Great Q! No I don´t see a problem, I see a solution. Bitcoin´s use of energy is what makes it viable. The more energy it uses, the more secure it becomes. It also creates peaceful competition for innovation (competition in absence of war) to harness cheaper, renewable, or waste energy, and the advancement of computational power and efficiency. For instance, many miners are now capturing the waste energy from burn stacks of oil rigs on site - energy that is released in a state too volatile to store of transport. Also, surplus grid energy can now be captured as monetary potential energy. Here´s a short documentary on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc
Forgive me for not saying your analysis is excellent.
But one major solar flare on an entire face of one major continent ,could sideline all electric to it. ⚡ Maybe as permanent. I don't know the possibility nor the probability. No one else does either. I have no problem with making it the alternative to USD soon.
Yeah I think many systems would struggle in cases of nuclear or solar flare EMPs... Bitcoin is as durable as the internet, which was designed to withstand nuclear war. If we get sent back to the stone age, then that´s that. A couple of people have asked this question and if you check the thread you´ll find a comprehensive answer. I´ll likely publish a long-form article to answer it in greater detail since many people have the same quiery. Thanks for your feedback and thought provoking questions!
I´m not sure if a nitrogen or oxygen generator would be most efficient... Although with electrolysis it is possible to turn H20 into volatile O2H2 gas, which turns back into water when combusted, it takes more energy input than there is output. Nitrogen is a very stable element and as such not a very promising fuel source.
When you buy bitcoin & you purchase it with money , fiat money , with a credit card etc etc , who gets the fiat money with which you buy crypto ? The fiat leaves your bank , how is it transferred & to whom?
Great question! It depends who you buy it from. You can buy Bitcoin from peer to peer venders on marketplaces like HodlHodl.com, or from exchanges like bullbitcoin.ca. You can buy Bitcoin from anyone who has Bitcoin, and you can have friends and clients pay you in Bitcoin for your services too.
Bitcoin is autonomous and decentralized, and there is no centralized source of distribution.
If I'm wrong so be it, but the Bible ONLY talks about gold and silver. Our paper money or imaginary money should be backed by gold. Period. You also need a system the smartest or dumbest person can use.
". . . if we can transition to a global condition in which Bitcoin is used as a popular medium of exchange or as a reserve currency, . . . " What do you think are the chances that central bankers will ever allow that to happen? Until/unless that happens, Bitcoin will not save us from bankers' planned digital currencies. Also, it's important to note that we need to stop calling these things "central bank digital currencies." Bankers outside the Fed realized that if we get our currency directly from the Fed, they would be out of business, so the Fed has conceded to allow other banks to establish digital currencies.
Perhaps, but, as I understand it, you cannot get into Bitcoin without spending dollars (or some other fiat currency), so Bitcoin at this point cannot completely replace fiat currencies, and, so far, there are very few things you can buy with Bitcoin. You can't shop for groceries, for instance, and it seems we're a long way away from that basic capability. It's nice to have buying power, but only if you can actually buy things with it.
Great Q! If there´s a break in the Bitcoin network, disconnected partitions will continue to operate and when the grid comes back online and partitions are reconnected, the longest partition of the blockchain (the one which was upheld by the largest network of computational power) will automatically be adopted by all other partitions. That would be in the case of a continental grid failure. In the case of a city or even a provincial grid going down, there would be almost no effect on the global network, and that area would simply carry on with the rest of the network when they´re back online. Bitcoin custody would likewise be unaffected, since Bitcoin isn´t stored on electronic devices like cash in a wallet, but as input/output transaction history documented on the public ledger of every Bitcoin node in the world.
We lost power for just one week this past winter, and one thing that struck me was if you didn't have cash, you couldn't buy gas or groceries. If the grid goes down for real, this is the stumbling block I can't get beyond. How do you pay for necessities when credit card processors don't work? When the internet is down? If an EMP knocks out the grid for an extended period of time? This is the scary thing about digital currency.
A carpenter has more than one tool in their kit. Ideally, in such a situation, people have stocked food, medicine, water, etc. If you´re worried about a collapse, prepare for a collapse.
I'm very well prepared, but the lack of ability to buy gas when the power went out made me think about always carrying cash, something I've never done. I live off grid and am very self reliant, but if the grid goes down, things are going to get really serious really fast. In which case cash will be king.
I stopped right HERE: "Bitcoin is not backed by any physical commodity like gold standard"...
In my mind, I replace "Bitcoin" with "Tulips" and can't go on.
Now, if you take the impressive and brilliant protocols, combine it with transaction anonymity and have some sort of gold depository in Switzerland, or else distributed so that at least some real asset backing exists, then you've got something.
One last little detail. A stable currency DOES NOT FLUCTUATE WILDLY IN VALUE. If it's some commodity trading or speculative common stock, yes. Calling it a "Currency"....NO.
You must realize that the US Dollar is also backed by nothing. What gives such a currency value? The willingness of others to accept it as a medium of exchange. Also, currencies that get debased lose their value. This is the utility of limiting Bitcoin to 21 million. In summary, the USD cannot compete.
As for "central banks", after that farce the "Federal" (sic !!) Reserve, I think many think as I do. Anonymous unregulated transactions, no matter for what, are essential to a free society. The appropriate police agencies can deal with criminal activities but to control and monitor everyone for everything in order to "prevent" crime is worse is a solution far worse than the problem. The current implementation of the free exchange, known as "cash", is anathema to the Global Techno-Fascists of the WEF in ther eager rush to implement a Global "Panopticon".
The system you described would require trust in a central body. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, but if you backed a cryptocurrency used globally with a gold depository in Switzerland, you would recreate the circumstances that led to 1971.
Not included is how much electrical cost is involved in maintaining such a system. And also who has been behind it and how does it simply offer another means for which to either suddenly create wealth out of nothing or make the rich richer?
This crypto was built on the idea of anonymous transactions and sold and utilized by criminals. Only later to reveal that its actually not anonymous. It was sold as the alternstive to a villanous fiat system enjoyed by privileged bankers , where we all learned about noney creation through reserve and such . Later we understand that certsin people got super rich with bitcoin. And not because it was actuslly being used as currency , but because of speculation . Like promoting of penny stocks .
The real value to society that bitcoin heralds is the blockchain. When or if the blockchain gets attached to all commodity trading , then the markets can avoid ponzi scams as they can be reversed and tracked . But tgat will only happen once those that rely on ponzi scams to centralize their power
I think that you will find that I answered all your questions to some extent in my article, but I´d be happy to elaborate. The electricity used to secure the Bitcoin transaction order (blockchain and proof-of-work) for a year is roughly the same as what the US uses for Christmas lights. I hope that its energy use increases, since that would make the network even more secure, and it creates competition to improve on cheap renewable energy sources, computational efficiency, and capturing waste energy like burn stacks from oil rigs (this is a popular method).
I won´t speak to all cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin has always been anonymous and public, as I explained in this article. Transactions are public, but personal information is not. The degree of privacy is up to the skill level and attentiveness of the user. I find the interplay between Monero and Bitcoin rather fun for instance, but such methods are for intermediate users.
I agree, blockchain is genius. You may notice that I explained it towards the later half of the article. This is because it builds off of the other core elements, and was Satoshi´s solution to prevent double spending vulnerabilities, which I explained in the first half of this article. A watch does not work without all the gears.
As I mentioned in the article, Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym used by the inventor(s). Whoever it is, if they´re still alive, had good reason to hide their identity. Whoever it was disappeared shortly after Bitcoin´s creation, and the 1.5million bitcoins he/she mined in the beginning have never been moved. The only way to verify the true inventor, is if he/she who claims to be Satoshi can in fact move Satoshi´s bitcoin. The beauty of it is that it doesn´t matter who made it, since the code is open source and verifiable, and I find it poetic that the inventor of an anonymous cryptocurrency is anonymous themself.
To your last point, the best way to manage all commodity trading with blockchain would simply be to use Bitcoin itself. There is no better alternative in the world.
I agree that crypto of various kinds have offered people the ability to secure wealth from inflation or from global monetary attacks . We have seen how the printing of money waters down everyone’s wealth if not secured. And it’s likely the easiest way to do so. So long as some other scam is not executed designed to lead people to do exactly that .
Well the thing is that a friend of mine created the first crypto fund in canada , and in that process openly explored with me at times all these details . I stand with my criticism. I realize that investers want to promote such things for their own benefit . I dont know too many people that actually use bitcoin to make transactions , beyond that first guy that was buying pot back in the day. But i do know many that buy it in the hopes of making money . And that is a problem. Bitcoin was presented as solving sone kind of banking money creatiin inequity and was sold as the working persons liberation, but was reslly taken up by the same kind of greedy people doing the same greedy things. And the anonymous part of it was discovered to actually be trackeable , by the informationof that my friend creating the find in canada revealed to me .
The problem with bitcoin is that it makes those the buy in early rich without any real substantial social value or resource. Its held up the same way the pyramid system is held up, and the first that buy in cash out with everyone’s money. That is in part why more are created, likely by the people selling out to secure their glee
Not that its all bad and just greedy speculation. This is why i pointed out that the blockchain is the thing of social value as it solves problems associated with commodity ,and would bring benefits of tracking and ease of ledgers to commodity trading . Trading the different commodities in bitcoin would not realize this benefit. The anonymous idea is a good one , and something that all people intuite as important to their freedom. And while the average government agency does not have the capacity , the powerful ones do and will. But in something that has oversight, like trading, it makessense . The big issue is that the way its been gamed is enjoyed by the same people that would need to consent to changing it . That is kind of why opposition to digital currency is so great
The “christmas lights” argument is an irrelevant gaslighting diversion/distraction. Power consumption is an exhorbitant waste and huge opportunity cost (and the noise pollution of fans for cooling is exhorbitant). People who want to ‘save the planet’ would never go for crypto if they knew. Tulips all the way.
I seem to recall from my friend who had to establish costs for a fund that the costs were actually somewhat higher then that overall. I would not have thought so, but they had to know with some degree of certainty how to assess values for the commission to approve the fund , so I take their word for it . Similar to how we know the cost to extract a barrel of oil. And I am not sure how a direct hit from a solar storm would fair
As of Jan 7, 2022 an estimate of annual energy cost of bitcoin mining exceeded that of Norway, 375x24. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimated 124 terawatt-hours. It’s likely gone up since then. All this energy expenditure produces nothing other than leger audit and has a huge opportunity cost (could have been used for something else that was productive). VISA uses 10,000 times less energy and can do a transaction in one second. Anyone trying to reduce their personal energy use would steer clear of crypto.
Climate Change change is about nudging society to accept Digital Currencies. The amount of energy produced to convert the worldwide use of paper money to Digital money is tremendous. It means less for your everyday living, more for your Digital Transactions. Everything you own that is electrified will be connected to the internet and will have the capability to be turned on or off at the Government’s Will ...
I´m in favor of individual states continuing to use paper money if they move to gold standard. However, I think that just keeping it cash is like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound. Bitcoin gives people, oppressed by authoritative regimes abusing money printing to fund wars and surveillance, an option to withdraw their financial support from that state into a deflationary currency which cannot be controlled by a central entity. It´s like how the emergence of new alternative media is causing the corporate media to collapse for lack of telling the truth. Options create competition, and Bitcoin has created options.
Very true about the power to print money. But sadly Bitcoin is traceable and will be banned very soon ... But not paper money, it is not traceable (for now)... It is all about control ...
I am one who is opposed to anything like Bitcoin!! I am sorry, but I didn't even read Rain Trozzi's Article. I disagree with Robert F Kennedy's opinion on it too, even tho' I like him. He omitted to say, when there are Electrical Outages, Bitcoin is useless, like anything else that depends on Electricity. If you agree with it Dr Tess, that's fine. It;s all a personal choice. I fell for investing $8,000AUD in Bitcoin. I ended up finding out they were a bunch of crooks. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve $6,000 back, but upset I had to say good-bye to $2,000. There is nothing like dealing with "Cash" & feel its one way of keeping some kind of Freedom. We are extremely opposed to Digital ID etc, & having been burnt with Bitcoin at the end of '21 early '22, will leave well alone!! QLD, Australia.
Bitcoin is fundamentally dangerous to a freedom loving public. It is the mindless, amoral technologist’s dream of a solution to a problem they invented. Go into town with $100 in cash and buy whatever you like. Nobody knows where you went, what you bought and where you bought it. Now do the same thing with bitcoin or any crypto mechanism. Right there on a ledger everyone can see is every purchase you made, how much you paid and where you bought it. That ledger can never be changed or erased. It’s all there for all time. The perfect surveillance tool. Someone on the network could decide your particular bitcoin address can no longer buy gas… you’re done. The perfect targeted control tool. No thank you to all that.
Thanks for these prompts Oriorda. Stores that accept Bitcoin typically use BTC Lightning (a layer two protocol). Transactions are near instant and anonymous with this method with the benefit of not supporting the liquidity of fiat currencies. I think if you wanted total anonymity though you´d be more worried about your cell phone, everyone else´s cell phone, the CCTV cameras, the computer in your car, the shop´s records, and the ATM you withdrew the money from. Here´s some info on GrapheneOS in case you´re using an iphone or android device: https://raintrozzi.substack.com/p/grapheneos-a-secure-smartphone-operating
Blockchain’s permanent non-alterable ledger tech HAS useful roles. For example, keeping a traceable record of the manufacturing process for parts used in aviation, that would be so valuable when something fails. Controlling ingredients and processes in food production. Or medical production. Just not in the money I spend living my free life, as separate from aggressive surveillance and control as I can make it. We simply cannot trust ANY centralised system where someone can pull a switch and control the citizen. We should be working TOWARDS decentralised systems to run society, where some chaos and inefficiency helps to keep the power merchants away from their goal of running everything. They are on record saying ‘In the future you will own nothing and you will be happy’. That’s not a future I want.
Great Q! Perhaps something I will write to more extensively in the future, but a short answer is:
If the power went out over a large region, for instance due to a nuclear EMP strike which took out the entire US power grid (closest thing I could think of to a plug in the sky) and thus disabled the fiber optic cables connecting the Americas to Europe and the rest of the world, Bitcoin would continue to operate on multiple partitions wherever unaffected advanced civilization persist. Proof of work protocol would continue to operate on these disconnected partitions, and as the network is gradually restored and continents are reconnected, partitions would automatically adopt the longest version of the blockchain. Transactions from smaller partitions which were not adopted in the re-merge would be moved to unconfirmed condition, which would be the speed bump experienced by surviving Bitcoiners during such a civilization ending event.
Hopefully we´re aiming for a more optimistic experience in our lifetime! Thanks for the Q Trevor. :)
Excellent article that concisely and correctly describes for the general public the genius of BTC.
Thanks Rainn.
Thank you! I´m glad that you found it accurate and concise. This comment was very uplifting to read. Thank you Terry!
There is two items on this, that always is in play, when humans are involved. Use and Ab-use!
When you build a better mouse trap for use. Somewhere a bigger Rat learns to cancel it.
No nations in history have ever "perfected" it's commerce systems from fraudulent practices.
Even trying to turn lead into gold thru creative Alchemy. Money is like a planet Lunar Tide.
Eventually moves to other shores. Raises all ships on one shore and lowers all ships in others.
Bitcoin needs a Gazillion watts of electricity to exist daily. Do you see a problem here? I do.....
Great Q! No I don´t see a problem, I see a solution. Bitcoin´s use of energy is what makes it viable. The more energy it uses, the more secure it becomes. It also creates peaceful competition for innovation (competition in absence of war) to harness cheaper, renewable, or waste energy, and the advancement of computational power and efficiency. For instance, many miners are now capturing the waste energy from burn stacks of oil rigs on site - energy that is released in a state too volatile to store of transport. Also, surplus grid energy can now be captured as monetary potential energy. Here´s a short documentary on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc
Forgive me for not saying your analysis is excellent.
But one major solar flare on an entire face of one major continent ,could sideline all electric to it. ⚡ Maybe as permanent. I don't know the possibility nor the probability. No one else does either. I have no problem with making it the alternative to USD soon.
Yeah I think many systems would struggle in cases of nuclear or solar flare EMPs... Bitcoin is as durable as the internet, which was designed to withstand nuclear war. If we get sent back to the stone age, then that´s that. A couple of people have asked this question and if you check the thread you´ll find a comprehensive answer. I´ll likely publish a long-form article to answer it in greater detail since many people have the same quiery. Thanks for your feedback and thought provoking questions!
So until it becomes air or oxygen powered.....🔜🪟
I´m not sure if a nitrogen or oxygen generator would be most efficient... Although with electrolysis it is possible to turn H20 into volatile O2H2 gas, which turns back into water when combusted, it takes more energy input than there is output. Nitrogen is a very stable element and as such not a very promising fuel source.
Well that's cleared that up
So glad to hear that!
When you buy bitcoin & you purchase it with money , fiat money , with a credit card etc etc , who gets the fiat money with which you buy crypto ? The fiat leaves your bank , how is it transferred & to whom?
Great question! It depends who you buy it from. You can buy Bitcoin from peer to peer venders on marketplaces like HodlHodl.com, or from exchanges like bullbitcoin.ca. You can buy Bitcoin from anyone who has Bitcoin, and you can have friends and clients pay you in Bitcoin for your services too.
Bitcoin is autonomous and decentralized, and there is no centralized source of distribution.
If I'm wrong so be it, but the Bible ONLY talks about gold and silver. Our paper money or imaginary money should be backed by gold. Period. You also need a system the smartest or dumbest person can use.
". . . if we can transition to a global condition in which Bitcoin is used as a popular medium of exchange or as a reserve currency, . . . " What do you think are the chances that central bankers will ever allow that to happen? Until/unless that happens, Bitcoin will not save us from bankers' planned digital currencies. Also, it's important to note that we need to stop calling these things "central bank digital currencies." Bankers outside the Fed realized that if we get our currency directly from the Fed, they would be out of business, so the Fed has conceded to allow other banks to establish digital currencies.
Well, the transition is already happening. Currently, Bitcoin has 90,000x the buying power of the US $
Perhaps, but, as I understand it, you cannot get into Bitcoin without spending dollars (or some other fiat currency), so Bitcoin at this point cannot completely replace fiat currencies, and, so far, there are very few things you can buy with Bitcoin. You can't shop for groceries, for instance, and it seems we're a long way away from that basic capability. It's nice to have buying power, but only if you can actually buy things with it.
Lovely and comprehensible write up.
Thank you! I´m glad that you found it helpful
What happens when the grid goes down?
Great Q! If there´s a break in the Bitcoin network, disconnected partitions will continue to operate and when the grid comes back online and partitions are reconnected, the longest partition of the blockchain (the one which was upheld by the largest network of computational power) will automatically be adopted by all other partitions. That would be in the case of a continental grid failure. In the case of a city or even a provincial grid going down, there would be almost no effect on the global network, and that area would simply carry on with the rest of the network when they´re back online. Bitcoin custody would likewise be unaffected, since Bitcoin isn´t stored on electronic devices like cash in a wallet, but as input/output transaction history documented on the public ledger of every Bitcoin node in the world.
We lost power for just one week this past winter, and one thing that struck me was if you didn't have cash, you couldn't buy gas or groceries. If the grid goes down for real, this is the stumbling block I can't get beyond. How do you pay for necessities when credit card processors don't work? When the internet is down? If an EMP knocks out the grid for an extended period of time? This is the scary thing about digital currency.
A carpenter has more than one tool in their kit. Ideally, in such a situation, people have stocked food, medicine, water, etc. If you´re worried about a collapse, prepare for a collapse.
I'm very well prepared, but the lack of ability to buy gas when the power went out made me think about always carrying cash, something I've never done. I live off grid and am very self reliant, but if the grid goes down, things are going to get really serious really fast. In which case cash will be king.
A beefy article for sure! Definitely good to keep this in my saved articles for reference. Good work!
Thanks brother! I´m glad you liked it!!
I stopped right HERE: "Bitcoin is not backed by any physical commodity like gold standard"...
In my mind, I replace "Bitcoin" with "Tulips" and can't go on.
Now, if you take the impressive and brilliant protocols, combine it with transaction anonymity and have some sort of gold depository in Switzerland, or else distributed so that at least some real asset backing exists, then you've got something.
One last little detail. A stable currency DOES NOT FLUCTUATE WILDLY IN VALUE. If it's some commodity trading or speculative common stock, yes. Calling it a "Currency"....NO.
You must realize that the US Dollar is also backed by nothing. What gives such a currency value? The willingness of others to accept it as a medium of exchange. Also, currencies that get debased lose their value. This is the utility of limiting Bitcoin to 21 million. In summary, the USD cannot compete.
Exactly. Limits to Bitcoin supply plus energy input required to bring it into circulation equals scarcity, and scarcity makes it valuable.
Exactly ! Thus making Bitcoins as intrinsically worthless as the current dollar !!
Tulips are so much more prettier !!
A central bank digital currency does appeal to some people...
Ah but NOT to me.
As for "central banks", after that farce the "Federal" (sic !!) Reserve, I think many think as I do. Anonymous unregulated transactions, no matter for what, are essential to a free society. The appropriate police agencies can deal with criminal activities but to control and monitor everyone for everything in order to "prevent" crime is worse is a solution far worse than the problem. The current implementation of the free exchange, known as "cash", is anathema to the Global Techno-Fascists of the WEF in ther eager rush to implement a Global "Panopticon".
The system you described would require trust in a central body. Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, but if you backed a cryptocurrency used globally with a gold depository in Switzerland, you would recreate the circumstances that led to 1971.
Not included is how much electrical cost is involved in maintaining such a system. And also who has been behind it and how does it simply offer another means for which to either suddenly create wealth out of nothing or make the rich richer?
This crypto was built on the idea of anonymous transactions and sold and utilized by criminals. Only later to reveal that its actually not anonymous. It was sold as the alternstive to a villanous fiat system enjoyed by privileged bankers , where we all learned about noney creation through reserve and such . Later we understand that certsin people got super rich with bitcoin. And not because it was actuslly being used as currency , but because of speculation . Like promoting of penny stocks .
The real value to society that bitcoin heralds is the blockchain. When or if the blockchain gets attached to all commodity trading , then the markets can avoid ponzi scams as they can be reversed and tracked . But tgat will only happen once those that rely on ponzi scams to centralize their power
Thanks for the Qs! Here´s a short answer:
I think that you will find that I answered all your questions to some extent in my article, but I´d be happy to elaborate. The electricity used to secure the Bitcoin transaction order (blockchain and proof-of-work) for a year is roughly the same as what the US uses for Christmas lights. I hope that its energy use increases, since that would make the network even more secure, and it creates competition to improve on cheap renewable energy sources, computational efficiency, and capturing waste energy like burn stacks from oil rigs (this is a popular method).
I won´t speak to all cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin has always been anonymous and public, as I explained in this article. Transactions are public, but personal information is not. The degree of privacy is up to the skill level and attentiveness of the user. I find the interplay between Monero and Bitcoin rather fun for instance, but such methods are for intermediate users.
I agree, blockchain is genius. You may notice that I explained it towards the later half of the article. This is because it builds off of the other core elements, and was Satoshi´s solution to prevent double spending vulnerabilities, which I explained in the first half of this article. A watch does not work without all the gears.
As I mentioned in the article, Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym used by the inventor(s). Whoever it is, if they´re still alive, had good reason to hide their identity. Whoever it was disappeared shortly after Bitcoin´s creation, and the 1.5million bitcoins he/she mined in the beginning have never been moved. The only way to verify the true inventor, is if he/she who claims to be Satoshi can in fact move Satoshi´s bitcoin. The beauty of it is that it doesn´t matter who made it, since the code is open source and verifiable, and I find it poetic that the inventor of an anonymous cryptocurrency is anonymous themself.
To your last point, the best way to manage all commodity trading with blockchain would simply be to use Bitcoin itself. There is no better alternative in the world.
I agree that crypto of various kinds have offered people the ability to secure wealth from inflation or from global monetary attacks . We have seen how the printing of money waters down everyone’s wealth if not secured. And it’s likely the easiest way to do so. So long as some other scam is not executed designed to lead people to do exactly that .
Well the thing is that a friend of mine created the first crypto fund in canada , and in that process openly explored with me at times all these details . I stand with my criticism. I realize that investers want to promote such things for their own benefit . I dont know too many people that actually use bitcoin to make transactions , beyond that first guy that was buying pot back in the day. But i do know many that buy it in the hopes of making money . And that is a problem. Bitcoin was presented as solving sone kind of banking money creatiin inequity and was sold as the working persons liberation, but was reslly taken up by the same kind of greedy people doing the same greedy things. And the anonymous part of it was discovered to actually be trackeable , by the informationof that my friend creating the find in canada revealed to me .
The problem with bitcoin is that it makes those the buy in early rich without any real substantial social value or resource. Its held up the same way the pyramid system is held up, and the first that buy in cash out with everyone’s money. That is in part why more are created, likely by the people selling out to secure their glee
Not that its all bad and just greedy speculation. This is why i pointed out that the blockchain is the thing of social value as it solves problems associated with commodity ,and would bring benefits of tracking and ease of ledgers to commodity trading . Trading the different commodities in bitcoin would not realize this benefit. The anonymous idea is a good one , and something that all people intuite as important to their freedom. And while the average government agency does not have the capacity , the powerful ones do and will. But in something that has oversight, like trading, it makessense . The big issue is that the way its been gamed is enjoyed by the same people that would need to consent to changing it . That is kind of why opposition to digital currency is so great
The “christmas lights” argument is an irrelevant gaslighting diversion/distraction. Power consumption is an exhorbitant waste and huge opportunity cost (and the noise pollution of fans for cooling is exhorbitant). People who want to ‘save the planet’ would never go for crypto if they knew. Tulips all the way.
I seem to recall from my friend who had to establish costs for a fund that the costs were actually somewhat higher then that overall. I would not have thought so, but they had to know with some degree of certainty how to assess values for the commission to approve the fund , so I take their word for it . Similar to how we know the cost to extract a barrel of oil. And I am not sure how a direct hit from a solar storm would fair
As of Jan 7, 2022 an estimate of annual energy cost of bitcoin mining exceeded that of Norway, 375x24. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimated 124 terawatt-hours. It’s likely gone up since then. All this energy expenditure produces nothing other than leger audit and has a huge opportunity cost (could have been used for something else that was productive). VISA uses 10,000 times less energy and can do a transaction in one second. Anyone trying to reduce their personal energy use would steer clear of crypto.
Climate Change change is about nudging society to accept Digital Currencies. The amount of energy produced to convert the worldwide use of paper money to Digital money is tremendous. It means less for your everyday living, more for your Digital Transactions. Everything you own that is electrified will be connected to the internet and will have the capability to be turned on or off at the Government’s Will ...
I´m in favor of individual states continuing to use paper money if they move to gold standard. However, I think that just keeping it cash is like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound. Bitcoin gives people, oppressed by authoritative regimes abusing money printing to fund wars and surveillance, an option to withdraw their financial support from that state into a deflationary currency which cannot be controlled by a central entity. It´s like how the emergence of new alternative media is causing the corporate media to collapse for lack of telling the truth. Options create competition, and Bitcoin has created options.
Very true about the power to print money. But sadly Bitcoin is traceable and will be banned very soon ... But not paper money, it is not traceable (for now)... It is all about control ...
Its a scam to entrap the gullible and enrich the inventors.
Cash also gives you anonymity.
I am one who is opposed to anything like Bitcoin!! I am sorry, but I didn't even read Rain Trozzi's Article. I disagree with Robert F Kennedy's opinion on it too, even tho' I like him. He omitted to say, when there are Electrical Outages, Bitcoin is useless, like anything else that depends on Electricity. If you agree with it Dr Tess, that's fine. It;s all a personal choice. I fell for investing $8,000AUD in Bitcoin. I ended up finding out they were a bunch of crooks. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve $6,000 back, but upset I had to say good-bye to $2,000. There is nothing like dealing with "Cash" & feel its one way of keeping some kind of Freedom. We are extremely opposed to Digital ID etc, & having been burnt with Bitcoin at the end of '21 early '22, will leave well alone!! QLD, Australia.
Bitcoin is fundamentally dangerous to a freedom loving public. It is the mindless, amoral technologist’s dream of a solution to a problem they invented. Go into town with $100 in cash and buy whatever you like. Nobody knows where you went, what you bought and where you bought it. Now do the same thing with bitcoin or any crypto mechanism. Right there on a ledger everyone can see is every purchase you made, how much you paid and where you bought it. That ledger can never be changed or erased. It’s all there for all time. The perfect surveillance tool. Someone on the network could decide your particular bitcoin address can no longer buy gas… you’re done. The perfect targeted control tool. No thank you to all that.
Thanks for these prompts Oriorda. Stores that accept Bitcoin typically use BTC Lightning (a layer two protocol). Transactions are near instant and anonymous with this method with the benefit of not supporting the liquidity of fiat currencies. I think if you wanted total anonymity though you´d be more worried about your cell phone, everyone else´s cell phone, the CCTV cameras, the computer in your car, the shop´s records, and the ATM you withdrew the money from. Here´s some info on GrapheneOS in case you´re using an iphone or android device: https://raintrozzi.substack.com/p/grapheneos-a-secure-smartphone-operating
Blockchain’s permanent non-alterable ledger tech HAS useful roles. For example, keeping a traceable record of the manufacturing process for parts used in aviation, that would be so valuable when something fails. Controlling ingredients and processes in food production. Or medical production. Just not in the money I spend living my free life, as separate from aggressive surveillance and control as I can make it. We simply cannot trust ANY centralised system where someone can pull a switch and control the citizen. We should be working TOWARDS decentralised systems to run society, where some chaos and inefficiency helps to keep the power merchants away from their goal of running everything. They are on record saying ‘In the future you will own nothing and you will be happy’. That’s not a future I want.
Until the big plug in the sky is pulled ????
Great Q! Perhaps something I will write to more extensively in the future, but a short answer is:
If the power went out over a large region, for instance due to a nuclear EMP strike which took out the entire US power grid (closest thing I could think of to a plug in the sky) and thus disabled the fiber optic cables connecting the Americas to Europe and the rest of the world, Bitcoin would continue to operate on multiple partitions wherever unaffected advanced civilization persist. Proof of work protocol would continue to operate on these disconnected partitions, and as the network is gradually restored and continents are reconnected, partitions would automatically adopt the longest version of the blockchain. Transactions from smaller partitions which were not adopted in the re-merge would be moved to unconfirmed condition, which would be the speed bump experienced by surviving Bitcoiners during such a civilization ending event.
Hopefully we´re aiming for a more optimistic experience in our lifetime! Thanks for the Q Trevor. :)