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submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin::US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.

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[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Some have tried, they have all failed. Bitcoin is international. A 51% attack is so implausibly expensive that nobody really has the resources to pull it off. Even if you had enough money and energy to burn, there is the small problem of acquiring enough of the specialized hardware to do it (ASIC miners), and potentially the specs and fab to make that hardware. People will see it coming a mile away. Don't want to use ASICs? Enjoy at least a 100x increase in energy and equipment costs. And it gets more expensive every year. If you had that much money to put into destroying Bitcoin, it would be much better spent on an ad campaign telling people Bitcoin was bad than doing a 51% attack.

A 51% attack doesn't prove Bitcoin is broken, it proves the protocol is working exactly as expected. A 51% attack causes a temporary fork. This happens all the time organically when two miners find the next block at the same time, it's a natural part of the protocol. That's why for really large or important transactions on main chain, you wait a few blocks before considering them fully secured.

Bitcoin's value to society is the ability to easily transfer money from point A to B and having a clear fiscal policy it has kept to for 15 years, 365 days a year, 24/7 without a single hour of downtime, a bank holiday, or getting hacked. There's a reason big money like hedge funds and private banking are investing in it: it's actually useful and has massive potential. The market cap of Bitcoin is 850 BILLION USD, that's bigger than the GDP of Sweden or Israel or Vietnam. People use it to move over a trillion dollars of value a year. You can debate how much of that movement is trading & speculation vs use as a currency, but it's a trillion nonetheless. I personally pay for things regularly with Bitcoin, you'd be surprised how many places you can spend it when you start looking. And it's available to anybody with a cellphone and halfway reliable internet access, including the billions of people who are "unbanked" and lack access to stable banking infrastructure.

Transactions on Bitcoin lightning occur in under a second and cost pennies in fees. That's to send it across the room or across the globe. Remittance services and bank wires use just as much energy and cost 10x-1000x as much. And they waste not just energy but human capital as well, we no longer need humans manually sending bank wires like it's 1910. You just don't see headlines about the energy impact of bank wires or western union because it's not novel, we just accept it as a cost of our financial system.

That's not even getting into the secondary costs to the environment of running a society on an economy based on an inflationary currency which requires that currency be rapidly spent because it's getting constantly devalued. That's a great strategy to rapidly industrialize the world, but it's not a great strategy on a globe with limited resources. Tell me, if you knew your dollar would be worth 10% more next year, would you be more hesitant to spend it? Might you consume less if you knew saving money in your bank account would actually cause it's value to stay the same or increase over time? Might you focus your spending more on quality products that will last instead of just buying the cheapest thing because if it breaks, you can just buy a new one? This isn't just on a personal level, this same kind of calculus is used by big investment firms to build everything that won't last. Buildings, stadiums, entire cities, financed with money that is constantly losing value. Bitcoin's value relative to goods and services will fluctuate like any currency does, but the supply of the currency does not increase. There are 21 million which will ever be minted. Your 0.1BTC will always be 0.1BTC and will always represent 0.1/128M% of the total supply. If the Bitcoin economy grows, you share in that growth and the value it produces instead of seeing the difference printed away and given to whoever controls the money supply and whoever they want to give it to.

[-] hark@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Skip ad. Bitcoin is pumped through ridiculous leverage and printing of "stable" coins like tether. The scam hasn't unraveled yet, but that doesn't mean it won't.

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml -5 points 9 months ago

Do you know that Tether and Bitcoin are different things? Because it seems like you don't.

[-] hark@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Do you know that tether is printed and used to buy bitcoin? Because it seems like you don't.

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Stablecoins are a house of cards built around stably relating to another house of cards which is the entire inflationary fiat system. Every single asset and currency is speculated on via the open market. Bitcoin is no exception. If it is overvalued or undervalued, that creates market opportunities for people to exploit the difference. The market has decided it's worth a certain amount today, it will be another amount tomorrow. Not unique to Bitcoin. Every year people have said Bitcoin was "overvalued" and powered purely by hype, on average, the market has decided they were wrong the following year.

Any honestly-run stablecoin inherently has to collateralize their coin with something. They can buy BTC (and do), they can buy USD (and do), they can buy wheat futures (but I'm not sure they do). Ultimately, a diverse portfolio would probably be wisest. Yet you don't see anybody complaining that "USD is being pumped by Tether/USDC". Why? Because it's not a problem.

[-] TypicalHog@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

??? How is USD being pumped by USDT/USDC? I'm lost, lol.

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml -1 points 9 months ago

The previous poster is alleging BTC is being "pumped" by tether because tether is collateralizing their coin by buying BTC. I'm pointing out that they also buy USD yet nobody is complaining that USD is being pumped.

If you buy a stablecoin, the hope is that the stablecoin is tied to an actual dollar (or whatever it is supposed to represent). This means if you buy $1 in tether, tether should buy $1 USD on the open market, put it in a vault, and wait until somebody else comes back to sell that dollar back to Tether. But you can buy other stuff too, other assets, which when you start managing large amounts of money is important for risk management. Plus they can make some returns that way. Some stablecoins pass the returns on to people who hold the stablecoin. Generally, these stablecoins are collapses waiting to happen for these and many other reasons.

[-] TypicalHog@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Do you genuinely believe the impact of Tether buying Bitcoin on Bitcoins price is comparable to the impact of Tether buying USD to USD "price"/value? Like fr?

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not saying it doesn't impact the price, I'm saying it doesn't matter. Bitcoin's current price looks like a steal to me if it's going to be the underlying currency for the global economy.

All currency is speculated on. The market finds the right price. Then it corrects. The price goes up and down. That's how markets work. The USD is guaranteed to lose value and buying power over time due to an inflationary supply. That's not even throwing in the US's declining role as a global currency hegemon and the reduced demand it causes.

Bitcoin? It could go up or down relative to other currencies or goods, but my portion of the supply relative to the whole will always be the same. That's why I buy bitcoin.

[-] TypicalHog@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

People defending Binance and Tether are either:

  • Clueless and haven't done any research
  • Brainwashed
  • Part of the Binance/Tether cartel
  • Paid to do it
  • Lying to themselves
  • Aware of the truth, but want their bags to continue to be propped up by fraudsters

Which one are you?

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

IDGAF about Tether, IMO it will collapse one day, and the world will be better for it. It's a currency whose basis is "trust me bro".

[-] TypicalHog@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

I just wish it collapsed sooner. At this point the effect on the whole crypto sector, be it BTC, ETH or ADA will be unimaginable for most people.

this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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