this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
36 points (84.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26980 readers
1240 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I see news stories that will give examples of how much energy a type of technology uses (usually AI or crypto). They'll claim very big numbers like the whole ecosystem using "as much as a small country" or one instance of use being "as much as an average home uses in a year."

With the crypto ecosystem being so big and I'm less inclined to defend it, I haven't thought as much about the claims. But with AI while it still has problematic aspects, it also has a lot of useful applications. When I run a single query the idea it's the same energy as driving my car ten miles or whatever doesn't seem to pass the smell test.

How are these numbers generated? Historically media doesn't do great with science reporting ("a cure for cancer was just invented" etc) so just trying to get some context/perspective.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Don't you think if some other currency surpassed Bitcoin as the best known and universally adopted currency that people would start speculating on the new currency instead of Bitcoin?

The issue is both proof of work and limited number of coins. As more people use a limited number of coins, the price will go up and so mining difficulty will go up, and so energy use goes up.

I think the future of cryptocurrency is inflationary coins that use proof of stake. (Also with anonymity built in instead of pseudonymity)

[โ€“] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago

If a coin is used the speculating goes down, same reason people don't speculate with dollar value, if X coins buys you a hot dog it gets a lot harder to speculate, the price becomes what people who use it give it. This is similar to gold, while it was used like money it was quite stable, but as people started to use dollars and the dollar decoupled from gold, actual gold became a lot more speculative.

Again no, the more coins people hold the more the value goes up, people actually using the coins doesn't interfere in their price, unless you get to a point where there aren't enough coins for everyone. But even if it got to the point that the price increases because everyone wants to use it and there aren't enough coins for everyone to use, I don't see how that would make mining more expensive. Like I said, processing 1 or 1000 transactions has a similar difficulty. The price of the coin going up could affect profitability, but the amount of ASICS is constant, so the power is already being consumed to mine other coins and would just be pointed here instead of there but would still have been consumed regardless.

I agree inflationary PoS coins, especially ones with smart contract capabilities such as Ethereum are way more useful. I understand the appeal for anonymity, but I disagree on the importance of it, I think most cryptocurrencies are anonymous enough even though like you pointed out they're not fully anonymous.