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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

> And that's only a problem if those energy sources are fossil fuels

Okay, but the 'if' there is true. Bitcoin is currently inducing demand for coal and gas plants, which is very bad. It's unclear when it'll stop doing that, if it'll stop, and a hypothetical future in which Bitcoin starts incentivizing the good thing instead of the bad thing doesn't change the truth value of the current bad thing.

(We've also fixated on coal burning, when there are oodles of other great reasons to not like Bitcoin. A small handful of them have been listed elsewhere in this thread.)

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Bitcoin isn't going away. More people are putting their trust in it as their monetary standard every day, not less. Bitcoin, the asset and network are neutral. Scams on top of it, shitcoin affinity scams, or whatever "oodles of other great reasons" don't change that. The majority of Bitcoin mining is already renewable, it already incentivises renewables this isn't a hypothetical future.

If somebody proposed a law tomorrow that bans coal plants being reopened to mine Bitcoin I wouldn't be against it, and Bitcoin would carry on happily regardless.

BUt you're then getting into the dangerous territory of telling people what and what isn't an acceptable use of compute power. Bitcoin is a valid and useful consumer of energy.

This is a polemic. I don't have a stated position on whether Bitcoin is or isn't going away, and we've completely drifted away from the factual matter at hand (that Bitcoin does currently incentivize coal burning).

If Bitcoin is neutral as you say, it cannot incentivize renewable production. It can only induce energy demand and, consequently, seek out the cheapest energy on the market. It doesn't get to sit on any laurels for that, any more than car manufacturing or aluminum refinement would. Except, of course, that those actually produce things.

Bitcoin mining secures hundreds of billions of value for hundreds of millions of people going back to the very first transaction. It produces security, a forcefield around a financial system, and the miners get paid to do that.

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