[ExI] Sell your Bitcoins!

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 18, 2026 at 10:11 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> for all that is known, P could = NP, and then all cryptography would be
> illusory.*


*All cryptography except for quantum cryptography, but I don't know how you
could make a cryptocurrency based on that.  *

*> Consider how little comparative time went by between when RSA was
> invented (in 1977) and when it first went into commercial use in 1982, just
> 5 years.*
>

*Actually a system exactly equivalent to RSA was invented 4 years earlier
in 1973 by Clifford Cocks, the discovery was classified but I'm sure
intelligence agencies studied it diligently during those 4 years because
from the very start it was clear that Cocks's idea was entirely practical.
His** contribution to cryptography was not known to the general public
until 1997 when his work was declassified, why that didn't happen in 1977
when the idea was independently discovered by others I do not know. *

*> We've had 30 years looking at lattice based cryptogtaphy and no one has
> found a weakness yet. *


*Lattice encryption may have been discovered 30 years ago but nobody was
studying it diligently because almost nobody thought it would ever be
needed. And because it's a pain in the ass to use.  *

 > *the Bitcoin software can be upgraded to support a wide number of
> various and distinct cryptographic algorihms from different family types,
> and even different key sizes.*


*Then it would be silly to call all of them "bitcoins", you'd have hundreds
or thousands of very different incompatible cryptocurrencies competing with
each other to grab as much energy for their use as possible.  *


> *>> Bitcoin was originally supposed to replace dollars and pounds and
>> euros for everyday use, but in that it has proven itself to be a huge FLOP
>> because it is an energy hog of immense proportions, and the addition of
>> lattice encryption will make things even worse.*
>>
>
> *> You don't seem to understand what I have been saying. The energy use is
> unrelated to the algorithms, or the transactions. It's purely from the
> minting. What makes this confusing is that within the Bitcoin protocol,
> transaction blocks are bundled with the minting process, both happen at the
> same time.*
>

*I agree that about 99.9% of Bitcoin's energy usage is caused by bitcoin
mining not managing bitcoin transactions, but that is irrelevant because
the two things are inextricably linked. You can't have one without the
other. **Bitcoin's huge energy expenditure is used to solve silly hash
puzzles which are of no use to anyone and have nothing to do with the
transactions themselve, energy that AI could've used to increase the sum
total of human knowledge or doing something a little more useful than
solving a hash puzzle, like curing cancer.  **It's locked into the
fundamental nature of bitcoin that the more people value it the more energy
it consumes, but in 2008 I doubt if Satoshi considered the thermodynamics
consequences of his idea. *


> *> Don't think of it in terms of Watts per transaction, think of it in
> terms of Watts per bitcoin minted.*
>

*You can't think about them separately because you can't have one without
the other.  *

*> you don't complain about how energy intensive our current monetary
> system is. Bitcoin at least, only need mint a coin once. And once mintes,
> no more energy need ever be spent to mint it again to create more bitcoins.
> Dollars, have to be minutes continuously and can only be created by first
> making things of lasting economic value.*



*But like it or not if you make an economic transaction with bitcoins then
more silly hash puzzles will be solved, and more energy will be wasted, and
more bitcoins are going to be mined. Worldwide bitcoin uses more energy
than the countries of Sweden or Poland. I hope you don't expect me to
believe that government printing presses making paper money uses more
energy than that.*



> *>>> The value of gold is set in large part by the economic cost of mining
>>> gold, which primarily comes down to the energy that must be spent to mine
>>> it.*
>>>
>>
>> *>> It might take a lot of energy and be difficult to make artificial dog
>> shit, and if you have the gift of gab you might be able to convince enough
>> people that artificial dog shit is valuable and everybody should own some
>> and create a fad, but no fad lasts forever. As for gold, I maintain that
>> our civilization would be just as prosperous if there was no gold at all in
>> the earth's crust; well OK nearly as prosperous,*
>>
>
> *> Not at all.*
>

*So if there were 10 times as much gold in the earth's crust then our
civilization would be 10 times as wealthy? I don't think so. *


> *> If Gold were used only for industrial purposes, its value would be much
> lower than it is today,*
>

*Not necessarily because if Gold was not used only for industrial purposes
the demand would be much less; and it's all about supply and demand.  The
metallic element Rhodium is used only for industrial processes but it costs
about $13,000 an ounce, and Iridium is about $7400 an ounce, but Gold is
only about $4500 an ounce.  *

*John K Clark *


>
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