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Comment by willtemperley | Hacker News Reader

These arguments are always pointless, as there is nothing that can be done about it, short of a global ban on computers and the internet. Why not ask the question: "how can we incentivise usage of clean over dirty energy?". How is it the fault of Bitcoin that someone realised burning brown coal to create hashes is economically viable? That's a failure of the state, not the software.

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I’ve seen a lot of backlash in the generative art world over NFTs as a result of the revelations of their climate impact, with people refusing to participate. So these articles aren’t pointless.

It’s ironic that Bitcoin started as a way to subvert the state, but now that its externalities are clear it’s a failure of the state to control those externalities. Never mind that it would require a global carbon tax, since coins are fungible and mining will relocate to avoid having to pay the cost of its externalities.

I'm arguing from a purely practical perspective. What can be done? Can we forget PoW and Bitcoin ever existed? Can we ban someone using their GPU from performing hashes and connecting to the internet? Even the great firewall of China hasn't managed that. Can we close coal burning power stations? Yes. Let's do that then. Whether it's ironic or not, whether bitcoin was designed to subvert anything is immaterial.

I mean, people refusing to participate does move the needle a bit. I think as awareness of the problem grows (via articles like this), there will be more demand for less wasteful NFT platforms.

You're probably right that the same is not true of Bitcoin. In my experience the digital art community is less nihilistic than the Bitcoin community about climate impacts, if only because Bitcoin has had a longer time for people concerned about the climate to self-select out of the community.

It is a failure of humanity. Just when climate change is become so obvious that basically no one takes the deniers seriously anymore, some asshole goes and invents a way to straight-up burn an ever-increasing amount of energy to power a pyramid scheme and people go mad for it.

Frankly, I'm increasingly of the opinion that we don't deserve to survive as a species.

> Why not ask the question: "how can we incentivise usage of clean over dirty energy?"

Because that would be absolutely pointless.

If energy were infinite and free, then all of this would disappear instantly.

The value of crypto is proportional to the future cost of minting. No future cost == zero present value.

> Because that would be absolutely pointless.

You are actually arguing that it's pointless to incentivise usage of clean over dirty energy. Do you own a coal mine?

> The value of crypto is proportional to the future cost of minting. No future cost == zero present value.

This argument requires some evidence. I was under the impression that scarcity of the asset underpinned the value.

Pointless in the context of Bitcoin mining, which is what we are debating. Not pointless in general. I don't own a coal mine. Or Bitcoins. Or stocks. Or much, really.

> there is nothing that can be done about it, short of a global ban on computers and the internet

This is not true, there are numerous ways to discourage these harmful proof-of-work systems.

This could be done at the mining source, by states taxing this industry extremely heavily or just banning it outright, and at the point of exchange, with states heavily taxing or banning conversion between normal currency to cryptocurrency. A wealth tax (payable in real money) on cryptocurrency holdings would be another option.

If enough economically influential states decided to do this, we should see a massive crash in the price of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies from this, as people realise it's not worth the hassle of dealing with under these increased regulations.

Of course there are ways to regulate it, but you cannot stop PoW as a concept from existing, nor can you stop the code from existing somewhere. So, even if one of your plans worked out, someone would git clone Doge and start again. OTOH, it's certainly possible to stop carbon being burned within a country.

Why is that a failure of the state? Which state?

Whichever state or jurisdiction the power station burning coal is based in.

Ah sorry lots of Americans here, in global English we use "state" to mean a sovereign state, not an arbitrary subdivision like Delaware

No I took you to mean "country" as I'm also not American, I just don't understand how you expect governments to foresee and restrict every possible new technology that affects energy consumption to such a large degree.

I also think that these kind of insights are what would be needed for states to act on technologies that pose these threats, though I believe if regulation is applied there will be a lot, and I mean a lot, of backlash.

All I'm arguing is that governments can stop carbon being burned on their soil but they cannot stop PoW existing. So let's focus on the former.

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