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> "There is absolutely a place for disruptive technical experiments like cryptocurrency in a small part of the system, and to have good regulation of the rest o
by pavlov 5y ago
> "There is absolutely a place for disruptive technical experiments like cryptocurrency in a small part of the system, and to have good regulation of the rest of the financial system. It seems to me that the current balance is doing exactly that."
Sure, I agree in principle. But the crypto science experiment is out of hand. It's providing negligible actual value to the system while consuming more energy than a mid-size European nation. This is an egregious failure.
If Bitcoin and Ethereum mining were shut down today, nobody would lose access to any necessary financial service, and we (mankind) would be at least 1% closer to the fossil fuel reduction goals we absolutely must meet. Seems like a no-brainer in the current state of emergency. There are many other things we need to do, but it's distressing that we're not even able to stop this novel waste that didn't exist ten years ago.
- matthewdgreen 5y agoI agree with you that proof of work is a disaster. The problem is that mining is probably the last part of modern cryptocurrency network that will go away following a full-on regulatory onslaught. What will instead crash first are the newer and less-resilient networks that don't use proof of work: proof-of-authority systems like Cosmos/Polygon, centralized systems like Binance Smart Chain, all the scalable rollup servers. Ongoing transitions like Ethereum's move to proof of stake might also be disrupted. Even if a regulatory approach was ultimately successful in shutting down proof-of-work mining, I think it would take years. Those years could be better spent by devising and encouraging more efficient consensus technologies, like the ones already being launched today.