On Mon, Aug 1, 2022, 11:37 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 10:58 AM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> As the number of bitcoins approaches 21 million the amount of energy >>> required to mint a new one will increase exponentially and will approach >>> infinity asymptotically. >>> >> >> *> Not necessarily, because as I explained the block reward decreases >> too. So the economic incentive also decreases.* >> > > The number of bitcoins you get as a reward may decrease but that's not > important, what's important is the amount of stuff you can buy with that > reward, and as the economy increases in size, as it will as technology > improves, then that reward will get bigger because each Bitcoin will be > worth 1/21 millionth of the world's economy. > That's the worst case scenario in terms of energy use incentives (bitcoin replacing all other currencies). But it's still finite, and not exponential to infinity. (Unless you are counting the economy as exponential to infinity). Bitcoin value would have to double every 4 years to 2100 for energy usage incentives to stay constant over the bitcoin minting period. I am not sure that is possible because the world economy doesn't double every four years. > *> Your theory of what will happen with bitcoin would conclude a gold >> miner will put in exponentially more and eventually infinite energy into >> mining a gold mine that is drying up.* >> > > And that is exactly what a rational gold miner would do if gold kept > exponentially increasing in price and was asymptotically approaching > infinite valuation. > Why do you have think bitcoin value is going to infinity? Even the most optimistic "bitcoin maximalists" don't seem to believe that. > >>Energy cost is one factor that determines the price of gold but not the >>> only one nor the most important one. And gold is irrelevant, it hasn't been >>> an important factor in the world economy in over a century, but paper money >>> has. And unlike Bitcoin it doesn't take an exponentially increasing amount >>> of energy to run a printing press. >>> >> >> *> You conveniently (for you) cut out my paragraph showing the printing >> press does require vast expenditures of energy. Since printed money is >> based on debt, and debts are typically secured against assets of value >> which required great expenditures of energy to produce (in line with the >> value of the asset, and therefore in line with the amount of money >> created).* >> > > That does not compute. It doesn't matter if you're using Bitcoins, > dollars, or monopoly money, the entire purpose of an economy is not to > create money but to create assets of value, money is just a bookkeeping > device and Bitcoin is an enormously inefficient bookkeeping device. > You may be confusing money creation with the bookkeeping process. For gold, dollars, bitcoin, the bookkeeping is trivial and easily done by computers and spreadsheets. For creation of gold, dollars, bitcoin, it's energy intensive for them all. You could argue that one difference with debt based money is we get a house or a car out of it, while for bitcoin, gold, collecting seashells, we get only waste-heat and a medium of exchange. But there is utility in having a medium of exchange, which can justify the energy expenditure. I agree that with debt based money we get both the medium of exchange and a useful economic product at the same time, but this kind of money has a finite life, whereas gold, bitcoin, seashells so not. It is an interesting trade off to consider. Jason > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > 914 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv29bCAzDs7gAgx3gyX-HW4Y5jYcYyHwsYvbSpT_VpVRfg%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv29bCAzDs7gAgx3gyX-HW4Y5jYcYyHwsYvbSpT_VpVRfg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhQhvOweuoVSkdN_sJwkwhqgujZJc0soctG8M0Ts02_Kg%40mail.gmail.com.
