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Mining gold was a similar disaster for the human and environmental cost
by ithkuil 5y ago
Mining gold was a similar disaster for the human and environmental cost
- svara 5y agoMaybe so, but at least mining is actually necessary to get gold out of the ground. Whereas running a distributed database and gambling can both be had for much less.
- user-the-name 5y agoAll of bitcoin could be run on a home PC from 2005. It can do about three transactions a second. And it is burning 0.5% of the electricity of the entire planet to do so. This is basically a crime against humanity at this point.
- knowfilter 5y agoBitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency
- DonHopkins 5y agoGenocide is not the only crime against humanity, yet it is still illegal. Go figure.
- orestarod 5y agoYou talked past each other here.
- HWR_14 5y agoMining gold still is. At least gold has uses that make it better than copper in some electrical uses.
- astoor 5y agoYes, but gold hasn't been explicitly designed to require ever increasing amounts of energy to extract ever diminishing quantities, and gold does have some practical use (approx 8% of annual production is used in mobile phones, televisions etc.)
- jpambrun 5y agoI can find both mining gold to store in basements and mining bitcoins incredibly stupid, selfish and irresponsible. They are not mutually exclusive.