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Comment by malermeister | Hacker News Reader

Ban it already. We're in a global energy and climate crisis. Stop wasting it for make-believe computer money.

(All money is make-believe)

I agree, fwiw. Let's move on to a post-money communist society.

which will never work since it doesn't account for greed and self-preservation instincts that are innate in human nature. Communism is just one step removed from anarchy and tribalism OR authoritarian government that says it's "communist"

it's like people can't understand it was engineered to be un-killable

You can't engineer your way out of a social dilemma. If the government says "anyone caught using bitcoin goes to jail" and actually puts effort into enforcing it, all the fancy engineering in the world isn't going to help you, unless you never want to actually use it in the real world.

But if bitcoin can operate in China now where it's been repeatedly banned and the network chugs along completely uninterrupted it seems like a stretch that governments (of which the entire world would have to band together) have any say here.

"actually puts effort into enforcing it" being the key. China is corrupt as shit and the enforcers are all bribed.

Corporations were also engineered to be un-killable. The way to reach them is to go after the people who run them. Obviously, if that’s the analogy, then the miners are quite secure anyway.

You're arguing that it's a poison (it isn't) but even worse you're proposing a cure that's far worse. So "go after them" in other words would mean: construct a global authoritarian surveillance apparatus that hunts down energy consumers?

You’ve read far more into my comment than I wrote.

ah ok sorry

That's what I would propose, at least, yes.

On this scale? Easily detected and killed. Just check their power bill.

It has gotten completely out of hand. What was intended to be run on personal computers has become a juggernaut of rampant egregious resource consumption.

Hey I'm the government man here to audit your power bill.

Please go over everything you spend your power on and the government will tell you whether you can continue to have power/internet.

Hey, why are you nervous? Oh looks like it was just a hot summer.

...oh what's this... sorry you don't have a heat pump, we will take your A/C, now spend 50k on a new heat pump one. Better get started it's going to be a hot one.

edit: do not downvote your government energy auditor, it will not help your opened case.

Those are a fraction of what it takes to be a miner?

Not sure what that was about.

The point was the government stepping in, monitoring, and cutting off services is bad.

Wait was that the point? What you mentioned sounded like an unironically ideal state.

I see we disagree on authoritarianism and liberty. Welp, have a good day.

> Easily detected and killed. Just check their power bill.

except that bitcoin doesn't inherently require any fixed amount of energy and that's why there's a difficulty adjustment, of course this fact seems to go over most people's heads and suggests to me they don't actually understand it

2% of national energy consumption. It's not rocket science, to catch the big offenders.

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