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Comment by basisword | Hacker News Reader

>> 1) a very serious climate crisis 2) a cost of living crisis where people can't afford energy to cook and heat (in the UK at least) and 3) a war that would likely be brought to a stop sooner if we could phase out Russian gas sooner.

All of these things are the result of bad governing, not crypto. Maybe banning crypto would help them (I don’t believe that) but banning lots of other things would also help. What we really need is better energy policy, better foreign policy, and better regulation of companies destroying the environment and contributing unnecessarily to climate change.

Edit: The vitriol in some of the replies to this is fascinating. Did you all just lose a fortune in the crypto crash or something?

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I'm "frothy" about my government (who are seemingly incompetent) too, that doesn't mean that crypto in it's realised form isn't also at fault. I mean sure, crypto as a concept isn't doing anyone any harm, but the realised actually running systems that are Eth and BTC sure as hell are.

> Maybe banning crypto would help them

It seemingly serves no purpose, and yet takes up a huge amount of power, which in it's absence would allow us to phase out a lot of our fossil fuel usage, which could include Russian gas.

What like a policy that bans extremely energy intensive things that offer no value other than to construct Ponzi schemes at rapid clip? Yeah we need that policy.

(Happy to hear what value crypto offers that can’t be done with more energy efficient mechanisms.)

Sorry to break this too you but bitcoin would need to be banned by a serious amount of governments to have any real effect on energy consumption. This is by design. The wiser policy choice is to incentivize the large mining farms in your country to mine on renewables and let a digital gold exist.

The point of (good) cryptocurrencies is that they require real energy to coerce. Because of this I’ve felt safe keeping savings & transacting in bitcoin for years, I’m sorry that you don’t see that as valuable. Good luck with your ban, it isn’t smart.

> bitcoin would need to be banned by a serious amount of governments to have any real effect on energy consumption

What's your reason behind believing that? From what I know , Bitcoin mining fell 50% when China banned it [1]. How would that not be similar if the US + EU just bans it tomorrow?

[1] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/109315/bitcoin-hashrate-...

Temporarily dropped 50%, then the miners moved to new countries and it's almost completely back to its hash rate from before the China ban now (probably has by now, the article below is from Dec 2021).

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/12/09/bitcoin-hashrate-ap...

So the question was “what value crypto offers that can’t be done with more energy efficient mechanisms,” and your answer is.. you can transact in crypto. This is trivially circular reasoning.

Nothing is crypto’s fault.

We get it.

It’s not cryptos fault that it’s a terrible currency. Just invest in it. It’s not crypto’s fault that it’s a terrible investment. Why don’t you want a great currency that government doesn’t control? It’s not crypto’s fault that half the money in the ecosystem is stolen. Why isn’t the government helping this anti governmental technology? It’s not crypto’s fault that the vast majority of the coins are scams. It only failed because Citadel and Blackstone attacked it.

No, crypto is pure and faultless. And anything that it does wrong is the fault of the government and/or Blackstone and Citadel and/or the Paper Hands.

People might think this is too bitter or dismissive but it's true.

I have seen many many people pointing out the shady dealings and the death spiral nature of Terra on social media like reddit. But they were shouted out with cries of "FUD!".

It's a ponzi scheme and if your caught holding the bag, it is always in your interest to continue the scam rather than call out the scammers. That is why crypto "communities" will never acknowledge negative facts.

>> Nothing is crypto’s fault.

Try re-reading my comment. I didn't say that.

> The vitriol in some of the replies to this is fascinating. Did you all just lose a fortune in the crypto crash or something

Ah, the "have fun staying poor" argument of "y'all are salty you missed out". Is it really inconceivable for you that some people may have (a) concern for a massive, energy guzzling Ponzi scheme (b) that just this week was revealed to cause "billions" in losses in others in their society (c) that they have been calling out for months and have only gotten vitriol for?

No, their pockets must have been directly hurt to be this salty. It's not like people are capable of having intelligence, empathy, or a desire to build a better world if it doesn't line their pockets, right?

It was a joke. For the record I've got no money in crypto.

>> Is it really inconceivable for you that some people may have (a) concern for a massive, energy guzzling Ponzi scheme (b) that just this week was revealed to cause "billions" in losses in others in their society (c) that they have been calling out for months and have only gotten vitriol for?

I think getting incredibly angry about those things, to the point that the usual type of rational HN discussion cannot happen, is idiotic. Discussing crypto here has become like discussing US politics. It's just not possible because everything is described in black and white/good and evil terms. Claiming that getting rid of crypto will lead to the resolution of national and international crises is stupid.

You don't think that the 1MWh or so of electricity used (estimates vary from 2MWh down to 700kWh, depending on what you read, so I pick a value in the low end of the middle) is pushing up the price of energy?

Let's reframe those values slightly - every bitcoin transaction uses about as much electricity as it costs to run my house for nearly six months.

Are you sure that's not having an adverse effect on energy prices?

> every bitcoin transaction uses about as much electricity as it costs to run my house for nearly six months.

Why does that even matter, a rich guy travelling in a private jet uses more energy compared to you travelling in commercial jet, does that mean we should ban private jets?

If we find that private jet use negatively impacts the price of or access to commercial airfare for the 99.9% (e.g. if we discover that commercial airports are congested by private corporate traffic, or that private airplanes are getting unfairly preferential access to scarce parts such that commercial airlines can't repair their planes), then yes: we should consider regulating and in some cases preventing private jet use.

In other words, the metaphor is bad.

Your metaphor is equally bad.

By that logic business class should be banned because business class customers get preferential access compared to economy customers and they use more energy.

PoW (ie mining) is not something inherent to cryptocurrencies. We should try to get rid of PoW and move all coins to non energy wasting systems (such as PoS).

No, PoW is the point of cryptocurrencies. PoS coins are not censorship resistant.

https://twitter.com/wef/status/941906002982637568?s=21&t=aJv...

Don’t believe everything you hear on the internet. The vast majority of these articles lead to Mora et al which has been thoroughly debunked.

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