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Comment by orthecreedence | Hacker News Reader

> The point is that the environmental argument is completely irrelevant if externalities are removed, which they absolutely should be.

Yes, I agree that my argument would be completely irrelevant if only something that will never happen happens.

Until then, I'd rather see some form of distributed currency that doesn't rely on pissing finite resources away to function.

I get where you're coming from, but our planet is at a critical point right now objectively. Pouring pollutants into the atmosphere so people can play with FunBux is an incredibly stupid use of resources. Yes, markets should price in externalities. That would solve SO MUCH MORE than just bitcoin's energy usage. But unfortunately that concept is at odds with market capitalism, and as such, I believe my critique of bitcoin stands. Markets are not rational, prices are not accurate, bitcoin is a polluting waste of energy.

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I don’t think anyone disagrees that reducing the energy requirements of cryptocurrency without any capability loss would be great. The trouble is when people who don’t like cryptocurrency for other reasons, or just don’t care about it, focus specifically on complaining about its energy usage.

Say you don’t care much about professional sports. Of course you would think that any innovation that reduces the energy requirements of professional would be great (more efficient arena lights, climate control, etc.). But I think it would be inappropriate to single out sports as a waste of energy, because it is only a “waste” because you don’t happen to receive and of the benefits.

Yeah, this makes sense.

I guess the issue I have is such a tiny minority of people are using such an excess of energy to do something that adds very little value to society. Even if the value of bitcoin is subjective, there's still a tiny minority of people consuming vast amounts of energy to derive what value it does bring them.

It just feel disproportionately harmful at a time when our top scientists are blue in the face from telling us to reduce carbon emissions.

I understand that it's not my place to judge what people derive value from. I also would argue that energy should be neutral (similar to my views on internet access). I guess my biggest gripe is probably something you and me share in common: the understanding that market mechanisms allowed this waste to happen in the first place. So you're definitely not wrong, and your argument about externalities is well-taken.

I’d rather not have environmental regulation that needs to decide the value to society of every activity. If the regulation just internalizes the costs of energy production, then I don’t care what you use your electricity for (up to some obvious and less-obvious limits, which can be and are handled by completely separate laws).

Damn bro, you are missing the point. As has been described, pure market mechanisms do not and cannot price externalities correctly.

That’s why we have environmental regulation, as imperfect as it is.

This implicitly means a society does make choices about how energy is used. Therefore, a discussion about societal priorities amongst individuals is essential.

Likewise with regulation related to finance and money.

Energy and money. Among the most highly regulated things in all societies.

I agree with the poster that POW cryptocoin systems are a shocking waste of electricity.

In addition, the only use cases that have proved viable are illegal or highly destructive to the social fabric.

When you look at the sheer amount of money transferred from losers to winners, it’s clear that this is not a benefit to anyone. The scams, the hacks, the thefts. Bitcoin and it’s ilk are parasitic systems that weaken the host.

To compare to Ferraris, well Ferraris are a niche product, are already regulated, and have a historical component that accounts for their hedonic properties.

To compare bitcoin to hello kitty backpacks is just a category error, which belies that the argument is disengenuous.

Perhaps you’re misunderstanding my point. I’m not against environmental regulations and I don’t expect market mechanisms to eliminate externalities. On the contrary, I want environmental regulations that reduce (ideally eliminate) externalities in the cost of energy. This should, almost by definition, be the goal of environmental regulations. Cap and trade on energy producers, for instance, can and probably does do this.

As for the stuff about cryptocurrencies being associated with scams and wealth inequality, to me that’s entirely independent of environmental impact and should be dealt with (and probably can be dealt with using existing laws) regardless of the environmental impact.

"Yes, I agree that my argument would be completely irrelevant if only something that will never happen happens."

The same could be said for people changing their behavior because you complain about it on a message board that the people in question don't even read. Nobody's going to stop using Bitcoin because you don't like it, so why bother?

That said, I think the cryptocurrency world is moving in that direction anyway. Most of the more exciting new cryptocurrencies use non-PoW consensus mechanisms, eg. IOTA = tangle, Ethereum Casper = PoS, EOS = DPoS, Stellar = SCP. And there's a strong economic incentive for that: when you reduce the cost of computation, you can use those computations for more applications, which drives adoption, which increases the value of peoples' cryptocurrencies. The challenge is that the fundamental benefit cryptocurrencies offer is computational trust, so until people are confident that these other consensus mechanisms are at least as immune to attack as PoW is, they're unlikely to switch away from Bitcoin.

> Nobody's going to stop using Bitcoin because you don't like it, so why bother?

Perhaps someone who did actually read what I wrote will realize that there are many, many things that do what Bitcoin does without the power usage of Bitcoin and perhaps seeks those as an alternative (like, PoS coins). And originally, the argument was "this is an environmental crisis," someone said "no it's not because of ferraris and backpacks," and I countered and said, yes, it's an issue. Why does anyone argue on an internet forum? I guess in the hopes of changing minds. I hope you would not find debate a waste of energy, at least not in a democratic form of governance.

> until people are confident that these other consensus mechanisms are at least as immune to attack as PoW is, they're unlikely to switch away from Bitcoin.

Yeah, that's the real meat of the argument, I suppose. We know PoW is at least difficult to attack. I am very happy that other consensus mechanisms are being explored though. I'm also not convinced existing non-PoW consensus mechanisms won't be as secure trust-wise as PoW.

I guess the overall point of this is that, yes, there's nothing I can do about people doing horribly wasteful things. But let's not pretend that bitcoin isn't horribly wasteful. Let's call a giraffe a giraffe. And maybe it's ok to be a giraffe if you're aware of the trade-offs, but it's certainly not a gazelle just because you're uncomfortable with the properties of giraffes.

I have bad news for you, which may or may not be fake: in the future, we all live inside. Our houses aren't self-sufficient bio-domes at first, we pipe in fresh air and water from centralised facilities; then we use it, and pipe it back. At the centralised facilities where air and water is recycled and power is generated, waste just goes outside. Some modicum of theatrical effort is put into loading the particularly radioactive stuff in steel drums and telling the concrete trucks cover it over, but nobody really cares. As we approach the limit of a dead planet, the externalities of energy production cease to be negative -- there's no harm in beating a dead horse. This is when the cost of energy will accurately reflect all externalities, not before then. A society which slows down energy production will be outcompeted, and then they won't be in charge of the inside. The outside is already a lost cause.

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