Hi. Each Bitcoin divides into 100,000,000 Satoshis. Often referred to as Sats.
Hi. Each Bitcoin divides into 100,000,000 Satoshis. Often referred to as Sats.
Strange thing to be happy about, but each to their own. A little education though for free.
During a bull market Bitcoin regularly "corrects". During the run from $1,000 to $20,000 in 2017 for example there were 6 corrections of ~30-45% on the way up.
This is the 2nd correction in this cycle. It won't be the last and we haven't seen the top yet.
Why strange? There are a number of reasons someone might be happy about falling bitcoin value, from the position they have themselves to a desire to enter the speculation from a lower starting point. It's not like a stock where at least increasing value can result in more funds being available to the company for growth/research etc. If bitcoin increases in value then it doesn't really do anything for a company. Likewise no company is harmed if it drops in value.
Because Bitcoin going up makes Eth go up, and then people buy mining PCs. Mining is causing me and the company I work for difficulties in getting what we need to do real work, creating real jobs.
Eth has some interesting ideas in it, so I've found myself watching and reading a lot of material recently to try and get a better grounding in the underlying technology. But I look at the current transaction times and gas prices, and I can't see how this can possibly be the sort of far reaching utopia people seem to preach. Eth as it stands couldn't cope with the transaction volume of Tesco, even if everyone else stopped using it.
But there is a good chance you are right, and Bitcoin will rise again. That doesn't stop it being an environmental disaster that hurts my ability to work and play, and I will continue to wish it gone.
In the mean time, I will point out that Bitcoin also had lots of corrections on the way down. Fingers crossed eh?
And now I read that Bitcoin is being used to drive botnets. Lovely.
https://arstechnica.com/information-...from-takedown/
Let's hope they never make a blockchain powered by beer, I need a visit to the fridge.
... and a quick check, Bitcoin is still "correcting". Diamond hands people, only those that know what they are doing sell on the way down
A lot of people may be upset that they can't get the hardware they want for their gaming rig but there's also the reality of a huge supply issue for hardware in a productivity environment (as you've mentioned) bundled on top of all the challenges facing us at the moment.
First of all I must agree with the issue of Graphics cards and Ether mining. I am dying to buy a new PC and have no chance of doing so because of the general supply issues. Mining doesn't help. Most Bitcoin mining is obviously done via ASICs but Eth is specifically setup to try to prevent this in an effort to keep the mining / staking more decentralised. But long before the Ether price flew up, there was already no supply.
There has always been FUD spread about Bitcoin. The latest attack tends to be "it's not green". However a very large % of it's mining is done via cheap green energy and this % increases every year. I've read reports detailing the % of renewable energy used at between 60 and 80%.
To understand it better you need to look at the current banking system. Understanding MMT, Fractional Reserve Banking & the effect of inflation (especially in 3rd world countries) is a good start. MMT, over 30% of the $ that exist in the world were created in the last year! FRB, the ability & mechanism for banks to create money from thin air. Inflation, the silent killer to savings (especially after so much money is now being created to fight Covid).
As someone who spent most of their working life in the payments industry working on credit card systems working with banks and supermarkets, I just find crypto currency laughably inadequate for any sort of everyday payment. It is bad enough waiting in a supermarket queue while someone tries to use a few coupons, but imagine waiting for a bitcoin transaction to clear?
But I have a couple of specific issues with your points. Firstly, in a growing company I have been buying PCs for engineering use, which has usually meant AMD 12 or 16 core boxes (mine is a diddy 8 core 3700X, but I only do software). Part of that build has been an RX 570 card because they were cheapish at around £140, silent when used for office work, and can drive lots of monitors including two display port for the standard pair of 1440p 27" Iiyama panels we currently give engineering staff. That was fine until the Eth price started rocketing just before Christmas, gaming cards were tricky but not impossible to get, but the likes of an RX570 was easy. So to me it seems clear as day, whattomine says you can make a profit on an RX570, so you can't buy them any more.
The energy argument is not new, it was a regular complaint with the last crypto bubble, and it isn't FUD. Renewable energy is something I have been watching very carefully for some years in its own right. We are making great strides in deploying renewables, but we also have a lot of very old generation capacity that needs replacing. In short, we do not have lots of spare capacity. The idea that adding power generation only for it to be sucked up in mining I find ecologically *really* offensive. Somewhere around the "lets burn down a forest" level of eco terrorism.
Edit: Note on the PC buying, I can get all the other components with possibly some compromise, it is only the GPU that is next to impossible to get.
The 'green' argument was already debunked - until everyone is using green energy then any green energy you take up mining is taking away from green energy someone else can use, thus they'll use non-green. So mining indirectly increases use of non-green energy. The exception is where you're using green energy that would not otherwise be capable of being used for anything else - ie excess energy in an area where there is no means to store/transport it. I doubt such energy makes up any significant portion for mining, and it's still subject to entropic concerns.
Corky34 (24-02-2021)
Bitcoin is not meant (right now) to be a payment network. Think of it as Gold 2.0 and a Store of Value. In time it is possible that it could be used for payments but this is a long conversation. Short version is that a Layer-2 solution would be used and the best example of this currently is the lightning network. For the time being though, you store your wealth in Bitcoin and spend in FIAT.
I've already agreed with you on GPUs, so not sure what extra point you are trying to make. But I tried to buy a 3080 when they were launched (and ETH mining wasn't a thing) and it was just as impossible then too.
This is precisely how many Bitcoin DC's are setup. Especially in Russia and China. The miners seek out locations that are cold (ideally) and have an abundance of cheap excess power (essential). The power is so cheap because there is no other use for it any longer. Often this is Hydro based and the old towns the power was setup to support have closed down.
I'm not going to change the minds of anyone who already has decided "Bitcoin is bad". But you may wish to look into how bent the current financial system is (and how much energy it uses) before just criticizing BTC.
Just that GPUs *were* possible to buy before this crypto bubble. Not all GPUs, the ones just released well that's just supply and demand. But now it seems I can only get GT710 type cards, which don't have displayport connectors, can't drive three monitors. I'm a tad frustrated by this, you can probably tell
But yeah, I'm aware of the lightning network, that isn't exactly new and I have been following this stuff for a long time. Bitcoin *used* to be meant for payment, that was the enthusiasm in the early days, it just never lived up to the hype.
and yet there are reports of mining operations in Iran building their own generator plants, just for the mining operations. That's clearly not "spare" energy, it is a carbon footprint devoted to bitcoin at a time we are supposed to be cutting back.
But hey, the quants are having a field day. But then they would because it's all just money to them, nothing really re-invented at all.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)