wow we are only 105 user id's apart!

holy cow, had to post a comment just to say i was here.

also a bit shocked the last post by Taco was about Reamde, which to me, feels a lot more recent than 10 years ago. That's frightening.

having seen frat boy culture and sorority girl culture, i recognize them as distinct things that are worthy of referencing. i also see frat boy culture, the frat boy culture i am familiar with anyway, as being generally bad. is it stereotypical? i suppose, but when i have witnessed it, what i see is a bunch of kids of rich people destroying a house drinking, womanizing and then after school settling in to a firmly upper middle class life as a result of their access to opportunity and social networks.

it really is fucking messed up and worthy of challenge.

dumbest shit ever.

indeed, and its important to recognize why its a demand-side solution. the architects of that system saw the value of burdening people under loans that cant be wiped away by bankruptcy. its a system designed with purpose and intent to create indentured servants.

charitable giving isnt a relevant tax deduction unless you itemize. you'd have to itemize over $24,800 of expenses, a number that's hard for most.

The IRS had to create a special non-profit deduction but that only gets you to $300 of deductible income, a paltry meaningless amount since it's just a deduction off your income, lowering your taxable income by $300 nets you like $15-50 in reduced tax liability, if you make enough to even be taxed.

through proof of work, bitcoin's value becomes tangible and real, because it takes real electricity, real work, to secure the system. the proof of work creates a direct link between the financial systems and energy systems, one that doesn't exist today in any practical way, and is a super power of bitcoin people are not yet cognizant of.

bitcoin creates a financial incentive for cheap energy, and that cheap energy is in the form of wasted/underutilized energy like off-peak renewables, gas flaring at drilling sites, hydro and many others. bitcoin's hunger for energy is directly related to the value of the network.

in a bitcoin dominant future, transaction fees on the main chain will be high, but only governments and banks will transact on chain. other settlement layers built on top of bitcoin, like lightning or even frankly existing fiat currencies, will conitnue to exist and those systems will continue to work as long as people find value in maintaining them.

is it rational to think that you're the sole decider of rationality?

if you read the article, what he's doing is he's spreading FUD into leadership basically saying "china is into bitcoin, and if they are alone, then it's a financial attack on the USD. What are you going to do, united states? are you on the sidelines? cause the solution here is to get into bitcoin pronto as a future store of value"

there's no clearing house between you and your recipient, no authority to apply friction or cost to your transaction, and it is border-resilient.

Bitcoin will never scale for everyone in the globe to transact on it. it isnt intended to and people wont use it for that because transaction costs will be too high. but it will function as a store of value basis for global currencies.

Bitcoins cost of operation will exactly match the value of processing. Moreover, its energy use will seek the cheapest source of energy. It will literally be the direct driver of incentives to continue to drive down the cost of energy by correlating our financial systems with our energy systems.

The cost of bitcoin, even in a future of a $10 tril or $100 tril valuation, is still far less than the world spends to mine gold, which derives about 80% of its value not from market demand but from store of value utilization. if we want to talk about bad things for the environment, lets talk about gold.

participating in discusssions about bitcoin at slashdot is extremely frustrating because you'd expect the technologically minded audience to not be so closed minded and resistant to change, but there's a ton of dead brains here that are completely unwilling to engage in critical thinking beyond repeating the "ponzi scheme" "uses energy uselessly" other things.

they literally cant see what's happening as they age and a new generation comes in with their ideas and so on. its so weird and doesnt fit with my expectation of slashdot at all.

if you don't understand how bitcoin actually contributes to solving the energy problem then i am not sure i can convince you, but you do need to do more research to understand it.

bitcoin effectively works as a financial battery for energy, it can be used for storing the value of under-utilized energy sources like hydro, solar and natural gas from flares, in the financial system. this is a relatively new concept so that people don't get it isn't surprising.

bitcoin's expense of operation is directly porportional to its value. what it will disrupt is existing subsidy markets which are incorrectly defined by politicians instead of markets, to create advantage where none should exist. places which have incorrectly defined energy related subsidy market will need to work to update or eliminate their subsidy plans.

bitcoin doesn't, and won't, use more electricity than global data center use or anything else. it will always be sized to its value by market conditions and the protocol.

yeah so its not the heat itself thats the problem. the earth has practically unlimited radiative capacity. its the pollution from converting fossil fuels into energy that is. bitcoin uses straight electricity, so it's far less pollutive than say international cargo freight or global car use when it comes to global warming CO2 and methane impacts.