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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

The cryptocurrency fandom seems to think the solution to "all money is arbitrary" is to make all money random.

Yes the dollar is a fiat currency. That's still functionally different and better than a "because we say so" currency.

And again cryptocurrency isn't a currency because it's almost never used as that. It's an investment. But the investment is on the idea of it being a currency in the future, which it never will be because it only gets used as an investment.

It's the financial equivalent of buying a set of super-expensive fine china you're always too scared to eat off of because no dinner is ever going to be posh or special enough to justify risking the good china.

It's like they are trying to reinvent Forex trading but making it so they can just make up the currencies.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
The cryptocurrency fandom seems to think the solution to "all money is arbitrary" is to make all money random.
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I'd say that's a very nice summary but unfortunately Psionl0 will be along shortly to tell me that it's in fact a horrible summary, perhaps in the process showing that he doesn't know what summaries are.

Yes the dollar is a fiat currency. That's still functionally different and better than a "because we say so" currency.
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You'd think the fact that currencies have been VERY stable in recent decades would give them a hint.
 
Belz... said:
I'd say that's a very nice summary but unfortunately Psionl0 will be along shortly to tell me that it's in fact a horrible summary, perhaps in the process showing that he doesn't know what summaries are.
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I don't know what "make all money random" means so I am not going to criticize this I-don't-know-if-this-is-a-summary.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Added: In fact it would be more efficient to build a car that burns coal directly rather than electricity produced by coal. You're losing lots of energy during the conversion process of coal to electricity.
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What is your evidence for this?
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Maybe this is the link you were looking for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAN5nO1ag0

It's a video of the Coaldsmobile. A GM car from the early 80's that ran on coal.
No kidding.
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But was it more efficient than using electricity generated by a coal-fired power station ?

Power stations use pulverised coal dust to superheat water and use that water to drive turbines.

The "Coaldsmobile" burns the pulverised coal dust directly in a turbine. I know that this sounds like an argument from incredulity, but if this was more efficient than using coal to heat water then wouldn't power stations be doing this ?

There would seem to be a *lot* of wasted heat in the coal-dust turbine.
 
Samson said:
It is a bleak future where local perfection is irrelevant.
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...what? What are you talking about?

Hydro power is clean and has a very low carbon footprint. Yes flooding a large area is destructive but that's where the issues end. We even sell power to the US because in certain periods we have too much of it.
 
The Don said:
But was it more efficient than using electricity generated by a coal-fired power station ?

Power stations use pulverised coal dust to superheat water and use that water to drive turbines.

The "Coaldsmobile" burns the pulverised coal dust directly in a turbine. I know that this sounds like an argument from incredulity, but if this was more efficient than using coal to heat water then wouldn't power stations be doing this ?

There would seem to be a *lot* of wasted heat in the coal-dust turbine.
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Not wanting to stray too far away from the topic, energy usage discussion about Bitcoin and mining are completely related, but this may be getting a bit closer to a discussion of energy production efficiencies in general.

If coal was the fuel used to produce electricity by burning it and using a boiler to drive a steam turbine to rotate a generator. It would be more efficient to use a hybrid system that used a coal dust powered turbine to rotate a generator, while utilizing the waste heat from the turbine to heat water to drive a second generator powered by a steam turbine. Though initial cost would be an issue, and likely the downfall, the efficiency of the hybrid plant would be much higher.

Personally, I'm all in for solar electric powering Bitcoin mining. Sunshine into money.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Added: In fact it would be more efficient to build a car that burns coal directly rather than electricity produced by coal. You're losing lots of energy during the conversion process of coal to electricity.
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ChrisBFRPKY said:
Only energy transformation, Thermodynamics. Chemical reactions, losses from conversion of 1 form of energy to another.....Stuff like that.
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This is false. Electric motors efficiency is in the high 90's plus you can use things like regenerative breaking to increase efficiency even further. There are some transmission and charging losses but these are a lot smaller than the additional losses you incur running a car sized internal combustion engine instead of a large power plant.

You can't compare coal because there are no vehicles that run on it. Even with natural gas, it's more efficient to produce electricity in a large natural gas power plant, and use that to charge a car battery than it is to power the car directly from natural gas. A coal powered vehicle would be even worse.
 
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