The Bitcoin Saga

[Tim_N]

@arrendek

Which cryptocoin does all of those things you mentioned?

Check out the Stellar network. It’s hard to find good comparisons with VISA but here is one place that has a table for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, and Visa:

Poseidon with Stellar blockchain to reduce carbon footprint -

(Note: can’t verify that their numbers aren’t legit)

There are others that are very green and can scale much much better than Bitcoin or Ethereum: Ripple (very similar tech to Stellar but more centralised), Algorand, TRON, and Cardano.

[Perky_Goth]

@Tim_N

There are already a great deal of stablecoins that have kept their value steady over long periods of time.

Maybe, I don’t look at all of them. Which ones? I’ll make a note to look at the new post.

@Tim_N

I’m not sure what you mean that it hasn’t accomplished decentralization.

Having a high # of entities in control of >50% of voting/mining power that would prevent collusion, tacit or not, on every single transaction.

@Tim_N

There are coins that exist right now, which conduct a large number of transactions per second, where fees are almost zero, transactions are near-instant globally, and it uses less energy per transaction than Visa.

Maybe, for the same reason, although my limited knowledge of the tech leads me to think some of those are contradictory, at least at scale, and add anti-fraud, etc.
But you do have a point, one+ could have a use as competition to the financial world, even if that’s an artifact of countries relinquishing their power and obligation of limiting them. I’ll take that look, maybe not right now, though.

[Wallapuctus]

So I woke up today and, like…

Buy the dip?

[lordkosc]

Mortgage everything and buy in, YOLO?

:)

[Wallapuctus]

I guess China banned crypto last night or something. And that’s how it happens. This isn’t money. China isn’t banning their banks from trading Dollars.

[inactive_user]

Stopped clock, twice a day, etc, etc.

[Woolen_Horde]

Coinbase is down for some users as Bitcoin sees massive sell-off

I see a damn ad for Coinbase on YouTube ALL THE TIME. DIE COINBASE. DIE.

[Ginger_Yellow]

@Woolen_Horde

Several social media users seemed frustrated

Really, CNBC?

[Wallapuctus]

@Woolen_Horde

I see a damn ad for Coinbase on YouTube ALL THE TIME. DIE COINBASE. DIE.

[Skip Ad 5] Earn Crypto while you learn about Crypto! [Skip Ad 3] Apply for your Crypto card now [Skip Ad 1] Coinba–[SKIP AD]

I don’t want to learn about Crypto I want to learn about UFOs!

[AK_Icebear]

The same thing happened in 2017 when China banned crypto exchanges. People figured out how to keep trading regardless. The whole decentralized network, etc.

Not sure when China objecting to anything was ever a sign of illegitimacy.

And, BTC has been falling for about 6 weeks, by more than it did last night. Sentiments clearly changed in early April - not because of anything specific to cryptocurrency, but rather because the end of the stimulus feast of 2020-21 is now more evident. As easy money dries up, highly liquid assets will lose some or all of the pricing they gained during the liquidity flood.

The same will happen with other assets like stocks, wood, steel etc over the next few quarters.

None of that is a defense of BTC at $65k, mind you. Just observing that every asset price in the world inflated in the past year and will face a correction as stimulus ends.

[MarinusWA]

I for one welcome this crash as I sold everything off already.

Also, if this is the big one, the ‘dip’ is still months away.

[Andy_Bates]

@Timex

No, it’s literally not. It is a unique physical object that exists as finite, quantitatively measurable matter within the physical universe.

The atoms of that print are unique. It exists as a separate physical object from other copies.

None of this applies to digital media. Digital media is a purely abstract thing, with no physical form at all. Every copy is literally exactly the same, because it is essentially nothing more than a sequence of numbers.

First of all, you’re assuming that all artwork is “a unique physical object” which is not necessarily true. Secondly, all you’re saying is that physical is different from digital, when for all intents and purposes the infinite duplicability of digital media also applies to physical media. But you have yet to clarify why physical media can be purchasable and collectible, but digital media can not be.

[AK_Icebear]

This is a useful article on BTC energy usage: How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?

Many journalists and academics talk about Bitcoin’s high “per-transaction energy cost,” but this metric is misleading. The vast majority of Bitcoin’s energy consumption happens during the mining process. Once coins have been issued, the energy required to validate transactions is minimal. As such, simply looking at Bitcoin’s total energy draw to date and dividing that by the number of transactions doesn’t make sense — most of that energy was used to mine Bitcoins, not to support transactions. And that leads us to the final critical misconception: that the energy costs associated with mining Bitcoin will continue to grow exponentially.

[CraigM]

Well there is also some intentional blurring.

One artist I know of working in the NFT space is also tying a physical representation token to the NFT token. Basically they are making a physical collectible item tied to the NFT sale.

It’s a whole wild west out there, with the differences being all over the place.

[Timex]

@Andy_Bates

First of all, you’re assuming that all artwork is “a unique physical object” which is not necessarily true.

When is it not true, given that we are talking about physical artwork in contrast to digital media?

@Andy_Bates

But you have yet to clarify why physical media can be purchasable and collectible, but digital media can not be.

You can totally collect whatever you want.

[Andy_Bates]

@Timex

When is it not true, given that we are talking about physical artwork in contrast to digital media?

Lawrence Weiner’s piece, “A 36” x 36" Removal to the Lathing or Support Wall of Plaster or Wallboard from a Wall" is a physical artwork that can be duplicated an unlimited number of times, and is not actually a physical object. Granted it’s an edge case, but there you go.

@Timex

You can totally collect whatever you want.

I was hoping you actually had a point about why you believe digital artwork isn’t (or shouldn’t be) collectible because you can make infinite copies, but I guess not.

[justkevin]

I think that article is very misleading. It makes it sound like the intensive energy use isn’t caused by bitcoin transactions, it’s caused by miners, as if those were two separate processes. Adding a transaction to the blockchain requires proof of “work.” People doing the work get a reward of bitcoin.

It’d be like if I claimed that my eating a steak had little environmental impact, because most of the impact was caused by farmers.

[Timex]

@Andy_Bates

Lawrence Weiner’s piece, “A 36” x 36" Removal to the Lathing or Support Wall of Plaster or Wallboard from a Wall" is a physical artwork that can be duplicated an unlimited number of times, and is not actually a physical object. Granted it’s an edge case, but there you go.

Who owns that work of art?

@Andy_Bates

I was hoping you actually had a point about why you believe digital artwork isn’t (or shouldn’t be) collectible because you can make infinite copies, but I guess not.

Anything is collectible. I could collect blades of grass, or grains of sand.

You can collect digital media, but ultimately anyone else who has a copy is going to have exactly the same thing you do.

This is fundamentally different from something like a coin, or a baseball card. If I own a baseball card, I own it, and you don’t, and the only way you can get it is if you get it from me.

[Mark_Weston]

@AK_Icebear

This is a useful article on BTC energy usage: How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?

Many journalists and academics talk about Bitcoin’s high “per-transaction energy cost,” but this metric is misleading. The vast majority of Bitcoin’s energy consumption happens during the mining process. Once coins have been issued, the energy required to validate transactions is minimal. As such, simply looking at Bitcoin’s total energy draw to date and dividing that by the number of transactions doesn’t make sense — most of that energy was used to mine Bitcoins, not to support transactions. And that leads us to the final critical misconception: that the energy costs associated with mining Bitcoin will continue to grow exponentially.

My understanding is that if there was no mining, there’d be no validation of transactions. The ability to mine is the incentive that keeps the processing power on the network needed for decentralized transaction processing. So there are no transactions without more coins being mined; the mining itself is literally the cost of doing business and that will always be true.

[Tim_N]

(always be true for proof of work blockchains).