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Bitcoin is just a convenient scapegoat for people to hate on and feel like they have the moral high ground, all while they eat a high meat diet, drive single oc

Bitcoin is just a convenient scapegoat for people to hate on and feel like they have the moral high ground, all while they eat a high meat diet, drive single occupant cars daily, take regular domestic flights and occasional international flights, and live in McMansions with AC 6 months out of the year. Our entire lifestyles in the developed world are horrifically carbon heavy. Beating up on things like bitcoin without addressing the actual problem of oil subsidies and the lack of carbon taxes is a waste of political capital that will set back actual effective climate action by years or decades. We can't afford to waste that time.

sdenton4 5y ago
FWIW, I opted out of children, eat a vegetarian diet, have never had a driver's license, and generally put on a sweater before reaching for the thermostat. And I will happily claim my two inches of my moral high-ground to say f$ck bitcoin.
asdff 5y ago
So what if other industries are also polluting? That's not a great excuse. Tax it all imo. Once you have a mechanism to quantify and tax carbon usage it wouldn't be hard to expand it to other industries. In the mean time airline tickets will be costly and within a couple of years you will see freight operators laying down electrified double track along their right of ways in order to capture demand for regional passenger transit at a lower price. The market will reshape to capture the most profit it can given the regulatory environment that it resides in. This is the point of these taxes, you force paradigm shifts that ultimately benefit the species as a whole at the cost of perhaps only a few quarters of poor profits for major corporations.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  > Tax it all imo. That's exactly what I'm saying. Getting tunnel vision on cryptocurrency is totally missing the point. Even if all cryptocurrnecies disappeared tomorrow, nothing would fundamentally change and our civilization would still be hopelessly unsustainable. The solution to carbon pollution has to apply to all forms of our consumption, or it won't actually matter in the long run.

sdenton4 5y ago

FWIW, I opted out of children, eat a vegetarian diet, have never had a driver's license, and generally put on a sweater before reaching for the thermostat. And I will happily claim my two inches of my moral high-ground to say f$ck bitcoin.

asdff 5y ago

So what if other industries are also polluting? That's not a great excuse. Tax it all imo. Once you have a mechanism to quantify and tax carbon usage it wouldn't be hard to expand it to other industries. In the mean time airline tickets will be costly and within a couple of years you will see freight operators laying down electrified double track along their right of ways in order to capture demand for regional passenger transit at a lower price. The market will reshape to capture the most profit it can given the regulatory environment that it resides in. This is the point of these taxes, you force paradigm shifts that ultimately benefit the species as a whole at the cost of perhaps only a few quarters of poor profits for major corporations.

anonporridge 5y ago
> Tax it all imo. That's exactly what I'm saying. Getting tunnel vision on cryptocurrency is totally missing the point. Even if all cryptocurrnecies disappeared tomorrow, nothing would fundamentally change and our civilization would still be hopelessly unsustainable. The solution to carbon pollution has to apply to all forms of our consumption, or it won't actually matter in the long run.