If the Bitcoin camp is to be suspect of bias, so is the other side.
This is mining sites that we know about, because they are public companies in the US. I doubt that the stealthy, privately-owned miners in Kazakhstan are using cleaner sources.
I dont think that is what you meant to say.
You were right, though.
The article repeatedly says things that are flat out false without any attempt at qualification or justification.
The first is assertion that scarcity by authority is only virtual scarcity, not real scarcity while somehow glossing over the fact that this type of scarcity is incredibly common in the real world. Simultaneously, the scarcity of cryptocurrency is somehow not due to authority because that authority is decentralized...
> As history shows and this example illustrates, planning an economy—virtual or not—is an impossible task. Every interference, no matter how benign the central planners believe it to be, will have unintended consequences and side effects that will beget more interference
This comment seems to categorically rules out all attempts to manage and regulate markets by throwing around the loaded term "planned economy“ and vaguely referencing "history" as a source. History actually shows us that economic planning and market regulation can have mixed results, but some of those results are clearly successes.
> Linden Lab has the power to break the rules and interfere as they see fit.
The "interference" that is then described is Linden Lab trying to follow the law by collecting taxes, eliminating gambling, and following banking regulations.
> One of the best examples for a flourishing economy (thanks to little intervention) is Eve Online, an MMORPG space simulation.
CCP (the makers of Eve Online) did have a carefully considered approach to economic interventions, but their interventions were not small. The biggest is CCP's ban on RMT (real money transactions) in an attempt limit free and bidirectional exchangeable with external economies. Any games that attempts to control RMT in such a fashion is engaged in a pretty extreme level of "economic intervention". Of course this is done to avoid going the type of legal liabilities that faced second life due to Linden Dollars becoming more like a real currency.
CCP also has a high level of control over the inputs and outputs to the Eve economy and manage them to keep that economy stable(ish) and the game fun and balanced to play. For a while, CCP employed economists to help understand gow CCP's interventions would affect their economy.
> It is simple, really: if a world is controlled and instantiated by a single entity, it is prone to manipulation. Sooner or later, it will cease to exist. And with it, everything that existed inside it.
How many cryotocurrencies have died in the last several years? Decentralization doesn't guarantee longevity. Meanwhile, WOW and Eve have both extisted longer than bitcoin. This is yet more unsupported propagandistic drivel.
I would argue the opposite. A stable economy, whether in-game or not, requires some level of central regulation and planning.
> The difference between in-game money and fiat money is in scale, not in nature. Both are virtual: simulations that are untethered from reality.
Wow, the tortuous argument that bitcoin is somehow "more tethered to reality" than the dollar isn't even worth recounting.
This is less of a "bridge" between skeptics and hodlers and more of a piece of libertarian propaganda. If you want a bridge, find an author that acknowledges that some regulation is necessary for a functioning economy.