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Comment by creshal | Hacker News Reader

PoW undermines our attempts to fight climate change, there's tons of examples of fossil fuel power plants being used for the sole purpose of running "crypto" "currencies". That is a very direct threat to our survival as a species.

Additionally, unregulated currency in general undermines the international political system itself, by allowing rogue states and terrorist organisations to completely bypass attempts at embargoing them. Or in case of organisations like the CIA, any attempts at governmental oversight – the situation was already bad before bitcoin, it's completely hopeless now.

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>PoW undermines our attempts to fight climate change, there's tons of examples of fossil fuel power plants being used for the sole purpose of running "crypto" "currencies".

No. There's literally one single concrete example of this happening [0] and a lot of moral busybodies wasting time with rounding errors instead of focusing on the big global climate disasters going on right now.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-giving-new-l...

PoW is now done more with renewable energy than most of other sectors. Bitcoin is one of the most clean markets out there.

In fact, Bitcoin is way better traceable than remittance systems used by terrorists. They smuggle cash, they use hawala, they use trade-based instruments (over and under invoicing), they use bank accounts on anonymous companies in tax havens. All these things are way more difficult to trace than Bitcoin (or 99% of all cryptocurrencies).

> PoW is now done more with renewable energy than most of other sectors. Bitcoin is one of the most clean markets out there.

A market for scams and scam accessories. If it stopped existing, we could shut down fossil fuel plants and put all those renewables to better use.

Supply, demand. People don't have better use for electricity than miners. If they did, they would buy it out. So your implication is false.

The fact you don't see value in cryptocurrencies doesn't equal for others it's the same.

It seems to me the technology is one of the contributors/facilitators in both those cases, rather than the cause. Surely the main scourge in your first paragraph are the fossil fuel power plants? Do you think either of these problems would be resolved or even significantly mitigated if cryptocurrencies were banned?

When already decommissioned fossil power plants get reactivated to mine bitcoin, I think it's safe to say that a ban of cryptocurrencies would have a significant impact.

I’m aware of only one case where a fossil fuel power plant partnered up with crypto miners. But I’m not denying PoW’s environmental impact, just its comparative scope and scale. Do you think we should ban other technologies reliant on dirty energy, such as motor vehicles? The Internet?

Presumably you believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in those cases. If that’s the case, crypto (PoW, really) would then chiefly be guilty of not being sufficiently beneficial to justify its contribution to climate change?

Yes. At the bare minimum, "crypto" "currencies" must be forced to move to Proof of Stake and stop dragging the entire world down with its madness.

Sadly that won't solve the problem. If 99% of Bitcoin is locked up in sidechains, the free 1% will become the new Bitcoin, so each Bitcoin will be far more expensive. As long as the price of Bitcoin rises faster than the mining rewards reduce, people will keep mining it.

And if you think that people dump a coin just because all the use cases have moved onto new coins, I present for your comment the "Ethereum Classic".

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