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>> Massive carbon emissions. This argument keeps being made but it's BS. There are plenty of PoS tokens which use very little electricity. Also, crypto discou

>> Massive carbon emissions. This argument keeps being made but it's BS. There are plenty of PoS tokens which use very little electricity. Also, crypto discourages consumption by discouraging spending through social HODLING behaviour. HODLING a token collectively to make the price go up means that community members have less fiat available to spend on consumables which reduces their collective consumption and reduces carbon emissions. In a crypto ecosystem, all the different tokens are competing for which community can HODL the hardest. The communities who produce the most value and spend the least are going to end up the richest (highest market cap) with the loudest economic voice. This is a lot better than the fiat monetary system where spending is not a factor because everyone is forced to support (and absorb the stresses caused by) the spending of billionaires within that system. When a billionaire spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a super-yacht or private jet, it doesn't crash their currency... Maybe it should! Imagine what good that would do to the environment if everyone was competing to consume less! There is also an argument that Bitcoin mostly uses cheap, surplus electricity because that's the only kind that's cheap enough to make mining profitable.

woodruffw 5y ago
> Also, crypto discourages consumption by discouraging spending through social HODLING behaviour. HODLING a token collectively to make the price go up means that community members have less fiat available to spend on consumables which reduces their collective consumption and reduces carbon emissions. This doesn't make sense. Holding an asset so that it appreciates in value causes it to, well, appreciate in value. There are plenty of ways to exercise that value without actually exchanging it: it can be used to issue loans or secure other financial instruments. The blockchain space seems to be rife with these sorts of schemes. But also, to the larger point: you're not reducing consumption if your goal is to inflate the value of an asset until you're stinking rich. You're deferring consumption until you have the resources commensurate to your desired level of consumption. That's what everybody does, to be clear: it's only blockchain people who seem to have trouble looking it in the eye.
- cryptica 5y ago
  >> You're deferring consumption until you have the resources But the point is that everyone is deferring consumption until some time in the future but that perfect time when you can cash out all at once never actually happens (note that a blockchain is public so it's not possible to quietly sell your assets without drawing attention and crashing prices; especially for people who own a lot of the asset). Traders can easily front-run you if you attempt any large sale. On the other hand, fiat provides many opportunities for billionaires to cash out and pass the costs onto regular tax payers. The pandemic was a perfect example of that; the reserve banks printed a ton of cash which propped up the markets and allowed billionaires to cash out huge sums without causing any crash. Also, there will always be a new up-and-coming tightly-HODLED coin by a younger generation to compete with yours.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > But the point is that everyone is deferring consumption until some time in the future but that perfect time when you can cash out all at once never actually happens (note that a blockchain is public so it's not possible to quietly sell your assets without drawing attention and crashing prices; especially for people who own a lot of the asset). Traders can easily front-run you if you attempt any large sale. I don't understand what this is supposed to be in contrast to. This is precisely how the normal market works: the vast majority of Jeff Bezos's actual wealth is illiquid and impossible to cash out at once, because doing so would be an extremely strong signal to the market that he no longer trusts his investments. This is also fundamentally how retirement (normally) works: Joe Schmo doesn't liquidate all of his retirement accounts the day he turns 65; he draws on them (and potentially incurs taxation) as necessary. Tens of millions of people in the developed world retire every year; the market doesn't crash when they do. To whit: there's nothing new about any of this. If cryptocurrency is an investment and you hold it like any other, then it behaves like any other. The only material differences appears to be the preponderance of scams and unsustainable behavior (cf. permagrowth around the next great coin).

woodruffw 5y ago

> Also, crypto discourages consumption by discouraging spending through social HODLING behaviour. HODLING a token collectively to make the price go up means that community members have less fiat available to spend on consumables which reduces their collective consumption and reduces carbon emissions. This doesn't make sense. Holding an asset so that it appreciates in value causes it to, well, appreciate in value. There are plenty of ways to exercise that value without actually exchanging it: it can be used to issue loans or secure other financial instruments. The blockchain space seems to be rife with these sorts of schemes. But also, to the larger point: you're not reducing consumption if your goal is to inflate the value of an asset until you're stinking rich. You're deferring consumption until you have the resources commensurate to your desired level of consumption. That's what everybody does, to be clear: it's only blockchain people who seem to have trouble looking it in the eye.

cryptica 5y ago
>> You're deferring consumption until you have the resources But the point is that everyone is deferring consumption until some time in the future but that perfect time when you can cash out all at once never actually happens (note that a blockchain is public so it's not possible to quietly sell your assets without drawing attention and crashing prices; especially for people who own a lot of the asset). Traders can easily front-run you if you attempt any large sale. On the other hand, fiat provides many opportunities for billionaires to cash out and pass the costs onto regular tax payers. The pandemic was a perfect example of that; the reserve banks printed a ton of cash which propped up the markets and allowed billionaires to cash out huge sums without causing any crash. Also, there will always be a new up-and-coming tightly-HODLED coin by a younger generation to compete with yours.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > But the point is that everyone is deferring consumption until some time in the future but that perfect time when you can cash out all at once never actually happens (note that a blockchain is public so it's not possible to quietly sell your assets without drawing attention and crashing prices; especially for people who own a lot of the asset). Traders can easily front-run you if you attempt any large sale. I don't understand what this is supposed to be in contrast to. This is precisely how the normal market works: the vast majority of Jeff Bezos's actual wealth is illiquid and impossible to cash out at once, because doing so would be an extremely strong signal to the market that he no longer trusts his investments. This is also fundamentally how retirement (normally) works: Joe Schmo doesn't liquidate all of his retirement accounts the day he turns 65; he draws on them (and potentially incurs taxation) as necessary. Tens of millions of people in the developed world retire every year; the market doesn't crash when they do. To whit: there's nothing new about any of this. If cryptocurrency is an investment and you hold it like any other, then it behaves like any other. The only material differences appears to be the preponderance of scams and unsustainable behavior (cf. permagrowth around the next great coin).