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Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

Are you claiming that video games waste more electricity than crypto mining PoW? Do you have evidence to support that? It's a pretty strong claim, since most of the power being used to play a video game is doing something (rasterizing images/synthesizing audio/simulating physics in order to provide the game experience) while most of the power used to do PoW mining is Wasted On Purpose.

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This is a complete double standard you're applying (which was kind of my point, policing electricity leads to everyone imposing their own private values on others). You could say that 100% of the power spent on videogames is wasted since they're a luxury/distraction/unnecessary. You could also say that none of the power is wasted on bitcoin since it's providing security for the network.

To be clear, I'm not saying either of these is "correct". My entire point here is that everyone talking about "waste" is just imposing their own private value system on everyone else and I've yet to see a single person apply some kind of consistent standard for what should and shouldn't be banned

Why do games have to use so much electricity? They should be fine with a few kb of storage and maybe some minimal networking. Back in the day games were completely fine and playable in tiny cartridges. Games should be regulated to not consume a certain amount of network and processing power.

On the other hand, without the PoW mechanism of Bitcoin, it's impossible to have the properties that bitcoin has - global decentralised money and payment network. If you believe otherwise, make one! Very quickly no one will be willing to pay for Bitcoin, and all those "wasted electricity" will suddenly become available again.

Why do I need to? Chia and Ethereum already exist.

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