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Comment by pradn | Hacker News Reader

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pradn·

It's not mental gymnastics to have a legitimate concern about energy usage.

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Especially when the economic value provided by that consumption is virtually zero (net negative with externalities).

I liked the idea of bitcoin when it came out, but as per usual things have just gotten out of hand from there.

Are there similar concerns about the pollution produced by gold mining? eg. "we should ban gold because it's so toxic to mine!"

Yes ofc. Nobody thinks mining is a clean industry.

There might be some concerns (eg. "wow gold mining is dirty, we should do something about it"), but I personally haven't seen anything close to "we should ban gold".

because gold is useful, bitcoin only has speculative value

This is addressed in a sibling comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26089473

And gold is useful.

Almost half of the world gold demand is for speculative/investment purposes[1]. If you consider jewelry to be speculative as well (at least partially, since if you only cared about appearance you could just plate it), the vast majority isn't "useful".

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...

> Almost half of the world gold demand is for speculative/investment purposes

fair (and I think gold as a "beautiful" metal is dumb), but the other half of the usage (on your claim) is for an array of productive things. I don't see wires, heat reflectors, etc being made out of bitcoin.

>but the other half of the usage (on your claim) is for an array of productive things

It's far less than that. Only 7.48% is definitely useful (under "technology").

There are. They're not super present in the public consciousness because they're drowned out by the concerns about the prevalence of child labor in many countries' gold mines.

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