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posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-bubble-is-bigger-than-yours dept.

As reported in the Evening Standard, the Bank of International Settlements published an annual report with four criteria to continue economic growth. However, it was rather overshadowed by a statement in the appendix (reported here, here, here, here, here and elsewhere) where cryptographic currency was described as a "combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster".

I agree and so does a Canadian electricity company.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @03:08AM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @03:08AM (#699099)

    How is proof of work an environmental disaster?

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by arslan on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:19AM (6 children)

    by arslan (3462) on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:19AM (#699121)

    Its the part that takes the most compute power - i.e. mining for the next coin sequence. There's studies out there around how much electricity is used/wasted, hence the environmental disaster.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:54AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:54AM (#699136)
      In other words, bitcoin is anti-green and facilitates AGW.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:33AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:33AM (#699172)

      I have a handful of spooge, which took me a half-hour to produce.

      Now, all I have to do is find someone else to buy it as "proof of work".

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @05:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @05:37PM (#699384)

        Half an hour? My bukkakke group is totally gonna get rich off JizzCoin, we can all mine one in 30 seconds flat!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:49AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:49AM (#699219)

      Do those studies tell you how much energy is used for various other "wasteful" activities like driving to work instead of public transport, playing violent video games, looking at porn, drinking/partying, etc?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:06PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:06PM (#699275)
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:09PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:09PM (#699276)

          Did you read what you are responding to at all?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @05:05AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @05:05AM (#699144)

    It's like opening the water faucet and having drinking water just go down the drain, then selling the water meter reading. All it does is use resources without something useful happening.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:46AM (#699217)

      Puritans have been saying this about nearly everything people like to do for awhile. Over 99% of what people use energy for can be considered "waste". Are you really falling for it in this case?

      Also, the energy used for mining s a fraction of a percent of what is just lost to fixable grid, power plant, appliance inefficiencies. Are you really falling for "here is a big number out of context, be scared"?

    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:59AM

      by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday June 27 2018, @10:59AM (#699225) Journal

      And how is that worse than the amount of energy and resources used by HFT, Wall Street traders, hell any financial system at all?
      If we were all perfect little communists you could eliminate an awful lot of wasted resources by just having everybody work for the good of society, and take only what they need from the community resources. The wasted work you could eliminate would include every supervisor, most managers and accountants, every banker and finance wonk out there. We redirect them into productive work and we could colonise the solar system in a decade, and head out to the stars in the next one.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:56PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:56PM (#699272)

      then selling the water meter reading

      Oh, come now, it's better than that, it's more like opening a betting pool on what the last digits of a water meter that reads in nano-liters will read.

      use resources without something useful happening.

      I'll argue that there is entertainment value in the speculation: people are having a great time fantasizing about how they've gotten in on the ground floor of the next big thing and they'll be 100x richer than all the other rubes out there who missed the boat. If they'd take a moment to think about it, that kind of fantasy can't possibly come true for everyone, but they don't - so the joyride continues. Just like 1849, the people who are raking in a steady income from the speculators are, on average, going to do much better than the speculators themselves.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]