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Sounds like you have a problem with fossil fuels.

• woodruffw 4y ago
  Indeed I do. I have problems with lots of things, as most people do.
  • tossl568 4y ago
    What makes securing hundreds of billions of people's money a less valid use of fossil fuels than playing Call of Duty?
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      For one, quantity: video games don’t use as much electricity, and those that do aren’t incentivizing reactivation of old fossil fuel plants. For another, necessity: we have a preexisting financial system that secures orders of magnitude more value than cryptocurrencies do, with actual legal guarantees and recourses. For a final, civic harm: whatever limited negative social ills can be explained by video games are dwarfed by the civic poison of fraud and “easy” money.
      • tossl568 4y ago
        Energy isn't fungible. That financial system uses many more magnitudes of energy. This is like blaming dollars for the existence of bank robbers.
        • woodruffw 4y ago
          I don’t understand what energy’s fungibility has to do with anything I’ve said. Most economic uses of energy involve exchanging it for productive capacity or consumer demand. Bitcoin definitely is an economic use of energy, just not a good or desirable one. I don’t think the directly comparable elements of the financial system (i.e., storage and settlement) use anywhere near as much power as Bitcoin does. Unless you’re doing that thing where you’re comparing the entire traditional economy to Bitcoin, which is silly: the traditional economy has actually valuable outflows, and Bitcoin does not replace factories and their workers.
          • tossl568 4y ago
            Not a good or desirable one in your opinion. It is absolutely good and desirable in my opinion to have neutral money that can be used by anybody but controlled by nobody. The US dollar is secured by military force which has a staggering energy footprint. Bitcoin finally settled roughly the same amount as Fedwire last year and uses exactly as much energy as it needs to.
• arghwhat 4y ago
  Yes, and thereby those that cause them to keep running (e.g., Bitcoin miners). If we had abundant clean energy everywhere with no unclean power plants, then knock yourself dead. But right now, any power consumed has an unclean component. Even if you use power in a country that is 100% renewable, it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy. And that these miners buy old crap power plants make it worse - it reverses grid-wide improvements to green energy. ... heck even with fully renewable energy for the entire globe, wastefully burning energy so that more renewable power sources need to be deployed is still bad - no power plant is neutral to manufacture. And re: comparison to call of duty, if had the same footprint as Bitcoin, then we could start talking. Bitcoin consumes power like a small country, not like someone forgetting to turn off the lights. All for something that can be done without any of this power draw.
  • tossl568 4y ago
    Nope. Energy isn't fungible.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Nothing the GP has said requires a stance on the fungible nature of energy. Where are you getting that from?
      • tossl568 4y ago
        "it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy." This idea/delusion that energy that is used for mining should and could have been used for something else. It's just not the case.
        • woodruffw 4y ago
          You shouldn’t refer to other commenters as deluded. It’s pretty clear the GP means a demand curve: cryptocurrencies induce demand for energy sources that would otherwise be uneconomical to operate. This doesn’t require fungibility.
• NoGravitas 4y ago
  Fossil fuels are everyone's problem.