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Comment by kaba0 | Hacker News Reader

> we do. One just need to see the world beyond their own planet.

Heat death of the universe would like a world with you. And before you say that it is so damn far we should not care about it, meaningful space travel is similarly so. We should save our own planet because a goddamn apocalyptic Earth after ww3 is still a more livable place then any planet in the Solar system.

Also, is being globally connected to each other with comparatively less energy expenditure bad? How about hosting free educational resources, but even just fun things? It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless.

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> It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless.

Bitcoin exists because there is no alternative decentralised, self sovereign currency. PoW exists because there is no other method to achieve that. It is by no means useless. You are not the user.

> Bitcoin exists because there is no alternative decentralised, self sovereign currency.

I do question whether we need one. We choose our governments to create laws protecting our values. I do agree that they are pretty far from perfect, but I don’t see why should we circumvent said laws. If I got a failed product, how will I get it replaced, when the seller could have disappeared? Yeah, there are smart contracts, but it’s not like our entire financial system was made up on the spot. It has many many warts, but it does solve real world problems.

> PoW exists because there is no other method to achieve that.

And as others mentioned in the thread, there are cryptos not dependent on PoW

>meaningful space travel is similarly so

as i already said - that is mainly because we fail to see the world beyond our planet.

>It is not comparable to hashing random numbers for proof of work levels of useless.

you find something not important to you and declare it useless. Other people do seems to value the planetary-scale decentralized consensus at like a $1T.

> as i already said - that is mainly because we fail to see the world beyond our planet.

Well, closer to the Sun it is way too hot, further away it is way too cold. There are also tiny problems like not having an atmosphere, too great or too small gravity, or small details like not having a solid surface, but sure, which planet would you like to travel to?

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