(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 08:30 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 04:32 AM)dasher Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 02:04 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  Here is an article discussing the waste of energy that the "future" currency bitcoin is using.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/qu...gy/6827940

'Economics professor' telling us about the virtues of green energy. Give me a break.

Plus the article is from October 2015 - which kind of coincides with the various bitcoin is dead mantras of Ethereum et al and the new improved Bitcoin 2.0 themes that did not quite come to pass as planned.

in other words, one of the lame, pie in the sky criticisms of bitcoin to some how suggest that the value and security of bitcoin is not worth spending some energy and other forms of currencies are not without their energy costs.

The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

I had looked through this below linked article earlier today, and I thought that it had provided some interesting descriptions of ways to diversify your retirement portfolio.


https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-offers-...ortfolios/

I found it a bit interesting how apparently expensive it seems to be to buy coins indirectly through these funds rather than directly...

Of course there are some advantages to indirectly because of the advantages of tax deferrability and qualifying under some retirement portfolios.

Probably we cannot really bank on the bitcoin ETF being approved, but I am not sure if I would put such disapproval probability as high as 95% that is stated in the below article.

http://www.coindesk.com/ex-gemini-lawyer...tcoin-etf/

Below is a linked article that asserts that governmental banning of bitcoin seems to have the opposite intended effect.

https://news.bitcoin.com/needham-banning...ifications

I know that sometimes guys here have expressed some concerns about the effects or the potential effects of various governmental actions on bitcoin (whether that be price or otherwise). The effects of government banning is by no means a settled question, and it does seem to be a likely ongoing occurrence in bitcoin's expected future.

(01-20-2017 02:25 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 08:30 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 04:32 AM)dasher Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 02:04 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  Here is an article discussing the waste of energy that the "future" currency bitcoin is using.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/qu...gy/6827940

'Economics professor' telling us about the virtues of green energy. Give me a break.

Plus the article is from October 2015 - which kind of coincides with the various bitcoin is dead mantras of Ethereum et al and the new improved Bitcoin 2.0 themes that did not quite come to pass as planned.

in other words, one of the lame, pie in the sky criticisms of bitcoin to some how suggest that the value and security of bitcoin is not worth spending some energy and other forms of currencies are not without their energy costs.

The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

Here's an interesting thread that could be considered a supplement to my above post.


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...ut_50000x/


The contents therein assert that currently bitcoin's computers have about 50,000 times the computing power of the top 500 supercomputers, but use less energy than those 500 supercomputers.

Just a bit of a data point to consider about energy consumption and what security, immutability and value storage is being provided with that (both present value and future value).

I'm interested in picking up some Bitcoin if it drops below $600.
What is the possibility of this happening?

You guys think I should just suck it up and buy em now @ $895?
Cryptocurrency is very new to me, have been doing a boat load of research the last 48 hours.

Experts (if there is such a thing) seem to think that it will rally to $1,300 - $2,000 before the end of 2017.
Same experts say wait to buy as it may dip as low as $500 as the Chinese economy soars early and then returns back to normal throughout the year.

Looking at the history though, it seems pretty rock solid in the high $800 low $900, couldn't imagine that it could actually get as low as $500.
Like I said this is all new to me though.

(01-20-2017 04:25 PM)ScrapperTL Wrote:  I'm interested in picking up some Bitcoin if it drops below $600.
What is the possibility of this happening?

You guys think I should just suck it up and buy em now @ $895?
Cryptocurrency is very new to me, have been doing a boat load of research the last 48 hours.

Experts (if there is such a thing) seem to think that it will rally to $1,300 - $2,000 before the end of 2017.
Same experts say wait to buy as it may dip as low as $500 as the Chinese economy soars early and then returns back to normal throughout the year.

Looking at the history though, it seems pretty rock solid in the high $800 low $900, couldn't imagine that it could actually get as low as $500.
Like I said this is all new to me though.

Ultimately you are going to have to decide your own strategy that is comfortable for you and to be comfortable with the consequences.

I personally don't think that it is a good idea to wait or to attempt to time this kind of market, but you gotta figure out your timeline and your budget and prepare for the price to move in either direction.

So for example if you currently have $1000 that you can invest, but you have an income stream that would allow you about an extra $200 per month, then you may consider investing about 1/3 of the $1000 at the current price (and then dollar cost average $50 or more per week and then attempt to be strategic with whatever other funds you have in order to buy on dips. I personally hate to ever run out of money to be able to buy on dips, so I always try to keep enough money that I can continue to buy on the way down.

Surely other guys are going to have other ideas, and that is why you need to figure out something that works for you, your budget and your views, and if you do not jump in too quickly, then you can continue to research into the matter as you are investing.

48 hours is just not enough time to research. When I started, I began investing right away, but I made a plan to spread my initial investment over six months and then to reassess the situation after the first six months and then at that point, I added another six months, and by the end of the second six months, I felt that I had established a comfortable stake for my own situation and viewpoints.. Of course, I continued to tweak my plans and strategies thereafter, but my point is that my initial investment was spread out over a year.... and surely others are going to have different approaches compared to me.

(01-20-2017 02:25 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 08:30 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 04:32 AM)dasher Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 02:04 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  Here is an article discussing the waste of energy that the "future" currency bitcoin is using.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/qu...gy/6827940

'Economics professor' telling us about the virtues of green energy. Give me a break.

Plus the article is from October 2015 - which kind of coincides with the various bitcoin is dead mantras of Ethereum et al and the new improved Bitcoin 2.0 themes that did not quite come to pass as planned.

in other words, one of the lame, pie in the sky criticisms of bitcoin to some how suggest that the value and security of bitcoin is not worth spending some energy and other forms of currencies are not without their energy costs.

The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

SJW arguments? Seriously?

(01-21-2017 04:29 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 02:25 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 08:30 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 04:32 AM)dasher Wrote:  'Economics professor' telling us about the virtues of green energy. Give me a break.

Plus the article is from October 2015 - which kind of coincides with the various bitcoin is dead mantras of Ethereum et al and the new improved Bitcoin 2.0 themes that did not quite come to pass as planned.

in other words, one of the lame, pie in the sky criticisms of bitcoin to some how suggest that the value and security of bitcoin is not worth spending some energy and other forms of currencies are not without their energy costs.

The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

SJW arguments? Seriously?

There is a little bit of that SJW (social justice warrior) in those kinds of environmental appeals, where there is kind of a vacuous assertion to save the environment without much more, blah blah blah... when the fact of the matter is that you gotta look at the situation a bit more broadly rather than just throwing out some ideas that sound good but are really without any applicable substance to the situation in what you are getting, the trade offs and what is actually happening.

(01-21-2017 07:50 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-21-2017 04:29 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 02:25 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 08:30 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Plus the article is from October 2015 - which kind of coincides with the various bitcoin is dead mantras of Ethereum et al and the new improved Bitcoin 2.0 themes that did not quite come to pass as planned.

in other words, one of the lame, pie in the sky criticisms of bitcoin to some how suggest that the value and security of bitcoin is not worth spending some energy and other forms of currencies are not without their energy costs.

The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

SJW arguments? Seriously?

There is a little bit of that SJW (social justice warrior) in those kinds of environmental appeals, where there is kind of a vacuous assertion to save the environment without much more, blah blah blah... when the fact of the matter is that you gotta look at the situation a bit more broadly rather than just throwing out some ideas that sound good but are really without any applicable substance to the situation in what you are getting, the trade offs and what is actually happening.

If you could have the same level off security as bitcoin, but without the waste of electricity, which one would you choose? And you call me stupid.

(01-21-2017 01:22 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-21-2017 07:50 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-21-2017 04:29 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 02:25 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 12:37 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  The arguments are just as valid today. If we want a currency for the future, shouldn't it be one that uses energy in an efficient way?

Those are really pussy SJW arguments that distract from the more important trade offs of security of value, decentralization and immutability, which bitcoin achieves at a decent cost.

Yeah, Vitalik and his associates had also been spouting about those kinds of arguments in order to bolster somehow that Proof of Work (POW) was inferior to Proof Of Stake (POS), but really we have not even witnessed any kind of POS coin that achieves the stupendous paradigm shifting achievements of bitcoin in terms of security and immutability (in other words not centralized, insecure and changeable like Ethereum with it's multiple forks).

In other words, nothing with value comes for free and electricity and mining is a small price to pay for what is achieved.

SJW arguments? Seriously?

There is a little bit of that SJW (social justice warrior) in those kinds of environmental appeals, where there is kind of a vacuous assertion to save the environment without much more, blah blah blah... when the fact of the matter is that you gotta look at the situation a bit more broadly rather than just throwing out some ideas that sound good but are really without any applicable substance to the situation in what you are getting, the trade offs and what is actually happening.

If you could have the same level off security as bitcoin, but without the waste of electricity, which one would you choose? And you call me stupid.

I doubt that you are stupid. You just seem to be on some kind of emotional kick in which you want to argue and battle about things that may or may not be that important, including seeming to want to be right about the supposed failure of bitcoin, when even if it were to go close to zero, now, you should just concede that it has already been a success.

Whatever bitcoin is, it is, in terms of mining and electricity consumption. There are all kinds of folks who direct computing power at it. It is not some kind of centralized computing system, it is a conglomeration of thousands of computers (and seemingly even warehouses of computers, possibly).

It seems like the bitcoin mining system is a pretty decent decentralized set up that is achieving a lot of value by securing value and making a lot of paradigm shifting exchanges in the way we view value and the way we view decentralized technology.

Bitcoin mining also has free market value characteristics that cause people to develop around it to direct computing power around it and want to continue to develop and direct computing power towards bitcoin, which has increased it's hashing power to record high levels - 50,000 times the most powerful 500 computers combined.. like was mentioned in another linked article that I posted earlier.

Regarding your hypothetical, do we have any other system that has all (or most) of the same attributes of bitcoin, but is only different in regards to less energy consumption?

Do you even understand the level of ridiculous that you are suggesting in your hypothetical? Do you realize that there is no such hypothetical system in place?

Makes me wonder, what is your proposition, exactly? We should not buy into or support bitcoin because it uses more energy than it hypothetically could in a more ideal world?

I'm thinking let's deal with what we really have in place rather than suggesting fantasy systems that do not even exist and then nothing wrong with attempting to improve upon such existing systems or to migrate or diversify ourselves into better systems and approaches to the extent that such better systems/approaches exist or are in the makings.

Right now, bitcoin is the BIG dog on the crypto currencies block, and there seem to be no real competing systems, and it has a lot of great things going on in its space that will likely continue to cause it to retain and likely even increase in value in the near and the long term (though I never really claim to know exactly some of the shorter term price directions)

Talk about the energy consumption of a currency is absolutely relevant.
I wouldn't like people learning up nature to harvest gold, that will eventually sit in a valve somewhere.

No doubt bitcoin use a lot of power atm, but every time the block reward get cut in half. Should´t the energy consumption drastically reduce at the same time? Until eventually the energy cost is more related to running the network, and not mining for new coins.

(01-21-2017 02:31 PM)pants Wrote:  Talk about the energy consumption of a currency is absolutely relevant.
I wouldn't like people learning up nature to harvest gold, that will eventually sit in a valve somewhere.

No doubt bitcoin use a lot of power atm, but every time the block reward get cut in half. Should´t the energy consumption drastically reduce at the same time? Until eventually the energy cost is more related to running the network, and not mining for new coins.

Maybe I made my point badly?

I am not suggesting that it is irrelevant to discuss bitcoin's energy consumption.

I also doubt that the proposition that you are making is going to be true, regarding energy consumption reducing with the cutting in half of the coin rewards. There are a lot of dynamics going on, but part of the future anticipation of energy consumption is going to related to value of the overall network and the rewards that are gotten from mining and/or securing the network.

If the market cap continues to go up with bitcoin, there will likely continue to be an incentive to invest in mining and also to invest in methods to attack the value on the network (hacks etc).

Sure, I have no real meaningful idea how these matters are going to play out including the direction of market cap, exactly, but I doubt that it is safe to assume that energy consumption is going to go down with the passage of time, unless either market cap does not go up very much or market cap actually decreases, and that does not seem to be a very safe assumption.

Do you remember before the last halvening (summer 2016), there were all kinds of predictions that miners would be abandoning bitcoin and bitcoin's hashing power would be going down which would lead to less security and prices going down etc etc etc... Probably, you were not one of those folks, but they were all over the place making those kinds of predictions, and instead bitcoin's hashing power has continued to go up in quite dramatic ways with hardly a halvening blip.

On the other hand, I do agree with what seems to be part of the assumptions of your proposition that there will likely be improvements in computing and energy that is needed to produce hashing power, but because of other reasons, including likely increases in market cap, etc, I doubt that better energy efficiencies is actually going to significantly result in meaningful reductions in overall energy consumption of bitcoin, but what do I know? That's just my ball park working idea at this time.

Frequently there are concerns about distribution of bitcoin mining becoming too centralized, but the fact of the matter appears that with the passage of time bitcoin mining is becoming more and more distributed and more and more miners are continuing to enter the space.

It is interesting when we have a nobel winning economist who seems to be warming up to bitcoin.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nobel-la...-rid-fiat/

I think that overall this new policy in China will be very interesting, and maybe even normalize some of the Chinese bitcoin trading.

The three major Chinese exchanges are implementing .2% fees and discontinuing margin trading. The fees go into effect noon UTC 1/24/17... .. which is 7 hours from now (as I type). I think the no margin trading may have already gone into effect, but I am not clear about that, exactly.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/chinese-...ding-fees/



This below linked article supplements the above article by contrasting China with Japan (suggesting that in Japan that currently there is considerable growth in bitcoin)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-23...8900-japan

Even though this article gives some perspective of changes in China, in contrast with the tone of the article, I am thinking that some crackdown on the past looseness of Chinese exchanges is a good thing for bitcoin and not a bad thing for China and bitcoin, either. So we can have a boom in China and a boom in Japan, even though some of the trading volume may appear to be going down in China, I doubt that their enthusiasm for bitcoin is going down (not yet anyhow).

I cannot recall if I may have already posted some article related to this topic of Trump and bitcoin, but there does seem to be a certain amount of consensus in the bitcoin community that Trump may end up being good for bitcoin, whether on-purpose or inadvertently.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/01/23/will-t...-partners/

(01-23-2017 10:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Frequently there are concerns about distribution of bitcoin mining becoming too centralized, but the fact of the matter appears that with the passage of time bitcoin mining is becoming more and more distributed and more and more miners are continuing to enter the space.

The below link is a supplement to my earlier post, which is a reddit thread discussing the mining distribution in 2017 as compared with 2012.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...2_vs_2017/

(01-24-2017 01:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  It is interesting when we have a nobel winning economist who seems to be warming up to bitcoin.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nobel-la...-rid-fiat/

Do you even read the links yourself? The article says that the professor is positive to crypto currencies. He also thought that it's good that the US government have been trying to shut down bitcoin. Because people have been using bitcoin to avoid tax.

Get the fuck out.

(01-24-2017 09:37 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-24-2017 01:06 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  It is interesting when we have a nobel winning economist who seems to be warming up to bitcoin.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nobel-la...-rid-fiat/

Do you even read the links yourself? The article says that the professor is positive to crypto currencies. He also thought that it's good that the US government have been trying to shut down bitcoin. Because people have been using bitcoin to avoid tax.

Get the fuck out.

Yep. I read that article.

The article was a bit vague in it's various representations concerning how the professor had evolved in his thinking about bitcoin and crypto currencies.

So yeah overall the article seems to have been making the point that a while back the professor was against bitcoin and crypto currencies, but he has recently come around in his thinking to be more receptive to bitcoin and crypto currencies.

I was not attempting to make any further point than that or attempting to read into the article any more than that.

Sure I would not be completely surprised if the article is not 100% accurate about the professors exact position or if the article misquotes the actual position of the professor.. but in the end, I was not attempting to make any kind of deeper point in regards to the professor's position, only that the article asserts that he seems to be warming up to bitcoin as compared with his previous position.

If you know more about the article or about the professor, please share.

By the way, there seems to be little to no meat to your assertions regarding the article being supposedly opposite to what I had been asserting ...

Wow.... Any of you guys interested in dynamics of prices and combining of exchanges. You guys should check out the links in this reddit thread, which has a link to a live combined exchange version, currently in dollars.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/...ook_chart/

Here's an article that seems to make quite a few points that are similar to ones that I have made, in essence bitcoin is not broken and that it is likely a good thing that bitcoin is difficult to change.


http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scaling-...oundtable/

(01-25-2017 12:44 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Here's an article that seems to make quite a few points that are similar to ones that I have made, in essence bitcoin is not broken and that it is likely a good thing that bitcoin is difficult to change.


http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scaling-...oundtable/

Did you realize this just now?

(01-25-2017 10:37 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-25-2017 12:44 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Here's an article that seems to make quite a few points that are similar to ones that I have made, in essence bitcoin is not broken and that it is likely a good thing that bitcoin is difficult to change.


http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scaling-...oundtable/

Did you realize this just now?

Seems that I've been making that point in various ways (or at least attempting to do so) for at least 6 months..


Also, here is a decent reddit thread discussing various aspects of segregated witness.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...i5_segwit/

(01-25-2017 11:06 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(01-25-2017 10:37 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(01-25-2017 12:44 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  Here's an article that seems to make quite a few points that are similar to ones that I have made, in essence bitcoin is not broken and that it is likely a good thing that bitcoin is difficult to change.


http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scaling-...oundtable/

Did you realize this just now?

Seems that I've been making that point in various ways (or at least attempting to do so) for at least 6 months..


Also, here is a decent reddit thread discussing various aspects of segregated witness.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...i5_segwit/

So you are just repeating yourself.