[kwlug-disc] Peak crypto?

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

> The Bitcoin people are taking action to solve the problems they see as
> real,
> which earns my respect, even though they may be misguided.
>

There are two main issues with Bitcoin at the moment:

- Every year, it is exponentially harder to "mine" Bitcoin because of the
way
the system works. That directly translates into custom ASIC rigs that last
less than a year, then go to the landfill, as well as exponential growth in
power usage unnecessarily.

I say unnecessary, because power usage is something that Bitcoin uses
because of the harder hashes that should be solved. This is all artificial.
There should be another alternative that does not use as much power.

- It enables fraudsters, scammers, and money laundereres more than
anything else previously. Yes, technology is use agnostic, but when the
main use case is crime, one has to pause and think how much less of
that would occur if there were no enabler technology that has little
else use.

On the third hand (ha) I start to wonder why there is a growing
> condemnation of Bitcoin's power usage in particular, especially when
> governments are exploring their own digital currencies.  Perhaps
> official digital coins will solve the power problems,


Issuing a digital currency does not have to be power intensive.
Canadian Tire money is not energy intensive. Neither should the
government issued ones be.

It is the "mining" and lottery that rewards those miners that cause
all this excessive power usage.

But will they solve the original problems Bitcoin set out to fix?  I have
> my doubts.
>

It is a great experiment that has run its course. Hope something else
comes up that avoids those serious drawbacks.

-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
Fast Reliable Drupal
Drupal performance optimization, hosting and consulting.
"Sooner or later, this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going
to blow up in our faces." -- Dr. Carl Sagan
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