Hacker News Reader

> If you just tax it or try to ban it they'll just move

Which is exactly what the locals would want, is it not? I mean, if I live in a place with cheap power, I don't want some outsider to come, take advantantage of that fact, and use so much power until the prices approach average power prices.

Hydroelectric plants usually require flooding huge areas of beautiful nature. People accept that because it's better than burning coal. But if people are just going to use it for something that doesn't help the local community at all, why bother destroying the local scenery?

There's more to the economy than just money; local governments often subsidize local companies if they think it's good for the locals even if it would be more profitable to move production overseas.

We don't need to find a way to make the "moral" thing more profitable. We can just make laws that prohibit the "amoral" thing. If we would let the market decide everything, why bother electing a government in the first place?

> if I live in a place with cheap power, I don't want some outsider to come, take advantantage of that fact, and use so much power until the prices approach average power prices.

There is no way someone use so much power until the prices approach average power prices, without making other changes. Maybe they offer lots of job positions? Maybe they pay lots of local Taxes?

Yes. Money is not everything, but good people can use those money to do "moral" things.

Groups of new people moving the local area is exactly what you hope your cheap electrical prices will bring. They create some jobs or support local store,increase real estate values, attract more supporting businesses.

The not in my backyard crowd are common in San Franisco but everywhere else welcoming new people raises all boats.

> welcoming new people raises all boats

No, it doesn't. Not when the new people are just interesting in exploiting local resources. They are not interested in becoming part of the local community.

Will the new people spend their money at my restaurant?

> Why is the thing I consider moral not attractive to the market

Because markets are notoriously unable to price in externalities on their own.

I realize there is a temptation here to throw up your hands and say "well, all human activity emits carbon", especially if you are long bitcoin, but it's a false equivalency. Bitcoin is an energy consumption monster by design, and its difficulty adjustment mechanism neutralizes any attempt at making mining more efficient.

Also its limited market cap and halving schedule will probably eventually phase out the energy consumption. Provided people are not willing to pay hundreds or thousands of (current day) dollars for transactions.

Edit: And if they are willing to pay that much that should be a clear sign of the value provided by the network

Edit2: And wether this will also phase out Bitcoins security model will be very interesting to observe across the next 10-20 years (depending on when btc will hit its market cap threshold in real terms)

If only we could tax carbon...

Because Bitcoin are fungible and cost the same to transfer across the world as across the room, mining would just move to the countries without a carbon tax.

I do think a carbon tax is a good idea, because in industries like transportation and energy it’s not as easy to just move production elsewhere, but it’s not really a solution here.

You could tax at the fiat off-ramps.

>is that right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin.

You can't abstract away the fuel for energy production. I'm sure bitcoin miners would be fine with mining every last bit of coal on the planet and using it to run their rigs if they can do it cheaply (which they probably can as coal prices drop and renewables ramp up)

Majority of bitcoin mining is run on fossil fuel power.[0]

A better 'use' is keeping it in the ground.

Here's a byproduct of bitcoin mining, basically throwing a lifeline to dying coal plant: "Bitcoin miner Marathon signs for coal-fired electricity in Montana"[1]

[0]https://decrypt.co/43848/why-bitcoin-miners-dont-use-more-re...

[1]https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/bitcoin-miner-mar...

“ If you really want an environmental problem to tackle go fight the oil industry killing thousands of animals every day, destroying communities every day, destroying them literally.”

It’s not one or the other. I’m critical of Bitcoin just like I’m critical of other things affecting the environment.

“If you just tax it or try to ban it they’ll just move”

Good. Let them move. Not everything is about acquiring as much money as physically possible. Getting more money out of people is not a tenable argument for whether something is appropriate or not.

Markets are wildly inefficient and do not account for everything. The areas that had low electricity prices were doing just fine for themselves before Bitcoin miners moved in, and will do just fine afterwards. Saying we should allow things because “money” is just sickening. At least come up with a better argument.

Well then, that it sickens you is such a better argument isn't it not? You should've told us earlier!

Look, we can admit the reality of the world we live in or we can pretend, but only if we admit the real world to ourselves we can even begin to contemplate finding some kind of solution to our problems. Trying to ban everything you don't like is what is really sickening because newsflash, people can think for themselves and don't need you to decide what's moral for them.

Money is important in society, deal with it. Money is useful in society, deal with it. Money, for better or worse, arguably controls society. Deal with it.

Living in reality is different than justifying it. Saying that Bitcoin miners using up electricity means there was no better use is not derived from reality- that’s your own personal viewpoint.

I don’t need to make any argument as I’m not the one presenting anything here. All I’m saying is that “money is good, therefore actions that net money are good”, is a terrible argument and we can do better than that.

> Trying to ban everything you don't like is what is really sickening

You could make the same argument about any law.

This isn't something we "don't like" - cryptocurrencies are tremendously destructive of the world's resources and their only use so far is crime - money laundering, tax evasion and buying or selling contraband.

We should be making these things illegal in just the same way we make money laundering and other things that damage society illegal.

I see them aligning with the locals and saying perhaps you should move out if you protest too much.

> The best option for the collection of arguably the most brilliant minds that have ever walked this planet is to work for Google, trying to get people to click more on ads.

Ridiculous.

A counterargument from Warren Buffett:

> If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing.

The market isn't a God - it selects silly, suboptimal things all the time, especially in the short run. It often selects things which are very bad for the many and good for the few, it has no regard for negative externalities, it's often subject to irrational speculative bubbles.

I'm not sure regulation is the answer, but bitcoin absolutely can and should be criticised as a poor use of energy.

> "right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin."

That's just not true. The higher the price of Bitcoin, the more incentive there is for miners to outbid other energy consumers.

Which is what I said, that is my point. That everything else is becoming so unattractive, that is the problem.

Adding lead to gasoline was an attractive innovation, and very profitable to oil companies.

It was also a known poison. Market forces alone don’t always solve these problems.

Which is exactly what the OP's point is, ie

  if the price of Bitcoin is high enough == there is no better use than to mine Bitcoin

Say profitable if you mean that, not "better".

...better use for electricity

Shuttering -- or not even building -- unnecessary power plants is a better use of electricity.

> is that right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin [...] the best option for the collection of arguably the most brilliant minds that have ever walked this planet is to work for Google, trying to get people to click more on ads

That's more about the fact that it's not measured in terms of dollars and shareholder return.

Would it be beneficial to have this electricity being used for other things or have those engineers do other things than optimize an ad click factory? Probably, we could use this electricity to have cheaper power for lower income households, or those engineers could work on improving other things.

But the market doesn't necessarily pay for those things, and if the system is geared towards optimizing for more dollars, then the only one gets is more dollars with all the non-priced externalities dumped onto the society at large.

> is that right now there is no "better" use for that electricity than bitcoin.

I've never heard of a clearer statement that our society is broken. We are literally destroying our own biosphere by generating energy, nearly all from fossil fuels, and yet we can't find anything "better" to do with that power.

It's madness.

> what can we do differently to make doing something else at least as profitable as mining bitcoin?

Not destroying our ecosystem will _never_ be profitable. We should do it because we want our grandchildren to live, not to make a buck.

A society that values immediate gain over its grandchildren's safety is, as I said, profoundly broken.

We're willing to concede that the best minds of our generation should be in the business of manipulating others to click on ads, but god forbid if some try to liberate us from total control and tyranny placed on civilization.

This should be the top comment of this post.

I'm quite flattered that you think[1] that I am one of the best minds of our generation, but I would disagree with your assessment of what the most difficult projects at Google are.

[1] Mistakenly, in my self-assessment.

The most difficult projects at Google are tangential to Google's raison d'etre, it exists to get people to click on ads.

Awesome response! I love that @ HN for every shortsighted person there is a longsighted one providing a non-mainstream view. What ratio do we have on other platforms or even in real life? 1 to 100?

Sorry, but the above argument is really a poor one.

Just because there’s “no better” use for that electricity (which I disagree), does not justify using it up on bitcoin mining. This is like saying it’s morally permissible to do A because if you don’t, someone else will.

Not to mention conflating “the best use of X people’s time” with “who is giving out the best compensation in a society where we need money”.

The mainstream view -is- positive of Bitcoin. Very few people are actually concerned with the environmental impact.

> The mainstream view -is- positive of Bitcoin. Very few people are actually concerned with the environmental impact.

You should ask yourself why that is. I think it's because Bitcoin is providing value to people. It has an extremely low barrier to entry. You don't need good credit to use it. You don't need to go to a bank. You don't need an id.

I don't think most people are actively using it yet, but they see the democratic nature of the "interface" to the crypto system and recognize that the power is shifted in their favor a bit more than the established monetary system. They know this because they've been abused by that system their entire lives.

I find a lot of upper middle class people struggle to see the value in Bitcoin because they can't empathize with people who can't use traditional banking.

Appealing to popularity fallacy.

For anyone in the US you do need an ID to use Bitcoin in any practical manner. Exchanges require it. Avoiding this requires jumping through multiple hoops, especially if you want to convert to cash.

People don’t think about the environmental consequences because most people don’t think about that anyways. We’re also on HN, where software companies use or rent computational power with zero regard to the environmental impact. And for Bitcoin owners it’s specifically in their financial interest not to think about how Bitcoin miners are using more electricity than actual countries.

All of that said, Bitcoin is a failed experiment. People aren’t using it as an actual currency, they’re hoarding it. Partly because of the model and mostly because trying to actually spend Bitcoin sucks badly.

Bitcoin is going to be replaced by a cryptocurrency that’s actually usable and competitive with existing payment networks. And hopefully one that doesn’t use such an electricity intensive model.

You can't just call use-cases you don't like a "fallacy". Like I said, the tech is still early, but there are decentralized exchanges where you don't need an ID to use them.

> People don’t think about the environmental consequences because most people don’t think about that anyways.

They don't think about that because:

A. They're not the cause of the environmental damage (check with the military and large industry there).

B. They're concerned about paying rent, buying food...

Money is at top of mind for most people.

> All of that said, Bitcoin is a failed experiment.

If this is failure to you, I hope Bitcoin keeps failing! By any metric you look at it, Bitcoin is reaching all time highs with exponential growth.

This comment perfectly encapsulates the logic of neoliberalism and inadvertently provides insight into how it is sending us full speed on an ecological collision course.