[tomxor]

> It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US

I'd bet that _all_ idle "devices" in in the US are providing far more utility by being ready and available to do ... anything (you did say all), than bitcoin which is _only_ a vehicle for speculating on intrinsic value being used by a tiny minority.

Sorry but I'm fed up of these stupid comparisons, if bitcoin uses 0.56% of the worlds electricity, there are a maximum of 178 ways to divide up the rest... it's simply not on that scale of usefulness, _and_ it is not comparable to fucking visa because it doesn't serve the worlds transactions, no one buys coffee with bitcoin. It's also not comparable to the USD for the same reason. Everything you compare it to will be of more material value to the world and almost always consume less energy, even if it's icecream. </rant>

[undersuit]

How much energy does encrypting all our video transmissions cost? I don't care how efficient the hardware running HDCP is, it's still wasteful to do so for every application and it's not even to protect the users nor would it be effective in the current form as such.

[tomxor]

Encryption of video specifically is a bit narrow, but lets widen it a bit: we watch a lot of video, video is neat right? I wonder how much energy goes into the transmission of _all_ video on the entire planet? end-to-end, the encoding, the hosting, the network transmission, the decoding on billions of devices and lighting up all those LED backlights, (and the extra overhead added by copyright protection crap)...

It's got to be on a similar playing field right? i wouldn't be surprised if it was a little more than 0.56% globally. But look at how much _billions_ of people get out of it all over the world: entertainment, art, education, something to connect to people with... it has a huge and invaluable impact on society - i dare anyone to try compare that to Bitcoin (not blockchain, not the utopian crypto dream, but Bitcoin).

[bobviolier]

The digiconomist actually compared watching Youtube with a single bitcoin transaction (don't know the specifics and how accurate), but they said 1 btc transaction is the same as 51.000 hours of watching YouTube:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

[trident5000]

Comparing BTC mining to a small country is just absurd. You could do the same with hundreds of other applications aside from YouTube like all social media servers, gaming, existing banking infrastructure, etc. Also Bitcoin arguably replaces gold which uses more energy and is more destructive to land (while using fossil fuels instead of mostly renewable energy like BTC). Lastly how much energy do we think the dollar which is backed by the US military uses per year? Id wager a lot more.

The pitchforks are out in this thread quite simply because people dont like other people outmaneuvering them in purchasing power but of course is disguised as a virtue signal.

[Griffinsauce]

Your last statement is based on exactly zero data points.

Let me provide one counter though: I couldn't give a rats ass whether you outmanouver me financially, I do care whether my child has a livable planet for his lifetime.

[trident5000]

Sure thing ;)

[Natfan]

To clarify, that's fifty one thousand, correct? Some countries use a period (.) as their "digit group separator"[0], and others use a comma (,).

[0]: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/110693

[BillinghamJ]

I generally work on the assumption that if it's being used to separate three digit separation, it's a thousand separator. If only two digits and it's a currency with cents, probably a decimal separator.

[Wowfunhappy]

HDCP's energy usage is marginal, but yes, it's pointless and I'd very much like to kill it. More critically, I'd also like all mobile phones to receive software support for three times as long as what Apple currently provides, and I'd like to build more wind farms and stop shutting down nuclear plants.

None of this excuses Bitcoin.

[undersuit]

I don't know why Bitcoin needs to be excused.

[Consultant32452]

I know this is just a matter of opinion, but I feel it would be hard to over-estimate the value in getting humanity off centrally planned currencies that are manipulated to cyclically transition massive amounts of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

Of course there's no guarantee that bitcoin or any of the other cryptos will resolve this issue for us, but they are our best chance at the moment.

[tomxor]

> I feel it would be hard to over-estimate the value in getting humanity off centrally planned currencies

That's not what this is about, Bitcoin has utterly failed at that mission, and nothing about cryptocurrencies necessitates computationally wasteful proof of work. The only reason Bitcoin is still popular is because of people using it for speculating, it's not a viable currency.

[IgorPartola]

Bitcoin is deflationary, isn’t it? How could it ever replace fiat if just by merely holding it you are guaranteed in the long run to increase value? You need mild inflation to get people to actually spend and not hoard. Bitcoin’s supply is fix so there is no point in ever spending it unless you want to cash out.

[trident5000]

Yeah because Ill never buy food and housing until I die because my currency is deflationary. That logic is so tired. Also the fact that you can convert US dollars to investments instantly instead of consuming basically extends the same situation, yet we still spend when we need to.

[Consultant32452]

If we imagine a deflationary currency encourages savings over consumerism... That doesn't sound so bad.

[IgorPartola]

From everything I’ve read, it tends to stagnate society. Why buy a car when you can just hold onto your money and tomorrow you can buy a house? Why buy a house when tomorrow you can buy a mansion. No value is produced because there is little incentive to invest into anything since just holding onto your money is a safe investment.

[xur17]

> Also the fact that you can convert US dollars to investments instantly instead of consuming basically extends the same situation, yet we still spend when we need to.

I've actually wondered about this -> why not use the SP500 as a form of currency? It seems like this would fit somewhere in between the US dollar and Bitcoin - store of value, increases in price over time (or at least historically does), pays dividends (so a productive asset). Downsides are no capped supply, and volatility (but so is Bitcoin).

[Consultant32452]

This would be a massive wealth transfer to the companies on SP500 because demand for the stocks would go up and those companies would basically get infinite zero interest loans by issuing more stock, which would inflate your currency.

[IgorPartola]

You see a lot of people buying groceries with BTC currently? What I see most people do is buy BTC and hold it, living off their regular paychecks, waiting for the BTC portfolio to hit some goal. They then trade it to the next investor who does the same. It’s not a currency so much as a store of value. It’s a stock, not money.

[trident5000]

Obviously thats going to be the case through rampant price discovery. Youre not saying anything original. Are you smarter than Visa and Mastercard and Paypal? Maybe they know something about future consumers that you dont.

[solosoyokaze]

Bitcoin continues to grow at an enormous rate. It hasn't failed at anything. Soon BTC will surpass the value of gold. We are actually on our way to getting off fiat.

[mockingbirdy]

This. I've realized years ago that the current fiat system can be unsustainable because it's very hard for regulators to avoid the temptation of applying QE and other monstrosities. But I realized way too late that BTC is the vehicle to flee from that (in a simple way compared to moving physical assets across borders).

It already succeeded in helping rich people in China to bring their wealth out of control. This has maximum utility for a lot of people. I'm not sure what will come after the current financial system (and it most probably won't go anywhere and will co-exist for some years before crypto will be banned everywhere), but this new type of wealth transfer mechanism already gets used a lot. Everyone who distrusts the current financial system or is oppressed by their regime is interested in it.

I don't know how the world will look like (it'll probably be very hard to continue the current path because capital has found a new way to move across borders and avoid taxes, again) and I don't know if it's generally good for global society, but Pandora's box is open.

I agree with the energy discussion and that it's wasteful, but the utility of it (transacting without governmental permission) seems to be higher for the participants. And they don't care about its socioeconomic impact, they care about its utility for them (money for miners and speculators who keep BTC's value high and the network functional, permissionless transaction for the actual target audience / users of BTC). BTC was built for permissionless money transactions, the speculation is just a byproduct and everyone is focusing on it instead of looking at its actual value for its users.

edit for the sibling comments: You need BTC only to move your assets from one country/wallet to another. You can then move it to a stable coin like USDC and slowly and safely get it out of the crypto system without having to deal with the volatility. This takes you half an hour and you're done. It's currently an investment vehicle, but its utility comes from being able to get money from A to B regardless of government intervention. Even if BTC drops to $3k, it still has this value. Looking at the price of BTC is missing the point: it's more than $0 and you can do a transaction in 10 minutes and that is all that matters to move assets.

[Hiopl]

But that high value (and the volatile prices) is entirely the problem (coupled with other issues like the extremely low potential number of transactions per second). As it stands, Bitcoin will never be anything other than an investment vehicle. Maybe another cryptocurrency will be a suitable replacement for fiat, but right now and for the foreseeable future, crypto is still too niche, too complex and volatile. At most we're seeing banks extend their offerings with cryptocurrency, but none of it points to widespread replacement of fiat outright. There are too many institutional, technical and social barriers.

[solosoyokaze]

Bitcoin plays a role in the crypto ecosystem. It's like gold. Ethereum is like the finance industry and things like DOGE are like currency. The value will be pegged to BTC, making it the foundation for the ecosystem.

[charcircuit]

>and things like DOGE are like currency. The value will be pegged to BTC, making it the foundation for the ecosystem. I disagree. It is more realistic for existing currency based stable coins to become the currencies. For example countries like the US will create a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar, China with the Yuan, and Europe with the Euro. Currently USD pegged stable coins are the most popular.

[tomxor]

> It hasn't failed at anything.

It has failed at being a usable currency, and not merely for socioeconomic reasons. A currency is more than just intrinsic value.

[briefcomment]

We need an uninflatable store of value more than anything, which Bitcoin is.

Think of how much unnecessary transacting and consumption is going on right now to escape a constantly inflating dollar. "Investments" and consumptions will tank with a deflationary store of value.

[SantalBlush]

>We need an uninflatable store of value more than anything

People keep repeating this as if it's a well known truth, and I'm wondering where they came up with the idea. Why are we to believe that inflation is the source of our current economic woes?

[trident5000]

Sure, just as Visa, Mastercard, Circle, Paypal and several of the largest major banks just accepted its use and facilitation. And while companies such as Tesla, PornHub, etc accept it as payment. Its totally not going anywhere and will never make that transition.

[rnestler]

> Soon BTC will surpass the value of gold

How would one measure that? The price of one bitcoin compared to the price of a kilogram of gold? That seems arbitrary. Total market value? Transaction volume?

[solosoyokaze]

Total market value.

[Consultant32452]

The computationally wasteful bit is a temporary problem for which solutions are already being created. The Lightning Network is one such effort.

Governments are already taking efforts to fight against crypto. The fact that bitcoin is classified as an "asset" is the government adding friction to using it. Every time you transact in bitcoin you have to put that on your taxes because there's some capital gains/loss. Of course, they don't talk about it as if that is an attack, but it is. And they wouldn't be attacking it if they weren't scared. It's surely not guaranteed, maybe not even likely, but it's still possible that we will win.

[dTal]

The computationally wasteful bit is the proof-of-work, which is an inherent part of bitcoin. The Lightning Network is just about scaling transactions.

Your government rant is a non-sequitor - bitcoin doesn't become any more efficient just because The Man doesn't like it.

[Consultant32452]

The computationally wasteful bit will go away with things like the visa network where they will only have to persist back to the blockchain when you transact with a wallet that isn't on their network. Otherwise it'll just be records in a database not unlike regular currency.

[undersuit]

The first government to move their money onto a crypto us going to have massive control over their economy. Roll their own crypto, keep the keys that allow more money to be printed, have the ability to lock people out of their wallets on a whim? They could even extract taxation by running all the nodes and taking the transaction fees.

[oraphalous]

Having a reliable store of value - is itself extremely valuable. At least to me... and to quite a few others apparently, with more and more by the day.

[Stevvo]

Bitcoin is about as "reliable" as a store of value as a casino chip placed on black on the blackjack table.

Bitcoin has many virtues, but a "store or value" is demonstrably not one of them. Why do you, and many others, feel that it is in spite of its volatility?

[shawnz]

There are a few counterarguments to this.

> about as "reliable" as a store of value as a casino chip

Casino analogies are misleading because the problem with the casino is that the expected outcome is negative. The problem with the casino isn't the volatility.

There are plenty of stores of value which have extreme volatility but are still prized by investors, like real estate or artwork.

> demonstrably not one of them

We are talking about an asset class that has existed for about 1 decade. Nobody is really sure what it will be able to achieve, but its ability to act as a store of value seems promising. As more people form their opinion about this and other matters related to cryptocurrencies, we should expect the volatility to decrease. So the volatility at the current moment is not really a good indicator for the long-term volatility.

[whateveracct]

i can't believe this "store of value" hype pivot that BTC pulled actually worked

[shawnz]

Alternatively, there was no "hype pivot" and that's simply what the market decided they valued most about Bitcoin (for now).

[rzz3]

> than bitcoin which is _only_ a vehicle for speculating on intrinsic value being used by a tiny minority

That’s a bit simplistic and completely lacking in big picture perspective. You even underline “only” as if you’re very confident in what you’re saying. Please do some research.

[tomxor]

Oh sorry, please replace "only" with 99.9%. Because of $20 transaction fees, because of the trend of companies that once accepted it shunning it due to aforementioned ridiculous transaction fees, and finally due to numerous papers presenting a statistical analysis of bitcoin transaction behaviour and coming to the same conclusion e.g DOI: 10.1016/j.intfin.2017.12