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A comment on Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin.

Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by jostmey on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @04:46PM (#9579176)
A major complaint about bitcoin is the wastefulness of mining. But that is precisely what makes bitcoin a commodity. If it were easy to generate bitcoins then people would start printing forgeries. I don't see a way around it.
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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by DenisM on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @04:57PM (#9579247)
A currency should be scarce, but scarcity does not have to come at the cost of spending energy.

Imagine a coin that's tied to how many push-ups you make each day? That's still scarce, but the side effects are positive, not negative - you get healthier instead of burning more coal.

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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by colordrops on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @05:00PM (#9579273)
> scarcity does not have to come at the cost of spending energy.

But it does until there's a better alternative. Currently there is no algorithm or technique that can't be gamed or corrupted other than proof of work.

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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by joshuapants on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @06:11PM (#9579687)
You spend energy when you do push-ups. That would also be a fairly easy system to game.
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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by PierreRochard on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @05:57PM (#9579600)
Sounds like we should change how electricity is produced?
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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by karmakaze on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @05:16PM (#9579366)
This aspect is only temporary while they're being minted.
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Re:Speculation About The Eventual Death Of Bitcoin by Dylan16807 on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @05:54PM (#9579581)
Unless bitcoin collapses there will always be huge amounts of energy wasted on mining, because the miner fees kick in as people compete to have their transactions recorded.
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