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Comment by andrewzah | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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