TapWaterBandit

This is too real haha. I do this exact thing.

> But now I’m sitting on this cash, and like Matthew McConaughey says in wolf of Wall Street , they’re fucking addicted

Only point of contention is that when you have a currency experiencing sustained inflation over any medium/long term time horizon, it makes sense people would want to hold anything over than cash. Anyone who saved in cash (even using Term Deposits) from basically the 70s to today in any currency has had their purchasing power destroyed.

Dream on, dude. Look into how the sanctions against Russia are going, not very well.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/66dfc09e-c94a-4846-a4e2-60d...

I swear some Americans seem to think the world they live in is from 1955 or 1975 or something. The US is just one player amongst many, a very important one but by no means the paramount one for every country in the world. The idea it is simply isn't backed by facts on the ground.

> Given a choice between an embargo by the US or embargo by the rest of the world, cuba and every country in the world would choose 'the rest of the world'.

No way is this true. Look at this list of countries by biggest trade partners (import & export) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_leading_t....

You really think countries will willing choose to trade with the USA over the rest of the world when it isn't the biggest destination for their exports nor their major source of imports? Why would they do that exactly?

And this has been a major problem for them since then. Look up the "Triffin Dilemma". If a nation's currency is the reserve currency it pretty much must run a trade deficit and one of the major impacts will be loss of manufacturing prowess. Happened to Great Britain when the Pound was the reserve currency too.

I think "follow the money" is the correct call but not like this. I think having the reserve currency be the USD means there is more demand for the currency than is needed to trade with the USA (because USD is used for all sorts of other international trade as well including things like buying oil). This makes the USD relatively too strong which makes their exports relatively too expensive.

This then has all sorts of flow on impacts throughout the manufacturing process and incentives inside the country.

My base case is still that the USD being the reserve currency is the problem. There will persistently by more demand for USD than is justified by the need to purchase American exports, so the currency is artificially high. This makes their exports more expensive than they should be relative to others, which hurts manufacturers.

Having a currency that is too strong for your economy always does this, look at the situation in European nations under the Euro.

Not really, way more kids are getting caught in the crypto scams than are making money doing them.

At this point crypto clearly isn't a bubble. And why would it be? Cryptographically secured money has some advantages over fiat money. This doesn't mean fiat will disappear and all crypto will succeed. But most fiat currencies haven't really "succeeded" either.

Money is a very "efficient" market in this sense because each individual can decide do you want to hold currency X or currency Y or currency Z? And there are pros and cons to each that lead to price discovery between currencies. And I think as time goes on it is becoming more and more apparent that many central banks do not take the management of their countries currency seriously and so people choose alternatives. This is what well-functioning markets look like. Consumer choice and incentives.

Yep.

And, of course, let's not discuss:

- tourism + air travel

- increasingly large cars far bigger than required from a utilitarian perspective

- luxury good production

- theme parks/fireworks displays

- cruise ships

Etc.

Bitcoin/crypto opposition is 95% pushed by embedded financial interests that will use any lever to protect their control over money and the power it gives them.

Legally, probably. I don't know the laws around environmental protection in that area so there may still have been a violation but it appears he was convicted here for violation of property rights as this is public land. But this whole situation is more about the property rights and how the lake here will be used for recreation rather than ecological concerns if I'm reading correctly.

Interesting observation about McDonald's.

I work as a doordasher and have never once spoken to or interacted with anyone who works at the company.Well that's not quite true, I had an order with issues once that went to a CS rep in the Philippines who I chatted with via messaging.

For all intents and purposes my "boss" is a computer.

I don't think that is the point he is making.

More that lawyers will hoard contracts but there will be financial incentives to defect early (the idea being to sell your contracts while the price is high).

Then that lawyer's contracts will become the mass-produced "good enough" boilerplate and be used widely driving down the value of hoarding contracts at all.

Lol yep, thought the same thing.

HN landed hard on the "sucks to be you" side of things with Musk, curious to see where this ends up.

Welding is incredibly important in modern construction. All steel-framed buildings are held together by welding pretty much. Not surprisingly it is quite highly paid (at least in my country).

The full quote is:

> Last Friday, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released the results of an annual study of the number of homeless people *in the country’s parks and riverside areas.*

So this isn't the full count of homeless, just the ones living in specific park areas.

I don't think it does need an update, it came across quite clearly in the article that you were pretty happy with life in general but felt that selling the company took away a sense of purpose/identity that you hadn't expected.

Was a really interesting read and gave me a lot to think about as a (hopefully) future founder!

This is a bizarre framing to support the argument people don't like faster delivery of goods.

But in the spirit of good faith I will give some:

- Movement of fish/meat to markets before it spoils

- Delivery of military messages around the battlefield. Also supply trains for military expeditions

- Projects like the Grand Canal in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)). Pretty much anywhere in history where people opted for using water transport of goods over land transport was done for speed/cost reasons.

Lol that isn't what a 51% attack is...The confidence people on this thread are speaking about something they have no clue about is staggering. A 51% is ALL about miners and nodes.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp

> forget about the ruthless of business

Noone has forgot a thing just aren't clowns like you who think businesses are some substitute god who can't be beat. Fidelity doesn't "hold" the transactions. Transactions to be relevant MUST be broadcast to the network and if this doesn't happen then the blockchain plods along as if they didn't happen.

Honestly, learn a bit more about how this stuff actually works before commenting.

Anywhere I can read thia withiut paywall?

I didn't address that point because it is conceptually and factually incorrect. But I will breakdown why for your benefit:

> The reason that bitcoin's energy usage is a philosophical nightmare is because it's a system where energy consumption is the product.

False. The "Product" is a permissionless global peer to peer financial network using a (relatively) non-depreciating commodity. Energy consumption is a side-effect of providing this product/service. I'm sure if you thought about it for a bit you would have to agree here. Noone is mining bitcoin for the sake of it, they are mining it for profit and the only reason bitcoin has value is other attributes of the network/commodity itself. So not a good start from OP.

> As opposed to industries which are "merely" energy-intensive, let's take aluminum refining for example, spending more energy to refine aluminum does not create more demand for aluminum, but spending more energy on bitcoin increases the price of bitcoin, which induces more demand, which increases the price, which incentivizes mining, which costs more energy, and so on in a vicious cycle.

This is factually incorrect and easy to see why. Here is a link to an overlapping chart showing the hashrate for bitcoin against the market cap (https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-marketcap-btc....). You'll notice the lack of connection between the market cap (overall price) and the hashing rate. This is an empirical fact based on the data we have so op is wrong once again.

It is true that price increases do incentivise more mining but the price increases aren't DRIVEN by increases in the mining. Otherwise it would be possible for anyone anywhere to spin up bitcoin farms and make guaranteed profit because the price would rise to a level commensurate with the energy expended. It is the other values of the network (peer-to-peer permissionless decentralised finance with an eventually depreciating commodity) that drive the price. Those are being priced by the market currently and more and more people are deciding to store wealth in the Bitcoin network as opposed to the Fiat network or other assets like property/gold/etc because they feel it gives a better combination of:

1. Store of value (or possibility for profit)

2. Functionality

Bitcoin mining is very often not profitable if you don't have cheap energy or do it collectively which is why it is moves around so much to find cheap energy sources (often using the cheapest forms of energy available which is burn off/extra gen that has no otherwise in grid) and miners pool to take a portion of the gains from mining the next block and getting the bitcoin that come with it.

OP's view of Bitcoin and proof of work is a very slanted one at best, completely factually inaccurate at worst.

> Please trust me when I say that I do not give a damn about the price of bitcoin. What I care about is stopping runaway energy consumption, and from that perspective proof-of-work is the biggest existential threat to humanity since the atom bomb.

Mate, this is ridiculous.

Global energy usage was 179000 Twh (terawatt hours) in 2022. (https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption)

Bitcoin energy usage was at its highest in 2022 at 200 Twh. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin...)

So 200/179000 * 100 = 0.11%

Bitcoin energy usage accounted for 0.11% of global energy usage and you think it is the biggest threat to humanity since the A-Bomb? Bitcoin is entirely irrelevant to the grand scheme of things re climate emissions.

So you are wrong on this point:

> bitcoin is a nontrivial component of that and it threatens to grow at an exponential pace

Bitcoin IS a trivial component of overall emissions and even with an insane ramp up would not be close to being the biggest issue re emissions.

Proof of Work is an energy-intensive solution to a very deep and old social problem: how do you verify transactions between parties over a great distance/online without a trusted intermediary?

Proof of work is enormously socially valuable and will change the world. Bitcoin may not be the PoW application to do it (although it also might be) but proof of work is here to stay because of the huge advantages it has over the existing system where individuals/institutions insert themselves between transactions to their own profit.

RE energy, not here to argue philosophy. Just going to point out that if that is your concern luckily the world is going over to renewables so that particular objection will be gone soon anyway.

> Miners and node operators can operate on whichever fork they want, but that doesnt mean Coinbase or Fidelity or whoever is going to recognize that fork.

Mate that isn't how it work. If Coinbase or Fidelity don't recognise the real blockchain then they no longer have real bitcoin, they have a forked coin (because they are not on the true bitcoin chain). The Bitcoin chain is determined by consensus of the majority of miners/nodes (not bitcoin holders!) and if they break from that they now have a substantially devalued asset (look up the price of BCH and BTG these days).

You seem to be under a misapprehension that owning the most bitcoin gives an institution or individual power over the network. It does not.

Bitcoin, by definition, cannot exist on two separate chains. If an institution attempted what you are saying all they will have done is reverse alchemy: turned gold (bitcoin) into lead (an unrecognised chain with no mining occurring, no recognition etc).

> No one can simply state "I am not interested in Bitcoin" in a discussion without triggering some "response". Regardless of the merits of Bitcoin, or absence of them, that is fscked up. Red flag.

Lol this is ridiculous. If you popped up on a hacker news thread about abortion rights and said "I am not interested in abortion rights" would you also say it is a "red flag" regardless of the merits (or lack of merits) of abortion?

If you truly have no interest then lurk. But if you choose to talk (noone is forcing you to!) then don't be surprised at responses.

Lol power usage is such a strawman argument. 1% of all electricity in USA is used watching Netflix but you don't hear people complaining. But running a global permissionless decentralised store of value currency network should supposedly be "super cheap" or it's an environmental disaster and must be stopped.

Lol this comment is funny because you clearly don't understand how Bitcoin works but are convinced it will be a problem. Owning the most bitcoin (or even a majority of the bitcoin) doesn't mean you control the network......

Even before reading this I definitely got vibes of "Wine makers find drinking red wine has benefits" or "Starbucks finds that coffee is the ultimate health drink" etc.

Eh, what's the alternative? Some people have this weird attitude that businesses are not allowed to shrink/fail. Businesses can only ever go one direction and that is more headcount, otherwise give them govt bailout.

Businesses need to be able to grow and shrink. Otherwise we just end up with "too big to fail".

I've thought one of the funnier end states for AGI would be if it was created but this ended up making it vastly less productive than when it was just a tool.

So the AI of the future was more like Bender or other robots from Futurama that display all the same flaws as people.

Yea this seems like the most likely read to me. The customers lost are indistinguishable from their churn rate.