[mondoveneziano]

The Internet provided solutions to technical problems, regardless of any societal/political considerations. They may have resulted, but as a secondary effect.

When theorizing about societal/political benefits, take into account the societal/political problems cryptocurrencies created by inventing a machine that allows converting resources directly into money of miners' digital wallets without regulation.

Your sending any amount of money, actual practicality and realizability aside, comes at the cost of a lottery, where miners perform literally 100.000.000.000.000.000.000 computations per second whose outcome is completely thrown away, unless they are lucky enough to be one of the 6 computations per hour that win. This cannot be made more efficient: If computing one hash costs less energy, the difficulty will be adjusted to require more calculations to keep the target of 6 hashes per hour.

By the decentralized property of cryptocurrencies, it is by design not possible to regulate where the energy for this lottery is coming from.

[dopidopHN]

I agree that proof of work seems to have outlived it’s usefulness as a mean to prevent spam on the ledger.

That being said, I still see proof of stake and proof of coverage as interesting way to maintain said ledger integrity in the like… 3 actually existing use case where a blockchain is superior to a SQLite instance with good security.

[baby]

You’re talking about Bitcoin when there’s a multitude of other cryptocurrencies that are not trying to be the digital gold but rather a mean of payment.

[seibelj]

Proof of Stake coins eliminate the electrical cost of mining yet maintain decentralization. ETH2 is live now but not fully in control of the network https://beaconscan.com/

Many other Proof of Stake blockchains like Cosmos have been live and working fine for years.

[mondoveneziano]

I have looked into proof-of-work in meticulous detail, I have not looked into proof-of-stake. If proof-of-stake exists and eschews the problems I have stated, then what I said here about the problems it creates does not apply anymore.

I have many other doubts against the usefulness and sensibility of blockchains in general, e.g. I have doubts how smart contracts actually succeed to reach their goals in a reality where humans make mistakes and courts are used to settle disputes and ambiguities. But these concerns then only affect the viability of technologies that I and others are not forced to participate in.

Proof-of-work on the other hand, as long as it continues to exist, affects everyone in that in incentivizes burning resources directly for money without regulation, no matter how dirty or wasteful.

[seibelj]

I do not play videogames, I think all videogames are a waste of time. Not only do they waste enormous amounts of electricity, but they also waste untold hours in fantasy worlds of meaningless nonsense.

That said, I think everyone should be able to buy electricity and spend it on what they want, even dumbfuck videogames that waste their life away. If we play the "your electricity is bad, my electricity is good" game then it leads to the majority restricting the minority.

Instead, we should price electricity based on externalities and let purchasers use it as they want. If electricity is 100% clean and the buyer chooses to mine bitcoin, that's their value decision, just as you playing videogames is your (very stupid) decision, but I support your right to waste electricity on it.

[SubiculumCode]

This is very true, and the down voting you are receiving for saying this is shameful.

[baby]

Tbh most of HN has very little knowledge in cryptocurrencies as this thread shows…

[SubiculumCode]

It's a shame. Crypto programmers are in extremely short supply and are in a situation where they can demand quite the salary.

[SubiculumCode]

Lol. Even this comment discussing a financial opportunity gets voted down. Ridiculous.