PowerSwitch

I've been closely following the emergence of bitcoin and other crypto currencies this year and have just completed the summary of my views of the sector.

https://forecastingintelligence.org/201 ... re-coming/

To summarize, in the short term very bullish but more pessimistic medium-longer term for different reasons to the typical sceptic.

Enjoy.

Which crypto currencies do you use?

Majority of my holdings are Bitcoin and ethereum with smaller investments in ripple, dash and ethereum classic.

All have been tipped by Teeka, who is the top crypto-currency expert.

This s what I wrote in the bitcoin topic in “Preparations�

woodburner wrote:Bitcoin is hardly something for anyone concerned about wadsting power or climate change

That problem is carbon emissions. De Vries has come up with some estimates by diving into data made available on a coal-powered Bitcoin mine in Mongolia. He concluded that this single mine is responsible for 8,000 to 13,000 kg CO2 emissions per Bitcoin it mines, and 24,000 - 40,000 kg of CO2 per hour.

Read more....

Bitcoin looks unsuitable for anyone hoping to keep the damaging effects of excessive power consumption to a minimum.

Bitcoin is increasingly looking like the modern equivalent of a Dutch bulb, something that you need to buy very quickly and sell as soon as you've made a profit. It hasn't even got the intrinsic value of a flower bulb. It is an essentially worthless, entry on a database somewhere; not even a piece of paper that you can show someone or put in a frame on your wall to decorate your house!

Yep. I wouldn't touch bitcoin with a bargepole

I prefer tulips to Bitcoin and I don't have anything invested in tulips.

I don't pretend to fully understand crypto currencies or crypto assets as I've heard them called and maintain a healthy skepticism . I've followed a few discussions on the internet and many are very enthusiastic about them and talk about bitcoin and the like becoming far more important than our "regular" currencies. Is there a possibility of people dumping the dollar in favour of bitcoin , of it becoming a world reserve currency and if it did would there be implications ?

The supply of bitcoins etc. only grows very slowly as it is the reverse of a fiat currency - each coin needs to be mined by consuming an ever increasing amount of real resources, ie energy, whereas fiat currencies require ever less resources as they can increase 10 fold in 'value' by adding a zero at the end. Neither system is sustainable, but bitcoins have made their early investors extremely rich in a way that round robin scammers can only dream of.

Yes that consumption of energy for bitcoin mining tends to put me in two minds . I didn't realise just how much is used to mine until I read the link put up on here ( was that yourself or emlordap ?) but 20 barrels per coin seems shocking. Then I look at the energy and envoiromental impact of gold mining and creating money out of thin air as we do now suddenly seems almost a sensible idea in terms of the envoiroment even if as you say it's unsustainable . I find myself having less and less faith in everything.

I think the energy costs of mining are overstated even though there clearly is an energy cost.

It reminds me of the banquet scene in Peter Pan where Robin Williams and the boys have to imagine the food on the table. We have an imaginary mine digging up imaginary bitcoins so of course the coal used to run the bitcoin mine is imaginary as well. Only a paramecium brain would think the energy needed to mine an imaginary thing was real.

I suppose the coin developers need to sell a human powered generator - an exercise bike driven hash generator. Then it becomes a genuine human limited currency.

vtsnowedin wrote:It reminds me of the banquet scene in Peter Pan where Robin Williams and the boys have to imagine the food on the table. We have an imaginary mine digging up imaginary bitcoins so of course the coal used to run the bitcoin mine is imaginary as well. Only a paramecium brain would think the energy needed to mine an imaginary thing was real.

A fairly convincing case can be made that crypto-currencies are more 'real' than currencies like dollar or pound... Crypto-currencies are objectively, mathematically defined. Fiat currencies are just a made up sorry which everyone happens to believe, today.

Not quite. Fiat currencies exist because it's what the king accepts his taxes to be paid with. You therefore have to aquire it, and this is where the seed of value starts.