These low hanging counters have been discussed over a lot.
Transaction cost is pretty low in multiple views:
- You can globally settle billions of dollars worth of bitcoin for less than 10$ [0]
- FIAT Settlements between banks is a complicated and non-auditable process, which is internationally speaking also very slow
- You can build layers on top of bitcoin, i.e. the Lightning Network or liquid, which reduces transaction costs and time by a lot (sub cent range in the lightning network)
Energy usage is not tied to transaction throughput. It is vital to be very high in the future, as it secures this global and auditable settlement network. Mining is a very competitive business. Renewable and unused energy IS the cheapest energy available (without govt. subsidies), thus the most competitive miners will use them. Mining also "subsidizes" research in cheap energy, as it gives you a competitive advantage.
Im answering his question why bitcoin is not the best use of money:
(1) Most people don't settle on large volumes (thats typically banks/states/institutionals) so small volumes have a high cost percentage making it not a good daily driver. The fact that there is any transaction cost makes it challenging to work with as a daily money vehicle for consumers.
(2) It requires energy to exist and keep a ledger, it also requires energy to mine. Your comment on renewable energy isn't accurate sadly and unused energy works only if you can get access to it which isn't universally available. In some jurisdictions renewable energy beats on price but this is largely on huge projects that are bid into utility grids (At least in North America). It will get there but still needs more time.
I don't see how mining subsidizes research in cheap energy.
Understand they have been debated ad nasueum and the reason is that they haven't really passed muster for the use case we are talking about.
Don't equate my arguments as saying bitcoin is bad - it doesn't have a good universal use case for money and it does have negative environmental benefits associated with it.
(1) I think people assume that just because bitcoin exists banks will vanish. Bitcoin is the protocol that banks can use, but individuals as well. Also, micropayments on Bitcoin exist today. I encourage you to download a lightning network wallet (e.g. Breez Wallet: non-custodial and open source) and send me a "lightning-invoice" I can pay you in the sub-cent range.
(2) It requires real world resources to be spend and uses the most globally available resource, energy. I see it as a feature not a bug.
Renewable energy is the cheapest though[0] and thus the one that competitive miners need to use. Non-competitive miners get driven out very fast thanks to the difficulty adjustment.
Any percentage of optimization you can get in your energy production you can use to outperform other miners, thus get more of the block subsidy and drive out inefficient miners.
Bitcoin mining de-risks investments in energy producing facilities. You always have a buyer for your energy, which is a problem especially in renewables. [1]
I think from a scientific view, allowing and observing the experiment bitcoin is extremely interesting. Nothing like it has challenged economic thinking in the last decades.
It is very productive for a large population of the world.[0]
Not everyone gets paid in a stable currency or has easy access to it.
How it is challenging economic thinking? There is a near-zero chance cryptocurrencies replace an actual currency as the global reserve, so it's going to continue to be a novelty until people move on to something shinier.
> Not everyone gets paid in a stable currency or has easy access to it.
Bitcoin doesn't appear to solve this issue at all. How is private manipulation of Bitcoin any different than an authoritarian manipulating the local currency? If I was in a country with unstable currency, I'd want Euro or US Dollars, not bitcoin.
> What you refer to as private manipulation is called supply and demand, maybe try reading Econo101 :)
Does Econ 101 cover asset bubbles or financial manipulation? It's been so long, that I can't remember, but I promise you that prices can reflect things other than supply and demand once you manage to get past that first class.
> Bitcoin doesn't need permission though
No authoritarian would EVER cut off or filter the internet in their country. Nope, has never happened, will never happen.
> No authoritarian would EVER cut off or filter the internet in their country. Nope, has never happened, will never happen.
You're right, Myanmar just did that! Scary to think of it. Fortunately Bitcoin works over more communication protocols, but no internet is certainly not in any way easily defendable today. But i still think that physical and banked usd, euros and gold are more easily seizable by a government. A no internet scenario is probably economic suicide by any government.
I really don't get what you mean by financial manipulation in regards to bitcoin.
Cutting off internet is virtually the first thing an authoritarian government does at the sign of unrest. I want to say there's been something like a dozen in the last decade. If you include incomplete internet shutdowns, that list would probably grow well over 100. Hell, it's not just limited to authoritarian governments: the UK requires ISPs to filter certain sites.
I would not bet that the government is incapable of cutting off access to bitcoin.
The supply got less, while the demand didn't decrease. The intrinsic value increased because of the network and lindy effect, which is why institutional investors jumped in. Bitcoin entered a speculative bubble the moment the first block was created.
I would say we just don't know the price of bitcoin yet, hence the heavy volatility.
I wouldn't price it at all, because I don't see it as valuable, and I don't gamble, so I'm not going to short it. The supply got less because people bought bitcoin based on media hype. That's pretty classic manipulation.
I'm astonished that you have such a strong opinion, while not even trying to understand how pricing works. Good thing you're not gambling on that!
Media hype typically drives demand, not supply. Supply in bitcoin is a very fundamental concept and controversial topic, which is a function of proof of work, difficulty adjustment and block subsidy.
What exactly in supply and demand is manipulation? You can't just shout manipulation and argue with "media hype", which historically for bitcoin is very mixed[0] and affects any asset class?
Transaction cost is pretty low in multiple views:
- You can globally settle billions of dollars worth of bitcoin for less than 10$ [0]
- FIAT Settlements between banks is a complicated and non-auditable process, which is internationally speaking also very slow
- You can build layers on top of bitcoin, i.e. the Lightning Network or liquid, which reduces transaction costs and time by a lot (sub cent range in the lightning network)
Energy usage is not tied to transaction throughput. It is vital to be very high in the future, as it secures this global and auditable settlement network. Mining is a very competitive business. Renewable and unused energy IS the cheapest energy available (without govt. subsidies), thus the most competitive miners will use them. Mining also "subsidizes" research in cheap energy, as it gives you a competitive advantage.
[0] https://twitter.com/CoreFeeHelper/status/1366787351985287168