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Comment by adh636 | Hacker News Reader

The same argument people made against Tesla saying why electric cars weren't really better than combustion engine cars. They said Tesla cars use a lot of energy, much of which comes from coal and other dirty sources. What a joke that Elon is making this argument.

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There's a big difference. Even if people using EVs now effectively burn coal to do it, they replaced an ICE and can migrate to greener sources over time. On the other hand, crypto mining exists purely on top of existing energy usage. These are not really comparable situations.

Sorry, I am not sure I completely understand your argument. You expect the energy used for Tesla cars to more easily migrate to greener energy? Bitcoin mining is completely location independent and is able to migrate to cheaper (which as renewable energy tech improves will equal greener) energy much easier than an individual tesla owner can.

Not only that but the same logic can also be applied to bitcoin, which aims to replace a financial system based on a petroleum standard.

More easily than your new combustion engine car, I think was the argument.

Assuming EV purchases on average replace existing cars not add new ones. (They do in a long run)

Energy usage:

Before buying an EV: X with Y convertible to green. After buying an EV: X with Y+d convertible to green.

Before a new miner starting: X with Y convertible to green. After: X+d with Y+d convertible to green.

It doesn't matter if the new miner is running 100% green, because they still use energy which could instead replace some amount of fossil fuels. We're not really isolated in this context - all of us suffer from not removing the reliance on burning coal.

The whole situation is completly different. There are way better alternative technologies then Bitcoin.

But there is no electric car with < then 0.1% of the energy consumption of a tesla.

How about mass transit, bicycles, running, walking. Lets stop using airplanes and use blimps instead. Maybe there are benefits to using energy? Energy usage is how society and technology advances.

Mass transit isn’t available to everyone. They don’t even have buses where I live.

> But there is no electric car

Well fortunately for us, cars aren't the only methods of transportation.

Tesla cars don't use an absurd amount of energy given the problem they're solving. Bitcoin does.

This is only true if you don't think Bitcoin is solving an important problem. For me, I think it is solving arguably the most important problem. That being said, even if I think clothes dryers (which use more energy than bitcoin) aren't solving a very important problem, I don't try and tell people they are bad or immoral or destroying the environment because they use clothes dryers.

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