9 ms·

Bitcoin Is as Legitimate as Ice Cream

15 points by QasimK 5y ago

zepto 5y ago
Try comparing it to smoking instead of ice cream. The personal choice argument depends on considering the externalities in a serious way. It’s a valid argument to explore, but this piece doesn’t do any serious work.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Try comparing it to smoking instead of ice cream. whats second hand bitcoin?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Dogecoin.
  - theonemind 5y ago
    It's a lot like second hand smoke, except instead of exposing one person to the smoke of one cigarette, you burn something and blow the wasteful, carcinogenic, lung-clogging byproducts in the face of the whole planet.
    - gruez 5y ago
      Doesn't this apply to milk, or other forms or recreational activity (eg. off road driving)?
      - zepto 5y ago
        Yes. Generally we evaluate the environmental impact of pretty much all economic activity these days. Methane from cows is indeed something to be concerned about.
        mnouquet 5y ago
        > Generally we evaluate the environmental impact of pretty much all economic activity these days How about porn ? ;-)
- seibelj 5y ago
  There’s no “serious work” to do - either we play the game of picking and choosing whose use of electricity is less useful than others, or we tax carbon universally. Personally I prefer Bitcoin to video games, but I’m probably a minority. However I don’t think we should outlaw video games for being a giant waste of electricity (and time).
  - zepto 5y ago
    Are videogames a giant waste of electricity? It depends a lot on what activities they displace.
    - gruez 5y ago
      Probably watching TV?
      - zepto 5y ago
        If it’s TV then it’s not additive unlike Bitcoin. It could well be a lot of other stuff, sports, resources consuming hobbies etc.
    - mnouquet 5y ago
      > Are videogames a giant waste of electricity? What is your argument for it not being such a giant waste ? Remember, we are now living in a guilty-until-proven-innocent world.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Video games don't cause oil pipelines to be shut down. Bitcoin has negative externalities beyond energy consumption.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    > either we play the game of picking and choosing whose use of electricity is less useful than others I keep hearing this argument from bitcoin enthusiasts, and I don't understand why this is a bad thing. Electricity for heating, for cooking, for entertainment is constructively used. Cryptocurrencies are the only case I know of where electricity is deliberately used to the minimum possible effect, with verification that that was the case. The only benefit is the thrill that people get by using them to speculatively gamble. A utility isn't an end goal, but rather in order to enable some activity from it. Utilities are provided such that they can enable some benefits to society. Using a utility in an unexpected way that benefits society is a fantastic thing. Using a utility in a way that is not beneficial to society, and that prevents beneficial uses of that utility, then it is perfectly reasonable to restrict usage. In this case, since monitoring for cryptocurrency validation would be indistinguishable from productive high-electricity usage, a better solution would be to target the exchanges, to remove the incentive for cryptocurrency validators to waste electricity. Cycling through other currencies would then be treated like any other form of money laundering.
mrkramer 5y ago
Aren't you free to use your electricity for whatever you want? Including doing intense mathematical calculations on your personal computer or server farm aka cryptocurrency mining.
- skybrian 5y ago
  Miners are responding to incentives. The prize money they’re competing for is roughly $1.5 billion a month. That’s too damn high. Lower the amount of money being given away and you’ll see a lot less mining. There are two ways that could be done, reducing the block reward or dropping the market price of Bitcoin.
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    Block reward is halving every 4 years, it is a hardcoded rule of Bitcoin; "The number of bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks, or approximately four years."[0] To reflect on your other comment on mining reward and price; protocol and rules are set in stone and price can only be crashed by market meaning change in demand for Bitcoin. [0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply
    - skybrian 5y ago
      Yes, I know. Something needs to be done about demand. A tax on holding bitcoin might convince honest individuals and businesses (who pay their taxes) to sell. It might not be enough but it would help. Make the tax proportional to mining revenue, and maybe the "set in stone" rule would be reconsidered?
      - incrudible 5y ago
        A tax on CO2 emission would reduce the incentive to mine with expensive coal without affecting price at all. Moreover, it would reduce the incentive to do all sorts of inefficient things that aren't even on your radar, because it's not the moral panic of the day. It would also increase the incentive to develop carbon capture and CO2-neutral solutions.
skybrian 5y ago
> mining reward is tending to zero by design The schedule matters. It’s good that the block reward will be cut in half soon, but why do we have to wait four years for it to happen again? There’s no particular reason to believe that Nakamoto would choose to spend 10x Google on electricity if they were choosing a schedule today. The schedule stays the way it is because miners like money and changing the consensus is hard, not because it’s a good idea. And so, the only way to drop electricity spending is to make the price crash. The much easier option of changing a parameter in the software is eliminated because of the impossibility of getting a consensus to do it. This is what happens when you remove centralized decision making.
- gruez 5y ago
  >This is what happens when you remove centralized decision making. Is this really a bad thing? ie. a system where you need consensus from all stakeholders for a change to go through, as opposed to something like the fed where they can unilaterally print trillions of dollars?
  - zepto 5y ago
    Sure it’s really a bad thing - a network that consumes exponentially increasing resources but cannot change because the incentives for individual actors is to keep playing the same game is just a tragedy of the commons and nothing more. Dislike of the ‘fed’ had no bearing on this.
  - skybrian 5y ago
    It’s not “all stakeholders” when only miners get to vote and (barring extraordinary consensus-making) there is only one way to vote.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >(barring extraordinary consensus-making) But changing the block reward schedule is "extraordinary consensus-making"?
y0ssar1an 5y ago
Their argument: Bitcoin isn't bad. Energy production is bad because it's not carbon-free. This is the classic "guns don't kill people" argument. Yes, guns wouldn't be bad if they were being sold in a perfect world with no murder. Bitcoin wouldn't be bad if we had perfect energy production with no environmental cost. But that's not the world we live in! "Bitcoin doesn't cause carbon emissions. Energy production causes carbon emissions."
- gruez 5y ago
  >Bitcoin wouldn't be bad if we had perfect energy production with no environmental cost. ...or if the cost was fully internalized.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    And if that fully-internalized cost did not negatively impact other uses of the market. In the same way, the post office forbid the sending of the Send a Dime chain letter[0], even though the senders paid full postage. It was a use that interfered with the intended outcomes of the post office, and prevented the end goals of the post office. [0] https://www.mortaljourney.com/2010/11/1900-century/1930-trends/the-prosperity-or-send-a-dime-chain-letter-fad https://www.mortaljourney.com/2010/11/1900-century/1930-tren...
    - gruez 5y ago
      > In the same way, the post office forbid the sending of the Send a Dime chain letter[0], even though the senders paid full postage. ...because it was spam, or because it was fraud? The postal service is very happy to send junk mail, as long as you're paying them for it (at below market first class letter rates!)
      - MereInterest 5y ago
        A bit of both, I think. The main difference is that junk mail has a predictable cadence, and capacity can be increased to account for it. On the other hand, chain letters have a very sharp rise time which swamps the available capacity, and a sharp fall time so there's no point in expanding to support it. The analogy I'd use is cryptocurrency's impact on the GPU market. The sharp rise of people wanting to pay electricity in order to buy into the pyramid scheme has caused GPU prices to skyrocket. It isn't clear yet when either the bubble will burst, or regulation will catch up with cryptocurrency, so there hasn't been much increased GPU production to handle the peak demand.
the_gipsy 5y ago
Ice cream is delicious. I don't really know how to enjoy a Bitcoin on its own.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- incrudible 5y ago
  A Bitcoin is a lot of fun on the way up, less so on the way down, but it never really gets boring.
willeh 5y ago
If Government has the right to ban plastic straws it has the right to ban bitcoin. You're not a bad person for drinking out of a plastic straw and neither are you a bad person for using Bitcoin. It is just that a behavior in aggregate is harmful and this in mind makes it defensible for government to forbid it, especially when a viable alternative exists. So the next time you get annoyed by that disgusting paper straw, think of the cryptogeeks who will be forced to use EMV when they would rather use the silicon based electric heater that is bitcoin.
- gruez 5y ago
  >It is just that a behavior in aggregate is harmful and this in mind makes it defensible for government to forbid it, especially when a viable alternative exists. Are "disgusting paper straws" really a "viable alternative" to plastic straws?
  - gaara87 5y ago
    metal straws imo are most viable at this point if the cultural shift is ignored
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jmull 5y ago
“Whatabout ice cream” A non-argument.
- incrudible 5y ago
  The argument is the following: Should people be deciding for other people on what CO2 should and should not be expended on? If so, anything you like could be banned with the same rationale and you would just have to accept it. If you were a little bit more principled, you would argue that if the CO2 emission has been paid for, it shouldn't matter how frivolous the use is.
  - jmull 5y ago
    Well, that's a question, not an argument. But CO2 emissions have both individual and societal costs and both individual and societal impacts. So I would say yes, absolutely: people, as a society, should have some say deciding for other people what CO2 should and shouldn't be expended on, because it impacts society as a whole. You mention that if it's paid for, the particular use of the emissions shouldn't matter. That's true in a way, but you need to properly include the impact on society into the CO2 emissions price. There are a bunch of complications to that, and we (the whole world) have not gotten all that far with that.
    - incrudible 5y ago
      > Well, that's a question, not an argument. It becomes an argument if you agree with the premise that people should not be able to prohibit others from doing things based on a spurious moral assessment. On those grounds, all kinds of frivolous activities - including eating ice cream - could be prohibited. If you don't agree with that premise, then your opinion is bad (and you should feel bad), but at least you're being consistent. > But CO2 emissions have both individual and societal costs and both individual and societal impacts. Yes, but the source of these emissions doesn't make a difference regarding the impact. To stay consistent, you would have to argue that the social benefit of ice cream is too large for it to be prohibited, while the social benefit of Bitcoin is too low for it to be allowed. That's a highly subjective assessment, to be made for each and every source of CO2. > There are a bunch of complications to that, and we (the whole world) have not gotten all that far with that. If we can't agree on a CO2 tax, then we can't agree on a ban (or tax) on Bitcoin mining either. The same countries that would refuse CO2 taxation would become a haven for Bitcoin mining.
egypturnash 5y ago
This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is. Let's say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of the transaction? How much waste heat did it generate? And on the other side: what is the energy cost of making that ice cream, shipping it to the store I bought it from, and keeping it refrigerated? How much waste heat did that generate? If the bitcoin transaction cost as much energy and generated as much waste heat as the production, storage, and shipping of the gallon of ice cream, then yeah, that's a good start for saying one is legitimate as the other. But if one of them cost a couple of orders of magnitude more energy, and generated three orders of magnitude more waste heat, for something that is theoretically the same monetary value (because they are, given that we paid for that whole supply chain with the bitcoin transaction), then there is a pretty clear imbalance. And for a bit more clarity - what is the energy/heat cost of buying that gallon of ice cream with a debit/credit card? How does that compare to both the production/shipping/storage of that gallon of ice cream, and to the cost of buying it with bitcoin? I am not going to do the research and estimation for this. Some quick lazy searching suggests that one BTC transaction consumes about 3x the energy of 100k transactions via Visa's network, though. And that is the issue: Bitcoin is, by design, incredibly wasteful of resources. Ludicrously so.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  Not to mention the transaction time. Visa is seconds, bitcoin is at least 30 min and typically an hour and sometimes almost a day. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time And then theres the transaction cost to consider. Visa is a few cents, bitcoin is tens of dollars. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Then watch out for the purported anonymity where the transactions are recorded forever.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    Bitcoin is slower than VISA, but faster than an international bank wire - and comparable in cost. If VISA is so much faster, then why do bank wires exist? There are Layer 2 solutions (Lightning Network) for cheap and instant transfers that do not warrant the security of a full Bitcoin transaction. Anonymity has never been a purported feature of Bitcoin. This is not a downside, it keeps regulatory scrutiny somewhat at bay.
chemmail 5y ago
I think the lower hanging fruit is eating Meat. The resources the the environmental harm is exponentially more than anything else out there. This comes from a mostly keto meater.

15 points by QasimK 5y ago

Try comparing it to smoking instead of ice cream. The personal choice argument depends on considering the externalities in a serious way. It’s a valid argument to explore, but this piece doesn’t do any serious work.

gruez 5y ago
>Try comparing it to smoking instead of ice cream. whats second hand bitcoin?
- bombcar 5y ago
  Dogecoin.
- theonemind 5y ago
  It's a lot like second hand smoke, except instead of exposing one person to the smoke of one cigarette, you burn something and blow the wasteful, carcinogenic, lung-clogging byproducts in the face of the whole planet.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Doesn't this apply to milk, or other forms or recreational activity (eg. off road driving)?
    - zepto 5y ago
      Yes. Generally we evaluate the environmental impact of pretty much all economic activity these days. Methane from cows is indeed something to be concerned about.
      - mnouquet 5y ago
        > Generally we evaluate the environmental impact of pretty much all economic activity these days How about porn ? ;-)
seibelj 5y ago
There’s no “serious work” to do - either we play the game of picking and choosing whose use of electricity is less useful than others, or we tax carbon universally. Personally I prefer Bitcoin to video games, but I’m probably a minority. However I don’t think we should outlaw video games for being a giant waste of electricity (and time).
- zepto 5y ago
  Are videogames a giant waste of electricity? It depends a lot on what activities they displace.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Probably watching TV?
    - zepto 5y ago
      If it’s TV then it’s not additive unlike Bitcoin. It could well be a lot of other stuff, sports, resources consuming hobbies etc.
  - mnouquet 5y ago
    > Are videogames a giant waste of electricity? What is your argument for it not being such a giant waste ? Remember, we are now living in a guilty-until-proven-innocent world.
- echelon 5y ago
  Video games don't cause oil pipelines to be shut down. Bitcoin has negative externalities beyond energy consumption.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  > either we play the game of picking and choosing whose use of electricity is less useful than others I keep hearing this argument from bitcoin enthusiasts, and I don't understand why this is a bad thing. Electricity for heating, for cooking, for entertainment is constructively used. Cryptocurrencies are the only case I know of where electricity is deliberately used to the minimum possible effect, with verification that that was the case. The only benefit is the thrill that people get by using them to speculatively gamble. A utility isn't an end goal, but rather in order to enable some activity from it. Utilities are provided such that they can enable some benefits to society. Using a utility in an unexpected way that benefits society is a fantastic thing. Using a utility in a way that is not beneficial to society, and that prevents beneficial uses of that utility, then it is perfectly reasonable to restrict usage. In this case, since monitoring for cryptocurrency validation would be indistinguishable from productive high-electricity usage, a better solution would be to target the exchanges, to remove the incentive for cryptocurrency validators to waste electricity. Cycling through other currencies would then be treated like any other form of money laundering.

mrkramer 5y ago

Aren't you free to use your electricity for whatever you want? Including doing intense mathematical calculations on your personal computer or server farm aka cryptocurrency mining.

skybrian 5y ago
Miners are responding to incentives. The prize money they’re competing for is roughly $1.5 billion a month. That’s too damn high. Lower the amount of money being given away and you’ll see a lot less mining. There are two ways that could be done, reducing the block reward or dropping the market price of Bitcoin.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  Block reward is halving every 4 years, it is a hardcoded rule of Bitcoin; "The number of bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks, or approximately four years."[0] To reflect on your other comment on mining reward and price; protocol and rules are set in stone and price can only be crashed by market meaning change in demand for Bitcoin. [0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply
  - skybrian 5y ago
    Yes, I know. Something needs to be done about demand. A tax on holding bitcoin might convince honest individuals and businesses (who pay their taxes) to sell. It might not be enough but it would help. Make the tax proportional to mining revenue, and maybe the "set in stone" rule would be reconsidered?
    - incrudible 5y ago
      A tax on CO2 emission would reduce the incentive to mine with expensive coal without affecting price at all. Moreover, it would reduce the incentive to do all sorts of inefficient things that aren't even on your radar, because it's not the moral panic of the day. It would also increase the incentive to develop carbon capture and CO2-neutral solutions.

skybrian 5y ago

> mining reward is tending to zero by design The schedule matters. It’s good that the block reward will be cut in half soon, but why do we have to wait four years for it to happen again? There’s no particular reason to believe that Nakamoto would choose to spend 10x Google on electricity if they were choosing a schedule today. The schedule stays the way it is because miners like money and changing the consensus is hard, not because it’s a good idea. And so, the only way to drop electricity spending is to make the price crash. The much easier option of changing a parameter in the software is eliminated because of the impossibility of getting a consensus to do it. This is what happens when you remove centralized decision making.

gruez 5y ago
>This is what happens when you remove centralized decision making. Is this really a bad thing? ie. a system where you need consensus from all stakeholders for a change to go through, as opposed to something like the fed where they can unilaterally print trillions of dollars?
- zepto 5y ago
  Sure it’s really a bad thing - a network that consumes exponentially increasing resources but cannot change because the incentives for individual actors is to keep playing the same game is just a tragedy of the commons and nothing more. Dislike of the ‘fed’ had no bearing on this.
- skybrian 5y ago
  It’s not “all stakeholders” when only miners get to vote and (barring extraordinary consensus-making) there is only one way to vote.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >(barring extraordinary consensus-making) But changing the block reward schedule is "extraordinary consensus-making"?

y0ssar1an 5y ago

Their argument: Bitcoin isn't bad. Energy production is bad because it's not carbon-free. This is the classic "guns don't kill people" argument. Yes, guns wouldn't be bad if they were being sold in a perfect world with no murder. Bitcoin wouldn't be bad if we had perfect energy production with no environmental cost. But that's not the world we live in! "Bitcoin doesn't cause carbon emissions. Energy production causes carbon emissions."

gruez 5y ago
>Bitcoin wouldn't be bad if we had perfect energy production with no environmental cost. ...or if the cost was fully internalized.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  And if that fully-internalized cost did not negatively impact other uses of the market. In the same way, the post office forbid the sending of the Send a Dime chain letter[0], even though the senders paid full postage. It was a use that interfered with the intended outcomes of the post office, and prevented the end goals of the post office. [0] https://www.mortaljourney.com/2010/11/1900-century/1930-trends/the-prosperity-or-send-a-dime-chain-letter-fad https://www.mortaljourney.com/2010/11/1900-century/1930-tren...
  - gruez 5y ago
    > In the same way, the post office forbid the sending of the Send a Dime chain letter[0], even though the senders paid full postage. ...because it was spam, or because it was fraud? The postal service is very happy to send junk mail, as long as you're paying them for it (at below market first class letter rates!)
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      A bit of both, I think. The main difference is that junk mail has a predictable cadence, and capacity can be increased to account for it. On the other hand, chain letters have a very sharp rise time which swamps the available capacity, and a sharp fall time so there's no point in expanding to support it. The analogy I'd use is cryptocurrency's impact on the GPU market. The sharp rise of people wanting to pay electricity in order to buy into the pyramid scheme has caused GPU prices to skyrocket. It isn't clear yet when either the bubble will burst, or regulation will catch up with cryptocurrency, so there hasn't been much increased GPU production to handle the peak demand.

the_gipsy 5y ago

Ice cream is delicious. I don't really know how to enjoy a Bitcoin on its own.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
incrudible 5y ago
A Bitcoin is a lot of fun on the way up, less so on the way down, but it never really gets boring.

willeh 5y ago

If Government has the right to ban plastic straws it has the right to ban bitcoin. You're not a bad person for drinking out of a plastic straw and neither are you a bad person for using Bitcoin. It is just that a behavior in aggregate is harmful and this in mind makes it defensible for government to forbid it, especially when a viable alternative exists. So the next time you get annoyed by that disgusting paper straw, think of the cryptogeeks who will be forced to use EMV when they would rather use the silicon based electric heater that is bitcoin.

gruez 5y ago
>It is just that a behavior in aggregate is harmful and this in mind makes it defensible for government to forbid it, especially when a viable alternative exists. Are "disgusting paper straws" really a "viable alternative" to plastic straws?
- gaara87 5y ago
  metal straws imo are most viable at this point if the cultural shift is ignored

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jmull 5y ago

“Whatabout ice cream” A non-argument.

incrudible 5y ago
The argument is the following: Should people be deciding for other people on what CO2 should and should not be expended on? If so, anything you like could be banned with the same rationale and you would just have to accept it. If you were a little bit more principled, you would argue that if the CO2 emission has been paid for, it shouldn't matter how frivolous the use is.
- jmull 5y ago
  Well, that's a question, not an argument. But CO2 emissions have both individual and societal costs and both individual and societal impacts. So I would say yes, absolutely: people, as a society, should have some say deciding for other people what CO2 should and shouldn't be expended on, because it impacts society as a whole. You mention that if it's paid for, the particular use of the emissions shouldn't matter. That's true in a way, but you need to properly include the impact on society into the CO2 emissions price. There are a bunch of complications to that, and we (the whole world) have not gotten all that far with that.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    > Well, that's a question, not an argument. It becomes an argument if you agree with the premise that people should not be able to prohibit others from doing things based on a spurious moral assessment. On those grounds, all kinds of frivolous activities - including eating ice cream - could be prohibited. If you don't agree with that premise, then your opinion is bad (and you should feel bad), but at least you're being consistent. > But CO2 emissions have both individual and societal costs and both individual and societal impacts. Yes, but the source of these emissions doesn't make a difference regarding the impact. To stay consistent, you would have to argue that the social benefit of ice cream is too large for it to be prohibited, while the social benefit of Bitcoin is too low for it to be allowed. That's a highly subjective assessment, to be made for each and every source of CO2. > There are a bunch of complications to that, and we (the whole world) have not gotten all that far with that. If we can't agree on a CO2 tax, then we can't agree on a ban (or tax) on Bitcoin mining either. The same countries that would refuse CO2 taxation would become a haven for Bitcoin mining.

egypturnash 5y ago

This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is. Let's say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of the transaction? How much waste heat did it generate? And on the other side: what is the energy cost of making that ice cream, shipping it to the store I bought it from, and keeping it refrigerated? How much waste heat did that generate? If the bitcoin transaction cost as much energy and generated as much waste heat as the production, storage, and shipping of the gallon of ice cream, then yeah, that's a good start for saying one is legitimate as the other. But if one of them cost a couple of orders of magnitude more energy, and generated three orders of magnitude more waste heat, for something that is theoretically the same monetary value (because they are, given that we paid for that whole supply chain with the bitcoin transaction), then there is a pretty clear imbalance. And for a bit more clarity - what is the energy/heat cost of buying that gallon of ice cream with a debit/credit card? How does that compare to both the production/shipping/storage of that gallon of ice cream, and to the cost of buying it with bitcoin? I am not going to do the research and estimation for this. Some quick lazy searching suggests that one BTC transaction consumes about 3x the energy of 100k transactions via Visa's network, though. And that is the issue: Bitcoin is, by design, incredibly wasteful of resources. Ludicrously so.

cosmotic 5y ago
Not to mention the transaction time. Visa is seconds, bitcoin is at least 30 min and typically an hour and sometimes almost a day. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time And then theres the transaction cost to consider. Visa is a few cents, bitcoin is tens of dollars. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Then watch out for the purported anonymity where the transactions are recorded forever.
- incrudible 5y ago
  Bitcoin is slower than VISA, but faster than an international bank wire - and comparable in cost. If VISA is so much faster, then why do bank wires exist? There are Layer 2 solutions (Lightning Network) for cheap and instant transfers that do not warrant the security of a full Bitcoin transaction. Anonymity has never been a purported feature of Bitcoin. This is not a downside, it keeps regulatory scrutiny somewhat at bay.

chemmail 5y ago

I think the lower hanging fruit is eating Meat. The resources the the environmental harm is exponentially more than anything else out there. This comes from a mostly keto meater.