[shawnz]

Exactly, just like how with fiat currencies, the military serves as a proof-of-waste system which does nothing productive except to compete with other militaries. They compete by intentionally burning their limited resources (young individuals' lives) so as to make an enemy attack cost-prohibitive, thus securing the network.

> The army is to defend the country and its people, and would not be reduced in a bitcoin powered world.

Yes, they also defend other things besides the country's financial interests. So you'd expect them to cost a little more than Bitcoin, which only defends holders' financial interests. I am simply pointing out how they use the same proof-of-work system to accomplish it.

If the widespread adoption of Bitcoin led to a devaluation of existing fiat currencies, then you would expect military spending to go down (in terms of bitcoins). But I don't think that Bitcoin's adoption will decrease the use of fiat currencies (by any significant amount).

> both of those things can be bad and having two of them can be additively much worse

It's not clear why they would be additively worse. Creating a new place to store wealth doesn't increase the overall amount of wealth.

I agree that it is not a good thing that proof-of-work systems are wasteful, but perhaps it's the only way of solving the problem.

Proof-of-stake systems look promising but there are still some open questions about how it should be implemented and what the implications are for network security, and it will be at least a few years before they become battle-tested enough to have the same level of trust as Bitcoin.

[arcticbull]

> I agree that it is not a good thing that proof-of-work systems are wasteful, but perhaps it's the only way of solving the problem.

Obviously not, the other solution is by fiat, which has been working for milennia, and it's not about to stop.

[shawnz]

Yes, but I just explained how fiat is secured by a system almost the same as proof-of-work (which you dismissed as "off-topic").

[arcticbull]

When I say "number go up" I'm not being disrespectful to you, I'm borrowing a turn of phrase from the Bitcoin community which they use to justify just about anything. Apologies if that or anything else I said rubbed you the wrong way, tone often fails to carry on the internet.

What I'm saying is that I have, quantifiably and mathematically, shown that it's not possible for a crypto to take less energy than a visa transaction, due to thermodynamics.

Your retort continues to be that "the state spends way more energy and resources defending the currency that you're not factoring in" -- but you've failed to quantify that in any way. It spends some quantity, ok, I understand that. You haven't replied how much, you haven't done any analysis. Without any justification you state that it's at least as big if not bigger than a Bitcoin transaction.

I want to know why, when I've shown it's not thermodynamically possible.

I'd love to know how much of the state's "energy expenditure" you apportion to "currency protection," and how much that would decrease in a world where the entire economy is denominated in cryptocurrency. Some justification - anything - would be a great starting point, but so far you've just stated it as fact, in many unrelated contexts. This is not a generally accepted or understood fact.

[shawnz]

Thanks for the clarification.

Regarding your crypto energy argument, I think I addressed this in the other thread but I will try to explain again.

With the current 1MB block limit and current valuation of Bitcoin, you are absolutely right that the transaction rate per kilowatt can't exceed Visa.

The argument in Nic Carter's post which you are missing is that transaction rate per kilowatt is just one possible way of judging the usefulness of a monetary system.

Monetary systems can be useful for reasons other than their high transaction rate (for example, they might support a particularly high transaction volume, or have a particularly high cost to attack).

Increasing the maximum possible transaction rate per kilowatt would be as simple as increasing the maximum possible block size, since transactions are effectively free (it is only finding blocks which costs money).

There are trade-offs associated with changing the block size limit, but those trade-offs have nothing whatsoever to do with the energy usage of Bitcoin. Changing the block size limit won't affect the energy usage. If the market had enough demand for increased transaction rates, either Bitcoin will be forced to increase the block size or it will simply be outcompeted by a different coin which already has.

> Your retort continues to be that "the state spends way more energy and resources defending the currency that you're not factoring in" -- but you've failed to quantify that in any way.

I actually don't know that that is true, and I didn't mean to imply that I know that for sure.

But, it is what you would expect assuming the market is accurately pricing Bitcoin for the value it provides them.

If it weren't true, and USD is actually cheaper to secure for the value it provides, then it is an easy arbitrage opportunity where you can short Bitcoin and buy the relatively-cheaper-to-secure USD instead. Eventually with enough market participants it is sure to eventually reach the "fair price".

[arcticbull]

It's completely off topic, because the existing financial system is an emergent property of the state. It's a free-loader. Very limited energy is expended specifically to maintain the financial system. The bulk of it is to maintain the state which you have to do whether the financial system is shells, legos, gold or bitcoin. It's an irrelevant point, a red herring, nothing more.

After all far be it from replacing Visa and Mastercard, Visa and Mastercard have simply added crypto so you actually have to remove them from your energy savings estimates.

Further I disproved the energy utilization point in the original conjecture as impossible. If you have something to add add it and show you work.

Sorry man, you're just not right on this one. Number go up, we get it. That doesn't make it a fundamentally good, useful or interesting technology. All this flailing/pointing at everything that moves with no calculation, no evidence, is just to distract from the fundamental fact that it's a wasteful, borderline useless casino.

Show. Your. Work.

[shawnz]

> the existing financial system is an emergent property of the state. It's a free-loader. Very limited energy is expended specifically to maintain the financial system. The bulk of it is to maintain the state

It isn't a matter of how much the financial system consumes. It is a matter of how much the state consumes to protect the wealth of its citizens (of which fiat is just an emergent property like you say).

> Further I disproved the energy utilization point in the original conjecture as impossible. If you have something to add add it and show you work.

You will have to clarify what point you mean or what work you want me to show.

> Number go up, we get it.

Please don't talk to me so disrespectfully. I have no interest in speculating on the price of cryptocurrencies.