HN user
It's a question of opportunity cost of electricity, not absolute numbers:
- You live in a place where the "cost" of mining = Electricity + Amortized cost of mining rig.
- Someone else lives in a place where "cost" of mining = (Electricity + Amortized Blackmarket Rig Cost) - (5% Inflation per month - 30% reduction in remittance fee -etc..)
The biggest trouble here is that pollution externalities of power generation are very commonly not priced into the cost of electricity, so generic incentives to consume energy also very commonly mean incentives to pollute more.
This is true and is a function of context and locale. That's the point. Opportunity cost.
- While storage is part of the infrastructure, it not the solution -> Not feasible for a large set of energy sources and often falls to the same pitfalls of bringing new power online (remoteness, capacity, etc..).
- Actually Bitcoin mining is being adopted by renewable providers as very good solution to offset intermittence and wasted excess.
- Further something like Natural gas flaring is something that cannot be stored but can largely routed through mining setups. Which is being adopted at scale.
Which is why Bitcoin mining is only feasible in the areas that have the lowest electricity rate?
Nope, not where Electricity is cheapest, but where it's opportunity cost is lowest. In developed nations with a stable currency this might be high, in others that don't have the privilege of printing the world's reserve to bail out bad decisions, different story. And that's what the market is reflecting.
My understanding is that a substantial fraction of that inefficiency is things like "there's power loss in running power from a power plant 100s of miles away" or "converting from AC to DC power induces power loss
Precisely, most Bitcoin mines are remotely located right next to the power plants, partially for this reason.
There's no need to invent new demand to manage existing demand.
No you need demand to bring excess supply.
FWIW there's a lot of half baked arguments going around the space, so a few comments for anyone genuinely interested in evaluating facts:
- The usage of electricity in Bitcoin is a feature not a bug. It's designed to use the most democratic and ubiquitous commodity avalible. Any nation/individual can evaluate their electrical opportunity cost and at any point make the decision to dedicate resources to towards re-balancing the network without permission. This is not possible with proof of stake.
- We produce about 160,000 TWh of power, ~50,000 TWh is wasted due to inefficiencies. Bitcoin using 120 TWh (0.25% of wasted power)
- A lot of Power projects get scraped due to inconsistencies in demand. Random Ex: Texas power outages during summer peak AC usage. It's infeasible to spin up and spin down extra generators to meet spikes in demand. #Bitcoin fixes this by providing excess supply a discounted demand during normal hours that can be routed away during peak needs else where. Ditto for renewables.
- Bonus: SHA-256 did not get broken this week.
Articles like this while well meaning and coming from a good place are extremely naive and myopic. Do a bit of research in terms of the costs in lives and “, yes c02, of the current status quo and petro dollar complex. Do some research on how many human productive hours where lost in debasement and irresponsible monetary policy (fun fact the GFC cost around 70,000$ per American) I can go on forever and should you be interested id be more than happy to point you in the direction of sound research that has been done on this topic rather than this click bait
You will never be able to exchange 1 billion dollars at will with RBC or any other bank.
- There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion
- To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.
and most poignant of all :
- Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is.
I remember the exact moment of my life when I read "Self reliance for the first time, I'll never forget that moment.
fluentd is great. You can setup forwarding nodes, that relay logs to one or mutiple masters that then persists into whatever layer(s) you want. Tolerance and failover baked in. Tons of connectors and best of all docker logs driver is built ships with docker so almost zero setup to get your container logs to fluentd. Also works nicely with kubernetes too!
Technically you would've 'lost your shirt' in bitcoin if you had bought it during only 2 of the last 520+ months...
There always was and will always be one Bitcoin.org
If you manage to secure it for a sufficiently long term where you feel comfortable you can meet it's obligations before the terms expire, then go for it !
Considering the current political and economic climate : 1- Pay back as much debt as you can: Signs point to the 'cheap money' party ending relatively soon and debt will start becoming considerably more expensive to carry. 2- Bitcoin. Yes, I said it. My 2 cents: Forgetting the debate on the currency aspect and its usability as such . A politically neutral store of value has a use case and there is a tremendous need for it going forward in this world. Bitcoin checks all the marks needed and has been around for more than 10 years now proving its use case. What you have to ask your self at this point is the following : What happens if it all goes down the gutter? Well you loose 1k. What happens if it actually works out? 10-100x? Who knows, but such asymmetric value propositions present themselfs once or twice in a lifetime. Educate your self and take action with the intention of being able to justify it to your future self in 10 years. Ultimatey that is whom you will have to answer to :)
Curious what kind of hash rates you would get on a 'super' computer..
Great resource that covers a array of topics on a spectrum of levels for different audiences.
But you do realize that "cryptocurrency" might very well be THE everyday use product/experiment that successfully demonstrates and educates the average human on the social implications of 'Crypto'.
Don't be so quick to distance your self from it.
International ACH transfer ? Any international Wire or remittance in general will cost you at least 25$.
Spot on.
Use as currency for Bitcoin (and other coin networks) is still in it's infancy and cannot scale the way it needs to should it want to replace fiat.
The important distinction I would draw though that stores of value have historically been cumbersome to transport and liquidate, Bitcoin solves that problem in a very good way.
I feel it's important to also address this 20$ bitcoin fee meme that seems to be going around. While based in truth it is not 100% accurate.
You have the capacity to set your own txn fee on the Bitcoin network. If you don't mind waiting a couple of blocks (1-3 hours) to get your transaction confirmed , then the fees fall down to single dollars and even lower. If you're selling a bulk commodity to a distributor in another market , you don't need ecommerce style confirmation times. Same goes for transferring large sums of wealth.
With that said, things like the lightning network will resolve alot of issues with Bitcoin scaling and in my (humble) opinion this is why LTC is pumping. (Atomic swap + Transfer over LTC )
You are absolutely right. Again my comment was directed at : > People who call Bitcoin a 'Ponzi scheme' , type of plant or apply whatever reduction on a very complex and innovative product.
Not at the one's who are raising very valid red flags on valuation and how hot the market is becoming. In my personal opinion it is absolutely 'bubble' like behavior right now.
And i believe we both echo the same sentiment.
Now try sending some of that money to a third world country and see how much they get between the fees they pay western union and the thugs waiting outside to 'tax' you. From sale to end point .. where'd my money go ? lol
Totally Kenya's mobile payment system evolution from SMSing minute refill codes, to an actual legally recognized form of payment is the original Blockchain in my mind :) But that is exactly my point, in that market , there is demand and need for innovation that means crypto (while inflated right now) is here to stay. People who call Bitcoin a 'Ponzi scheme' , type of plant or apply whatever reduction on a very complex and innovative product are just mind boggling to me.
haha, depends on the card you agree to sign off to :)
This thread's audience is obviously a 'developed nations' one.
From our perspective yes, Crytpo's use case as currency make absolutely no sense (yet), we tap our Visa card to pay instantly with no fees and no fraud liability, hard to beat.
As a store of value however there is a very strong use case in the western world. Of the top my head, it is estimated that 10% of our GDP is in off shore havens, think about that infamous 1% moving just half of that 10% into Bitcoin ..
I digress..
If you venture your mind a little outside the borders of our empire and think about the 'unbanked' parts of our planet, entire populations whom live under poverty for the sole reason that they do not have access to the equity and efficient markets directly. If you look there, people are DYING for something like Bitcoin and other crypto's. There is absolutely no reason an African farmer to have to sell his Oranges to Europe in Euro then buy it back from there (Sell Euro to local currency) for local use.
Currency is an abstraction, an expression of a market, just like language is.
Here we tap to pay and need everyone to protect us from fraudsters, pornographers, money laundry , <insert your favorite horse man of the apolocyple here>, in other parts of the world , that far out number the western world in population, they don't care to be protected by the above because quite frankly the price they pay for that 'protection' is insanely oppressive governments that use the above to legitimize the oppression.
It is exactly in those markets where you start to see a VERY stong use case as both store of value and currency for crypto and it is exactly that market that will drive the world's demand for good UI for crypto that will eventually usher in mass adoption.
You need to go through it to unmask it. It's about getting terrified/stressed and then coming out on the other side relatively unharmed a number of times until your mind starts making association that every time you felt this way before and told your self that it will be alright, everything did indeed turn out ok. Thus the term : learning to trust your self.
Profitable to the US maybe .. but bless inflation exporting that took that burden and placed it on every thing (countries, assets,etc..) that are pegged to the USD.
"According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy" http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/economy/the-true-cost-o...
HN is truly a hub for a great set of minds in the tech community but when it comes to crypto it just amazes me how myopic opinions can be.
How much did that 2008 bailout cost in terms of resources ? .... right.
Yep I agree. Coffee script's terse nature makes it great to write readable tests.
1-Insta pot on discount 2- Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection, namely self reliance.