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> I politely ask others to reply with "You're wrong because ..." followed by a believable explanation. I want to be proven wrong on this. One thing you're wron

> I politely ask others to reply with "You're wrong because ..." followed by a believable explanation. I want to be proven wrong on this. One thing you're wrong about is that cryptocurrencies are in general mined using electricity and specialized hardware. Bitcoin is the biggest outlier in that respect, with its plans to continue their mining program permanently. Ethereum has the software to end their mining program (the "beacon chain"), which is currently finalized in spec and running alongside the original chain as they finish testing it before final release later this year (the "merge" event). I always feel the need to nitpick here, as it's a common misconception that "most" cryptocurrencies are an environmental disgrace. Bitcoin is an environmental disgrace, Ethereum you could say is an environmental disgrace until they shut off mining later this year, but since the vast majority of cryptocurrencies don't use mining at all, it makes the most sense to target the ones that do rather than throwing the entire space under the bus. I also disagree that cryptocurrency can't scale, as I'm intimately familiar with the work being done with transaction execution verification by zero knowledge proof (especially Ethereum's zero knowledge rollups), but that's a discussion for another time. I'm also aware that I am in a comment thread about a company doing something very scammy in regards to crypto, so please try to distance my explanation from the disapproval we share towards Norton. Obviously I am not trying to defend Norton here.

squarefoot 5y ago
Thanks to you and cwkoss for the very constructive replies, that's what I was looking for. I was speaking broadly, the news about Norton just gave the chance to comment. > Bitcoin is an environmental disgrace, Ethereum you could say is an environmental disgrace until they shut off mining later this year, but since the vast majority of cryptocurrencies don't use mining at all Can you please elaborate on that? If that's the case then I've to read a bit more on the subject as I thought every cryptocurrency required powerful hardware (GPUs or ASICs) under intensive load, which of course translates in huge power demands. The graph showing an almost 3x factor increase in power consumption in just one year looks worrying to me, however if you say there are other environment friendly means, that makes the matter interesting. What are however the chances that we can correct that factor in a immediate future?
- everfree 5y ago
  > Can you please elaborate on that? If that's the case then I've to read a bit more on the subject as I thought every cryptocurrency required powerful hardware (GPUs or ASICs) under intensive load, which of course translates in huge power demands. Definitely not the case. That's the case for Proof of Work cryptocurrencies, but the vast majority of cryptocurrencies now are not Proof of Work but Proof of Stake. The only real stragglers are Bitcoin and Ethereum. With Proof of Work, the chain's energy usage has nothing to do with load. It's literally because they couldn't figure out how to get the chain to work properly without making people burn large amounts of energy as a byproduct. Even when the chain is empty and nobody is sending transactions, that energy still needs to be constantly burned to maintain a Proof of Work cryptocurrency. Proof of Stake research (an alternative consensus mechanism that doesn't require this energy burn) wouldn't be complete and ready for production systems until many years later. > The graph showing an almost 3x factor increase in power consumption in just one year looks worrying to me, however if you say there are other environment friendly means, that makes the matter interesting. That's a graph of Bitcoin, the only top crypto that uses Proof of Work with no plans to transition away from it. So I think environmentalists should be focused on Bitcoin, not cryptocurrency in general.

squarefoot 5y ago

Thanks to you and cwkoss for the very constructive replies, that's what I was looking for. I was speaking broadly, the news about Norton just gave the chance to comment. > Bitcoin is an environmental disgrace, Ethereum you could say is an environmental disgrace until they shut off mining later this year, but since the vast majority of cryptocurrencies don't use mining at all Can you please elaborate on that? If that's the case then I've to read a bit more on the subject as I thought every cryptocurrency required powerful hardware (GPUs or ASICs) under intensive load, which of course translates in huge power demands. The graph showing an almost 3x factor increase in power consumption in just one year looks worrying to me, however if you say there are other environment friendly means, that makes the matter interesting. What are however the chances that we can correct that factor in a immediate future?

everfree 5y ago
> Can you please elaborate on that? If that's the case then I've to read a bit more on the subject as I thought every cryptocurrency required powerful hardware (GPUs or ASICs) under intensive load, which of course translates in huge power demands. Definitely not the case. That's the case for Proof of Work cryptocurrencies, but the vast majority of cryptocurrencies now are not Proof of Work but Proof of Stake. The only real stragglers are Bitcoin and Ethereum. With Proof of Work, the chain's energy usage has nothing to do with load. It's literally because they couldn't figure out how to get the chain to work properly without making people burn large amounts of energy as a byproduct. Even when the chain is empty and nobody is sending transactions, that energy still needs to be constantly burned to maintain a Proof of Work cryptocurrency. Proof of Stake research (an alternative consensus mechanism that doesn't require this energy burn) wouldn't be complete and ready for production systems until many years later. > The graph showing an almost 3x factor increase in power consumption in just one year looks worrying to me, however if you say there are other environment friendly means, that makes the matter interesting. That's a graph of Bitcoin, the only top crypto that uses Proof of Work with no plans to transition away from it. So I think environmentalists should be focused on Bitcoin, not cryptocurrency in general.