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I do find it interesting that people hate on crypto for its energy consumption but ignore all the other wasteful computation.

mrpopo 4y ago
Crypto has a far lower ratio on utility/speculation than other wasteful computations. Deep learning is changing the world in many visible ways (with a whole lot of speculation regardless).
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  Your bias shines through here. What visible ways? Machine generated photographs? About as useful as NFTs... I can, right now, send liquid assets to any human being on the planet with an internet connection without asking a financial institution, government, bank, payment processor or phone company for permission. That's utility, that's changing the world in a visible way.
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    You make it sound as if financial institutions and banks didn't have a purpose. There is far more negative utility in this. Governments, banks and financial institutions prevent tax fraud, apply workers' rights, redistribute money, etc. Of course they're not perfect. In that case fix your government, not the money system.
    - betwixthewires 4y ago
      Why not both? I get that financial systems have a purpose, I'd argue there's far more negative utility in them. They have positive effects, but a lot of their utility is not to protect people, but to control them to someone else's benefit. If they protected us without attempting to control us to the benefit of others, or brazenly looting us for our labor, nobody would be trying to build cryptocurrency in the first place.
Shorel 4y ago
No one will ever say anything bad about game consoles, which consume much more electricity than cryptocurrencies =)
- michaelwww 4y ago
  Or king size refrigerators and secondary home freezer a lot of people feel the need to have
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Or televisions and mobile phones and networks with their nearly constantly on transmitters...
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Come on, do you seriously compare something that you and nigh everyone use multiple hours each day and effects you on a physical basis to something as useless as cryptos?
    - andruby 4y ago
      I think my iPhone SE has a ~7 Wh battery. It needs about 80% extra charge each day, which means its consumption is roughly 5.5 Wh per day or about 2 kWh/year. At the previous 112 TWh/year ETH was using before the merge, that would be the equivalent of 56 billion iPhone SE's. Think about that. The energy usage of ETH's POW used the equivalent power of 50B smartphones.
  - cryptonym 4y ago
    This remains a far better usage of energy than ETH. It's not optimal but at least it's preserving some food. You can hardly do worse than consuming energy just to eventually get a proof that you burned a big amount of energy.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Game consoles provide utility.
dudebrooo 4y ago

mrpopo 4y ago

Crypto has a far lower ratio on utility/speculation than other wasteful computations. Deep learning is changing the world in many visible ways (with a whole lot of speculation regardless).

betwixthewires 4y ago
Your bias shines through here. What visible ways? Machine generated photographs? About as useful as NFTs... I can, right now, send liquid assets to any human being on the planet with an internet connection without asking a financial institution, government, bank, payment processor or phone company for permission. That's utility, that's changing the world in a visible way.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  You make it sound as if financial institutions and banks didn't have a purpose. There is far more negative utility in this. Governments, banks and financial institutions prevent tax fraud, apply workers' rights, redistribute money, etc. Of course they're not perfect. In that case fix your government, not the money system.
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    Why not both? I get that financial systems have a purpose, I'd argue there's far more negative utility in them. They have positive effects, but a lot of their utility is not to protect people, but to control them to someone else's benefit. If they protected us without attempting to control us to the benefit of others, or brazenly looting us for our labor, nobody would be trying to build cryptocurrency in the first place.

Shorel 4y ago

No one will ever say anything bad about game consoles, which consume much more electricity than cryptocurrencies =)

michaelwww 4y ago
Or king size refrigerators and secondary home freezer a lot of people feel the need to have
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Or televisions and mobile phones and networks with their nearly constantly on transmitters...
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Come on, do you seriously compare something that you and nigh everyone use multiple hours each day and effects you on a physical basis to something as useless as cryptos?
  - andruby 4y ago
    I think my iPhone SE has a ~7 Wh battery. It needs about 80% extra charge each day, which means its consumption is roughly 5.5 Wh per day or about 2 kWh/year. At the previous 112 TWh/year ETH was using before the merge, that would be the equivalent of 56 billion iPhone SE's. Think about that. The energy usage of ETH's POW used the equivalent power of 50B smartphones.
- cryptonym 4y ago
  This remains a far better usage of energy than ETH. It's not optimal but at least it's preserving some food. You can hardly do worse than consuming energy just to eventually get a proof that you burned a big amount of energy.
Gigachad 4y ago
Game consoles provide utility.

dudebrooo 4y ago