Bitcoin is quite scalable. The problem is the hash rate is scaled to a huge level due to speculation and therefore it is both super secure and wasteful. It should be either $500 a BTC or be in use by 10x as many people as it is today.
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Bitcoin out of MA
- Thread starter Beltsbear
- Start date
Off Shore
Off Topic Member
Carl Raymond
Active Member
Sorry, can you clarify pls. Bitcoin with a tiny fraction of the world's transactions is using as much energy as Ireland. Even if 10x more efficient, it's a polluting disaster. Several orders of magnitude improvement are required.
Carl Raymond
Active Member
Maybe this is mean, but my internal reaction whenever I see Bitcoin collapsing down:
View attachment 354487
My apologies to any libertarians. And to any hardcore bitcoin fans. But I repeat myself
Happy to see Bitcoin fall in a heap.
Just a general request for others to choose carefully between the words crypto(currency) and Bitcoin. I am pro crypto, but anti Bitcoin, because of the proof of work flaw in Bitcoin making it an energy drain and huge polluter.
If they can make energy efficient crypto, it's another middle man eliminator, just like Spotify, Airbnb, Netflix and Tesla's online ordering.
The middle men being: banks, record labels, travel agents, video stores, car lots respectively.
There is no practical direct relationship between number of transactions and energy wasted. You could probably process all current transactions on one single desktop computer.
The amount of energy wasted is somewhat related to the price of bitcoin and the rate at which bitcoins are produced. So every time the value of bitcoin is halved, the incentive to generate bitcoin is reduced, and I assert that the amount of energy wasted on the bitcoin network will also be roughly halved.
With that in mind, I'm o. k. with bitcoin as an idea of a decentralized coin. I'm also o. k. with the value of bitcoin going down to $50 or so. I still own quite a few bitcoin, so this will affect me personally. But bitcoin generation is just wasteful currently, and I don't want a world in which the price of bitcoin rises another 10000%.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Prediction 1:
Bitcoin's trading value will be usurped by a Crypto USD. Having hosted US citizens in the UK trying to buy stuff with USD, I am confident that much of the world won't be understanding that a mBTC = $4.5 anytime soon (no wait, $4...$3.5...). Chinese Billionaires buy their jets with USD etc. Anything else will seem like all that French chat at the Olympics opening ceremony.
Prediction 2:
Bitcoin's store of value will be usurped by a new coin called Ponzicoin. You are guaranteed to double your money with every purchase as long as you forward to 5 friends on Facebook.
Carl Raymond
Active Member
Um, I don't think so:
Note well that on the following chart they had to compare 1 bitcoin transaction with 100,000 VISA transactions to make the second bar visible.
Here's just one choice quote:
"Bitcoin’s biggest problem is not even its massive energy consumption, but that the network is mostly fueled by coal-fired power plants in China. Coal-based electricity is available at very low rates in this country. Even with a conservative emission factor, this results in an extreme carbon footprint for each unique Bitcoin transaction.
Additional research published in Nature Climate Change (October 2018) even suggested that Bitcoin mining alone could push global warning “above 2 °C within less than three decades“."
Source:
Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index - Digiconomist
Edit: And to relate back to the thread. Bitcoin is dying (I hope), as it must because it's a polluter. This is dragging Nvidia down because of a board glut apparently, which hits the Nasdaq index.
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You don't understand the built-in deflation mechanism of bitcoin, then. The work (and hence energy used) to secure blocks in the blockchain is grossly constant, while the reward for mining is exponentially decreasing.
No, the expected work to discover a block is not constant, because there is a difficulty that constantly adjusts the work needed to discover new blocks. The difficulty is adjusted up when the hashrate goes up, i. e. more work is done, and is adjusted down when less work is done.
Both hashrate and difficulty have gone down recently, which means we currently see the effect of the lower price: Less energy is wasted. The effect is very small so far (down to August levels), but should be stronger when the price drops further.
Article on difficulty:
Difficulty - Bitcoin Wiki
Graphs with hashrate, difficulty etc.:
Bitcoin network graphs
There are other solutions for consensus which are less energy intensive. Such as POS, DPOS, centralized etc. But so far non of them have over taken Bitcoin. Ethereum will at some point switch to POS at some point, they have more developers than Bitcoin and rank #2 in market cap of the cryptocurrencies so maybe ethereum will turn into a more efficient alternative. It is not clear if the network token or a ERC like token on the network will be used as currency, ie even if ethereum network ends up being used it might not be ETH that captures all value.
It should also be noted that the VISA has a lot of infrastructure with ATMs, banks, offices etc which also consume energy.
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