Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact(m.dw.com)
m.dw.com
Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact
https://m.dw.com/en/tesla-changes-stance-on-bitcoin-amid-climate-concerns/a-57515879
275 comments
Discussed earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135776
So far, Elon/Tesla:
1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up.
3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market."
4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting.
As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liquidity before investing one and a half billion dollars of company money.
1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up.
3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market."
4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting.
As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liquidity before investing one and a half billion dollars of company money.
When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things.
There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised.
If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for making it, shouldn’t we applaud them for listening?
I mean, isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?
There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised.
If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for making it, shouldn’t we applaud them for listening?
I mean, isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?
>I mean, isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?
I want to encourage 'corporate flexibility and social accountability'.
I do not want to encourage market-whale-individuals to attempt one-person pump-and-dumps on small(ish) global markets and further market opportunism & manipulation.
Personally I believe that the decision has little to do with environmental impact; I think that the btc opportunity is beginning to dwindle in various ways, so the focus shifts to other *coin markets where they can profit similarly using the same or similar tactics.
BTC specifically is made out to be the boogeyman so that the excuse doesn't disallow similar behavior with other coins in the future. I fully expect similar reasoning with DogeCoin when that opportunity dries up and they move to greener pastures for the third time -- inevitably when profit margins are greater elsewhere.
I want to encourage 'corporate flexibility and social accountability'.
I do not want to encourage market-whale-individuals to attempt one-person pump-and-dumps on small(ish) global markets and further market opportunism & manipulation.
Personally I believe that the decision has little to do with environmental impact; I think that the btc opportunity is beginning to dwindle in various ways, so the focus shifts to other *coin markets where they can profit similarly using the same or similar tactics.
BTC specifically is made out to be the boogeyman so that the excuse doesn't disallow similar behavior with other coins in the future. I fully expect similar reasoning with DogeCoin when that opportunity dries up and they move to greener pastures for the third time -- inevitably when profit margins are greater elsewhere.
All crypto I know about is useful !only! for market speculation.
Bitcoin is especially broken and useless for anything. Unless you want to pay 100$ transaction cost to by ice-cream at grocery store.
Bitcoin is especially broken and useless for anything. Unless you want to pay 100$ transaction cost to by ice-cream at grocery store.
BTC maximalists argue that it’s a better store of value than gold due to portability, divisibility, durability, and scarcity. The theory is that it will be used to settle inter-bank transactions once it is widely adopted by institutions.
>The theory is that it will be used to settle inter-bank transactions once it is widely adopted by institutions.
Banks have absolutely not need of a proof of work scheme like Bitcoin, them switching to a system with the power requirements of BTC seems highly unlikely.
Banks have absolutely not need of a proof of work scheme like Bitcoin, them switching to a system with the power requirements of BTC seems highly unlikely.
I use crypto (and mainly Bitcoin) to pay for three years every month now. Average fee over those years is more like $1. In comparison with $20 transaction fees my bank asks when I transact for example from EU to SouthAm, zero hassle and no paperwork when sending to countries with trade embargo, I must say, Bitcoin is golden.
How much are the fees for converting to Bitcoin, the recipient converting from Bitcoin, and the transaction costs? TransferWise is quoting me an effective all-in price[0] of £1.98 to send someone in Brazil £100 of my hard-earned Sterling. I’m struggling to believe you’re getting Bitcoin in or out of fiat for less than 2-5% a go, and transaction cost is ~$15, so ballpark this is costing $25?
0: £100 -> 729.83, where Google says it “should” be 744.61;
0: £100 -> 729.83, where Google says it “should” be 744.61;
So it depends. For example in Argentina, they AFAIK have two conversion rates. When you use a normal bank account, you have to use government conversion rate that's 50% of black market rate between Argentinian pesos and USDs. With Bitcoin, you could try black market straight away and even if you pay 2-5%, you might end up better.
For transaction rate, Trezor says at 22sat/B., you will have your transaction confirmed in 4 hours 10 minutes for $1.85.
Even if BTC price was stable, I would still use it. But my experience is that having some BTC is usually better than just having cash.
For transaction rate, Trezor says at 22sat/B., you will have your transaction confirmed in 4 hours 10 minutes for $1.85.
Even if BTC price was stable, I would still use it. But my experience is that having some BTC is usually better than just having cash.
I use Western Union and for the last 2 years it's said there's 0 transfer fee's. It's basically the same exchange rate as the bank so i don't think they skim off the top and if they do it would end up being like 50 cents in difference to the bank. ( i have no idea how WU makes money)
You may be benefiting from some kind of a special deal or a promotion, but overall their fees are very high
https://www.westernunion.com/content/dam/wu/EU/EN/feeTableRe...
Like sometimes two digit percentage high.
https://www.westernunion.com/content/dam/wu/EU/EN/feeTableRe...
Like sometimes two digit percentage high.
Drugs.
How many do you know? Tezos looks good to me, especially in the context of hic et nunc art market.
"small(ish)" a trillion USD (+/-) is not exactly small
As of today, we know about 3.87% of the 56 billion outstanding Tethers that help define that market cap are backed by cash. During the big dump to 46K a day ago, Coinbase' bid-ask spread went to $1000-2500 depending on when you looked. That's a serious lack of liquidity. While a "trillion" is not small, its a completely illusory number.
> I do not want to encourage market-whale-individuals to attempt one-person pump-and-dumps on small(ish) global markets and further market opportunism & manipulation.
Eh, no innocent by-standers get hurt when someone 'dumps-and-pumps' bitcoin.
And if you want to teach people a lesson, the higher the profile of the 'pumper-and-dumper', the better.
Eh, no innocent by-standers get hurt when someone 'dumps-and-pumps' bitcoin.
And if you want to teach people a lesson, the higher the profile of the 'pumper-and-dumper', the better.
No, because this makes it seem like they are not making the right decisions because they are right, but only because doing the wrong thing made them unpopular. It makes you wonder what other wrong things they do that doesn't elicit enough of a popular response to make them reconsider.
It's not like the environmental impact of Bitcoin was a subtle or obscure issue when they first made the decision. They should have known better, and it remains worrying that they did not.
It's not like the environmental impact of Bitcoin was a subtle or obscure issue when they first made the decision. They should have known better, and it remains worrying that they did not.
For profit companies don't make decisions because they're right. Right and wrong have no meaning in capitalism. Companies make decisions based on profits.
We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't.
The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.
We might wish it were different, but it very clearly isn't.
The best we can hope for is that public pressure convinces companies that right and profitable overlap.
That is an absolute statement being applied to a relative world.
The idea that a company won't make a right decision ever is patently absurd. The idea that there are good companies and bad companies is likewise absurd.
Of course, a large company has to worry about money because their burn rate is so high, to imply otherwise is naive. It doesn't follow that a cash rich company won't decide to sustainably source materials or pay a fair wage for their employees.
Whether companies should ever be allowed to get that large is a different discussion.
The idea that a company won't make a right decision ever is patently absurd. The idea that there are good companies and bad companies is likewise absurd.
Of course, a large company has to worry about money because their burn rate is so high, to imply otherwise is naive. It doesn't follow that a cash rich company won't decide to sustainably source materials or pay a fair wage for their employees.
Whether companies should ever be allowed to get that large is a different discussion.
Hold on, when did anyone introduce the idea that a company won't make a right decision ever? That's a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of my comment.
It's so easy to find something 'patently absurd' in a comment if you aren't bound by the actual content of the comment.
Maybe there was something confusing in my choice of words, given the downvotes.
I don't think HN is naive enough to think that large publicly traded companies genuinely make decisions based on moral concepts like right and wrong. If they do the right thing, they do it because they see an advantage in it. That's how they're designed to function.
It's so easy to find something 'patently absurd' in a comment if you aren't bound by the actual content of the comment.
Maybe there was something confusing in my choice of words, given the downvotes.
I don't think HN is naive enough to think that large publicly traded companies genuinely make decisions based on moral concepts like right and wrong. If they do the right thing, they do it because they see an advantage in it. That's how they're designed to function.
Is it bad to not want to do something only because public opinion says not to?
I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness.
But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it.
Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows.
But either way, people got what they wanted.
I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness.
But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it.
Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows.
But either way, people got what they wanted.
In terms of the discussion about it being a neutral thing, some points:
1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the paperclips.
2. Elon Musk makes the worlds most famous line of environmentally friendly cars. It is believed he does this, or at least he attempts to sell them on the basis of, being environmentally friendly and saving the planet.
3. Elon Musk also then invests hugely in a decentralised currency that, by design, if it becomes popular, will use all available resources at the exclusion of any other ideology, due to it's decentralised design - including saving the climate, etc - so because energy production by and large destroys the climate, it will destroy the climate.
You can say this is a neutral choice, but mostly it just seems like a really dumb or contradictory choice. He (Elon) may well believe decentralised currencies are the future - he has also stated that as soon as a rampant unchecked production mechanism gets free, we are doomed. The apparent inability to connect the two is what I find so striking.
1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the paperclips.
2. Elon Musk makes the worlds most famous line of environmentally friendly cars. It is believed he does this, or at least he attempts to sell them on the basis of, being environmentally friendly and saving the planet.
3. Elon Musk also then invests hugely in a decentralised currency that, by design, if it becomes popular, will use all available resources at the exclusion of any other ideology, due to it's decentralised design - including saving the climate, etc - so because energy production by and large destroys the climate, it will destroy the climate.
You can say this is a neutral choice, but mostly it just seems like a really dumb or contradictory choice. He (Elon) may well believe decentralised currencies are the future - he has also stated that as soon as a rampant unchecked production mechanism gets free, we are doomed. The apparent inability to connect the two is what I find so striking.
It's not like figuring out that bitcoin destroys the environment is rocket science.
Even if it was, doesn't he have rocket scientists to figure that kind of stuff out for him?
Even if it was, doesn't he have rocket scientists to figure that kind of stuff out for him?
>I mean, isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?
Kind of. If I announce I'm going to start beating my wife and then say "After feedback, I've decided not to do this" then I don't expect to be voted man of the year. And yes, this is an extreme example but for the sort of people who get angry on Twitter the issue they're getting mad at is an extreme one (whatever it is).
I think reversing a bad decision is admirable when it wasn't already obvious at the time of making it that it was bad. If new information comes to light that they couldn't have reasonably known originally then of course, that's fine. But mostly the new information seems to be "We knew this would piss some people off but we thought we could get away with it."
Kind of. If I announce I'm going to start beating my wife and then say "After feedback, I've decided not to do this" then I don't expect to be voted man of the year. And yes, this is an extreme example but for the sort of people who get angry on Twitter the issue they're getting mad at is an extreme one (whatever it is).
I think reversing a bad decision is admirable when it wasn't already obvious at the time of making it that it was bad. If new information comes to light that they couldn't have reasonably known originally then of course, that's fine. But mostly the new information seems to be "We knew this would piss some people off but we thought we could get away with it."
The problem is that you can't really take a company at face value if they reverse course after having already profited from their "lapse in judgement". The parent post lined out potential motivations behind all this that IMO aren't really that outlandish. It's speculation, but it's not some outlandish crackpot theory
Sure, but a basic rule of civility is that you should "assume good faith" and give others the benefit of the doubt when the good faith explanation is plausible.
That assumption of good faith works (mostly) for individuals. It does or should not extend to for profit corporations.
It absolutely does.
The way I understand all the responses to my comment, it seems a lot of people have the impression that the assumption of good faith makes someone naive... But that's absolutely not the case.
The assumption of good faith does not require one to "believe" that any given action is the product of good faith. The only thing it requires is that good faith be the starting point from which you evaluate someone else's (or yes, a for-profit corporation's) actions. All one needs to do is begin by first trying to understand how an action could be explained by factors other than bad faith, or could be compatible with good faith.
This is in fact a very weak requirement!
The way I understand all the responses to my comment, it seems a lot of people have the impression that the assumption of good faith makes someone naive... But that's absolutely not the case.
The assumption of good faith does not require one to "believe" that any given action is the product of good faith. The only thing it requires is that good faith be the starting point from which you evaluate someone else's (or yes, a for-profit corporation's) actions. All one needs to do is begin by first trying to understand how an action could be explained by factors other than bad faith, or could be compatible with good faith.
This is in fact a very weak requirement!
Please don't think "for profit" is evil. It's just normal. You can find enormous negative things about all financial structures.
I think a lot of people feel that the good faith explanation isn't sufficiently plausible in this case, assuming even just the most cursory of research was done before this decision
I think you can and should assume good faith. However, the explanation about the environment seems dubious for reasons people have pointed out here. They didn't know about bitcoin's environmental impact? The people at Tesla didn't think about negative environmental impact being counter to their brand? Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming good faith does not mean you have to be gullible.
Read enough news and your good faith for publicly traded companies of any kind will be gone quickly. Tesla may be more trendy than EA, but the motivations are always the same.
You should assume good faith until money comes into play. Once that happens, you should assume little.
Assume good faith for a company? It’s called being naive/biased for Tesla/Musk.
Do you assume good faith when it comes to Facebook’s data handling? Or goddamn disgusting nestle doing basically anything? (Btw, can’t we just cancel nestle?)
Do you assume good faith when it comes to Facebook’s data handling? Or goddamn disgusting nestle doing basically anything? (Btw, can’t we just cancel nestle?)
In this case it isn't plausible as GP pointed out.
They do not gain anything by crashing bitcoin. They could gain by selling bitcoin, but they sold only 10% of their position.
Even when you "pomp and dump" you have to dump as the name suggest. It is not "pomp and crash&hold".
Unless they show profit from selling 1B$ bitcoin in next financial statements it is just Elon being dumb idiot.
Both for buying Bitcoin in the first place and for not offloading to make money to invest in Tesla.
Even when you "pomp and dump" you have to dump as the name suggest. It is not "pomp and crash&hold".
Unless they show profit from selling 1B$ bitcoin in next financial statements it is just Elon being dumb idiot.
Both for buying Bitcoin in the first place and for not offloading to make money to invest in Tesla.
> isn’t this exactly the behaviour we want to encourage?
A company manipulating a volatile market for financial gains, then distancing themselves for PR while keeping the profits?
I don't see how any part of this should be encouraged. I could imagine a much larger backlash if this wasn't done by Tesla but, say, AT&T or Google.
A company manipulating a volatile market for financial gains, then distancing themselves for PR while keeping the profits?
I don't see how any part of this should be encouraged. I could imagine a much larger backlash if this wasn't done by Tesla but, say, AT&T or Google.
As long as they profited from the whole thing, I don't think they should be applauded. It's like applauding someone for stealing from the cookie jar for some time and then stopping after an outcry. Sure, it's better than continuing to steal, but I'd only applaud after the cookies have been paid back.
Sure, but none of it makes any sense. I have to imagine the decision to buy Bitcoin and accept it as payment was vetted by a lot of people internally, not just Musk himself. And the environmental impacts from mining are well known. Musk isn’t stupid either - he must’ve known this would be an issue for Tesla’s image.
the impact from mining was well know, the PR impact was not.
It is hard these days to gauge how bad people will react, if you're lucky something else happens to get people screaming the same week and you can get away with anything.
It is hard these days to gauge how bad people will react, if you're lucky something else happens to get people screaming the same week and you can get away with anything.
It all makes perfect sense if they in fact want to buy more bitcoin at the moment. There has been a whole lot of very, very ugly inflation data released over the last few days.
This would explain why they refrained from selling before making an announcement which they surely knew would (and did: -10%) tank the BTC/USD rate.
This would explain why they refrained from selling before making an announcement which they surely knew would (and did: -10%) tank the BTC/USD rate.
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In my opinion Musk probably thinks/knows he's like Trump. Whatever they do, they have a bunch of hardcore defenders (like the ones who will burn this comment to the ground).
Wake me up when Musk stops selling his carbon offsets. Because for every non-pollution a Tesla car doesn't do, the sold carbon offset means there's another ICE car that's doing it.
"Musk cares for the environment". Hah, that's as bullshit as "Trump cares about the working class".
Wake me up when Musk stops selling his carbon offsets. Because for every non-pollution a Tesla car doesn't do, the sold carbon offset means there's another ICE car that's doing it.
"Musk cares for the environment". Hah, that's as bullshit as "Trump cares about the working class".
Carbon credits are doing their exact purpose. It is moving profitability into environmentally friendly sectors and out of polluting sectors. This is in order to make polluting more expensive and environmentally friendly cheaper... I’m not sure why you would think selling carbon credits is evil.
So if I'm allowed to put out 1000kg of CO2, and my neighbour as well for a total of 2000kg of CO2, hey, let me be zero emissions and emit 5kg of CO2. Hooray, it's better for the environment, the CO2 emissions are down 995kg!
Oh wait, I sold my credits to my neighbor, so total CO2 emissions are still 2000kg. Hooray, I'm saving the planet! Worship me! /s
Oh wait, I sold my credits to my neighbor, so total CO2 emissions are still 2000kg. Hooray, I'm saving the planet! Worship me! /s
I see why you are confused because that’s not how it works. A manufacturer is required to produce say 20% electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions. To reach the goal, unless they pay someone who is producing electric vehicles they will be fined. This basically boosts the electric vehicle industry and hurts the gas vehicle industry. If you are in favor of the environment this should be a good thing. Companies are encouraged to go electric, and if you don’t everything is more expensive for the company and the consumer. You don’t need to worship anyone, the point is to encourage a transition to lower carbon and few companies can do it. You don’t need to worship anyone.
People would take back the criticism of market manipulation if Tesla donated the profits made from BTC to environmental charities.
They could also spend half an hour to google bitcoin before buying them?
And they would eventually find https://Nano.org, a totally green, fast and fee-less alternative to Bitcoin. (Which has seen a price jump of 60% since the announcement).
> There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised.
World is a complex place and there are groups who have different opinions on this. Bitcoiners were cheering when Tesla started shilling BTC, now they are booing. Environmentalists are now tipping Tesla but not that much because they still remain sceptical.
World is a complex place and there are groups who have different opinions on this. Bitcoiners were cheering when Tesla started shilling BTC, now they are booing. Environmentalists are now tipping Tesla but not that much because they still remain sceptical.
> If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for making it, shouldn’t we applaud them for listening?
Making a terrible mistake suggests you might have bad judgement. Fixing it doesn't erase that, it just removes the immediate impact of that bad decision. To recover fully they need to take additional action that demonstrates that actually their judgement has improved now.
Making a terrible mistake suggests you might have bad judgement. Fixing it doesn't erase that, it just removes the immediate impact of that bad decision. To recover fully they need to take additional action that demonstrates that actually their judgement has improved now.
Not really, since 1) Musk knew environmental impact well before; 2) it took him a lot of time to react, way too much to put it into 'oh now I understand' ; 3) they happily support dogecoin which is basically exactly the same issue
Not much respect for Musk for this one, either he is knowingly manipulating market for whatever amoral reasons or his asperger is getting somehow the worst of him
Not much respect for Musk for this one, either he is knowingly manipulating market for whatever amoral reasons or his asperger is getting somehow the worst of him
It's better than staying on a wrong course, but it would be even better if they had thought it through before announcing the plan. It's not as though the environmental impacts of bitcoin were a well kept secret that Tesla couldn't have known about.
>And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things
Didn't a company filled with really smart people (no, I don't mean it sarcastically) not know that it'll look bad before buying a billion dollars worth bitcoin?
Didn't a company filled with really smart people (no, I don't mean it sarcastically) not know that it'll look bad before buying a billion dollars worth bitcoin?
Elon is clearly driving up the price of proof of work cryptocurrencies. The environmental impact of these is directly related to their price.
& I'd be surprised to know that Musk didn't know the environmental impact of bitcoin before he pushed bitcoin to the sky?
I’m fairly sure a company has the resources to ask a few people from the target audience before making a decision. And frankly, it was so obvious that it’s a bad decision, bitcoin is just hyped by a similar group that thinks of Elon highly for some strange reason, and for him, fame is everything.
Yea, because it wasn't known that bitcoin is not the best thing for environment for years, I guess?
The perfect cover for a pump-and-dump scheme.
Maybe there was a 3b we don’t know about yet.
The use of coal power to mine bitcoins recently came to light.
They didn't sell all of their bitcoin, just a fraction, and this is probably another ruse to buy cheaper. There was minicrash earlier that tanked the value >> 10% but it was bought up almost immediately.
Sorry for the lack of clarity, when I said a "bunch of bitcoin" that's quantifiably 10% of their Bitcoin. It amounted to a hundred million dollar profit. Curious if they sold any after 4/1.
Yes. A very clever plan, executed to perfection.
We don't know the price point of the BTC they bought at the time but it is likely to be somewhere around $30,000 - $40,000 and then they announced it to cause a run up close to $60,000 and then sold some of it for a >$101m profit.
Now they somehow 'stop accepting Bitcoin' causing BTC to go down 12%.
These same institutions are NOT interested in hodling. They are here to make money off of their BTC investment with only risking a small amount and cashing out 10% of it, while the retail investor hodls for their life savings at all time highs again.
We don't know the price point of the BTC they bought at the time but it is likely to be somewhere around $30,000 - $40,000 and then they announced it to cause a run up close to $60,000 and then sold some of it for a >$101m profit.
Now they somehow 'stop accepting Bitcoin' causing BTC to go down 12%.
These same institutions are NOT interested in hodling. They are here to make money off of their BTC investment with only risking a small amount and cashing out 10% of it, while the retail investor hodls for their life savings at all time highs again.
> executed to perfection
Except they still own nearly all the Bitcoin they bought, so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it and tanking the rest could be described as “to perfection”.
Except they still own nearly all the Bitcoin they bought, so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it and tanking the rest could be described as “to perfection”.
> Except they still own a ton of Bitcoin
No where in my sentence suggested they sold all of it.
> so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it could be described as “to perfection”
Telsa did not lose any money from their BTC investment and are still up >40%. At that time, they (and others on Twitter) caused a run up in the crypto markets to drive the BTC price up to new all time highs and got out a large profit even by selling a small amount and then causing it to drop 12% after the announcement, sounds like it was perfectly executed and it worked for them.
No where in my sentence suggested they sold all of it.
> so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it could be described as “to perfection”
Telsa did not lose any money from their BTC investment and are still up >40%. At that time, they (and others on Twitter) caused a run up in the crypto markets to drive the BTC price up to new all time highs and got out a large profit even by selling a small amount and then causing it to drop 12% after the announcement, sounds like it was perfectly executed and it worked for them.
Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own?
How did the 12% drop benefit Tesla?
You're not making any sense.
How did the 12% drop benefit Tesla?
You're not making any sense.
> Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own?
It's not but that doesn't mean Musk won't do it anyway. He once tanked his own company's stock by smoking cannabis in public. After something like that anything is possible.
It's not but that doesn't mean Musk won't do it anyway. He once tanked his own company's stock by smoking cannabis in public. After something like that anything is possible.
Stock market investors don’t care, because they’re in it for the long term. It’s the stock market gamblers who bitch and moan, even though they’re the ones who actually cause these fluctuations by reacting to superficial, fleeting news stories which have no bearing on the underlying asset.
Perhaps because only that amount could be sold for a good enough price? Someone has to buy it and a sudden increase in supply will drive the price down, that amount is not a single transaction with fixed price.
None of that was an answer to any of my questions. Specifically, how did talking down Bitcoin benefit Tesla? I don't understand how that move plays into Tesla's hands.
Selling some at a good price, wait/manipulate it back up again, sell some more, repeat. You can’t liquidate the whole thing at the same time.
That's still not an answer to my question. Specifically, how did talking down Bitcoin benefit Tesla? That step didn't feature in your hypothesised manipulation strategy.
A 12% drop isnt ‘tanking Bitcoin’, it’s barely more than normal daily fluctuations in the crazy casino of crypto.
That's true.
> while the retail investor hodls for their life savings at all time highs again.
Said all this after the 2017/8 peak. Called people idiots for buying BTC at $20k. Laughed when it plummeted.
Who's laughing now.
Said all this after the 2017/8 peak. Called people idiots for buying BTC at $20k. Laughed when it plummeted.
Who's laughing now.
> Who's laughing now.
I am and those who bought BTC when it fell to less than $5000 or $7000 for sometime in a while since it reached its ATH in 2017. That was the chance for new comers to buy into crypto in March 2020.
No-one who bought at those lows lost any money. Only those buying at ATHs and selling now. Thus they are forced to HODL and wait for it to go up again.
And now it's 2021, the new ATH for BTC is $60K and as for many alt-coins thanks to Elon and the Twitter crypto hypers, all the alts are flying and NOW the new retail investors are buying into crypto today, which is a dangerous sign of a pull back later.
Might as well take some profits off the table. Just like what Tesla did and many others in the smart money.
So yes, I'm always laughing at those buying right now in all time highs when I keep hitting that sell button.
I am and those who bought BTC when it fell to less than $5000 or $7000 for sometime in a while since it reached its ATH in 2017. That was the chance for new comers to buy into crypto in March 2020.
No-one who bought at those lows lost any money. Only those buying at ATHs and selling now. Thus they are forced to HODL and wait for it to go up again.
And now it's 2021, the new ATH for BTC is $60K and as for many alt-coins thanks to Elon and the Twitter crypto hypers, all the alts are flying and NOW the new retail investors are buying into crypto today, which is a dangerous sign of a pull back later.
Might as well take some profits off the table. Just like what Tesla did and many others in the smart money.
So yes, I'm always laughing at those buying right now in all time highs when I keep hitting that sell button.
Hard to say - many were liquidated on the way down, may more sold in frustration. I'd suspect a ton of people lost a ton of money on the way down in 2017/8. They're not laughing.
and now, repeat with Doge, which is exactly the same as BTC.
Meanwhile they started accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX just couple of days ago. Dogecoin has exactly the same energy spending incentives as Bitcoin.
The whole set of actions doesn't sound very logical.
The whole set of actions doesn't sound very logical.
> Meanwhile they started accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX
What does that mean ? That SpaceX sells LEO trips in dogecoin ? Or that the coffee machine takes dogecoin ?
What does that mean ? That SpaceX sells LEO trips in dogecoin ? Or that the coffee machine takes dogecoin ?
The actual flight is purchased with the Dogecoin currency.
https://www.space.com/spacex-dogecoin-moon-mission
https://www.space.com/spacex-dogecoin-moon-mission
> Dogecoin has exactly the same energy spending incentives as Bitcoin.
Does it?
I thought that Bitcoin was particularly bad because block sizes were small, so there's a big incentive to mine and get mining fees.
Dogecoin is still wasteful, but it's an order of magnitude less than Bitcoin.
Does it?
I thought that Bitcoin was particularly bad because block sizes were small, so there's a big incentive to mine and get mining fees.
Dogecoin is still wasteful, but it's an order of magnitude less than Bitcoin.
> I thought that Bitcoin was particularly bad because block sizes were small, so there's a big incentive to mine and get mining fees.
No. Doesn't make sense.
Miners get rewarded for spending energy in all PoW coins. I don't think details such as block size matters. Dogecoin BTW as well has the 1MB block limit, their block time is just smaller (1 minute). However dogecoin has quite small amount of transactions compared to BTC, it is nowhere near its capacity limits yet.
No. Doesn't make sense.
Miners get rewarded for spending energy in all PoW coins. I don't think details such as block size matters. Dogecoin BTW as well has the 1MB block limit, their block time is just smaller (1 minute). However dogecoin has quite small amount of transactions compared to BTC, it is nowhere near its capacity limits yet.
Dogecoin is incredibly more efficient for kilowatt per hash than bitcoin. Of the very popular older coins only XRP is more efficient.
https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cry...
https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cry...
KW per hashrate doesn't make much sense. At that point you're just comparing the efficiency for the available hardware for hashing function, ASICs that are designed to handle up to calculating SHA256 of up to 1MB of data versus scrypt ASICs.
Since that's the case, your statement of "of the very popular older coins only XRP is more efficient" falls apart as at the very least Litecoin would need to be at the exact same spot.
And if you are talking about per mined blocks, then you are putting the network difficulty into the picture and arguing a lower network difficulty (hence lower network hashrate) as a selling point isn't going to get you anywhere.
Since that's the case, your statement of "of the very popular older coins only XRP is more efficient" falls apart as at the very least Litecoin would need to be at the exact same spot.
And if you are talking about per mined blocks, then you are putting the network difficulty into the picture and arguing a lower network difficulty (hence lower network hashrate) as a selling point isn't going to get you anywhere.
It's absolutely logical when your primary criterion is M' > M.
> Dogecoin has exactly the same energy spending incentives as Bitcoin.
While the incentives are the same, Dogecoin has roughly 7.4x lower energy requirements than Bitcoin currently, so accepting Dogecoin instead of Bitcoin is a tad less offensive.
While the incentives are the same, Dogecoin has roughly 7.4x lower energy requirements than Bitcoin currently, so accepting Dogecoin instead of Bitcoin is a tad less offensive.
Only because it's not used.
This is like arguing we should switch from using cars currently on the road because they use energy, to cars currently standing in a garage, because we measured and clearly the parked cars use less energy than the cars on the road.
It's not even hyperbole, it's precisely equivalent and just as boneheaded as it sounds.
This is like arguing we should switch from using cars currently on the road because they use energy, to cars currently standing in a garage, because we measured and clearly the parked cars use less energy than the cars on the road.
It's not even hyperbole, it's precisely equivalent and just as boneheaded as it sounds.
This is not true. Dogecoin is way lower KW per hash than bitcoin. Dogecoin is .12 and bitcoin is 707
https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cry...
With a market cap that is 20 times lower, higher market cap means higher prices, means more miners and thus more energy requirement
Not quite. Energy requirements correspond to daily dollar emission (column PoW produced 24h in [1]).
Early in their emission, coins can have high daily emission and low marketcap. And dogecoin is at less than 1/3 of its 500B soft total supply [2].
[1] https://www.f2pool.com/coins
[2] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
Early in their emission, coins can have high daily emission and low marketcap. And dogecoin is at less than 1/3 of its 500B soft total supply [2].
[1] https://www.f2pool.com/coins
[2] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
Musk said they were looking for crypto with an energy requirement of <1% of bitcoin's, so that would rule Doge out too.
He should look at the one that uses 0.15% of bitcoin's while having a much more even distribution than Dogecoin (which had 20x block reward in its first year).
They also wrote the customer agreement such that they would refund Bitcoin purchases in either dollars or Bitcoin[1], depending on which was more profitable. This can be used to effectively get free options on a highly volatile asset[2].
[1] https://twitter.com/TBPInvictus/status/1375088089002094595 [2] https://twitter.com/macrocephalopod/status/13750990694970286...
[1] https://twitter.com/TBPInvictus/status/1375088089002094595 [2] https://twitter.com/macrocephalopod/status/13750990694970286...
The alternative was to essentially provide free options to customers. It was stupid whichever way they did it.
No, the alternative was to issue refunds in the currency of transaction. There's no reason they would ever offer customers the choice of refund currency.
That doesn't work. Say you purchase car for 0.5BTC today. Tommorrow BTC goes up. You ask for a refund and immediately buy the same car back for say 0.25BTC. Free discount. Who would not do it?
Core of this is that BTC (atleast right now) is a highly volatile, speculative asset. There is no way direct payments in BTC will make common "market sense" until volatility stabilizes. Until then someone has to take responsibility for bearing that volatility, either the customer or the manufacturer. In this case, it's apt that the customer bears it (as they should, it's their gamble).
Core of this is that BTC (atleast right now) is a highly volatile, speculative asset. There is no way direct payments in BTC will make common "market sense" until volatility stabilizes. Until then someone has to take responsibility for bearing that volatility, either the customer or the manufacturer. In this case, it's apt that the customer bears it (as they should, it's their gamble).
I wonder if someday we get even more absurd. Musk wagers company money on the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, announces this on Twitter, then hedges his bet when Vegas moved the line after a bunch of pro chiefs action. I mean, it’s not like there aren’t hedge funds that do sports gambling already.
[deleted]
Is that not market manipulation?
[deleted]
5. Asked on the same day on Twitter if they should accept Dogecoin instead.
This whole thing has become as ridiculous as it is blatant.
This whole thing has become as ridiculous as it is blatant.
If Tesla bought and sold stock in another company, they would need to announce it immediately according to detailed regulations.
With Bitcoin there is nothing that regulates. Tesla can buy it in secret, announce it and drive up the price, sell it in secret, announce it and drive the price back down.
With Bitcoin there is nothing that regulates. Tesla can buy it in secret, announce it and drive up the price, sell it in secret, announce it and drive the price back down.
Classic pump & dump.
And of course, there's no one to complain as crypto markets are unregulated anyway
And of course, there's no one to complain as crypto markets are unregulated anyway
He also mentioned dogecoin a lot in between.
It seems Elon is playing pump-and-dump game, creating significant profit, betting on one "horse" and putting a curb to others.
[deleted]
Elon is a con man.
I can't find this youtube video of an engineer explaining why the Boring Tunnel is hyped up bullshit. It's just a slow car based subway with very low throughput due to by-design bottlenecks at the entry- and exit-points.
Can't find it. Wouldn't be surprised to learn that Google/Youtube is shadow banning it.
Somebody knows what I mean and can post a link?
I can't find this youtube video of an engineer explaining why the Boring Tunnel is hyped up bullshit. It's just a slow car based subway with very low throughput due to by-design bottlenecks at the entry- and exit-points.
Can't find it. Wouldn't be surprised to learn that Google/Youtube is shadow banning it.
Somebody knows what I mean and can post a link?
I see this as market manipulation.
Tesla hasn't suddenly become aware of information not available when Tesla initially announced they'd accept bitcoin as payment.
Tesla hasn't suddenly become aware of information not available when Tesla initially announced they'd accept bitcoin as payment.
Absolutely. If anyone believes this bs they're just enabling and encouraging musk to continue manipulating markets as he pleases. People will now start praising his decision but make no mistake, I don't know what was the real reason behind it but sure as hell it wasn't climate change and the way musk goes about releasing information that is moving markets is contemtable
I wonder if Bitcoin investors will start to work out what all those regulations they avoided were for.
Very unlikely. For Bitcoin this is just another day. 10-20% drops should be expected by anyone who knows anything about crypto.
No, of course not. Most big stakeholders in cryptocurrencies want a manipulable asset to invest in. A long circuituous route was taken to building one when regulation cut off the ability to do what they are doing with their coins.
I mean, the whole transacting without borders, and providing a transaction medium that is somewhat immune to geopolitical power projection by any one nation state looks great on paper; but it's also the type of idealistic tool frequuently used to get someone to part with their money.
As much of a raging contrarian as I am when it comes to Federal regulation a d interference in markets; the type of market activity surrounding crypto is a spot on copy paste of the types of scammy behavior the SEC was meant to rein in, even if the rulemaking (whether I like how it's done or not) hasn't caught up. It's also market activity that's producing no net positive societal value as far as I've heard of measuring being done to account for it. Businesses popped up to facilitate movement of coins, and conversion to fiat; but the externalities (regulatory escape, lost funds by people when scam exchanges walk off with everyone's assets, greased anti-money laundering mechanisms, environmental costs, brain drain)...
I know my viewpoint on it probably means about as much in the long run as a gnat fart, but it's just one of those things that seems like a solution looking for a problem, picking whatever problem looks most likely to gain momentum this week, and to hell with the problems caused as a result.
I mean, the whole transacting without borders, and providing a transaction medium that is somewhat immune to geopolitical power projection by any one nation state looks great on paper; but it's also the type of idealistic tool frequuently used to get someone to part with their money.
As much of a raging contrarian as I am when it comes to Federal regulation a d interference in markets; the type of market activity surrounding crypto is a spot on copy paste of the types of scammy behavior the SEC was meant to rein in, even if the rulemaking (whether I like how it's done or not) hasn't caught up. It's also market activity that's producing no net positive societal value as far as I've heard of measuring being done to account for it. Businesses popped up to facilitate movement of coins, and conversion to fiat; but the externalities (regulatory escape, lost funds by people when scam exchanges walk off with everyone's assets, greased anti-money laundering mechanisms, environmental costs, brain drain)...
I know my viewpoint on it probably means about as much in the long run as a gnat fart, but it's just one of those things that seems like a solution looking for a problem, picking whatever problem looks most likely to gain momentum this week, and to hell with the problems caused as a result.
Much better for people to learn not to make investment decisions based on a single company.
> I see this as market manipulation.
Absolutely. Any mention of cryptocurrency by Musk or his companies instantly reflects on the price and there's no way in hell Musk doesn't know that. Happened with Dogecoin like a week ago (after his SNL appearance), happening again.
Absolutely. Any mention of cryptocurrency by Musk or his companies instantly reflects on the price and there's no way in hell Musk doesn't know that. Happened with Dogecoin like a week ago (after his SNL appearance), happening again.
I'm not suggesting anything here, but it doesn't seem outrageous to think that after the SNL appearance and all the dogecoin references that Tesla/Musk may have bought substantial amounts prior to that before the obvious shilling on live television.
If that's the case, he would not have expected it to crash.
i.e. This may be desperation to fix the quarterly results after the plan backfired.
If that's the case, he would not have expected it to crash.
i.e. This may be desperation to fix the quarterly results after the plan backfired.
Either market manipulation or incompetence, it's one of the two.
For someone who owns Tesla and a solar company, claiming that he didn't already knew that Bitcoin is a huge energy sink seems unlikely.
Tesla is a little more high profile, but they certainly aren't the first company to implement something, or take a action, where you from the outside question the environmental impact. Only to have the company reverse the same decision a while later, claiming a huge effort to help the environment.
For someone who owns Tesla and a solar company, claiming that he didn't already knew that Bitcoin is a huge energy sink seems unlikely.
Tesla is a little more high profile, but they certainly aren't the first company to implement something, or take a action, where you from the outside question the environmental impact. Only to have the company reverse the same decision a while later, claiming a huge effort to help the environment.
I mean, he had all the data in front of him when he announced end of March 2020 that Covid will be gone by April 2020 so I don't know what to think of this erratic behavior.
He effectively got away with doing it on TSLA why not try it out on BTC and doge coin too?
Or maybe he sees something coming in crypo the rest of us don't (e.g. regulatory crackdown).
Or maybe he sees something coming in crypo the rest of us don't (e.g. regulatory crackdown).
Well, they might saw the backslash in environmentalist community, that used to be their main supporters.
That's imo a pretty big sudden information.
I'm pretty sure bitcoin's environmental concern was known before the announcement. It wasn't sudden information.
You don’t think they knew that going in?
I think a lot of people are aware that bitcoin transactions have an energy cost but haven’t sufficiently gone down the rabbit hole of quantifying exactly what that cost is.
A company as big as as TSLA has people on payroll to figure that out. If they don’t, then it’s still on them. You think this is WSB where I see a ticker, strike and expiry and I’m in with my life savings?
I think you're a touch over-optimistic if you think that all large companies always consider every possible ramification of every decision to its fullest extent prior to acting.
Personally I think Tesla's (and Elon's, and for that matter everyone's) involvement with cryptocurrency as a serious investment is moronic, driven almost entirely by sci-fi daydreaming rather than by actual principles. But my opinion doesn't matter to anyone else, so *shrug,* I guess.
Personally I think Tesla's (and Elon's, and for that matter everyone's) involvement with cryptocurrency as a serious investment is moronic, driven almost entirely by sci-fi daydreaming rather than by actual principles. But my opinion doesn't matter to anyone else, so *shrug,* I guess.
It’s a typical pump-and-dump+market manipulation decision in an unregulated market so it is legal, and highly profitable. It’s not a bad investment, only a moral failing.
Given that they haven't pumped (if anything they stand accused of deflating, not pumping) and they haven't dumped (they still hold roughly 90% of their peak position) how do you figure that they performed a "pump and dump"?
and Bitcoin is 100% market manipulation. Useless asset.
I would be amazed if the SEC doesnt start an investigation assuming one is not in flight.
Yeah, he's just enacting retribution on the SEC for the tweetsitter they appointed due to him ... manipulating the market. ($420 funding secured, anyone?)
Except the SEC is not directly harmed by market manipulation, the market participants they exist to protect are.
It was not marketing manipulation until now?
That is anarcho-capitalism to you. Even though I'm a libertarian leaning, I still think we should put a tax from CO2 emissions on crypto transactions. Something in range of 300$ per tonne of CO2. So with bitcoin emissions at 0.5T per transaction, it would be somewhere around 150$ per transaction. And to cash in on bitcoin you should be required to document the whole history of bitcoin you own.
> Something in range of 300$ per tonne of CO2.
Why so high, and why specifically for crypto transactions and not everything that generates CO2?
Why so high, and why specifically for crypto transactions and not everything that generates CO2?
That's about the cost of removing CO2 at industrial scale today.
And yes, I'm supporter of overall carbon tax.
Preferably something like European Union Emission Trading Scheme [0] where at some point we can just ban unmitigated emissions into the atmosphere.
I have no issue with people spending as much resources on bitcoin or any other crypto as they want as long as they clean up after themselves.
Actually it should include the whole package of externalities - CO2, electronic waste pollution etc.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin...
And yes, I'm supporter of overall carbon tax.
Preferably something like European Union Emission Trading Scheme [0] where at some point we can just ban unmitigated emissions into the atmosphere.
I have no issue with people spending as much resources on bitcoin or any other crypto as they want as long as they clean up after themselves.
Actually it should include the whole package of externalities - CO2, electronic waste pollution etc.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin...
100% pump and dump.
How would he benefit? There are no put-options in Bitcoin land.
Of course there are:
https://www.deribit.com/main#/options?tab=BTC-28MAY21
Interesting. Any signs of a single party buying lots of them just before the announcement?
What I don't get is, why people are talking about environmental impact per transaction. Transactions or not, the computers are churning constantly to solve the useless function that would produce the hash with the most 0s in it.
It really doesn't have anything to do with transactions(the fees are only a fraction of the profits). The energy impact would be precisely correlated to the fiat price since the miners will be paying for the energy and equipment in fiat.
Transactions or not, the higher the price, the dirtier the proof of work blockchain is. Just look at the most recent block: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865...
reward: 6.25BTC
fees for transactions: 0.5BTC
total revenue: 6.75BTC, that is ~ $350K at the moment.
Each block is mined every 10min on average, so it is 2.1M per hour. So the total energy consumption is limited to $2.1M per hour or $1.5B per month at this price. It would be $150M if the price was $5k instead and $30B if the price goes to $1M per BTC. When that happens, 1 transaction will amount to the energy consumption of an American family for 1 year or more. At $1M per BTC, $360,000,000,000 worth of energy would be wasted per year on calculating a hash of a block that is functionally exactly the same with the same amount of transaction as the one calculated for $360, $3.6 or $0.03.
I'm sure I'm missing something like investors betting on price increases, infrastructure elasticity etc. but the correlation must be roughly like that.
Transactions or not, the higher the price, the dirtier the proof of work blockchain is. Just look at the most recent block: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865...
reward: 6.25BTC
fees for transactions: 0.5BTC
total revenue: 6.75BTC, that is ~ $350K at the moment.
Each block is mined every 10min on average, so it is 2.1M per hour. So the total energy consumption is limited to $2.1M per hour or $1.5B per month at this price. It would be $150M if the price was $5k instead and $30B if the price goes to $1M per BTC. When that happens, 1 transaction will amount to the energy consumption of an American family for 1 year or more. At $1M per BTC, $360,000,000,000 worth of energy would be wasted per year on calculating a hash of a block that is functionally exactly the same with the same amount of transaction as the one calculated for $360, $3.6 or $0.03.
I'm sure I'm missing something like investors betting on price increases, infrastructure elasticity etc. but the correlation must be roughly like that.
And as such, the best thing that Tesla can do for the environment is to sell all of its PoW coins and continue to talk-down the price.
They, and we, can also petition Governments to ban the exchange of PoW coins for fiat. PoW coins serve no purpose and represent a egregious waste of our civilization's advanced manufactured goods and electricity. Taking crypto down a notch might also make ransomware attacks less likely.
They, and we, can also petition Governments to ban the exchange of PoW coins for fiat. PoW coins serve no purpose and represent a egregious waste of our civilization's advanced manufactured goods and electricity. Taking crypto down a notch might also make ransomware attacks less likely.
If it was about the environment and not looking for a scape goat, then ban or simply tax the dirty energy sources.
It makes no difference to the environment if you burn coal to feed Bitcoin or a factory.
Higher taxes on dirty energy would make a huge difference to which power sources would be used by Bitcoin however as Bitcoin feeds on cheap energy, but why limit ourselves to Bitcoin anyway; it doesn't burn the coal.
It makes no difference to the environment if you burn coal to feed Bitcoin or a factory.
Higher taxes on dirty energy would make a huge difference to which power sources would be used by Bitcoin however as Bitcoin feeds on cheap energy, but why limit ourselves to Bitcoin anyway; it doesn't burn the coal.
Fossil energy sources is a necessary evil, the pollution we create results in cars, computers, food etc. You can't simply say that from now on you'll shut down the coal energy, that would be catastrophic.
Instead, the governments are incentivising the cleaner sources over the other. At least the governments that have a mandate to do that.
The problem with the energy spent on Bitcoin is that it produces a gambling marketplace and nothing else(okay, also some ransomware and illicit trade tools too but these are minuscule). Do we really need to have huge global gambling marketplace at the cost of the destruction of the environment? At the same destruction we could he better food, electronics cars etc. The same gambling marketplace infrastructure could be run for just a few kWh.
Instead, the governments are incentivising the cleaner sources over the other. At least the governments that have a mandate to do that.
The problem with the energy spent on Bitcoin is that it produces a gambling marketplace and nothing else(okay, also some ransomware and illicit trade tools too but these are minuscule). Do we really need to have huge global gambling marketplace at the cost of the destruction of the environment? At the same destruction we could he better food, electronics cars etc. The same gambling marketplace infrastructure could be run for just a few kWh.
It's not a fundamental thing it's just that looking at the per-transaction energy cost really puts things in perspective. And 500kWh is hard to comprehend so I like to put it in perspective by comparing it to locomotives. An F40PH, which is a very common American passenger locomotive as seen on Caltrain, Amtrak, Metra and the MBTA puts out about 2.4MW at full blast. So, just under 5 transactions per hour, per locomotive. It's staggering.
Expressing the energy consumption in electric vehicle mileage makes the numbers more tangible. 500kWh is ~3000 kilometers of range for a mid-sized EV, or enough to move a family across the whole continent. Just to shift BTC from one pocket to another.
What's intangible about a locomotive? It's a big engine the size of a house growling up a storm.
[deleted]
BTC has pivoted away from the Bitcoin whitepaper in mid 2017, decided to constrain its transactional troughput and went the "store of value" route. It can handle some 4 transactions per second.
An unconstrained version of bitcoin can handle hundreds, and with technological improvements thousands and then tens of thousands of transactions per second. I can already do this on a Raspberry Pi [0] (in controlled conditions).
Bitcoin's footprint is sadly big, but still smaller than that of the banking industry. I foresee a future where most of the mining is done with renewables, as this is what will make the most sense.
[0] https://read.cash/@mtrycz/how-my-rpi4-handles-scalenets-256m...
An unconstrained version of bitcoin can handle hundreds, and with technological improvements thousands and then tens of thousands of transactions per second. I can already do this on a Raspberry Pi [0] (in controlled conditions).
Bitcoin's footprint is sadly big, but still smaller than that of the banking industry. I foresee a future where most of the mining is done with renewables, as this is what will make the most sense.
[0] https://read.cash/@mtrycz/how-my-rpi4-handles-scalenets-256m...
As I said, the number of transactions is irrelevant up until the block reward gets minuscule or completely ends. That is statistically not expected to happen before a few decades.
I know about the banking industry argument but the banking industry is not only about transactions and they also catch up with technology, removing staff closing down offices and branches. In fact, those related to transactions are already almost gone, the rest is about things where BTC is irrelevant anyway, things like compliance anti-fraud etc. If anything, the crypto exchanges assumed many of the banking infrastructure.
Blockchain vs a centralised database is not even a competition when it comes to efficiency, no matter how much you want o twist the argument the fundamentals are rock solid.
What blockchain solves is the trust issue but only for storing the value and not for using it. The problem is, we as humans rarely transact with people who we don't trust. Even with the ransomware and drug trade use cases of the crypto coins, the transaction depends on the trust that the seller will deliver the goods.
The only possible use case is when the society ceases to function. When that happens, BTC would be very useful but when that happens the economy would be fraction of what is now because everything beyond transactions will still need trust so that the labour can integrate vertically and do high value production.
I know about the banking industry argument but the banking industry is not only about transactions and they also catch up with technology, removing staff closing down offices and branches. In fact, those related to transactions are already almost gone, the rest is about things where BTC is irrelevant anyway, things like compliance anti-fraud etc. If anything, the crypto exchanges assumed many of the banking infrastructure.
Blockchain vs a centralised database is not even a competition when it comes to efficiency, no matter how much you want o twist the argument the fundamentals are rock solid.
What blockchain solves is the trust issue but only for storing the value and not for using it. The problem is, we as humans rarely transact with people who we don't trust. Even with the ransomware and drug trade use cases of the crypto coins, the transaction depends on the trust that the seller will deliver the goods.
The only possible use case is when the society ceases to function. When that happens, BTC would be very useful but when that happens the economy would be fraction of what is now because everything beyond transactions will still need trust so that the labour can integrate vertically and do high value production.
If bitcoin had the same market cap (currently 40 trillion) as all of the cash in the world the price would be higher and the ecological footprint would be significantly worse.
There was a comment that was deleted as I was writing a reply. Just not to waste it, here it is:
the comment: "Correct me if I'm wrong but in absolute numbers Bitcoin seems to be responsible for more CO2 emissions than the whole financial industry. [1] And it's hardly in use. Indeed it seems convincing that Bitcoin together with Bitcoin Cash can be tuned to have reasonably low energy usage per transaction, e.g. by doing lots of transactions off-chain. But it's not the default, it's an option that is not really being taken advantage of. It's unfair to compare systems that are not optimized with systems that are optimized. On the other hand Bitcoin is now more than 10 years old and there was already a reasonable amount of time to optimize it. That said, I think some of the initially advertised noble goals (more stable currency, democratized access to financial tooling) are thrown away for quick profits. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952"
my reply:
On chain, off-chain doesn't matter because it's not the transactions that the miners are after.
The Bitcoin blockchain can probably be mined even on a fitness tracker, it's not that the calculation itself requiring gargantuous amount of energy. It can even be mined by hand.
The problem is, it is a competition by design which economically dictates that there's money to be made up until the price of mining matches the reward of a mined block. This is also dynamically adjusted to match the mining availability through increasing or decreasing the difficulty(which is, the adjustment of number of 0s that are needed in the hash for a block to be valid).
The current situation is by design and BTC will work fine with any amount of energy thrown at it. It will work exactly the same, on-chain, off chain, mined by a single server, mined by the complete use of humanity's energy, the energy collected by a Dyson Sphere. If will work exactly the same, only the number of zeros on the hash of a block will change.
the comment: "Correct me if I'm wrong but in absolute numbers Bitcoin seems to be responsible for more CO2 emissions than the whole financial industry. [1] And it's hardly in use. Indeed it seems convincing that Bitcoin together with Bitcoin Cash can be tuned to have reasonably low energy usage per transaction, e.g. by doing lots of transactions off-chain. But it's not the default, it's an option that is not really being taken advantage of. It's unfair to compare systems that are not optimized with systems that are optimized. On the other hand Bitcoin is now more than 10 years old and there was already a reasonable amount of time to optimize it. That said, I think some of the initially advertised noble goals (more stable currency, democratized access to financial tooling) are thrown away for quick profits. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952"
my reply:
On chain, off-chain doesn't matter because it's not the transactions that the miners are after.
The Bitcoin blockchain can probably be mined even on a fitness tracker, it's not that the calculation itself requiring gargantuous amount of energy. It can even be mined by hand.
The problem is, it is a competition by design which economically dictates that there's money to be made up until the price of mining matches the reward of a mined block. This is also dynamically adjusted to match the mining availability through increasing or decreasing the difficulty(which is, the adjustment of number of 0s that are needed in the hash for a block to be valid).
The current situation is by design and BTC will work fine with any amount of energy thrown at it. It will work exactly the same, on-chain, off chain, mined by a single server, mined by the complete use of humanity's energy, the energy collected by a Dyson Sphere. If will work exactly the same, only the number of zeros on the hash of a block will change.
You're completely right. I think the second order effects are negligible at this scale.
It’s like arguing that a running engine in a stopped car doesn’t have an environmental effect, it only counts when the car moves.
You are technically correct, but it’s inseparable from a transaction. The all-around point is bitcoin as a whole is wasteful.
You are technically correct, but it’s inseparable from a transaction. The all-around point is bitcoin as a whole is wasteful.
isn't it the case that multiple miners (or pools) compete for the same block and only 1 wins, the rest just waste work?
That's exactly the case but on average the total mined coins must be distributed proportionally to the miners workload since the possibility to strike a block is correlated with the hash-rate which is correlated with energy consumption. They also do pooling to ease the distribution.
That Bitcoin mining has a disastrous energy consumption is not a new finding. Elon and Tesla knew that and decided to go for bitcoin anyways. And they made alot of profit from that.
For me that seems as if they came to the (correct) conclusion that BTC is not the future. Justifying that decision with the climate impact feels like a bad excuse.
For me that seems as if they came to the (correct) conclusion that BTC is not the future. Justifying that decision with the climate impact feels like a bad excuse.
If anything, it's good that its public now that its an energy problem. For the average person dealing with bitcoin this wasn't known (at least in my circles). Great way to get everyone's attention.
Why is is Bitcoin mining mainly happening in China, but not other compute bound tasks?
How about machine learning. Why aren't the leading data centers for ML based in China?
Or are they?
And on the energy front - if fossil fuels are the best energy source for calculating hashes, why not for other types of number crunching?
Can boycotting one type of calculations really keep the fossil fuels under the ground? If they are useful to power computations - won't they be used for some kind of computations anyhow?
How about machine learning. Why aren't the leading data centers for ML based in China?
Or are they?
And on the energy front - if fossil fuels are the best energy source for calculating hashes, why not for other types of number crunching?
Can boycotting one type of calculations really keep the fossil fuels under the ground? If they are useful to power computations - won't they be used for some kind of computations anyhow?
There are several reasons it's mostly a China-operation. Interestingly, it's a textbook example of deficiencies being the competitive advantage.
#1 - China's electricity grid is not very efficient at distributing, which leads to some areas with constant surpluses, directly translating into extremely low electricity prices in those areas
#2 - almost all computer hardware is manufactured in East Asia. Chinese miners don't buy their hardware on the open market, they snatch underhanded special deals with the manufacturers who're then deeply sorry about their "unexpected manufacturing shortfalls"
#3 - Crypto is essentially banned in China for private citizens. Chinese Communist Party is actually quite happy about the mining though - when you zoom out a bit, it's just a money pipe from the rest of the world (mainly US) to China. It also funds bootstrapping of their silicon industry
#4 - crypto in general benefits from weak rule of law. Try running a crypto mining operation in France - the tax collectors will be knocking on your door after the first mined block. Corruption and nepotism is absolutely endemic in China - "sharing" a bit of the mining profits with the local officials has a high chance of skirting the rest of the tax burden
#1 - China's electricity grid is not very efficient at distributing, which leads to some areas with constant surpluses, directly translating into extremely low electricity prices in those areas
#2 - almost all computer hardware is manufactured in East Asia. Chinese miners don't buy their hardware on the open market, they snatch underhanded special deals with the manufacturers who're then deeply sorry about their "unexpected manufacturing shortfalls"
#3 - Crypto is essentially banned in China for private citizens. Chinese Communist Party is actually quite happy about the mining though - when you zoom out a bit, it's just a money pipe from the rest of the world (mainly US) to China. It also funds bootstrapping of their silicon industry
#4 - crypto in general benefits from weak rule of law. Try running a crypto mining operation in France - the tax collectors will be knocking on your door after the first mined block. Corruption and nepotism is absolutely endemic in China - "sharing" a bit of the mining profits with the local officials has a high chance of skirting the rest of the tax burden
These 4 points would apply to any type of high latency / low security computation though.
Is Bitcoin mining the only type of such computation for which there is a large demand?
Is Bitcoin mining the only type of such computation for which there is a large demand?
Data centers mostly serve customers and customers care about reliability and latency.
Distance and Great Firewall of China do not help with any of that.
Also, because moving data to China is a legal nightmare in EU and public relations nightmare in the whole west.
Distance and Great Firewall of China do not help with any of that.
Also, because moving data to China is a legal nightmare in EU and public relations nightmare in the whole west.
Because there is tremendous risk of having data located in China. This is not the case with Bitcoin. If you put your SOTA AI/ML project there, your IP will be stolen, guaranteed. If you put your Bitcoin mining there, your only risk is the hardware.
The Bitcoin mining farms in China are not rented out to western customers. They do not sell the raw processing power. They sell the finished product: mined blocks.
They could do the same for ML. Sell the trained models.
They could do the same for ML. Sell the trained models.
The trained model is a guarded treasure. There's a reason why very few ML papers publish their trained models; or Deepmind/OpenAI never releasing the resulting models - it's expensive to train the network, but cheap to use it afterwards. You don't want anyone unauthorized to get their hands on it.
Well, somehow the models must be monetized.
Either by giving them to the customer (Like Tesla will put them into cars) or by letting the customer interact with them via the internet (SaaS).
Either way - if the production of the models is most efficient in China, then we should see them being made in China.
Either by giving them to the customer (Like Tesla will put them into cars) or by letting the customer interact with them via the internet (SaaS).
Either way - if the production of the models is most efficient in China, then we should see them being made in China.
Probably because it's a good way to funnel money out of China
If you take a positive spin it on, it could be heavy manipulation for the environment.
1. Buy Bitcoin to put added focus to it
2. Stop using it and cite environmental impact
3. Swap to something more environmentally acceptable in an attempt to tilt Bitcoin from the crypto throne or push them to change the amount of mining going on.
I’m not sure how beneficial it is to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s a view I haven’t seen it the threads before.
1. Buy Bitcoin to put added focus to it
2. Stop using it and cite environmental impact
3. Swap to something more environmentally acceptable in an attempt to tilt Bitcoin from the crypto throne or push them to change the amount of mining going on.
I’m not sure how beneficial it is to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s a view I haven’t seen it the threads before.
He is also suggests they are look at Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies with significantly lower energy use. Maybe this is just a pre-cursor to Musk launching a PoS 'Tesla EnviroCoin' down the line...
I suggest E-coin. I cannot imagine the hype for such a coin.
I think cryptocurrency is actually failing, not because of technical nor political reasons, but all because of the sheer stupidity of populus. You see, cryptocurrencies are absolutely vulnerable to social engineering likes this, and I believe this is not something technology can solve, never ever even in the far future.
The future of cryptocurrency now lies in the hands of governments, whose regulations are the only true solution. Good bye the days of truly decentralized and purely market-controlled digital - ahem - currency.
The future of cryptocurrency now lies in the hands of governments, whose regulations are the only true solution. Good bye the days of truly decentralized and purely market-controlled digital - ahem - currency.
The explanation is obviously bullshit, everybody knew the climate impact years ago. He realized his power for market manipulation for Dogecoin and he milked the cow for real this time.
"years ago" as in 2008, when the whitepaper was released. Wasting energy, but make it competitive. And the grift is simply astounding.
I don't see why people would bet the future on something that is thermodynamically doomed.
According to Satoshi, dependence on thermodynamics is a feature to prevent centralization.
> dependence on thermodynamics is a feature to prevent centralization
Never underestimate humanity's willingness to destroy itself in the quest for wealth and power.
Never underestimate humanity's willingness to destroy itself in the quest for wealth and power.
Doesn't seem to be working so fine now, is it?
Also I wouldn't put behind well financed groups that hire PhDs to find a way to accelerate the PoW enough to gain a significant advantage (as in, ability to centralize the blockchain).
Also I wouldn't put behind well financed groups that hire PhDs to find a way to accelerate the PoW enough to gain a significant advantage (as in, ability to centralize the blockchain).
The funny thing is that even if you found some magical hardware that was 100x more efficient than the next best thing, the incentives make it so that you don't want to use 0.01X energy to produce Y hashes and mine the same proportion of coins, you'd want to use X energy to produce 100Y hashes so you mine a larger proportion of coins.
> accelerate the PoW
That wouldn't do anything to energy consumption. It would just increase the hash rate.
That wouldn't do anything to energy consumption. It would just increase the hash rate.
The group with access to that technology would be able to centralize hashing.
Because it's all a scam to make fast and easy money.
I mean humanity is inevitably thermodynamically doomed. So is the universe.
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"... and not at all because Musk has already offloaded his crypto prior to a public appearance where he bagged out crypto."
Did he offload his Bitcoins?
I was conjecting. Personally I think he held and planned to buy again on the subsequent dip.
Same people calling for decentralization, unregulated practices and absolute freemarket are now calling for regulation and accusing Elon of market manipulation. This can't get any better, I'm having a lot of fun reading Reddit and Hackernews. Good job, Elon! You demonstrated once again that you are a talented businessman. It's so easy to make money when there are so many naive people around. Thanks for the lesson.
Anything that makes money (for me) is good. Capitalism at its finest. Cheers.
Indeed. Say that again.
Am I the only one that feels like there's a striking resemblance between these events and any large scale pump and dump scheme? Just a thought (:
Why did Tesla saying they would accept payment in bitcoin move the price so much anyway? Surely it was only ever going to be used in a very small fraction of Tesla’s sales. And Tesla’s sales only represent a very small fraction of the total number of bitcoin transactions.
Were bitcoin speculators behaving rationally when they bought and sold on this news? And if not, don’t they deserve the majority of the blame here?
Were bitcoin speculators behaving rationally when they bought and sold on this news? And if not, don’t they deserve the majority of the blame here?
Perception...
And also, who says speculators behave rationally?
It is rational to expect that a "bad news" might take the price down because irrational speculators would sell, therefore it is rational to be irrational, and sell.
It is rational to expect that a "bad news" might take the price down because irrational speculators would sell, therefore it is rational to be irrational, and sell.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13926020410258432...
“Tesla are looking at other crypto currencies which use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction”
$NANO is up almost 50% in the last 12 hours, in response to this I think.
“Tesla are looking at other crypto currencies which use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction”
$NANO is up almost 50% in the last 12 hours, in response to this I think.
Just curious as someone out of the loop, what regulations encourage other car companies to buy regulatory credits that Tesla is granted by producing zero emission vehicles? I know its a big part of their profitability.
Are there not regulations that would encourage Tesla to buy credits to make up for their crypto-polluting sins?
Are there not regulations that would encourage Tesla to buy credits to make up for their crypto-polluting sins?
Talking about the EU perspective in 2020 here: FCA (Fiat Chrysler and all of their brands) sold too few low/zero emission cars. Their fine would have been X millions of €. By paying Tesla X - 100 millions €, they save 100 million €, while being pretty pissed off that they are financing a different OEM.
Due to this reason, they already announced that in 2021 they won't need to "pool" with another OEM like they did in 2020.
Due to this reason, they already announced that in 2021 they won't need to "pool" with another OEM like they did in 2020.
Hope we now can start a proof of stake cycle. Peercoin is dead. What other proof of stake viable currency is there?
Only when the energy impact of crypto currency is dealt with will i indulge in speculating that it can be a net good for humanicy
Only when the energy impact of crypto currency is dealt with will i indulge in speculating that it can be a net good for humanicy
We need proof of CO2 scrubbing.
We have that now. Reward block in 100 years. It’s a physical reward of a habitable planet.
This is actually a great idea. Sell carbon capture machines backed by a cryptocurrency.
Basically what Helium is doing for IoT networks, could be done for carbon capture machines aswell. Helium sells branded radio modules, "miners" provide network coverage and get paid for this in Helium(coin)
CarbonCoin (patent pending) could do the same, produce or white-label carbon capture machines, add logging modules to keep track how much CO2 is captured and pay the owners of these machines in CarbonCoin.
Basically what Helium is doing for IoT networks, could be done for carbon capture machines aswell. Helium sells branded radio modules, "miners" provide network coverage and get paid for this in Helium(coin)
CarbonCoin (patent pending) could do the same, produce or white-label carbon capture machines, add logging modules to keep track how much CO2 is captured and pay the owners of these machines in CarbonCoin.
Replace the gold standard with the CO2 standard. Tie currency to carbon captured and stored.
Ethereum 2.0.
Proof of stake cannot be decentralized since it's permissioned by stake and not permissionless - we studied it since it first thought about in 2014.
You literally cannot get stake without someone giving you permission because it's an internally already owned resource. Permission is barrier to entry of up to infinity and another word for censorship. If control is not distributed without permission to independent parties, it cannot be called decentralized nor censorship resistant.
There is no alternative to proof of work because that uses an EXTERNAL permissionless resource available all over the universe for a reason. And it does it in a matter that's provable via a concept known as unforgeable costliness.
Not only is mining permissionless, it's costly to everyone. At equilibrium the mining costs force miners to sell virtually all coins and depend on the markets for recovering those sunk costs just to break even. That means miners are literally forced to give up control to the markets and makes the coins equally accessible without permission via mining or buying on markets forced through unforgeable costliness. The markets, and coin owners, get to price incentives that pay miners on every possible version of the chain preventing many issues including miner collusion that could render sunk costs unrecoverable.
Proof of stake is opposite - it literally forces a permission be given by every token put up for sale, something they never have to do. Staking rewards literally incentivize opposite of distributing control to others by giving you rewards in form of more coins and more control without any additional costs forever.
Proof of work is the most efficient way, the only known way, and the best known way to decentralize control. And it uses far less energy than entire countries regularly use to secure their currency, all in adversarial environment.
The biggest challenge for real decentralized cryptocurrencies is lack of education and enormous incentives to deceive and miseducate everyone for profit. This is why there's so much money these days spent marketing scams that pretend to be cryptocurrencies but are centrally premined (literally skipped permissionless mining for majority for permissioned centrally pre-mined coins) or trivially printed authority token designs like proof of stake all completely permissioned.
There is no alternative to proof of work because that uses an EXTERNAL permissionless resource available all over the universe for a reason. And it does it in a matter that's provable via a concept known as unforgeable costliness.
Not only is mining permissionless, it's costly to everyone. At equilibrium the mining costs force miners to sell virtually all coins and depend on the markets for recovering those sunk costs just to break even. That means miners are literally forced to give up control to the markets and makes the coins equally accessible without permission via mining or buying on markets forced through unforgeable costliness. The markets, and coin owners, get to price incentives that pay miners on every possible version of the chain preventing many issues including miner collusion that could render sunk costs unrecoverable.
Proof of stake is opposite - it literally forces a permission be given by every token put up for sale, something they never have to do. Staking rewards literally incentivize opposite of distributing control to others by giving you rewards in form of more coins and more control without any additional costs forever.
Proof of work is the most efficient way, the only known way, and the best known way to decentralize control. And it uses far less energy than entire countries regularly use to secure their currency, all in adversarial environment.
The biggest challenge for real decentralized cryptocurrencies is lack of education and enormous incentives to deceive and miseducate everyone for profit. This is why there's so much money these days spent marketing scams that pretend to be cryptocurrencies but are centrally premined (literally skipped permissionless mining for majority for permissioned centrally pre-mined coins) or trivially printed authority token designs like proof of stake all completely permissioned.
Check out Ark coin, its proof of stake since the beginning and they’re doing interesting things that are sustainable.
Cardano
[deleted]
Https://Nano.org
It seems initial distribution was centrally managed in this coin. Needs much stronger proof of no foul play in this case than a shiny web site
Where can one buy some?
Polkadot / Kusama (by the original CTO of Ethereum Dr. Gavin Wood)
Nice recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAa1vKyVR5M
Nice recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAa1vKyVR5M
Polkadot/Kusama are amazing projects, but not designed to be used primarily as p2p currencies. As much as I have some issues / doubts with Cardano, I still think it's the most viable PoS cryptocurrency for mass adoption right now. ETH2 maybe also, whenever the transition actually happens.
except the fact they are literally centrally premined scams and not permissionless since you can't get stake without someone choosing for literally no forced reason to give you access
there's a reason ethereum has always been considered a scam by every developer in the space that wasn't a premine scammer
there's a reason ethereum has always been considered a scam by every developer in the space that wasn't a premine scammer
Proof of stake is validation-by-the-rich
I like https://chia.net, even if hackernews was just panicking about a harddrive shortage (proof of space) I can't accept that playing bingo on terabyte drives will ever be profitable enough to buy a data center for it.
Anyway it's the programmability (chialisp) that is really interesting.
I like https://chia.net, even if hackernews was just panicking about a harddrive shortage (proof of space) I can't accept that playing bingo on terabyte drives will ever be profitable enough to buy a data center for it.
Anyway it's the programmability (chialisp) that is really interesting.
> Proof of stake is validation-by-the-rich
But so is proof-of-work. PoS is weighted by how much wealth you’ve got at risk in the system, PoW by how much you have currently tied up supporting the system’s infrastructure. So, they look at different uses of wealth, but both are looking at wealth.
Proof-of-X is pretty invariably “Wealth, applied to X”, especially if the system ever becomes even loosely recognized as money-like.
But so is proof-of-work. PoS is weighted by how much wealth you’ve got at risk in the system, PoW by how much you have currently tied up supporting the system’s infrastructure. So, they look at different uses of wealth, but both are looking at wealth.
Proof-of-X is pretty invariably “Wealth, applied to X”, especially if the system ever becomes even loosely recognized as money-like.
Exactly, proof of work is even more for rich because it's all about availability to processors and cheap energy - guess who has that? super rich and corrupt.
Proof of Stake is validation by faith in the network which is infinitely more reliable and fair. In fact it's much more alligned with bitcoins philosophy of positive-greed than proof of work is in the current day. Heads of PoS need the network healthy for their assets to be healthy - heads of PoW can rotate shitcoins every month since they mine all the same.
Proof of Stake is validation by faith in the network which is infinitely more reliable and fair. In fact it's much more alligned with bitcoins philosophy of positive-greed than proof of work is in the current day. Heads of PoS need the network healthy for their assets to be healthy - heads of PoW can rotate shitcoins every month since they mine all the same.
Chia is a puppy-stage environmental and supply chain disaster waiting to happen.
If you burn an ssd a week to make a tiny profit, you’ll have people burning racks of them and creating tonnes of eWaste. Look forward to $2k entry level laptops (see gpu prices)
If you burn an ssd a week to make a tiny profit, you’ll have people burning racks of them and creating tonnes of eWaste. Look forward to $2k entry level laptops (see gpu prices)
You used to be able to mine Bitcoin on a CPU.
Then a GPU, now it takes warehouses full of ASICs to do it profitably.
What's stopping Chia from doing the same thing to the storage space?
Adoption. I don't like Chia, and I don't want other people to like it either.
Then a GPU, now it takes warehouses full of ASICs to do it profitably.
What's stopping Chia from doing the same thing to the storage space?
Adoption. I don't like Chia, and I don't want other people to like it either.
> What's stopping Chia from doing the same thing to the storage space?
The gobsmacking amount of HDD supply on earth. For now people are burning SSDs to create the plots (1TB SSD can probably create a petabyte of plots to "farm"), but if you have that petabyte of storage space you're keeping online 24/7, do you suspect playing bingo to win crypto tokens is the most profitable use of that memory?
How the economics shake out remains to be seen, but I think they have a solid vision that farming can be just rewarding enough for people to use old harddrives, not profitable enough to burn NVMe sticks.
eg: I farmed 2 coins running an old thinkpad and a network drive for a month so far. Worth ~$2200 at current rate. Nice profit, but probably not buying a new thinkpad to dedicate to it.
The gobsmacking amount of HDD supply on earth. For now people are burning SSDs to create the plots (1TB SSD can probably create a petabyte of plots to "farm"), but if you have that petabyte of storage space you're keeping online 24/7, do you suspect playing bingo to win crypto tokens is the most profitable use of that memory?
How the economics shake out remains to be seen, but I think they have a solid vision that farming can be just rewarding enough for people to use old harddrives, not profitable enough to burn NVMe sticks.
eg: I farmed 2 coins running an old thinkpad and a network drive for a month so far. Worth ~$2200 at current rate. Nice profit, but probably not buying a new thinkpad to dedicate to it.
This is my issue: the only thing stopping it from becoming the most profitable use of that memory is the market value of Chia.
Chia isn't cool. Chia gives you bad breath, and it makes dogs hate you. Spread the word.
Chia isn't cool. Chia gives you bad breath, and it makes dogs hate you. Spread the word.
Chia is another proof of waste coin. Not what we need at all.
It seems that Tesla is using the popularity of Bitcoin to prove the concept while making a lot of money and then they can switch to Dogecoin propping its price up.
If I was Elon, I would use my influence on the crypto market to buy back Tesla to take it out of the stock market.
For SpaceX, use it for extra funding.
For SpaceX, use it for extra funding.
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I would just like to hear what those who were saying that Bitcoin is Tesla's long term position 3 months ago have to say now?
Once Ethereum completes its transition to Proof of Stake, which will reduce its energy consumption by 99.75%, it will be the natural choice for Tesla.
I'm not sure that being the natural choice for another pump n dump scheme is a good thing.
Tesla didn't dump bitcoin. They only sold 10% of their holding, so any negative impact of their decision to cease acceptance of bitcoin for vehicle purchases, on the value of their bitcoin holdings, would outweigh the gains they made from pumping bitcoin and selling a portion of it.
> They only sold 10% of their holding
That we know of.
That we know of.
So we can't claim Tesla did a pump and dump because there's no evidence showing that.
1. Pump
2. Dump <--- You are here
Somebody short bitcoin? ;-)
the world is drifting towards redditocracy
Tesla is a joke.
there is theory, after the big sell offs in the stock market Elon wants to drive the crypto space down too to hurt the shorts
Why is this guy not in jail? This is blatantly manipulating cryptos almost every other week.
Is there anything legally wrong with manipulating crypto courses? Or even ethically?
The supposed main advantage of cryptos is that they are independent of governments and institutions, and their rules. And in this case, that's exactly what they get.
And besides that, without 'manipulation' (which I'd say includes any kind of marketing), cryptos would inherently be worth exactly nothing.
The supposed main advantage of cryptos is that they are independent of governments and institutions, and their rules. And in this case, that's exactly what they get.
And besides that, without 'manipulation' (which I'd say includes any kind of marketing), cryptos would inherently be worth exactly nothing.
These markets are being manipulated by big money all the time. Musk just makes it more obvious how pathetic the system always has been.
For the exact same reasons that Jim Cramer is not in jail, CNBC staff is not in jail, Marketwatch staff is not in jail, Motley fool staff is not in jail, Ken Griffin is not in jail, etc etc.
For the same reasons the people who tried to short and manipulate Tesla (and GameStop) into bankruptcy for gains didn't go to jail.
Also for the same reasons market makers and hedge funds like Citadel can still exist while blatantly manipulating the market every second of every day and deliberately shorting healthy companies into bankruptcy for gains.
All of the above parties are doing way way way worse than Musk in broad daylight. All Musk does is arguably pump and dump. The above parties pump and dump and are constantly wash trading, influencing/buying the SEC, buying media (CNBC "Tesla is almost bankrupt, sell now", etc) for pump and dumps, pump & dumping on Twitter (Cramer), naked shorting illegally, messing with order executions, HFT DDoS attacks on exchanges for profit and so on and so forth. All at the attractive cost of meaningless tiny fines (assuming they get fined at all) and 0 jail time.
Yes. The US financial markets are completely rotten.
Ironically, I feel that the crypto markets are much fairer. At least you can buy a real token directly and sell that real token for money on an exchange of your chosing. At least it's clear that Musk is pumping and dumping (as opposed to Jim Cramer on CNBC, who does exactly the same for hedge funds under the veil of "trustworthy media").
As a comparison: ever tried to get your hands on stock certificates for stock you own? Good luck with that. Can you point me to a broker where you can directly own a share? You can't. They don't exist. Can you point me to a broker that doesn't lend out the shares which YOU "own" to hedge funds? I know of some in Europe, but they are very rare. Can you point me to a broker that allows you to route your orders to the exchange of your choice? I can only name 1: IBKR. The vast majority of brokers get paid to route your orders to the exchange that is worst for you and best for whoever is paying off your broker. And then there's "cheap" brokers who offer "payment for order flow" where traders essentially pay a "trade fee" to whoever is paying for order flow (to give you worse execution than themselves).
I could go on and on and on.
PS: to be sure, I don't mean to turn this into whataboutism and to argue that Musk's pump & dumps are ethically OK because others are doing worse. The point I'm trying to make is that the US markets are essentially rigged and unfair. And claiming that Musk should be in jail for pump-n-dumping is fine, but then many others should be jail too. Preferably for longer and with way higher priority.
For the same reasons the people who tried to short and manipulate Tesla (and GameStop) into bankruptcy for gains didn't go to jail.
Also for the same reasons market makers and hedge funds like Citadel can still exist while blatantly manipulating the market every second of every day and deliberately shorting healthy companies into bankruptcy for gains.
All of the above parties are doing way way way worse than Musk in broad daylight. All Musk does is arguably pump and dump. The above parties pump and dump and are constantly wash trading, influencing/buying the SEC, buying media (CNBC "Tesla is almost bankrupt, sell now", etc) for pump and dumps, pump & dumping on Twitter (Cramer), naked shorting illegally, messing with order executions, HFT DDoS attacks on exchanges for profit and so on and so forth. All at the attractive cost of meaningless tiny fines (assuming they get fined at all) and 0 jail time.
Yes. The US financial markets are completely rotten.
Ironically, I feel that the crypto markets are much fairer. At least you can buy a real token directly and sell that real token for money on an exchange of your chosing. At least it's clear that Musk is pumping and dumping (as opposed to Jim Cramer on CNBC, who does exactly the same for hedge funds under the veil of "trustworthy media").
As a comparison: ever tried to get your hands on stock certificates for stock you own? Good luck with that. Can you point me to a broker where you can directly own a share? You can't. They don't exist. Can you point me to a broker that doesn't lend out the shares which YOU "own" to hedge funds? I know of some in Europe, but they are very rare. Can you point me to a broker that allows you to route your orders to the exchange of your choice? I can only name 1: IBKR. The vast majority of brokers get paid to route your orders to the exchange that is worst for you and best for whoever is paying off your broker. And then there's "cheap" brokers who offer "payment for order flow" where traders essentially pay a "trade fee" to whoever is paying for order flow (to give you worse execution than themselves).
I could go on and on and on.
PS: to be sure, I don't mean to turn this into whataboutism and to argue that Musk's pump & dumps are ethically OK because others are doing worse. The point I'm trying to make is that the US markets are essentially rigged and unfair. And claiming that Musk should be in jail for pump-n-dumping is fine, but then many others should be jail too. Preferably for longer and with way higher priority.
Elon is still promoting Dogecoin which is also proof of work. Lots of people will be harmed when it crashes. Nearly all cryptocurrencies crash 85% every once in a while.
Is your real name "Richard J Schueler", and is this true?
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_...
>Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart
>Legal and questionable events from Richard J Schueler:
>2002: Sued and won by Peacefire.org for violating Washingtons anti-spam laws, he was known at that time as the 'spam king' and made a lot of money off it - source. The Methuselah Foundation, for which Heart volunteered at that time, was committed to extending the human lifespan and “making 90 the new 50”.
>Questionable events in Panama: Several of Heart’s alleged aliases (James Hart, J. Richard, Richard Schueler) were named in connection with a Panamanian criminal network. Heart, called "CharityLover' at that time supposed cohorts included robbers, blackmailers and corrupt lawyers and judges, according to posts stemming from the now defunct Panama-Guide website . Miguel Antonio Bernal (Panama lawyer) described the process by which American criminals flooded Panama to “rob, cheat and blackmail local businessmen using Panama’s weak legal system'' in the linked post under ''Panama".
You're the same "Richard Heart" who won the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for "HEX", correct?
https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/kwhjxa/why_...
>Why HEX is a Ponzi and not a solid investment (Part 2): Richard Heart
>Legal and questionable events from Richard J Schueler:
>2002: Sued and won by Peacefire.org for violating Washingtons anti-spam laws, he was known at that time as the 'spam king' and made a lot of money off it - source. The Methuselah Foundation, for which Heart volunteered at that time, was committed to extending the human lifespan and “making 90 the new 50”.
>Questionable events in Panama: Several of Heart’s alleged aliases (James Hart, J. Richard, Richard Schueler) were named in connection with a Panamanian criminal network. Heart, called "CharityLover' at that time supposed cohorts included robbers, blackmailers and corrupt lawyers and judges, according to posts stemming from the now defunct Panama-Guide website . Miguel Antonio Bernal (Panama lawyer) described the process by which American criminals flooded Panama to “rob, cheat and blackmail local businessmen using Panama’s weak legal system'' in the linked post under ''Panama".
You're the same "Richard Heart" who won the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for "HEX", correct?
https://twitter.com/JuanSGalt/status/1233242355995750400
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=tf-lJu5iDh...
Humor: So I'm sure your explanation of why somebody hasn't already successfully implemented practical proof of stake before is totally credible and unbiased! ;)
Not Humor: If somebody will work on it for free, do you promise to pay them in your own cryptocurrency? "Will work for stake!"
Not Humor: If somebody will work on it for free, do you promise to pay them in your own cryptocurrency? "Will work for stake!"
People have successfully implemented proof of stake cryptos. Solana, cardano, avax,algorand just to name a few are all faster and cheaper than BTC or ETH (some vastly so), and don’t have the horrifying resource usage that comes with proof of work.
As far as I can tell, the fact that bitcoin/eth weren’t phased out for better alternatives tells me that: * a significant usage of crypto is pure speculation/investment * peoples identity gets tied to particular coins * people care more about existing network than usability (eth vs solana, for example)
I have respect for the people in this space who are trying to do meaningfully new or interesting things, although its overshadowed by the wealth of blatant Ponzi schemes, memecoins, or copycats/scams just trying to make a quick buck.
As far as I can tell, the fact that bitcoin/eth weren’t phased out for better alternatives tells me that: * a significant usage of crypto is pure speculation/investment * peoples identity gets tied to particular coins * people care more about existing network than usability (eth vs solana, for example)
I have respect for the people in this space who are trying to do meaningfully new or interesting things, although its overshadowed by the wealth of blatant Ponzi schemes, memecoins, or copycats/scams just trying to make a quick buck.
You don't have to destroy the environment to maintain a database. There's other ways to achieve censorship resistance than waste. Blockchains are are all social consensus anyway.
"Do you want to develop my new cryptocurrency?" is the new "Do you want to develop an app?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult...
Edit: [You spoiled the joke by retroactively editing your post and removing your amusing disclaimer that you had a financial stake in shilling POS, and your hilarious call for programmers to help you develop your new cryptocurrency! "Dodge, dodge." That's what makes you so funny! The "Glooty" character parody is spot on.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVy0JWX5XEY&ab_channel=Adult...
Edit: [You spoiled the joke by retroactively editing your post and removing your amusing disclaimer that you had a financial stake in shilling POS, and your hilarious call for programmers to help you develop your new cryptocurrency! "Dodge, dodge." That's what makes you so funny! The "Glooty" character parody is spot on.]
I see your joke and raise you one joke https://paywithexposure.com/ Also, you should actually watch the interview on the page you just linked. It's amazing.
Not a joke:
Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer
https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-h...
So will you again confirm what the article claims you already confirmed?
>Richard Heart was sued for spamming in 2002 under WA state law. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i...
>During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days.
Is this an accurate quote of your own words?
>When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.”
Confronting Richard Heart of HEX - SPAM KING and Crypto Scammer
https://www.cointelligence.com/content/confronting-richard-h...
So will you again confirm what the article claims you already confirmed?
>Richard Heart was sued for spamming in 2002 under WA state law. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/peacefire-org-beats-spammers-i...
>During the interview at ANON, Richard confirmed that he was one of the first people in the world to be sued for online spam, back in 2002. This shows us Richard has experience abusing unregulated markets, as he is doing with crypto these days.
Is this an accurate quote of your own words?
>When I pressed the matter and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether he, as the FOUNDER of HEX, knows who benefits from the funds sent to the “Origin Address” he flat-out said “I’m dodging your question.” Dodging the question! He proceeds to repeat “Dodge, dodge.”
The same argument people made against Tesla saying why electric cars weren't really better than combustion engine cars. They said Tesla cars use a lot of energy, much of which comes from coal and other dirty sources. What a joke that Elon is making this argument.
There's a big difference. Even if people using EVs now effectively burn coal to do it, they replaced an ICE and can migrate to greener sources over time. On the other hand, crypto mining exists purely on top of existing energy usage. These are not really comparable situations.
Sorry, I am not sure I completely understand your argument. You expect the energy used for Tesla cars to more easily migrate to greener energy? Bitcoin mining is completely location independent and is able to migrate to cheaper (which as renewable energy tech improves will equal greener) energy much easier than an individual tesla owner can.
Assuming EV purchases on average replace existing cars not add new ones. (They do in a long run)
Energy usage:
Before buying an EV: X with Y convertible to green. After buying an EV: X with Y+d convertible to green.
Before a new miner starting: X with Y convertible to green. After: X+d with Y+d convertible to green.
It doesn't matter if the new miner is running 100% green, because they still use energy which could instead replace some amount of fossil fuels. We're not really isolated in this context - all of us suffer from not removing the reliance on burning coal.
Energy usage:
Before buying an EV: X with Y convertible to green. After buying an EV: X with Y+d convertible to green.
Before a new miner starting: X with Y convertible to green. After: X+d with Y+d convertible to green.
It doesn't matter if the new miner is running 100% green, because they still use energy which could instead replace some amount of fossil fuels. We're not really isolated in this context - all of us suffer from not removing the reliance on burning coal.
Not only that but the same logic can also be applied to bitcoin, which aims to replace a financial system based on a petroleum standard.
[deleted]
More easily than your new combustion engine car, I think was the argument.
The whole situation is completly different. There are way better alternative technologies then Bitcoin.
But there is no electric car with < then 0.1% of the energy consumption of a tesla.
But there is no electric car with < then 0.1% of the energy consumption of a tesla.
How about mass transit, bicycles, running, walking. Lets stop using airplanes and use blimps instead. Maybe there are benefits to using energy? Energy usage is how society and technology advances.
Mass transit isn’t available to everyone. They don’t even have buses where I live.
> But there is no electric car
Well fortunately for us, cars aren't the only methods of transportation.
Well fortunately for us, cars aren't the only methods of transportation.
Tesla cars don't use an absurd amount of energy given the problem they're solving. Bitcoin does.
This is only true if you don't think Bitcoin is solving an important problem. For me, I think it is solving arguably the most important problem. That being said, even if I think clothes dryers (which use more energy than bitcoin) aren't solving a very important problem, I don't try and tell people they are bad or immoral or destroying the environment because they use clothes dryers.