You can disagree with the sanction while still being understanding of GitHub trying to cut ties with the sanctioned entity. Or be critical of them being heavy handed in their compliance but agree with the sanction in general.
Plenty of organizations in the past have chosen what side of this conceptual line to stand on.
One can end up looking like the EFF with a long term, very strong reputation of standing up for clear boundaries of what’s right in the legal<>code context and go to court over it, or you can end up looking like GitHub.
Edit - additionally, tornado runs on eth, which is soon to be env-friendly PoS.
Also, Ethereum has been "soon to be env-friendly PoS" for years now. Let's revisit that if and when it actually happens.
Yes, you’re correct, the judgement is about what the energy is used for.
In a country where a dictator can make you starve with a snap of the fingers, cryptocurrencies are vital to survival. So even 10x more energy 'wasted' on such an indespensable service would still be a bargain I'd take.
In a country where a dictator can make you starve with the snap of the finger, what are you going to do, eat your virtual coins from your jail cell? Technology is notably not a solution to social problems
If there will ever be an uprising, it'll be funded with nothing else but cryptocurrency.
So yes, cryptocurrencies are worth every watt of energy they use.
Bitcoin alone is estimated to use 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.
The US Department of Energy estimates that there are 80 million households with dishwashers in the US (although they believe 16m never use them, but we will ignore that). It appears that the average dishwasher uses 251kWh annually (at the avg of 215 cycles per year).
So this would put the US annual dishwasher power consumption to around 20 terawatt-hours. This would mean that the rest of the world would need approximately 518 million household dishwashers used 215 times a year each, to make up the rest of the power usage for just Bitcoin.
When you start factoring in the size difference in dishwashers between countries, the power usage differences between 120v and 220v in different parts of the world, the overall adoption rate of dishwashers etc... it makes it hard to believe that they could compete with crypto power usage.
Bitcoin just consumes extra energy, not makes an existing process more efficient.
I'm grateful to live in a society where this is not a "problem", but I don't take it for granted
The switch has been delayed 6(!) times since 2017. It‘s perpetually happening “soon”. I believe it when it’s actually live.
I don't agree with a lot of things in the world, but the only thing I wish for them is for things to get better, not worse.
The funny part is he's contributing to the problem, as in not realizing it's the working class vs the rich, not the left vs the right.
Seems like every celebrity and talk show host was pushing NFT's, be it Kardasians, Kimmel, Fallon, even Bill Murray released a collection 1 month ago. Ultra stars like Tom Brady to Mark Cuban were investing and (still) talking about crypto companies they are heavily invested in. Half the superbowl ads this year were advocating for people to waste money on crypto.
Perhaps there is some grey area as to what qualifies as a service being provided to that entity. Is my fork still a service being provided to them? Or is it a service being provided to me? But that is still something useful to the sanctioned entity, so am I now providing them a service? In which case GitHub is still a party to providing them a service.
When you're a donation based non-profit, it's easy to "stand up for clear boundaries". In fact, it's literally your purpose.
When you've got >$100Bn of profits on the line, it's a little harder - and you have a different purpose (i.e. to make money).
There's a massive difference between "nope, I won't comply with the law" and "I think this law is a bad idea, let's go to the courts to see if we can do something about it". And GitHub has done the last, too, to restore access to Iranian developers for example.
What is the name of this sanctioned entity that GitHub supposedly cut ties with?
You'll note that none of the developers who had their accounts suspended were themselves sanctioned.
As far as I know, Tornado Cash is not a legal entity either.