See the future of the internet inside the Wayforward Machine

[Alfatawi Mendel]

I disagree because people can advocate against Crypto for many other reasons that are all legitimate.

I also feel this is a stunt for attention more than realistically what is a likely future. Climate change will be a bigger problem by then for example. Which went help if everyone is hard into crypto

What climate change George? I'm reliably informed that it's all a hoax put forward by libtard, woke, freaks who have been implanted by vaccinated Gates/Soros microchips. Of course, billion-dollar corporations supplying dark money to the freedom-loving good-old-boys have nothing to do with it. /s

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Tried the link and I am not convinced. I don't think these data of verification will be necessary in 20 years from now. All this data including retina scan, fingerprint or DNA blood samples will be already in the system. The government databases or we could call that government database will have all that.
The only thing is to ask yourself is internet something you can't live without. The whole different story is if we're not able to get food or energy sources to keep us warm.
In the future this could be the filter to distinguish between how much a person is dependable and on the other hand independent. It's also a thin line for so called "big brother", how much freedom or lack of it can produce desired state.

Some people in the here and now wouldn't be able to feed their families without access to a smartphone or the internet. No smartphone for the Agency. No job.

 

[Ben1978]

When put into actual context, Bitcoin's power consumption is more energy efficient... You don't see these headlines often, because there's a narrative to downplay this technology. See for yourself...

Bitcoin mining actually uses less energy than traditional banking, new report claims

Bitcoin mining’s energy use questioned after Elon Musk said Tesla would no longer take it

www.independent.co.uk

Bitcoin Greener Than Finance System? - PayBitoPro

Discover how Bitcoin's energy consumption compares favorably to the current financial system's environmental impact.

www.paybito.com

Aside from this, the crypto industry is the only industry that has the direct incentive to make things as energy efficient as possible, because high energy use cuts directly into mining profits. That's why we're mining Bitcoin with volcanoes now. And that's why crypto is the largest collective pushing to actually use renewable energy solutions rather than just virtue signaling with it.

That's slightly different info than the Cambridge study (which is regularly selectively quoted by crypto advocates including Kathy Wood). My issue with the independent report would be the same as social media users pointed out:
"@ciraxx Gold is 11x larger than bitcoin and banking system is 18x larger(in 2018) probably larger now... sooo if bitcoin is scaled up to that size what would the power consumption be? So Bitcoin 11-18 times smaller but uses ~ half the power the other two use."
The author's say that throughput doesn't effect power consumption but this doesn't make sense to me. The more popular and valuable btc becomes presumably the more power will be used as more miners try to take advantage?

Another issue is that if the banking system is already so energy inefficient, then crypto is going on top of that not instead of that. It will only be if and when crypto starts massively eating into the banking system, and BTC either moves to proof of stake, or is replaced by more efficient crypto, that the crypto is more efficient argument will actually be net positive.

Interesting point about the incentive to reduce energy costs. Although it's a shame that the most energy inefficient crypto, and the one that really has to stick around to allow all the others to succeed cos if Bitcoin becomes a loser then I think it'll take a very long time for other crypto's to achieve the same level of investment, is the dominant one.

I've got 20% of my savings in crypto btw so I'm not someone who wants to kill it, but I do think we need to be honest about what its pluses and minuses are.

EDIT: That second article says this:
"It can also be stated that 78% of bitcoin’s power usage is directly from renewable sources."

This is the kind of misquoting of the Cambridge report that is rife among crypto advocates. Power usage coming directly from renewables is far far lower than 78% (I think it's actually about 30% from memory) and this figure will be much much lower now that China has booted out its miners who used hydro power extensively for mining. A correct statement might be something like 78% of miners use some form of renewable energy (which could comprise 10% or 100% of the total energy they use).

The future of crypto could be very green, but that's still some way off and BTCs dominance and energy inefficient mining process will mean that the green argument won't win out anytime soon.

I do find it interesting though that crypto is already more energy efficient than gold, because crypto could definitely be instead of gold rather than in addition to. Yes, gold has a real world use in the case of jewelry (and possibly some industrial uses I'm unaware of) but when it's used as a store of value and just sits in vaults and safes it becomes as ethereal as BTC. If the world economy collapses will a gold bar really be of that much value. I guess it will compared to crypto, but not by that much.

SECOND EDIT:

So I just wrote this for an older friend trying to understand crypto. Would it be accurate?:
Just read a bit more on this. Basically there are thousands of crypto's. Among them BTC is the original, the biggest, the most inefficient, but also the most secure (as a direct result of that inefficiency). Ethereum is the second biggest crypto and it's more efficient and also has many more functions than just being a store of wealth (which is BTCs only function). Then among the other leading crypto coins they are also even more efficient than Ethereum and offer even more use cases. Bitcoins supply is apparently limited to 21 million and already 2/3rds of those have been mined. If I am thinking correctly this is why energy usage from crypto isn't as worrying as people make out; because 2/3rds of the mining for by far the most energy inefficient coin has already been done.

 

[NightAntilli]

That's slightly different info than the Cambridge study (which is regularly selectively quoted by crypto advocates including Kathy Wood). My issue with the independent report would be the same as social media users pointed out:
"@ciraxx Gold is 11x larger than bitcoin and banking system is 18x larger(in 2018) probably larger now... sooo if bitcoin is scaled up to that size what would the power consumption be? So Bitcoin 11-18 times smaller but uses ~ half the power the other two use."
The author's say that throughput doesn't effect power consumption but this doesn't make sense to me. The more popular and valuable btc becomes presumably the more power will be used as more miners try to take advantage?

You can't really compare "size" in that way. It doesn't matter if there are 10 miners or 10 trillions miners; The transaction throughput remains the same. The amount of miners determines the power consumption. The more miners, the more secure the network due to the higher hashrate, and the more power is consumed. Less miners means a less secure network due to the lower hashrate, and less power is consumed. In other words, the power consumption is directly related to the security of the network. The amount of transactions is not.

Another issue is that if the banking system is already so energy inefficient, then crypto is going on top of that not instead of that. It will only be if and when crypto starts massively eating into the banking system, and BTC either moves to proof of stake, or is replaced by more efficient crypto, that the crypto is more efficient argument will actually be net positive.

This is true. But that doesn't really mean we should do away with crypto. Should we do away with electric cars because they are consuming energy on top of petrol ones? Keep in mind that the majority of electricity in the world is still generated through fossil fuels.
Just FYI, if you pay something with VISA for example, the transaction is actually settled a month later. With Bitcoin, transactions actually settle in 10 minutes.

Interesting point about the incentive to reduce energy costs. Although it's a shame that the most energy inefficient crypto, and the one that really has to stick around to allow all the others to succeed cos if Bitcoin becomes a loser then I think it'll take a very long time for other crypto's to achieve the same level of investment, is the dominant one.

I don't really know if Bitcoin is the most energy inefficient... Most miners use ASICs, which are inevitably more efficient than using graphics cards (like ETH) or CPUs (like Monero).
There is a possibility that Bitcoin dies in the far future, and PoS becomes the dominant method of blockchains. But in reality, PoW is more secure than PoS. And it is more decentralized, because PoS encourages hoarding while PoW encourages distribution of coins to cover electricity costs... I think Solana has as of now, the best blockchain that balances security, power consumption and decentralization. But we'll see how it goes in practice.

I've got 20% of my savings in crypto btw so I'm not someone who wants to kill it, but I do think we need to be honest about what its pluses and minuses are.

I agree... But again, there is a difference between the faults of a specific crypto, and the faults of crypto as a general industry. All individual cryptocurrencies have faults or limits. But as a whole, it is pretty much a healthy industry. If you really want to understand why, I actually recommend you read through this whole Twitter thread, if you have the time... It amounts to Tweet 45...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443921339727896577

That second article says this:
"It can also be stated that 78% of bitcoin’s power usage is directly from renewable sources."

This is the kind of misquoting of the Cambridge report that is rife among crypto advocates. Power usage coming directly from renewables is far far lower than 78% (I think it's actually about 30% from memory) and this figure will be much much lower now that China has booted out its miners who used hydro power extensively for mining. A correct statement might be something like 78% of miners use some form of renewable energy (which could comprise 10% or 100% of the total energy they use).

You're 100% right. It is hard to measure the amount of renewables used. Whether it dropped or not after China's crackdown... I'm not sure. I don't know many places in the world that have cheaper electricity than China, so the incentive is there to increase rather than decrease the use of renewables. But I have no data on that, so, it's speculation on my part.

The future of crypto could be very green, but that's still some way off and BTCs dominance and energy inefficient mining process will mean that the green argument won't win out anytime soon.

It won't win easily in the eyes of the public. But then again... We are mining Bitcoin with volcanoes now. That seems like a good selling point lol.

I do find it interesting though that crypto is already more energy efficient than gold, because crypto could definitely be instead of gold rather than in addition to. Yes, gold has a real world use in the case of jewelry (and possibly some industrial uses I'm unaware of) but when it's used as a store of value and just sits in vaults and safes it becomes as ethereal as BTC. If the world economy collapses will a gold bar really be of that much value. I guess it will compared to crypto, but not by that much.

If the world economy collapses, Bitcoin and other crypto are a lot more accessible compared to gold, even to the average user. That's assuming the internet doesn't go down with it. Hopefully, web3 will assist in bringing a foolproof internet. We'll see.
In either case, we'll have a lot bigger problems if the global economy collapses. After all, even though I think crypto will be of use in such a case, we can't eat crypto.

So I just wrote this for an older friend trying to understand crypto. Would it be accurate?:
Just read a bit more on this. Basically there are thousands of crypto's. Among them BTC is the original, the biggest, the most inefficient, but also the most secure (as a direct result of that inefficiency). Ethereum is the second biggest crypto and it's more efficient and also has many more functions than just being a store of wealth (which is BTCs only function). Then among the other leading crypto coins they are also even more efficient than Ethereum and offer even more use cases. Bitcoins supply is apparently limited to 21 million and already 2/3rds of those have been mined. If I am thinking correctly this is why energy usage from crypto isn't as worrying as people make out; because 2/3rds of the mining for by far the most energy inefficient coin has already been done.

Well, the thing is that Bitcoin has been made to do the exact same thing, no matter what hardware power you throw at it. Ethereum is also based on that principle. That's by design for the security and decentralization.

The amount of coins mined doesn't necessarily have a correlation with the power consumption. The mining of the few that are left are going to consume a lot more energy than all previous ones combined. The rewards are decreased every 4 years, while the amount of miners have been increasing. So it's costing more power to mine less Bitcoin in the same amount of time. And it was designed this way to increase its scarcity, rather than it being an inflation machine like fiat currencies.

There are other projects out there that scale depending on the hardware used, rather than them doing the same thing independent of the hardware.

One thing that people often forget... Countless ASICs have been built specifically to mine Bitcoin. If we were to stop Bitcoin tomorrow, all that hardware, which cost actual resources to produce, is now wasted. Not only that, you'd have to get rid of all of them. What do you do with that? To the landfill? Burn them? Doesn't sound that environmentally friendly, does it?

 

[Ben1978]

When put into actual context, Bitcoin's power consumption is more energy efficient... You don't see these headlines often, because there's a narrative to downplay this technology. See for yourself...

Bitcoin mining actually uses less energy than traditional banking, new report claims

Bitcoin mining’s energy use questioned after Elon Musk said Tesla would no longer take it

www.independent.co.uk

Bitcoin Greener Than Finance System? - PayBitoPro

Discover how Bitcoin's energy consumption compares favorably to the current financial system's environmental impact.

www.paybito.com

Aside from this, the crypto industry is the only industry that has the direct incentive to make things as energy efficient as possible, because high energy use cuts directly into mining profits. That's why we're mining Bitcoin with volcanoes now. And that's why crypto is the largest collective pushing to actually use renewable energy solutions rather than just virtue signaling with it.

You can't really compare "size" in that way. It doesn't matter if there are 10 miners or 10 trillions miners; The transaction throughput remains the same. The amount of miners determines the power consumption. The more miners, the more secure the network due to the higher hashrate, and the more power is consumed. Less miners means a less secure network due to the lower hashrate, and less power is consumed. In other words, the power consumption is directly related to the security of the network. The amount of transactions is not.


This is true. But that doesn't really mean we should do away with crypto. Should we do away with electric cars because they are consuming energy on top of petrol ones? Keep in mind that the majority of electricity in the world is still generated through fossil fuels.
Just FYI, if you pay something with VISA for example, the transaction is actually settled a month later. With Bitcoin, transactions actually settle in 10 minutes.


I don't really know if Bitcoin is the most energy inefficient... Most miners use ASICs, which are inevitably more efficient than using graphics cards (like ETH) or CPUs (like Monero).
There is a possibility that Bitcoin dies in the far future, and PoS becomes the dominant method of blockchains. But in reality, PoW is more secure than PoS. And it is more decentralized, because PoS encourages hoarding while PoW encourages distribution of coins to cover electricity costs... I think Solana has as of now, the best blockchain that balances security, power consumption and decentralization. But we'll see how it goes in practice.


I agree... But again, there is a difference between the faults of a specific crypto, and the faults of crypto as a general industry. All individual cryptocurrencies have faults or limits. But as a whole, it is pretty much a healthy industry. If you really want to understand why, I actually recommend you read through this whole Twitter thread, if you have the time... It amounts to Tweet 45...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443921339727896577

You're 100% right. It is hard to measure the amount of renewables used. Whether it dropped or not after China's crackdown... I'm not sure. I don't know many places in the world that have cheaper electricity than China, so the incentive is there to increase rather than decrease the use of renewables. But I have no data on that, so, it's speculation on my part.


It won't win easily in the eyes of the public. But then again... We are mining Bitcoin with volcanoes now. That seems like a good selling point lol.


If the world economy collapses, Bitcoin and other crypto are a lot more accessible compared to gold, even to the average user. That's assuming the internet doesn't go down with it. Hopefully, web3 will assist in bringing a foolproof internet. We'll see.
In either case, we'll have a lot bigger problems if the global economy collapses. After all, even though I think crypto will be of use in such a case, we can't eat crypto.


Well, the thing is that Bitcoin has been made to do the exact same thing, no matter what hardware power you throw at it. Ethereum is also based on that principle. That's by design for the security and decentralization.

The amount of coins mined doesn't necessarily have a correlation with the power consumption. The mining of the few that are left are going to consume a lot more energy than all previous ones combined. The rewards are decreased every 4 years, while the amount of miners have been increasing. So it's costing more power to mine less Bitcoin in the same amount of time. And it was designed this way to increase its scarcity, rather than it being an inflation machine like fiat currencies.

There are other projects out there that scale depending on the hardware used, rather than them doing the same thing independent of the hardware.

One thing that people often forget... Countless ASICs have been built specifically to mine Bitcoin. If we were to stop Bitcoin tomorrow, all that hardware, which cost actual resources to produce, is now wasted. Not only that, you'd have to get rid of all of them. What do you do with that? To the landfill? Burn them? Doesn't sound that environmentally friendly, does it?

Thanks

You can't really compare "size" in that way. It doesn't matter if there are 10 miners or 10 trillions miners; The transaction throughput remains the same. The amount of miners determines the power consumption. The more miners, the more secure the network due to the higher hashrate, and the more power is consumed. Less miners means a less secure network due to the lower hashrate, and less power is consumed. In other words, the power consumption is directly related to the security of the network. The amount of transactions is not.


This is true. But that doesn't really mean we should do away with crypto. Should we do away with electric cars because they are consuming energy on top of petrol ones? Keep in mind that the majority of electricity in the world is still generated through fossil fuels.
Just FYI, if you pay something with VISA for example, the transaction is actually settled a month later. With Bitcoin, transactions actually settle in 10 minutes.


I don't really know if Bitcoin is the most energy inefficient... Most miners use ASICs, which are inevitably more efficient than using graphics cards (like ETH) or CPUs (like Monero).
There is a possibility that Bitcoin dies in the far future, and PoS becomes the dominant method of blockchains. But in reality, PoW is more secure than PoS. And it is more decentralized, because PoS encourages hoarding while PoW encourages distribution of coins to cover electricity costs... I think Solana has as of now, the best blockchain that balances security, power consumption and decentralization. But we'll see how it goes in practice.


I agree... But again, there is a difference between the faults of a specific crypto, and the faults of crypto as a general industry. All individual cryptocurrencies have faults or limits. But as a whole, it is pretty much a healthy industry. If you really want to understand why, I actually recommend you read through this whole Twitter thread, if you have the time... It amounts to Tweet 45...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1443921339727896577

You're 100% right. It is hard to measure the amount of renewables used. Whether it dropped or not after China's crackdown... I'm not sure. I don't know many places in the world that have cheaper electricity than China, so the incentive is there to increase rather than decrease the use of renewables. But I have no data on that, so, it's speculation on my part.


It won't win easily in the eyes of the public. But then again... We are mining Bitcoin with volcanoes now. That seems like a good selling point lol.


If the world economy collapses, Bitcoin and other crypto are a lot more accessible compared to gold, even to the average user. That's assuming the internet doesn't go down with it. Hopefully, web3 will assist in bringing a foolproof internet. We'll see.
In either case, we'll have a lot bigger problems if the global economy collapses. After all, even though I think crypto will be of use in such a case, we can't eat crypto.


Well, the thing is that Bitcoin has been made to do the exact same thing, no matter what hardware power you throw at it. Ethereum is also based on that principle. That's by design for the security and decentralization.

The amount of coins mined doesn't necessarily have a correlation with the power consumption. The mining of the few that are left are going to consume a lot more energy than all previous ones combined. The rewards are decreased every 4 years, while the amount of miners have been increasing. So it's costing more power to mine less Bitcoin in the same amount of time. And it was designed this way to increase its scarcity, rather than it being an inflation machine like fiat currencies.

There are other projects out there that scale depending on the hardware used, rather than them doing the same thing independent of the hardware.

One thing that people often forget... Countless ASICs have been built specifically to mine Bitcoin. If we were to stop Bitcoin tomorrow, all that hardware, which cost actual resources to produce, is now wasted. Not only that, you'd have to get rid of all of them. What do you do with that? To the landfill? Burn them? Doesn't sound that environmentally friendly, does it?

Thanks for the detailed reply. Very useful.

I'll go read that Twitter thread now. Cheers