Hacker News Reader

Comment by castratikron | Hacker News Reader

The author misses the point. The root of the problem is that electricity is not carbon free. What the electricity is used for is irrelevant. What the author suggests would be similar to saying, "let's stop climate change by minimizing our driving instead of transitioning to electric transport."

View on HN

I think the point was that POW specifically is an inefficient method of verification. They weren't arguing against the notion of using energy to run a virtual currency, just that Bitcoin specifically is needlessly wasteful, so we should move to alternative cryptocurrencies. So actually I think they are arguing for 'switching to electric transport', to use your example.

No, even if the electricity were carbon-free there would still be an opportunity cost in wasting ever-increasing amounts of it doing bitcoin mining instead of, say, aluminium smelting, or powering electric trains, or any other useful thing.

Also just for the record, minimizing driving is a good way to combat climate change.

But that's exactly the best way to reduce global warming, minimize consumption.

Obviously to minimize consumption you should cut away the things that provide the least value for the highest reduction. So for example turn of lights during the night in empty buildings is much better than using renewable energy to power the lights.

"What the author suggests would be similar to saying,"

No, because driving has a legitimate purpose.

In many cases it doesn't.

More legitimate than mining coins that'll be put in a wallet that ends up in a landfill.

Yeah, and we should try (eg. the correct incentives) to reduce driving that has no purpose or value.

Just because it exists doesn't make it a good thing in the current circumstances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com