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Comment by vanderZwan | Hacker News Reader

Funny enough despite my burning hatred of everything cryptocurrency Snowden has been my go-to counter-argument whenever someone brings up the wonderful "solution" that cryptocurrencies promise to be to zero-trust environments:

"Are you Edward Snowden or in a societal position comparable to that of Edward Snowden? No? Then society probably isn't quite dysfunctional enough for you yet to justify going to these algorithmic extremes."

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You're pulling the classic "I've got nothing to hide, therefore I don't need privacy"

The utterly extreme zero-trust proof-of-work crypto algorithms that have been significantly contributing to climate change over the last decade are not necessary to achieve privacy, and most of the time not even used to achieve it either.

Significantly contributing to climate change? Nonsense. The US petrodollar has single handedly caused climate change. The greed of the upper class and their alignment with the middle east has caused climate change.

How anyone could believe a digital token of value, a keypair, and voluntary usage of energy to participate in a decentralized network could possibly be a major contributing factor in climate change, while shipping barges and oil rigs are in full operation, is beyond me. A part of me wish I was capable of such levels of delusion.

I am a strong believer in climate change, but I feel many are pulling the "causes climate change" card in their arguments like "think of the children!"—a subtly dishonest way to trap their interlocutor because no one sane would want harm to come to the children, or to climate.

I am also a strong knower in climate change. The evidence is irrefutable. But it is strange to me that the one real threat against the banking and financial industries, the one real opponent to a stranglehold on money, somehow coincidently has been associated with the literal destruction of this planet via climate change. And people are really buying it!

Crypto has a lot of flaws but climate change is not one of them. I guess I need to just deal with these lemmings parroting whatever the authorities have on the agenda to psychologically take out opponents, but never thought I would see them successfully wage war on mathematics like this.

"the voluntary usage of energy" is the referred part you also recognize as such. When that usage is the size of a small country consumption it becomes worth talking about - just like the shipping barges and oil rigs. You don't fix a wrong with another wrong.

Hey now, I like turning that on its head: what's going on with proprietary software? What wrong is it doing that it needs to hide?

crypto without the investment angle sounds great

I’d love to have electronically anonymous cash on my person that I could spend at will at any establishment, and transport across state boundaries

Unfortunately you need verifiable artificial scarcity which creates a bubble

And to protect said electronic cash which has a barrier to entry

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