Bitcoin now a much bigger waste of energy

John Quiggin27 Comments

I’m giving a talk tomorrow at a Colloquium organized by a group called Sort, on The Wasteful Economics in Resource Recovery, and I’ve been asked to talk a bit about blockchain technology. That reminded me that I needed to take another look at the issue, and what has changed since 2015 when I wrote that

at most of the market value of a Bitcoin reflects the electricity wasted in the calculations needed to “mine” it, with the obvious disastrous implications for the global climate.

and concluded that the sooner this collective delusion comes to an end, the better.

As far as I can determine, the only thing that has changed is that the Bitcoin bubble has got massively bigger and that the associated waste of energy is now much more widely recognised than when I first wrote about it.

Despite the huge increase in the market value of bitcoins, they seem further than ever from becoming an actual currency. Unsurprisingly, there’s no sign that governments are willing to accept bitcoins as legal tender. Nor is there any sign that they are displacing standard forms of money. On the contrary, bitcoins now seem to be seen as a financial asset, with no real suggestion that they will ever be a general medium of exchange.

As a check on this, here’s a list of firms that accept bitcoin as payment, which fits easily on to a single page. Sydney readers who would like to buy a beer with bitcoin are in luck, or were back in 2014 when the Old Fitzroy got a bit of coverage for saying it would accept bitcoins. There’s another pub listed in London, and that’s about it as far as drinks are concerned. After nearly a decade, Bitcoin acceptance remains the stuff of publicity stunts, not a serious commercial option.

At least by repute, bitcoins are used more extensively in covert transactions such as those involving drug trading, tax evasion and money laundering. But that’s scarcely a good reason to bet on them beintg around for a long while. If the scale of the problem gets large enough to cause real problems, governments will act to shut the whole system down or regulate it to the point where the compliance costs make the whole idea unattractive.

At any rate, the durability and magnitude of the Bitcoin phenomenon, running for nearly 10 years and with a putative value of nearly $US 100 billion, provides us with a very sharp test of the Efficient (financial) Markets Hypothesis. If Bitcoin eventually becomes a currency, the EMH and its supportsr will be vindicated, and I (along with quite a few other economists) will have a lot of egg on my face. If the bubble bursts, the roles will be reversed.

Finally, I should give a plug to Gridcoin. This is a project that aims to avoid the massive waste involved in Bitcoin by making calculations that are actually useful to science. This is a worthwhile idea. But with a current market capitalization of $21 million, it’s obviously got a long way to go.

There are also alternatives to the “proof of work” method of validating changes to the blockchain, such as “proof of importance”, which is analogous to Google’s page ranking systems. I’m still trying to find out more about these.

Appearances

John Quiggin5 Comments

I’ll be at the State Library of Queensland tonight for Science Says!. I don’t know what I’ve let myself in for, but I’m assured it will be fun.

On Sunday, I’ll be talking at a Colloquium organized by a group called Sort, on The Wasteful Economics in Resource Recovery.

My last event for the year (I think!) will be a talk about the Economics Nobel award (yes, I know) at the Economics Society of Australia Christmas party. Free for members, probably not of much interest to others.

Last-minute economic policy post

John Quiggin19 Comments

Both Labor and the LNP have released their economic policies just two days before the state election. This isn’t just a matter of “costings”. Essentially, all the new expenditure items and tax reductions were announced with some fanfare during the campaign, while the revenue measures and expenditure cuts needed to fund these goodies have been kept under wraps until now. This is a terrible way to run an election, but the “hardheads” on both sides obviously think it’s a good idea (the same hardheads who gave us compulsory preferential voting on the Labor side and the Commission of Audit for the LNP).

On the LNP side, my assessments here and here have been confirmed. The tax cuts and extra spending promised by the LNP have been financed by cuts to services (euphemistically referred to as “efficiency dividends”) and by the abandonment of the Cross-River rail project, which appears to be vital if we are going to handle a growing Brisbane population in the future. The efficiency dividend will necessarily involve reduced employment. If the promise to avoid compulsory redundancies is adhered to in spirit as well as letter, that will mean a semi-permanent hiring freeze in areas with low turnover, which is likely to have adverse effects on efficiency.

These are big cuts, but not enough to reach the target of a surplus on fiscal balance. That means the stage is set for yet another Commission of Audit and unannounced further cuts.

Labor is planning to finance promised improvements in services through a mixture of tax increases (targeted at the relatively wealthy) and unspecified reallocation of existing funds, yielding a modest net increase in expenditure as compared to the cuts proposed by the LNP.

We have a choice then between Labor offering improved services, which must ultimately be financed by tax revenue and the LNP offering cuts in taxes, services and jobs. It would have been helpful if this choice had been made explicit four weeks ago, but still it is clear enough. Unsurprisingly, I prefer Labor.

Financing a UBI/GMI

John Quiggin17 Comments

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post making some observations on the closely related ideas of a Universal Basic Income or Guaranteed Minimum Income. The most important was

Observation 1: Any UBI scheme can be replicated by a GBI with the same effective marginal tax rates, and vice versa

I meant to follow up with a more detailed exploration of financing issues, but all sorts of other things intervened. However, I’ve now prepared a draft, which is over the fold.

Comments and criticism much appreciated

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Renewables, coal and culture war

John Quiggin11 Comments

In the final week of the Queensland election campaign, I’ve been busy trying to do what I can to influence the result. I’ve put out a couple of opinion pieces about the choice between coal and renewable energy. This one, in The Guardian, focuses on the central role of the culture war in motivating rightwing opposition to renewable energy. In The Conversation, I look at the economics and business aspects and debunk the idea that ‘ultrasupercritical’ technology makes coal-fired power a high efficiency, low emissions technology

Also, in New Matilda, I’m collaborating with Morgan Brigg and Kristen Lyons of the Global Change Institute to produce a five-part series on Adani and the resistance to the project by the Wangan and Jagalingou people.

An opportunity for a Bill of Rights

John Quiggin30 Comments

One of the striking outcomes of the equal marriage survey is that a lot of people who had always assumed themselves to be part of (in Spiro Agnew’s phrase) the “silent majority” have been presented with undeniable evidence that they are actually in the minority. Not only that, but the minority to which they belong on equal marriage would be even smaller if it weren’t boosted by lots of people they’ve always thought of as undesirable minorities. Most notably, the No vote was swelled by Muslims and recent migrants from more traditional cultures.

Against that background, it’s not surprising to see people who have never had a good word to say about the United Nations, or about a Bill of Rights, embracing the idea of incorporating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into Australian law (we’re already a signatory, but that has no legal effect).

It would be absurd to incorporate a document dealing with topics as diverse as the death penalty and war propaganda (both prohibited) into the Marriage Act. Nevertheless, now that the issue has been raised, it’s a great opportunity for Australia to get something like a Bill of Rights enshrined into law (though of course it wouldn’t change the Constitution).

It’s tempting to use the thumping majority recorded in the survey as a stick with which to beat those (variously described as “dinosaurs” or “reactionaries”) who campaigned against equal rights on this occasion. But all majorities are temporary. It would be far better to use this moment to make common cause in support of protections for minorities of all kinds.

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The thin end of the wedge on anti-discrimination law?

John Quiggin39 Comments

The latest attempt to derail equal marriage was a proposal by a group of conservatives to remove anti-discrimination provision to allow a wide range of discrimination against same-sex married couples. The leading proponent of the proposal was James Paterson who, like so many Liberal MPs, is a former staffer at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Press coverage duly noted that Paterson had answered “Yes” in the postal survey and described him as a supporter of individual liberty, but didn’t as far as I can tell ask the obvious question: is Paterson’s position on discrimination specific to this issue, or does he support a general right to discriminate on racial, religious and other grounds?

The public record isn’t very clear on this. Insofar as he’s said anything about anti-discrimination law, Paterson has been opposed. This is consistent with the orthodox propertarian position that employers, business and landlords should be free from any interference from government. However, so far, he has only made this point explicit in relation to equal marriage and racist speech (Section 18C). So, it would be good to have a clear statement as to whether the current bill is intended as the thin end of the wedge, or whether he sees equal marriage as a special case.