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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

Digital gold crashes with a war.
Black gold collapses upwards as does yellow gold.
 
Samson said:
Digital gold crashes with a war.
Black gold collapses upwards as does yellow gold.
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Bitcoin needing the internet and a crapton of power seems a drawback to the idea of bitcoin being a hedge against social collapse seeing that sort of thing is not usually good for infrastructure.
 
Suddenly said:
Bitcoin needing the internet and a crapton of power seems a drawback to the idea of bitcoin being a hedge against social collapse seeing that sort of thing is not usually good for infrastructure.
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It does need internet, but not ton of power. Power needed scales automatically with power supply.
 
carlitos said:
How does that work exactly?
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There is something called mining difficulty. It's set so new solution is found roughly every 10 minutes. Then miners simply compete. Those who invest more power are more likely to find the solution first. Miners basically balance computing power vs. price of electricity and hardware.
If 99% of miners would switch their rigs off, system would adjust the difficulty and they would be solving easier problems.

Some interesting news: Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Sets New All-Time High
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-sets-time-032656607.html

BTC difficulty graph is here: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/difficulty
 
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Thank you. I was surprised that I actually knew about some of that.

Are you suggesting that, in case of a global emergency reducing internet access by 99% of miners, bitcoin would be ok because of the reduced work required automatically? I’m a little skeptical that transactions would keep going but I’m no expert.
 
carlitos said:
Thank you. I was surprised that I actually knew about some of that.

Are you suggesting that, in case of a global emergency reducing internet access by 99% of miners, bitcoin would be ok because of the reduced work required automatically? I’m a little skeptical that transactions would keep going but I’m no expert.
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Well, me neither, but if you look at the graph you can see how varied the difficulty was in the past, and the actual rate of new block is kept the same.
 
If the world internet crashes, the only people with internet could be the winners, and they might not be all geeked up about mining bitcoin to benefit the losers. Cybercurrency will be a whole new angle to cyber warfare.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Financial sanctions are easier than ever for Russians to evade. Thank Bitcoin

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/24/business/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-russia-sanctions/index.html
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Jesus Christ.

Even the article says, and I paraphrase, "It might work on an extremely small scale, but not really enough to move the needle."

All per your article:
1) They'd have to find another country that wants to buy their oil\wheat in bitcoin. We aren't talking $1 million, we're talking actual billions of dollars moving through wallets.
2) Those transactions would be easily trackable on both ends. From Russia to insert_country_here
3) There's no real, practical way to introduce bitcoin back into the global market, with amounts of that scale without everyone knowing about it, given the public ledger.
4) The sheer volatility of bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is a huge deterrent for anyone doing large scale business in it. Any country Russia wants to pay, or get paid from, would cause HUGE fluctuations in bitcoin due to the size of funds going in and out of the blockchain with just their transactions.

I get it, bitcoin is scary and all that, but Russia isn't going to avoid even a fraction of the sanctions because of bitcoin.
 
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plague311 said:
Jesus Christ.

Even the article says, and I paraphrase, "It might work on an extremely small scale, but not really enough to move the needle."

All per your article:
1) They'd have to find another country that wants to buy their oil\wheat in bitcoin. We aren't talking $1 million, we're talking actual billions of dollars moving through wallets.
2) Those transactions would be easily trackable on both ends. From Russia to insert_country_here
3) There's no real, practical way to introduce bitcoin back into the global market, with amounts of that scale without everyone knowing about it, given the public ledger.
4) The sheer volatility of bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is a huge deterrent for anyone doing large scale business in it. Any country Russia wants to pay, or get paid from, would cause HUGE fluctuations in bitcoin due to the size of funds going in and out of the blockchain with just their transactions.

I get it, bitcoin is scary and all that, but Russia isn't going to avoid even a fraction of the sanctions because of bitcoin.
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These sorts of CNN articles are the worst. The giveaway is they usually use one source and when you google it turns out the person is not exactly a detached observer but is selling something or has some angle. Like when all those shoplifting things came out they'd quote people with security consulting businesses.

In this case the guy whose business gains by setting off alarms about money laundering while getting his name out there. Now he gets to use his being used as a source as a marketing tool.

Not to mention Russia exports like $500B yearly. Bitcoins entire market cap is about $750B. Volatility barely begins to describe what that would be like.
 
The utilitarians will grapple with your post.
The greatest good for the greatest number.
 
a_unique_person said:
Good point. The dependence on hi-tech and energy at the same time makes it fragile.
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Hmmm, I would have thought the posts following the one you quoted adequately addressed the power issue.

If in an apocalyptic scenario bitcoin mining was reduced to a handful of PCs then the energy needed for mining would be negligible. A fragmented internet might create blockchain forking issues though.
 
On a crime procedural TV show last night, a kidnapper demanded $10 million in Bitcoin to release his hostage. My first thought while watching it was to wonder what the ransom would end up actually being worth, given the frequent fluctuations. And as people have mentioned here, it would be a lot harder for the kidnapper to actually spend the ransom.
 
plague311 said:
Jesus Christ.

Even the article says, and I paraphrase, "It might work on an extremely small scale, but not really enough to move the needle."

All per your article:
1) They'd have to find another country that wants to buy their oil\wheat in bitcoin. We aren't talking $1 million, we're talking actual billions of dollars moving through wallets.
2) Those transactions would be easily trackable on both ends. From Russia to insert_country_here
3) There's no real, practical way to introduce bitcoin back into the global market, with amounts of that scale without everyone knowing about it, given the public ledger.
4) The sheer volatility of bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is a huge deterrent for anyone doing large scale business in it. Any country Russia wants to pay, or get paid from, would cause HUGE fluctuations in bitcoin due to the size of funds going in and out of the blockchain with just their transactions.

I get it, bitcoin is scary and all that, but Russia isn't going to avoid even a fraction of the sanctions because of bitcoin.
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Yea it will not help Russia avoid sanctions, though it might help specific Olligarchs targeted for sanctions personally partially avoid them.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Yea it will not help Russia avoid sanctions, though it might help specific Olligarchs targeted for sanctions personally partially avoid them.
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I would be shocked if Bitcoin were actually used to help them save any noticeable amount of money from being sanctioned. Sure, it's possible, anything's possible, but I highly, highly doubt it.
 
plague311 said:
I would be shocked if Bitcoin were actually used to help them save any noticeable amount of money from being sanctioned. Sure, it's possible, anything's possible, but I highly, highly doubt it.
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But surely that is precisely because Bitcoin hasn't really taken off so far --- at least not as currency per se (although it kind of has, as investment, or at least as super-volatile investment aka speculation)?

Had people actually started using Bitcoin as currency, then absolutely, Russia could indeed have taken advantage of it. And if people do adopt it as currency in future, then in future imposing sanctions will become that much more difficult, maybe even impossible.

Which is kind of the whole point of cryptos, isn't it? Not let the government get on your case. Not when it's seen as intrusive and undesirable; but also not when it's seen as necessary and/or desirable. I don't think it's even possible to make a government-free currency that's government-free only when "we" want it, and otherwise not, not even in theory.

So, I mean, this can be seen as an argument against cryptos, or it can be seen as an argument in favor of them, depending on who/where you are, and also how you see this whole business of government control.
 
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