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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

It's not a matter of opinion. Crypto provides incredibly little value to the average person vs. its energy usage. It takes an entire tank of gasoline to make a single Bitcoin transaction, don't insult me by telling me it's a matter of opinion that that's a waste.

And Proof of Waste is about more than it's impact on the environment through it's egregious energy use. Even in places that use clean energy, Bitcoin mining is putting a strain on the grid. (I suspect mining had something to do with Texas' grid problems last winter.) Even if you're harnessing off grid energy, you're a leech sucking value out of the economy by being a major contributor to the chip/GPU shortage.

And for what? All to contribute to a system that has greater wealth inequality than the existing financial system. Brilliant stuff.

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Is sun radiating energy in all directions also a waste in your terminology? You can call any use of energy “waste” this way.

Would bitcoin mining be better if it would use clean energy? I think you really are mixing two things here: energy production (that can be “good” or “bad” from ethical or evological perspective) and energy consumption that cannot be bad, just inefficient in terms of the return in business value (but it’s for the owners or customers to calculate, not bystanders to judge).

Imo mixing two is a massive fallacy.

Edit: typos.

> Would bitcoin mining be better if it would use clean energy?

No, Bitcoin mining should not exist. It serves no demonstrable net-positive value to society.

> I think you really are mixing two things here

I'm not, you seem to be confused. Energy production is produced only because it is economically viable to do so. Bitcoin makes it economically viable to produce most forms of energy, regardless of that specific source's environmental impact. This is harmful consumption of energy. Like leaving the lights on when you're not home, simply because you don't care. Bitcoin is not indifferent, its core function is to increase energy usage. Some people would have you believe Bitcoin's core value is its use as a currency. Its value is as infrastructure that wastes energy for profit, and the collective buy-in and infrastructure created to ensure it remains a store of value.

You could maybe argue this is worth it, if there were absolutely no other way to do it. But there is, and it works much better. Central banking is strictly superior to cryptocurrency for most reasons that the average person cares about. If you don't agree, that's irrelevant, because you're an outlier. Most people want cheap transactional costs, fast transactions, and for their money to have stable value. They couldn't care for a second if the transaction is cryptographically secure as long as it's reasonably insured.

> Energy production is produced only because it is economically viable

Tell that to sun

And what’s bad about leaving the lights on? Is energy a scarce resource or what? Since when is it bad to use it? This is such a strange take you have. We are not talking about water in the desert. We are talking about energy and increased consumption just stimulates more production and decreases cost.

It’s like saying “don’t type stupid comments on your laptop, it’s a waste of your laptop resources”. They are not finite. We can produce more. In so many different ways. Some of which are bad and some are good.

Doesn’t make typing stupid comments bad in no way.

> Tell that to sun

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally daft or what, but obviously we're talking about energy used by humans.

On Earth, the means to capture or produce any energy is a result of economic interest. If you want to capture energy from the sun at scale, there's a cost attached to it.

> And what’s bad about leaving the lights on? Is energy a scarce resource or what?

Yes, captured energy is literally a scare resource. Texas had rolling blackouts last winter. Many places in the developing world have constant rolling blackouts. That's why we charge money for it, that's why we invest money to drill for it, that's why we've invested decades of research and development into improving our ability to capture energy.

The electric company where I live, which is hydro-electricity based has run commercials for as long as I can remember to conserve energy because of its positive impact on the environment. Where the hell do you live that you think energy is infinite and free? The sun?

For all their faults, cryptocurrencies might put payments and the money supply outside political meddling. If most people don’t care about that yet, well, most Americans didn’t care about British rule in 1764.

This is your opinion.

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