Has the day of the smart computer controlled micro-grid arrived? Should we all be getting ready to become energy traders? Or is this just the latest craze in Green utopia?
Virtual Energy
Has the day of the smart computer controlled micro-grid arrived? Should we all be getting ready to become energy traders? Or is this just the latest craze in Green utopia?
Virtual Energy
How am I supposed to charge my Tesla?
Bitcoin mining ‘is using so much energy that it is causing electricity blackouts’ amid fears it will consume more power than the world by 2020
Experts say Bitcoin mining is consuming more power than used by 159 countries
The hardware uses approximately 31 terrawatt hours of energy per year
That compares with 23TWh in Ireland and 309TWh for the whole of the UK
It is creating a ‘colossal’ carbon footprint as the value of one coin surges to more than £12,000 amid violent swings in the cryptocurrency market
And over at Zerohedge
Bitcoin Surpasses “Tulip Mania”, Is Now The Biggest Bubble In World History
Somehow “what could possibly go wrong comes to mind .” My next thought is who’s going to be picking my pocket .
I have been messing with computers, bulletin boards, for those of you that only understand the internet, since 1980.
You have probably heard stories about Bitcoin, but I could, ‘should’ have bought 20 dollars worth when it was .50 cents per coin.
But don’t feel too sorry for me, because I would have sold it when it reached 100 dollars per coin.
We still have a ways to go to reach peak stupidity:
http://www.maxphoton.com/bitcoin-reached-peak-stupidity/
Glad I’m not the only one that sees Bitcoin as a big bag of nothing.
At last, a logical and comprehensible explanation of Bitcoin.
DanBC:
I’ve been scratching my head in bewilderment over Bitcoin ever since I first heard about it.
Bitcoin reminds me of the dodgy loan investments of a decade ago.
Wow. Bockchain bullshit just got up on stilts.
*blockchain
It seems that every generation must experience their own bubble and the Bitcoin / blockchain iteration is going to be the learning experience of young techno-geeks raised on gaming and or their elders who should know better.
Even the beggars know better
Two words- Ponzie Scheme.
Those at the bottom are paying billions of dollars to those at the top.
When it crashes there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
Euan … and now I’VE read … YOUR … nicely presented dissertation on Blockchain (formerly block chain -ha!) and only one thing keeps ringing in my head … “pyramid scheme”. My mind instinctively tries to deconstruct complex systems into understandable bits … and the understandable bit that keeps ringing in my head is … scarcity. Energy scarcity. The world is NOT awash in MORE renewable energy than we can consume. And all the residential rooftop solar panels in the world will never power our industrialized society. So WHO is going to be left holding the INCREASINGLY expensive energy bills after the “Blockchain” has calculated the cost of our 100% renewable energy. Yep … you and me. We are going to always BE the last “investor” in this energy pyramid scheme.
Like so many “green dreams” … a simple understandable concept is presented … which is then SUPERPOWERED by a computer model or program … and we are told (and WANT to believe) that all our problems will be solved with the ease of a George Jetson robot maid. “Time of use sharing” … has been successfully used for parking lots (so why not “green” energy?). For a small fee, you can park your car for the 8pm movie theatre showing at the local Bank’s after-hours parking lot. So SURELY they we can do the same thing with Energy … right? Uh, sure … no problem … unless the new Star Wars Film is showing … and the Bank runs out of their limited parking stalls. THEN … you’re gonna have to PAY the evil Capitalist price-gouging FEE if you want to park your car. So we all better hope that Bridget Jones Diary-5 is playing every night.
so when you buy bitcoins you buy nothing and i would guess buying virtual energy is less than nothing. We really have reached the pinnacle of idiocy.
is that your real pocket or the virtual one?
the whole gig is really making me nervous, everything under the sun handed over to the CPU. and a whole generation of malcontent ‘basement dwellers’ with nothing to do but open another pop tart and message their buddies on the latest hacker target.
I say it again, we need *another* internet, separate from the web and very highly restricted admittance. for example, a database of which systems are allowed to connect. restricted to banks, military, government and BONAFIDE users with 512 bit encryption, etc
even then, cant stop an insider from doing the deed.
jeez kenji, where did you get your street smarts?
certainly not from the ontariowe edjukashun cystem.
also, this bitchcoin stuff reminds me of the contract I did downtown Tranna with a small s/w outfit (later bought by IBM). their product handled securities lending xactions.
what a concept, allow traders to dip into your stock holdings in order to close deals. then they would shop around forthwith to replace the stocks they borrowed.
supposedly a win-win-win situation. hooooold on . . . . if, IF the price of said stock tanks in the time it takes to replace it, the original holder, ie lender of the stock *temporarily* does NOT have control over it. only when it gets replaced by the trader in whatever typical time frame.
you lose !!!
hmmmm.
I learned real quick, and not being fully cognoscente of stock trading rules and practices, to NOT question this big hole in the propaganda regarding securities lending.
sign of the times . . . . .
KENJI – There’s two sides to this. Its possible that Bitcoin is brilliant in ways most do not yet comprehend – including me! It is designed to consume time and energy to function – lots of it. So it is analagous to gold. But gold is not finite, Bitcoin is designed to be finite.
And in other professional materials I read today “bubbles” normaly are created in group minds who do not recognise them. Most folks think that Bitcoin is a bubble (ponzi, pyramid scheme) therefore it can’t be one 😉 ???
The other side is applying the blockchain technology to energy trading. I posed some key questions in my post and no one has answered, suggesting no one knows the answers. If you buy a SolarCoin to buy solar energy is it stamped in space and time where and when it can be used. And once used does it cease to exist?
The third side to these two is why GE are bound up in this technical scam while laying off thousands of workers. Do their engineers no longer understand how electricty works?
If you see my reply to Kneji, bubbles normally go unnoticed until they burst. Everyone not involved, including me, thinks Bitcoin is a bubble, therefore it cannot be 😉
Never trust a fart
Oh look the posts are entirely composed of techno-illiterate doddering old fools who don’t know what a ponzi scheme is. Shocker.
@Fearless: Exactly. When I first heard about Bitcoin, I wondered what kind of BS it was, that is my natural reaction about something that mystifies me). Last week my daughter was thinking of investing into it when it was worth $12,000. I told her to stay out of something that neither of us understands.
Since then it increased by 50%. Yup, she learned her lesson. “Don’t listen to Dad.”
I once worked on a project as a reviewer where “microgrid” was the buzzword. If I were living on a remote station in teh Australian Outback it might be precticable, otherwise it’s just hooey to attract dollars from suckers.
Peter Lynch gave some advice in one of his books which made a lot of sense to me.
For anyone considering buying a stock, one way of determining if one understands that company’s business is to explain what it does to a 10-year-old. If one can’t do that, perhaps one shouldn’t buy the stock.
Bitcoin is real. It is a new way of transferring or storing value (money) from one place to another. You convert Canadian dollars to Bitcoin where it is stored in a ‘wallet’ and recorded on the blockchain. You can then transfer some portion of your Bitcoin holding to someone anywhere on earth who has an internet connection. The transfer transaction is also recorded on the blockchain. The recipient can then convert their Bitcoin into the local currency of choice. Conversion of local currency to Bitcoin and conversion of the remote Bitcoin to recipients local currency is done at exchanges that handle these tasks.
The recording of transactions on the blockchain is an extremely complex and compute intensive task that consumes an enormous amount of computer power resulting in an very large consumption of electricity. The task is made artificially difficult to control the rate at which blocks can be added to the blockchain. This process is called bitcoin mining. A bitcoin miner that successfully computes the cryptographic hash code that allows the blockchain to be extended is rewarded with a transaction transferring a defined amount of Bitcoins to his wallet. The mining difficulty is adjusted periodically to increase the difficulty to control the rate of creation, and the amount of Bitcoin reward for success is also adjusted downward over time so that only about 21 million Bitcoins will be generated by the year 2140. This is the reason Bitcoin has value, because it is hard to create and the supply is limited. All the bitcoin miners agree on these rules.
I see Bitcoin being used in three ways:
1. Transfer value from one place to another quickly.
2. Temporarily store value in a secure manner. (alternate currency)
3. Speculation in order to make money.
Right now it seems reason 3 is the driving force behind the wild price swings in Bitcoin.
It is a fascinating subject for an old computer geek like myself to study. However, I do not hold any Bitcoin now and may only buy a small amount to try out to see how well it works.
Want to know more? Look at this site for the history of Bitcoin. Drag the bottom panel to the left until a flag is under the blue line in middle, then click on the flag to read it.
History of Bitcoin
The mining difficulty is adjusted periodically to increase the difficulty to control the rate of creation, and the amount of Bitcoin reward for success is also adjusted downward over time so that only about 21 million Bitcoins will be generated by the year 2140. This is the reason Bitcoin has value, because it is hard to create and the supply is limited. All the bitcoin miners agree on these rules.
OK … the first bit of this quote makes good sense to me … that like a Stock (Equity) or like M2 (the primary money supply) … Bitcoin is in limited supply, thus creating value through scarcity. Theoretically, Bitcoin should keep rising in value … until 2140? as demand increases and the supply is (programmed to be) limited. And then I read the last bit in the bold letters … that “all the Bitcoin Miners agree on these rules”. So what happens when the Bitcoin Miners “agree” to CHANGE the rules? And who ARE these people who are “agreeing to these rules”? When a corporation wants to increase their stock offerings they give a “stock split” to current holders to ensure they don’t lose value with the increase in supply. When the government/Federal Reserve expand M2 … EVERYONE loses value. So which will it be when The Bitcoin Miners “agree” to change the rules? Will current “coin” holders be made whole? Or wholly f()cked?
Oh Look! The UnReal poster launches another ad hominem attack without specifically addressing any facts. Behold the intellectual capacity (critically limited) of the LEFT