Hacker News Reader

Comment by verisimilitudes | Hacker News Reader

The argument is clear. Bitcoin is bad because most of Hacker News missed the boat and because the environment is an easy excuse. Meanwhile, inefficient webshit such as Slack running on millions of computers or sending megabytes of traffic over the Internet for basic shit is fine, because those produce acceptable money. Also, it's much harder to estimate the energy waste from constantly surveilling people to send Turing-complete advertisements to their phones but, again, those make USD, so they're okay.

View on HN

I dont think that's a correct assessment of HN. I would wager that if you polled the community you'd find a very high ratio of some of the earliest adopters here.

Many of us are very analytical and looked closely at how bitcoin works wrt energy usage and decided that it's not a good technology, and sold our stacks long ago.

Personally i got out just before the peak in 2017 or 2018 whenever that was, and this was an ethical decision based on the energy usage. My first btc purchased was probably around 2014, so I made some money, but it feels dirty and I dont want any part in the scheme.

The reason I share my anecdote is to provide a counter example to what I think you imagine. I'm quite sure there are many people like me on here. HN as a whole is pretty on top of tech and areas of high growth obviously.

Well a 400b dollar market cap disagrees with you. If the energy usage was not justified then nobody would actually mine it. Which means more people think its worth while than not.

The great thing is even though we all respect your choice not to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin will continue to work as it was intended and there is not much you can do about it.

You are better of conserving your own energy then Bitcoins.

> Bitcoin is bad because most of Hacker News missed the boat

Having a currency get worse as a medium of exchange over time isn't about being salty over "missing the boat". I cannot imagine a usecase for Bitcoin, I can imagine a usecase for DAI or RAI.

According to Bitcoin maximalist logic I should be burning or cutting down the rainforest in 2013 to make a quick buck and then retire on my Bitcoin going up in value than actually work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com