities listed on givewell.org.

I just realized that taxes are actually a form of forced altruism. The money goes towards good things (schools, hospitals, roads), but you get in trouble if you don't "donate" the appropriate amount.

It's actually very possible that taxes could be enforced with a blockchain contract. It would be nice if all of humanity could somehow agree on all of our necessary shared expenses, and then encode those laws into some software that governs a blockchain. We wouldn't need the IRS anymore, and nobody would need to donate any money. It could just be implemented as a "sales tax" on any transaction. Perhaps the United Nations might be able to manage the distribution, but I actually agree with Donald Trump when he says the UN is plagued with mismanagement and bureaucracy [1]. So I don't know, maybe we need to reinvent politics at the same time. (Although I wouldn't want a democracy where every single person can vote on every issue.)

Imagine if no-one accepted any currency unless it was backed by a global blockchain. Companies could no longer hide money offshore to avoid (or evade) taxes. All of their corporate income taxes would be calculated and paid out automatically by the global network, and no-one would accept their payments if they don't follow all of the rules.

[1] http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/...

[hutzlibu]

"I just realized that taxes are actually a form of forced altruism. The money goes towards good things"

Like war (on drugs, iraq, afghanistan), NSA, CIA, etc? And you have also not much choice, if you don't support the spending on the current education system for example.

Thats why it is not a donation. So in my Utopian future taxes would be indeed voluntarily and directly bound - so if there is no money for certain things, then apparently nobody wants them. I suppose most people favor education and streets over sustaining a global invading force, but I might be wrong. Anyway, still a long way to go for this ...

[matt4077]

Every transaction consumes an average household's WEEKLY engird usages.

How's that not a simple concept?

> Buy, sit on it, cash out back to federal reserve notes. Profit.

If someone wins, someone else has to lose. And no, it's not the credit card companies. It's the last one holding the potato.

[hutzlibu]

"If someone wins, someone else has to lose"

You (and many others) might need to look up the concept of "mutual benefit"

[sova]

You are right, the comparison is based on a faulty premise: the premise that current money minting doesn't consume energy.

You are very kind to point out that the pursuit of money is not an end-goal at all, and it would be great if a lot of these young bucks who made it big on bitcoin were investing their earnings into furthering the globe, instead of just living lavishly.

[albertgoeswoof]

A lot of the bitcoin wealth is going straight into ICOs, which do free up capital for innovation, in theory

[sova]

That is true! ICOs that have novel purposes are certainly welcome to the world. One day I'd like to make my own cryptocoin for my site so there can be a mini ecosystem / economy there, too.