I hear #bitcoin has been surging lately?
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I hear #bitcoin has been surging lately?
I’m not blanket anti-blockchain and crypto currencies (though I’ve yet to benefit from it any way), but the proof-of-work believers continue to perplex me.
You’re saying that in the year 2024, half a decade into the Information Age, we should all agree that this token of yours not only stores but *appreciates* (increases) in value over time, because you did us all the great favor of crunching some loopy math and burned a lot of energy in the process?
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Erlend Sogge Heggenreplied to Erlend Sogge Heggen last edited by [email protected]
This is the Batman’s Joker way of making a new currency:
Burn a bunch of legacy money to make room for your own currency.
In the Joker’s case the new currency was fear and chaos. For bitcoiners it’s alt-money and power.
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@erlend I'm not pro-bitcoin or proof-of-work, and it does seem like a poor trade-off, but there is _some_ foundation for it's value.
In the end, it is kind of similar to gold. Gold has a limited supply and nobody can fake it. It's worth a lot because it takes a lot of energy and resources to mine the gold, and it's been around long enough that there is a certain respect for it and the fact that you can't just "make' it out of thin air.
Bitcoin is pretty similar in those ways.
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@erlend There aren't a lot of other options that work with as little governance, coordination, and trust.
Still, we're burning a bunch of electricity for a debatable advantage.
I think bitcoin has been practically useful in the lives of some people in Argentina after the government trashed the value of the national currency. Inflation was so bad you couldn't have savings.
So there is a possibility for usefulness in real life, but I'm not necessarily optimistic for it.
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@zicklag surely proof-of-stake/storage and similar such solutions can check all of those requirement boxes without the waste of PoW?
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@erlend I think Proof of Stake solves most of the problems, but it requires more trust in the validators ( proof-of-stake's version of "mining" ), and it becomes completely insecure if the value of the token drops too much. Like if the market for the token drops dramatically for any reason, then it can be easier to start cheating the system by "buying trust". Things are just harder to get totally secure.
That said, even though it's harder to do, I think the savings are absolutely worth it.
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@erlend I think the reason people will keep using proof-of-work is because requiring you to expend natural resources will always just be an _easy_ way to make the token non-forgeable.
But I'm pretty sure it would be better for everybody if we used proof-of-stake instead.
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@zicklag yeah that’s pretty much my whole point: Bitcoin and its ilk is only “easy” insofar as we ignore its externalities, just like it’s easier to burn fossil fuels than to invent better forms of energy capture.
