NYC is getting its own city coin in line with the incoming mayor's crypto hub vision

[Polybius]

Source: Business Insider

New York City is about to get its own digital token in line with the vision of Mayor-Elect Eric Adams to transform the Big Apple into a cryptocurrency hub.

The coin is called NYCCoin and is being launched by CityCoins, a civic-minded community and open-source protocol that gives investors an avenue to support their cities by expanding their crypto treasury while earning for themselves. When bought or mined, it allocates 30% of its reward to the city.

NYCCoin's launch follows close behind MiamiCoin, which to date has earned more than $21.3 million for the city of Miami since its August 2020 launch, the community said.

While Austin, Texas was a close contender, the community eventually chose New York, propelled by the incoming mayor's pro-crypto stance, Patrick Stanley, a CityCoins community lead, told Insider.

Read more: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/nyc-city-coin-stacks-adams-bitcoin-miami-cryptocurrency-new-york-2021-11

[msongs]

1. maybe the mayor could spend time getting the nypd under control n t

[Ford_Prefect]

2. The amount of energy consummed by systems which mine and facilitate crypto currencies

Last edited Wed Nov 10, 2021, 05:54 AM - Edit history (2)

make this an UNwise investment. It is neither carbon neutral as some enthusiasts have alleged, nor a wise use of energy as such. The entire enterprise rests on off-shoring computing and power costs while significantly increasing overall consumption.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/27/bitcoin-mining-electricity-use-environmental-impact

The Guardian Sat 27 Feb 2021: Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'.

The cryptocurrency’s (Bitcoin)value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use.

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Now that over 18.5m bitcoin have been mined, the average computer can no longer mine bitcoins. Instead, mining now requires special computer equipment that can handle the intense processing power needed to get bitcoin today. And, of course, these special computers need a lot of electricity to run.

The amount of electricity used to mine bitcoin “has historically been more than [electricity used by] entire countries, like Ireland”, said Benjamin Jones, a professor of economics at the University of New Mexico who has researched bitcoin’s environmental impact. “We’re talking about multiple terawatts, dozens of terawatts a year of electricity being used just for bitcoin … That’s a lot of electricity.”

Proponents of bitcoin say that mining is increasingly being done with electricity from renewable sources as that type of energy becomes cheaper, and the energy used is far lower than that of other, more wasteful, uses of power. The energy wasted by plugged-in but inactive home devices in the US alone could power bitcoin mining for 1.8 years, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.

But environmentalists say that mining is still a cause for concern particularly because miners will go wherever electricity is cheapest and that may mean places that use coal. According to Cambridge, China has the most bitcoin mining of any country by far. While the country has been slowly moving toward renewable energy, about two-thirds of its electricity comes from coal.

******************************

In simpler terms:

...if Bitcoin were a country, only 30 other countries would use more electricity. It would surpass the yearly power needs of the UAE, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Belgium, Austria or Israel.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-bitcoin-need-more-energy-than-whole-countries/a-56573390
*************************************************

Mining involves the calculation of complex mathematical equations and it is extremely energy intensive, requiring powerful and expensive computer equipment. Data from the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that the Bitcoin network now consumes a whopping 142.59 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity each year, a figure that is higher than many countries.

Putting the figure into perspective, it could power all of the kettles used to boil water in the United Kingdom and the European Union for 32 years and 4.5 years, respectively. It also represents 0.57% of global electricity production and accounts for 0.65% of global electricity consumption. In fact, if Bitcoin was a country, it would be the 27th largest consumer of electricity on the planet in May 2021. Its annual electricity consumption is higher than Norway's 124 TWh and more than twice the level of Bangladesh's 70 TWh.

It is also substantially higher than the amount of electricity used by some of the world's largest technology companies. According to a further comparison carried out by Visual Capitalist, Google's GOOG -0.1% annual electricity consumption amounts to 12 TWh while Facebook's totals five TWh. Bitcoin still uses less energy than the world's data centers, however, with their yearly electricity consumption totaling 205 TWh.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/05/05/bitcoin-devours-more-electricity-than-many-countries-infographic/

I'm reminded of the early days of the internet when some people invested and lost quite heavily because they didn't understand what they were buying and how it could generate income.

In the case of Crypto I can see there are some potential benefits to moving money around which allows the users to bypass local taxes and other regulatory activity. That's useful to the clients but bad for the community at large.
IMO it is a very energy expensive way for a select group of investors to pull value out of the national infrastructure without paying an appropriate fee, like the way Mining and Oil companies pay pennies on the dollar to extract natural resources from National lands, and in the process dodge the cost of environmental impacts.

[Blues Heron]

6. The existing financial system uses ten times the wattage of bitcoin

Never heard a peep about that though

[BumRushDaShow]

11. You made me do a couple searches

and I found these -

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/a-comparison-of-bitcoins-environmental-impact-with-that-of-gold-and-banking-2021-05-04
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes-less-than-half-the-energy-of-the-banking-or-gold-industries

I expect that the "old school" mining is a "given" for environmental impact, but "the (modern) markets" are certainly glossed over but probably because the energy-using "tech" for them is relatively "new".

In 5 days, we have the 154th anniversary of the start of the earliest of that "tech" - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-stock-ticker-debuts



Edison's version - http://edison.rutgers.edu/ticker.htm

(I blame you for my finding this )

ETA - as a note, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange is the oldest in the nation (yes older than NYC's) -

[Blues Heron]

15. great post, thanks

[BumRushDaShow]

16. And thank you for encouraging me to learn something new today!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. Don't discard logic. That system would NOT go away if we switched completely to bitcoin

The existing financial system uses ten times the wattage of bitcoin
Never heard a peep about that though

That energy in the world financial system would be needed to trade mortgage backed securities to finance house buying and insurance and building schools and running hospitals.

It's not going to go away. Duh.


And which orifice did you pull that figure out of? Do you have a source? I very much doubt it. Hint, it's not close. It's much less than 10 times. But do you know what you are talking about?

I'll do your work for you.

It is a pittance among total world energy consumption, which is over 163 PetaWattHours per year. Bitcoin mining is 142 Twh per year. The finance industry uses about twice as much as bitcoin mining. 142 x 2 = 284 Pwh per year, or about a fifth of one percent of worldwide energy consumption.

And remember, the finance industry is needed whether it is based on bitcoins or gold or dollars. And the finance industry is vital to organizing a green response to climate change.

[Blues Heron]

17. theres no need for an energy guzzling ATM if they take Bitcoin

there will be offsets, you have to look at the totality of the energy involved. How much energy does it take to mine and move the ore required for actual coins? Not needed with Bitcoin. All those armored cars to move the old obsolete cash? you think they run on air?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Armored cars? Seriously? Do the math on worldwide armored car energy. And see post 12

ATMs are NOT energy-guzzling, and especially not compared to bitcoin mining.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2824849

[Blues Heron]

22. well at least we can subtract that entire industry when cash is obsolete

Another offset

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. If every city has a "coin", it's a mess. And a waste of electricity in greenhouse world

If Able Baker in New York orders sugar from Charlie Delta in Miami and it is trucked by Extra Foxtrot based in Austin Texas, how is to be paid?

If AB pays with NYCCoin but CD needs to pay staff with MiamiCoin and pay EF with AustinCoin and pay Jamaica with US dollars, who gets rich? The "coin" brokers.

How green is it for all the cities in the US to launch mining operations as heavy as BitCoin's weight on climate change mitigation efforts? If it costs, say, 100 coal power plants to mostly fully mine a currency, then if there are a thousand competing city "coins", then that's 100,000 coal power plants. And for what end? If there is use for, say, a Trillion bucks worth of "coins" circulating, then a thousand coins means each one is only 1/1000 as useful, and thus has only 1/1000 value if it were the only one. (Note, some will have more value than others, but the sum and averages hold up, making the point).

I used the phrase "to mostly fully mine" because it gets worse. The more of a coin is "mined", the harder it is to find the remaining ones, and the amount of electricity used and fossil fuel emissions goes up.

Hint: it's not green to proliferate "coins".

Bitcoin miners align with fossil fuel firms, alarming ...
https://www.nbcnews.com › tech › tech-news › bitcoin-...
Sep. 25, 2021 — Bitcoin mining is breathing life into aging fossil fuel power plants, creating a ... which currently permit subsidies to waste coal plants, ...

Powering bitcoin mining with waste coal isn't a green idea
https://qz.com › powering-bitcoin-mining-with-waste-c...
Jun. 24, 2021 — Stronghold Digital Mining has raised $105 million to mine bitcoin using ... But waste coal plants cause horrendous pollution of their own, ...

China's bitcoin miner exodus - CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com › 2021/06/15 › chinas-bitcoin-min...
China is in the process of kicking out all its bitcoin miners, and many of ... and Inner Mongolia are home to many of China's coal plants.
Jun. 15, 2021

Bitcoin's alarming carbon footprint - Nature
https://www.nature.com › correspondence
Feb. 7, 2018 — The 'mining' process for the cryptocurrency bitcoin is power hungry, and is increasing its environmental impact as its price and popularity ...

[Blues Heron]

9. think of the energy to mine the metal and other components to build an ATM

and then have it plugged in 24/7 in case someone needs a little motor to spit out a twenty and play a little song while it does so. Hint- its not even slightly green.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Come off it. You didn't bother looking up even basic facts and doing a little arithmetic

A desktop computer uses about 60-250 watts per hour, call it 0.2 kilowatts per hour on average. An ATM is basically a desktop computer, roughly, in terms of power. I suspect it uses less power than the average desktop computer.

There are 470,000 ATMs in the US. Multiply that by 1750 kwh per year (@0.2 kw/h) = 822,500,000 kwh per year = 0.822 TeraWattHours per year to run ATMs.

Compare that with bitcoin mining at 142 TeraWattHours per year and going up.

And you want to multiply that by 100 or some large number of city cryptocurrencies?



Making an ATM: it takes about 16,000 Kwh, all in (resource extraction, shipping, production), to make a car. An ATM would take a lot less. Imagine a stack of ATMs, maybe 20-30 to equal a car (5 x 2 x 2 or 3). Call it 20. So about 800 kwh per ATM.

They last, say, about 10 years each. Halve that and call it replacing them at 20% per year.

20% x 470,000 x 800 kwh = 75,2000,000 kwh = 0.075 Twh per year building ATMs. Compare again with 142 Twh per year.



And you want to eliminate 0.822 + 0.075 = 0.9 Twh per year and replace it with 142 Twh per year multiplied by a hundred city coins?
And you think that is greener.

[Blues Heron]

21. good post

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. Thanks. We can get to a progressive future. . . . nt

[Roy Rolling]

4. We had that once in America

Everyplace had a different currency. Even the Confederates printed their own money.

Ignoring my opinion a cryptocurrency’s value is the amount of energy it consumes to create it, multiple currencies don’t change that—a Bitcoin is created by computers consuming massive amounts of electricity.

Oh wait. That can’t be ignored—cryptocurrency is a currency made of burned carbon. It may be valued equally around the world, even if the price is zero.

[Slammer]

5. coin

Can't claim I'm an expert on the energy usage of computers but as I understand it, mining coins can be done as a background program on a computer that you're using for something else. At least that was how it worked back when I tried (unprofitably and briefly) mining some bitcoin years ago.

Now if you're keeping your computer open to mine coins while you aren't using the computer for anything else, you're running up energy costs significantly.

But if you're just mining while you happen to have your computer open, it shouldn't take much power at all. I don't recall my computer ever having its fan come on because the processor was working hard or anything while I was mining but it comes on regularly when I'm playing a game with intense graphics.

In any case, a city has to get its revenue from someplace. And whatever activity is generating that revenue is likely to be using energy, using water, using roads, and doing a lot of other things which aren't energy neutral or carbon neutral.

I don't see the point in singling out mining coins as a horrible or unethical way to generate revenue.

After all, cities get revenue from things like Uber and Grubhub which would rack up spectacularly bad numbers if anyone bothered to add them up.

And in any case, people in NYC who are inclined to mine for coins are probably going to mine something regardless of whether the city offers its own coin....

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. You are right. You are not an expert. It is way way beyond "background programs". . . . nt

[Slammer]

29. rolleyes

OMG, obviously I've been schooled by someone who is an expert. I bow to your obvious knowledge.



I invite anyone who's interested to Google "how does bitcoin mining work".

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. ( yawn )

Last edited Wed Nov 10, 2021, 08:34 PM - Edit history (2)

GPUs are long past "background programs", being much faster than CPUs. ASICS are long past GPUs.

An "arms race" has been observed through the various hashing technologies that have been used to mine bitcoins: basic central processing units (CPUs), high-end graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) all have been used, each reducing the profitability of the less-specialized technology. Bitcoin-specific ASICs are now the primary method of mining bitcoin and have surpassed GPU speed by as much as 300-fold.

[Deminpenn]

7. What could possibly go wrong?

First, none of these cryptocurrancies are legal tender. A person can decide to accept them, just like one could choose to accept clamshells for payment of goods and services, but no one else has to accept them or redeem them for legal tender.

Second, this reminds me of the dotcom and mortagage-backed securities bubbles, something that's going to burst sooner rather than later and leave a lot of people holding a worthless asset.

Third, why is anyone "mining" something that is completely made up?

Last, what happens when the US government decides that cryptocurrancy is threatening the dollar and tax revenue?

[Blues Heron]

8. no one has to accept cash either

plenty of places don't accept cash, more every day. The worth of bitcoin is its security (the crypto part) and the lack of a requirement for a bank account. All you need is a phone.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. You don't understand a bit if you say "why is anyone mining something that is completely made up?"

Third, why is anyone "mining" something that is completely made up?

This is so fundamental to the cryptocurrencies that if you don't understand this you understand nothing about them.

If it is "completely made up", then go ahead yourself, just try to make up a bitcoin or an nyccoin. Come on, go ahead, just make one up. Just pull it out of the air or a nether piece of anatomy. Go right ahead. Do it.

It would be worth your time to just "completely make up" a bitcoin. They are extremely valuable. Make yourself rich by "completely making up" a dozen and converting to cash. That would net you $800,000 immediately. Cash you can "completely make up".

Do it.

Now.

Show us how.

Or don't talk about that which you know nothing about, maybe?

[Ford_Prefect]

14. You are saying that giving a computer a complex math problem to solve is a valid method of exchange?

There is NO original value of an object or currency which is exchanged for value, or sold for value. There is no interest paid on a debt, or profit raised from manufacture and sale.

There is only a problem set for the computer. A grim set of numbers that someone was paid to install in it to make it find an answer. That is the very essence of something from nothing. There are costs of computer time used, technician time to install and monitor the program, and electrical power costs. The only benefit I can see is that someone's ego is massaged by the process and someone else's ego is twigged by the thought of owing something no one else can, presumably while having duped a 3rd party into paying for it all.

We used to call this vaporware, and snake oil. I see no reason to alter that description here.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. I'm not invested in cryptocurrencies and I don't anticipate doing so. But think about mediums of exc

Mediums of exchange are ALL based on perceived value. Clam shells, tobacco, gold, dollars, bitcoins.

There is "NO original value" in a green piece of paper.

Mediums only work well (hold value) if they are inherently scarce. Bitcoins are inherently scarce. There will only ever be 21,000,000 of them. Mathematical certainty as a consequence of the mathematics behind their design.

Dollars are not inherently scarce. The government can print more of them. But they keep them effectively inherently scarce by limiting the supply and by making them hard to counterfeit (holographic inserts, detailed engraving, special papers, etc.).

[Blues Heron]

20. They can be checked for forgery - thats what the complex crypto is all about

its why they are trusted. Not about ego, its about security.

[Deminpenn]

26. Admittedly, I don't know much about the cryptocurrancies

but that doesn't change the fact that bitcoin and the others are a completely made up thing that does not even exist in any material form. It is laughable that anyone takes them seriously. Go to a bank and see if it will give you real legal tender for a bitcoin.

Why are they "mined"? To create scarcity, driving up demand and ultimately price like diamonds for example.

My bet would be that in the end, crytos will be revealed as a giant ponzi scheme.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. They are NOT mined to "create" scarcity. They ARE scarce, mathematically

The mining does not make them scarce. Bitcoins are scarce and have to be found by computations, which has been figuratively termed "mining". There is a limit of 21,000,000 bitcoins, mathematically. Period. Mining them fills in the 2,000,000 approximately that have not yet been found. Increasing supply does not drive up price or demand: basic high school economics.

Mining diamonds does not make them scarce. Diamonds are scarce and have to be found by digging holes in the ground or alluvial mining. Mining them does the exact opposite of creating scarcity. Find something and it is thus less scarce because there is now more of it. Increasing the supply does not drive up demand for and price of diamonds.

It is illogical to think that mining bitcoin or diamonds "creates scarcity". It would be a good time for you to stop talking about basic things, like supply and demand and blockchains, that your posts in this thread have not yet shown any understanding of.


Take your gold and diamonds to the bank and they won't give you real tender. So by your logic that makes them worthless, for the same reason you feel bitcoins are worthless. Give your diamonds and gold to me.

[lonely bird]

25. Security?

Hmmm.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/19/239592/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/

Maybe not. At some point someone(s) will control cryptocurrency and someone(s) will attempt to crash it a la Soros and the British Pound.

What is critical to remember is that EVERYTHING is psychological and, in the case of an economy, based upon confidence or the lack thereof. As an example there is no price fairy who raises prices, humans decide to raise prices based upon psychological inputs such as greed and fear.

Cryptocurrency is nothing more than creating currency out of nothing just like regular money but the difference is that its value is completely independent of reality. That uncoupled characteristic has, imo, hidden implications that not only are not good but are very dangerous.

Btw, the more you mine then the more you create. How is this in anyway different from the psychological fears of hyperinflation complained about due to government printing money?

[greenjar_01]

28. Large sections of NYC will be underwater in 20 years

Good luck with the currency, though.

[rockfordfile]

31. What a idiot

Russia, China and some other pos have help create the chip shortage with the bitcoin crap. bitcoin is a danger to the USA.