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[MrRoboto75]

All that energy and I still can't buy pizza with it.

[heydude6]

Bitcoin in general is now using as much power as, like, Venezuela. The entire thing.

It's been like that for over a year. The power demands of cryptocurrency have always been ridiculous and one of the big reasons why I don't think it will ever really catch on. Bitcoin is the first, which is why it's the worst, yet it's the one with the most value. Proof that economics is bullshit.

[NJW2000]

I've been thinking about the bitcoin energy use for a while now. I do wonder if it would be possible to create a cryptocurrency where the mining operation was easier for humans than computers. Of course, it would have to actually catch on, but still.

[bloop_bleep]

Uhhhh, unlikely. The hash would probably either be very slow for humans to process or very easy to crack by anyone with a computer.

Plus then you're just offloading the energy use onto human agriculture to feed humans and taking up human productivity.

[pisskop]

Did I just hear you say 'unemployment solutions'?

[Eschar]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-senate-bans-hormone-therapy-surgery-felony-transgender-youth/

Makes puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans teenagers a felony (for the doctor), and requires school staff to out trans teenagers to their parents.

[NJW2000]

Uhhhh, unlikely. The hash would probably either be very slow for humans to process or very easy to crack by anyone with a computer.

Plus then you're just offloading the energy use onto human agriculture to feed humans and taking up human productivity.

Yeah, it would have to be super weird. I was thinking of some kind of system where you earned currency by solving extremely computationally intense problems that are still easy enough that humans can have a shot at them... like verifying and proving statements that aren't effectively decidable in formal logic. Probably still something computers could do better though.

[MrRoboto75]

What if the money was based on some sort of precious, physical object.  And then you could "mine" the currency... by mining, out of the ground.

[hops]

Gold will never work as a currency because it takes too much energy to obtain from nature, and it's heavy, so it takes a lot of energy to move it around, too. You can't buy pizza with gold. All this talk about replacing crypto with a gold standard is insane.

...Huh, I was joking but now that made me think about how gold is kind of fucked up too.

[MrRoboto75]

Gold will never work as a currency because it takes too much energy to obtain from nature, and it's heavy, so it takes a lot of energy to move it around, too. You can't buy pizza with gold. All this talk about replacing crypto with a gold standard is insane.

...Huh, I was joking but now that made me think about how gold is kind of fucked up too.

Of course not, but as it is we're pumping 1st world country's worth of power and pollution into what, a make-believe commodity that sometimes you can buy illegal shit with on the dark web?  Inflate the market value of PC parts?

And usually you didn't just carry the rock around.  You banked it somewhere and got a scrip saying you own it.

[Egan_BW]

Seems as though it would be quite possible to live in a world where you can buy a pizza for a gold coin. It may be heavy but I think it has a reasonable value : weight ratio for casual use, at least. You could buy a lot of pizzas with a purse full of gold.

I suppose one problem with relying on gold/silver/etc coins to make trades is that there's not a huge supply of those elements as compared to the current human population. So I suppose that if we see major governments collapsing paired with a big drop in human population, those could become the most convenient currency!

[heydude6]

This conversation reminds me about the man-sized stone wheels an island tribe used as currency once. They would push these things around with them whenever they would make a purchase, but then they got the idea of simply keeping a record of who owns which wheel. They inadvertently invented cash. It's really fascinating stuff, so I decided to link a couple of articles.

Spoiler: Some Articles (click to show/hide)

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money
https://www.citeco.fr/en/stone-wheels-yap

[hops]

Seems as though it would be quite possible to live in a world where you can buy a pizza for a gold coin. It may be heavy but I think it has a reasonable value : weight ratio for casual use, at least. You could buy a lot of pizzas with a purse full of gold.

I suppose one problem with relying on gold/silver/etc coins to make trades is that there's not a huge supply of those elements as compared to the current human population. So I suppose that if we see major governments collapsing paired with a big drop in human population, those could become the most convenient currency!

I was thinking more as in the problem with making sure it's real gold and not fraudulent, which is something that crypto is apparently obsessed about judging on their whole thing about proofs.

[McTraveller]

Was going to play a game I haven't played in a while... only find out that the developer forced updates and in doing so made it no longer compatible with my machine.  What the ever-loving-F is wrong with the world, where that is even a thing?

Why wouldn't they just freeze the version and not update it past that point for those that still want it?

What a waste...

[MrRoboto75]

Seems as though it would be quite possible to live in a world where you can buy a pizza for a gold coin. It may be heavy but I think it has a reasonable value : weight ratio for casual use, at least. You could buy a lot of pizzas with a purse full of gold.

I suppose one problem with relying on gold/silver/etc coins to make trades is that there's not a huge supply of those elements as compared to the current human population. So I suppose that if we see major governments collapsing paired with a big drop in human population, those could become the most convenient currency!

I was thinking more as in the problem with making sure it's real gold and not fraudulent, which is something that crypto is apparently obsessed about judging on their whole thing about proofs.

Most of the time legit precious metal coins were fraudulent anyway.  Most coinage would be debased over time, either alloying the metal or shaving down the dimensions for a slightly smaller coin.  You get more coin per bar of gold or whatever.  You coupled that with Legal Tender law so merchants have to accept the lame coin for face value instead of real weight, which used to be how they'd accept coinage.

But merchant weight of course had its own issues.  But only the government is allowed to lie about the coinage.