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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.