[LispShmisp]

Did they ask you to explain it? Did you talk about shortcomings of it?

Most of the crypto related posts feels like advertising/preaching. Issues with their proposed solutions are rarely focused on and when they're brought up, hand waving begins.

I think this is a consequence of crypto proponents using mostly same talking points, usually decentralization/some libertarian dream. Technical discussions are rarely initiated. I've been following this since early days of BTC and I'm so tired of it. I don't see anything in it that would help our society. Maybe due to your political leanings you do.

[prohobo]

No, they didn't. Most people just make inflammatory comments or make extremely complex "gotcha" claims that aren't true, which need both parties to be cooperative to resolve. I was busy trying to make arguments against wild claims, and ended up saying dumb things like "Amazon Alexas burn more energy in a year by sitting idle in people's homes than the entire Bitcoin network does"; things that are technically true but don't resolve the attacker's underlying unease - and so are unhelpful.

Crypto has a lot of real problems like the current markets which seem to just be re-enforcing the worst aspects of capitalism; and other issues like: costs, scalability, lack of connection to physical objects/systems (the NFT problem), dispute resolution, etc.

These problems are huge, especially if blockchain tech ever becomes mainstream. The problem is that discussion of these topics - in casual discussions at least - gets derailed by ideological flag waving. To me it's like Occupy Wall Street being derailed by wokeists; they weren't able to mobilize anything meaningful because they were bogged down by delusional anxieties.

[gls2ro]

Out of curiosity how do you estimate this comparison:

> Amazon Alexas burn more energy in a year by sitting idle in people's homes than the entire Bitcoin network does

[prohobo]

I actually looked into it and got the quote wrong, it's not Amazon Alexas globally, it's all "always on devices" in America; including computers, gaming consoles, etc.

From googling and "This Machine Greens" docu:

> American always on devices: 1375 TWh per year

> Cruise ships: 250 TWh per year

> Bitcoin: 116 TWh per year

> Online advertising: 106 TWh per year

> American Alexas: 1.52 TWh per year

[svennek]

That is almost 630 watts per person (250 million people, 24*365 hours per year)... That seems like a lot...

As a north european techie spending power on quite a few always on things (respberry pis, a nas, a router, wifi, ps5 etc)- but also freezer, fridge, cooking - and lightning for half the year and a little extra heating, I have used around 2500 kWh year to date, which is roughly 320 watts in total (or half that stated figure for always on devices alone...)

EDIT: I remembered the american population size wrong, the right figure is 475 watts @330 Mln people, but my point stands..

[prohobo]

I would say less technically savvy people probably use more electricity, not less. And you're assuming that you're the average American consumer. There are probably old toasters and electrical heaters that contribute significantly to that figure. In any case, the conservative estimate is still several times that of Bitcoin's usage.

I'd also say cruise ships are more egregious, which no one seems to care about despite them definitely not using clean energy or being remotely useful, using 2.5x the amount of energy as Bitcoin - or as much as Spain!