Another thing that baffles me is the need to mention energy usage along with anything related to crypto. The complaint about energy usage is a normative claim t

Another thing that baffles me is the need to mention energy usage along with anything related to crypto. The complaint about energy usage is a normative claim that these technologies don’t deserve to use the energy they do, which is fine, but then it’s never backed up by an actual argument for why they don’t. Additionally, this is a standard I don’t see applied to anything else that could be reasonably argued to be on the same level of “dumb” as anti-crypto people claim crypto is. Let’s see the same scrutiny of energy usage applied to every TikTok ever made. Let’s see it applied to the training of massive ML recommender systems that serve no purpose but to better target ads (this is one I have seen from some folks, but nowhere near as much as I’ve seen outrage over crypto energy usage). If someone says “well yeah, but at least those recommender systems have value, which crypto doesn’t!”, sorry, but value for whom? Certainly not users. I’m disappointed that even on HN, there’s pushback against individual creators of digital content trying to capture some of the value they create. Individuals simply don’t have the resources to use the legal system to go after anonymous people online who steal their work, and they shouldn’t be expected to just give it away for free. So other solutions need to be tried, and NFTs are maybe one potential solution.