pshin45

I agree that everything you say is true or has been true of Bitcoin at some point.

However, the more important question is how all of those things will change going forwards.

Is Bitcoin's volatility decreasing? Yes.

Will Bitcoin ever become stable enough to be a reliable store of value comparable to gold or the US dollar? We'll see.

Will cryptocurrency security and management improve? Most certainly.

Will new regulations help weed out bad actors? One would hope so.

Will Bitcoin become easier to use on mobile devices? I can't see why not.

Will Bitcoin transactions become instant or near-instant? Many people in the space are working on it.

Will Bitcoin become more intuitive? I would bet yes.

> so big that 1.3 million people were displaced to build it.

The fact that China built a large hydroelectric power plant (Three Gorges Dam) that displaced a lot of people, shouldn't be an argument against Bitcoin. There are ways to provide electricity for Bitcoin mining that are green and don't displace people.

> safeguard the proceeds of wealthy hackers' speculation

The people who get richest from the stock market are those who are already wealthier to begin with. Are you against the stock market and securities in general?

> nor ever will provide as much utility to the world as, say, Ireland.

Apples to oranges comparisons aside, a better comparison would be Bitcoin eventually becoming a popular alternative for gold investment, and/or an alternative to Western Union.

Gold mining causes direct physical destruction of landscapes and ecosystems [1]. I think Bitcoin mining largely displacing gold mining is a good thing.

Western Union charges as much as $95 to send $1,000 [2], and their customers are generally poorer working-class people. M-Pesa in Kenya has already demonstrated that mobile money services can lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty [3]. The Bitcoin protocol doesn't have a corporate profit motive and can become a cheaper and more globally scalable version of Western Union or M-Pesa.

[1] https://www.brilliantearth.com/gold-mining-environment/

[2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/western-union-review...

[3] https://news.mit.edu/2016/mobile-money-kenyans-out-poverty-1...

The same could be said for any new technology – they are always a double-sword, and it's our responsibility as technologists to do what we can to maximize the upside and minimize the downside.

The internet has changed society for the better in innumerable ways, but it's also robbed us of privacy and freedoms. Cars allow greater access to economic opportunities for people living outside urban centers, but they are also responsible for most of the world’s air pollution, and millions of people are killed each year as a result of traffic collisions.

This is the reality we have to face as people who work in technology.

> unless you also specify how much better.

That is impossible for anyone to say with any certainty, because the future impact of new technologies are, by their nature, impossible to predict.

The oft-cited statistic is that 2 billion adults worldwide are still completely “unbanked” and don’t even have a basic checking or savings account. One percent of 2 billion is 20 million people (roughly the population of a mid-size country), many of them living in poverty.

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with M-Pesa in Kenya to happen more easily in any country in the world.

I've written about this as well. You can skip to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked" to read data on how m-Pesa has improved life for many poor and rural Kenyans.

https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan...

I think your point about US power plants is a nitpick – The largest power plants in the world are not located in the US, and either way my point still stands because it's meant to be a rough approximation.

Unlike data centers where electricity consumption is directly correlated with internet usage, Bitcoin's electricity consumption is instead directly correlated with its price (which attracts more miners), and is very indirectly correlated with the number of users or transactions.

It's very possible that Bitcoin could be adopted by a significant (e.g. 10% or more) percentage of the world population even as its price remains fairly consistent, which would mean its total electricity consumption would remain fairly consistent as well.

Indeed, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, to put those numbers in context, Bitcoin consumes as much power globally as a single large power plant, and roughly 10% of the world's data centers [1].

To be sure, it's the growth rate of that consumption that is more concerning. But at the same time, there are lots of reasons to believe that Bitcoin's electricity consumption will naturally moderate and flatten over time.

If you think Bitcoin has even a 1% chance of changing the world for the better e.g. via increased financial inclusion for lower-income populations, I think that amount of electricity is a reasonable "investment" to make (for now).

[1] https://medium.com/@petershin45/bitcoin-is-killing-the-plane...

Bitcoin's absolute power consumption isn't at a critical level yet — Bitcoin consumes as much power globally as a single large power plant, and roughly 10% of the world's data centers.

However, I agree that its rapid and consistent growth rate is concerning and can't be ignored.

It's an area I'm really interested in and have been reading a lot about, because most of the news and "analysis" of the issue on both sides has been obnoxiously biased.

I tried to write a balanced summary article of the situation (below). Long-term, Bitcoin's electricity consumption could really go either way i.e. flatten or continue growing indefinitely. There are some causal factors like price that are out of our control, but there are others like the Lightning Network that are both feasible and in our control, and could significantly moderate Bitcoin's electricity consumption.

https://medium.com/@petershin45/bitcoin-is-killing-the-plane...

And for those who prefer written communication, there's Crisis Text Line[1]: Text 741741 (US only)

Disclaimer: I'm a volunteer.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/r-u

Re: Bitcoin's electricity consumption, I wasn't satisfied with how one-sided or incomplete a lot of the articles written about this topic are, so I tried writing my own* that (hopefully) more fully and objectively encapsulates the data and facts of the matter.

TL;DR – We all need to stop ignoring Bitcoin's rapidly-growing electricity consumption and making flawed "What about _____?"† arguments. The Bitcoin community (myself included) needs to start facing reality and be able to demonstrate four things:

1) Bitcoin’s energy usage is actually reasonable, when viewed in proper context

2) All that electricity is actually serving a useful purpose

3) Bitcoin’s growing energy needs can be brought under control

4) Over time, the electricity for Bitcoin will increasingly come from renewable sources

I personally believe that #1 and #4 are already true and will continue to trend in the right direction over time. As for #2 and #3, those can become true in the near future, but right now it's all hypothetical and Bitcoin needs to start delivering on its (unfulfilled) potential soon.

* https://medium.com/@petershin45/bitcoin-is-killing-the-plane...

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

To add to this point, M-Pesa has been a huge success in Kenya, but has had trouble expanding to other countries because of some inherent limitations of M-Pesa's model.

A cryptocurrency could enable the next evolution of mobile payment services like M-Pesa. I touched on this in a past blog post:

https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan... (You can scroll down to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked")

Travis Kalanick's words to that Uber driver back in Feb 2017 are very ironic now in retrospect:

"Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else."

I see Donald Trump running for president as being nothing more than a glorified PR campaign to build his own brand. I don't think he even cares if he wins or loses, and I think it's possible he might not even accept the presidency if he were to win it as it's not worth the headache - He's a businessman first and foremost whose primary interest is in amassing wealth.

However, I do think there is one "side benefit" to his absurd, self-serving presidential campaign, and that is he is making a mockery of the US's political process and pushing it to its logical extremes, which I think is long overdue. A good democratic process should be able to prevent potential fascists from gaining power, and the fact that Trump even got this far shows the deficiencies of the system and that it needs reform. There is literally nothing stopping popular and influential celebrities like Kanye West and Kim Kardashian from running for president and winning. In fact, they've even announced their intentions to do so[1].

I'd argue that, ironically, Trump is achieving the same ends that Larry Lessig[2] hoped to achieve, albeit through very different means.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9x92nwGf_M

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig_presidential_c...

What interesting timing - I'm organizing an Immigration-themed hackathon[1] this weekend in SF, and on Saturday morning we'll have a speaking panel called "Immigrant Founder Stories" where founders from 4 startups (big to small) will share about their struggles to gain permanent status in the US, and how it affected them as entrepreneurs.

- Laks Srini, Co-founder & CTO at Zenefits [2]

- Tri Tran, Co-founder & CEO at Munchery [3]

- Silver Keskküla, Co-founder at Teleport (ex-Skype) [4]

- Nikhil Aitharaju, Co-founder at Tint [5]

[1] http://www.up.co/communities/usa/san-francisco/startup-weeke... (Use promo code "hn" for 70% off)

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/technology/workers-in-sili...

[3] https://medium.com/@munchery/pitch-your-life-2f170eab933b

[4] https://medium.com/@keskkyla/good-luck-being-born-tomorrow-d...

[5] https://app.fwd.us/stories/259

You could say the same thing for any "on-demand" startup out there. It's this kind of intellectual laziness ("It failed in the past so it couldn't possibly succeed now.") that prevented electric cars from happening sooner.

Some on-demand startups will work out magnificently and many others will not because the economics just don't make sense. In the case of Munchery, I think their valuation is very reasonable when you consider it's an order of magnitude less than that of one of their indirect competitors Blue Apron who is seeking a $2 billion valuation (as mentioned in the article).