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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this comment before, and honestly I think it's cheap. This article is about a clear, real problem with the current implementation of Bitcoin, namely that it requires enormous amounts of energy. I am not "anti-Bitcoin", I am anti a payment and financial storage protocol that requires gargantuan amounts of energy.

So if you have a problem or comment on the article in question, please make it, we're all ears. But responding to valid criticisms of Bitcoin with hand-wavy "oh HN is so anti-Bitcoin" is not discussion, it's tribalism.

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Valid criticism is one thing, but this wave of criticism ignores so many basic facts about Bitcoin mining and energy generation/transportation/storage it's unbelievable. It also ignores the benefits, handwaving them away as if they didn't exist at all (it's all nice and easy for the firstworlders they can't even imagine there's a world without reliable banks, but there is!) while offering no alternative. Why would people use Bitcoin if there was a better alternative, isn't one of the arguments that it costs so much? Try to find out how much does it cost to transfer money to Ghana or Congo by other means and how reliable it is...

To be 100% clear, I believe your comment is exactly the type of valid counterargument I'm talking about, i.e. you bring up unique issues that Bitcoin solves, and point out that other monetary systems have high costs as well. Those are things one can have an honest debate about.

That is very different than the "HN is so anti-Bitcoin bringing up decade old strawmen" comment I responded to. Perhaps most obviously by the fact that there are many in the crypto community itself that believe the energy usage of BTC is a real problem and are attempting to come up with viable alternatives like proof of stake.

If you were all ears you'd know by now that there's no viable alternative to PoW. Or genuinely cared to find out for yourself for that matter.

> If you were all ears you'd know by now that there's no viable alternative to PoW. Or genuinely cared to find out for yourself for that matter.

I love how people who are the most condescending are also usually the most wrong. Have you never heard of Ethereum 2.0?

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