What makes Bitcoin a "waste of energy" and a data center hosting TikTok or Reddit not?
If we believe both statistics, then crypto mining uses roughly as much electricity as all data centers. But data centers drive so many different industries and benefit people in countless ways- entertainment (as you mentioned), financial, education, communication, etc, etc.
Crypto is like. Neat? There's some people who benefit greatly from it, sure. But broadly compare how different society would look if crypto didn't exist (not different at all, I'd think?) to how different it would look if data centers didn't exist. Looking at it that way, it's crazy that they at all use similar amounts of electricity.
(I'm not even climbing up the tree of Bitcoin's energy consumption being many multiples greater than Reddit's.)
While Bitcoin arguably parasitises energy, social media parasitises human time and attention (which is a much scarcer resource), all while breaking down political institutions and societal cohesion and being a tool for foreign actors to manipulate people on never before seen scales. Social media is "move fast and break things" on a societal scale.
Bitcoin is at worst a speculative asset (no worse than most financial assets) at best a new monetary system in its infancy (unlikely but possible). It is clear to me which technology has more of a raison d'être.
I guess social media pays the salaries of most people on this forum, so the old adage "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" applies.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong. It's happened before. The future will show who is right.
ultimately, once you start thinking you have the right to ban things you should be prepared for someone else to ban things you enjoy.
While there are different ways to evaluate any given topic, all opinions are not equally valid.
you may not like what I do with the power I PAY for but you don't get a say in how I use it.
Yes. Absolutely yes.
> you may not like what I do with the power I PAY for but you don't get a say in how I use it.
There are thousands of things you're not allowed to do with the power you PAY for.
What do people get from Bitcoin? Monopoly money with no purpose or intrinsic value.
If I am paying for the electricity do I have the right to use that electricity however I like? Next time you don't like how much electricity "bitcoin" uses ask yourself: am I okay with the government dictating how I am supposed to use electricity? in fact, am I okay with the government dictating anything that can and should be adjustable through the free market?
Maybe it was that weird guy on a pole out in the field
As far as financial instruments go, Bitcoin is fantastically, comically inefficient, and by design.