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Comment by mitchelldeacon9 | Hacker News Reader

7. Primary use-value of crypto is to facilitate payments for ramsomware and other illegal activity.

In the early days of crypto, this is what kept me away: the clear use case for illegal purposes (Silk Road anyone?). What I didn't realize was the big early driver was to transfer wealth out of China. China has strict capital controls and China's wealthy don't want their entire wealth to be at the behest of the CCP. There are limited reasons you can move money out of China. Bitcoin mining was a way around this.

That's technically illegal too but not in the same category as, say, ransomware, drugs, etc.

Anyway, I don't think the illegal use cases really matter. After all, cash can be used this way too. Sure cash can't be used for certain things crypto can be but crypto isn't fundamentally immoral any more than money is.

IMO, Proof of work crypto is fundamentally immoral because of the externalized environmental costs.

You can think that, but you are looking at the wrong side of the equation. The path down this thought process is being a bully -- "I don't want you to use electricity in that way". That is just your preference. Let the miners use power how they like, cleanly. Issue as many carbon taxes as you like to the producers if you feel it needs a finger on the scale. The miners don't tell you to stop wasting power on xmas trees.

Using energy is fine. Producing unclean energy is immoral. So is driving an internal combustion vehicle. We must get our power generation efficient and clean as possible.

> We must get our power generation efficient and clean as possible.

The thing is that, even if, it is not going to happen soon. And Energy for Bitcoin is out of proportion if you compare it with anything you have mentioned. Bitcoin wants to replace something with less efficient way. Bitcoin is backward thinking.

Not understanding Bitcoin is backward thinking. Bitcoin is an incentive to move to clean power.

You can't stop it, you can't stop people mining it, you can't stop people using it. Complaining about the energy is like complaining about the moon. Nothing you say or do can make it go away. So get people to generate it cleanly.

Virtually all electricity has externalized environmental cost. Even electricity used to power a hospital. I agree this externality is immoral, not the hospital or PoW itself.

You don't see any ethical difference between powering a hospital versus thousands of video cards to solve a useless puzzle? None? Not even a little tiny bit?

What about the fact that those video cards use HUNDREDS of times more power than even a relatively busy hospital?

I see the ethical issue as being externalities from the electricity, not the hospital or puzzle.

But resources are not limitless.

Are you comparing utility of hospital with proof of waste?

12% of the USA's economy is illegal activity. [1]

0.5% of Bitcoin's volume is illegal activity. [2]

When will this crime meme finally die?

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032916/how-big...

[2]: https://ciphertrace.com/2020-year-end-cryptocurrency-crime-a...

You need to recheck your numbers. [1] says the number is about 7% for the US. [2] is > 10% for Bitcoin before I stopped adding.

[2] says:

> illicit transactions making up less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s yearly volume in 2020

No adding required.

[1] throws a lot of numbers including/excluding different categories of drugs/etc. You can squabble about 7% or 12%, but the point is it's an order of magnitude higher than 0.5%.

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