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Mining gold is wildly destructive to the environment and energy intensive: * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/environmental-disaster-gold-industry

Mining gold is wildly destructive to the environment and energy intensive: * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/environmental-disaster-gold-industry-180949762/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/environmental-... * https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/ring-environmental-cost-gold-mining/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/ring-environmen... > Organizations are always more powerful than individuals, and force their competitors to form organizations of their own. BitTorrent, Bitcoin, OSS, Tor... due to advances in networking and computing, decentralization is finally able to challenge centralization by organizing people at scale through mutually agreed upon protocols. This trend will only continue. > What is ethical about Bitcoin? It’s a fully auditable, online-only, energy black hole that is predominantly mined in China using coal energy, purchased and held by the 1% of the population who can afford to buy it. It allows you to store money without any middlemen; it's permission-less. Therefore it empowers the individual over the state. It's much easier for the government to pilfer my bank account than it is for them to torture me in hopes I tell them my seed phrase.

lwansbrough 6y ago
> Mining gold is wildly destructive to the environment and energy intensive Yes, I'm not denying this. As I said, the cost is mostly fixed and amortized over time. Meanwhile Bitcoin's transactional energy cost is skyrocketing. The energy impact of holding already mined Bitcoin is equivalent to the entire energy consumption of the network, because the network must remain operational to ensure the value remains. This is not true of gold. This is mostly irrelevant anyway, as modern money is not based on a gold standard. > by organizing people at scale through mutually agreed upon protocols. You just described organization through democratic law and governance. My point remains on that topic: anarchism can only exist as a transient state of non-equilibrium. In the end, some organization will end up with majority power. > It allows you to store money without any middlemen; it's permission-less. Governments still exist, it's not permissionless. You can store cash or gold without any middlemen, but most people don't because it's inconvenient. That's why banks exist and will continue to exist. > Therefore it empowers the individual over the state. Nothing screams empowerment like total auditability and transparency for the existing institutions to monitor an analyze. Far more likely that the government audit's your Bitcoin transaction history and throw you in jail for illegal activity than torture you for your money. You know what is legitimately anonymous? Cash.

lwansbrough 6y ago

> Mining gold is wildly destructive to the environment and energy intensive Yes, I'm not denying this. As I said, the cost is mostly fixed and amortized over time. Meanwhile Bitcoin's transactional energy cost is skyrocketing. The energy impact of holding already mined Bitcoin is equivalent to the entire energy consumption of the network, because the network must remain operational to ensure the value remains. This is not true of gold. This is mostly irrelevant anyway, as modern money is not based on a gold standard. > by organizing people at scale through mutually agreed upon protocols. You just described organization through democratic law and governance. My point remains on that topic: anarchism can only exist as a transient state of non-equilibrium. In the end, some organization will end up with majority power. > It allows you to store money without any middlemen; it's permission-less. Governments still exist, it's not permissionless. You can store cash or gold without any middlemen, but most people don't because it's inconvenient. That's why banks exist and will continue to exist. > Therefore it empowers the individual over the state. Nothing screams empowerment like total auditability and transparency for the existing institutions to monitor an analyze. Far more likely that the government audit's your Bitcoin transaction history and throw you in jail for illegal activity than torture you for your money. You know what is legitimately anonymous? Cash.