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> The metric to compare bitcoin to is energy per transaction compared with EXISTING forms of digital finance with which it is competing. False. Bitcoin might h

by ephbit 3y ago

> The metric to compare bitcoin to is energy per transaction compared with EXISTING forms of digital finance with which it is competing. False. Bitcoin might have originally been envisioned as "p2p electronic cash" but that's not really what its use/goal is anymore. Even though throughput and cost of transactions is not irrelevant to Bitcoin at this point, it is definitely far down in the list of priorities. The much more important aspects are now security and suitability/reliability as a store-of-value. > It's like saying, "sure child abuse is bad, but war causes way more suffering and there are still wars so no need to do anything about child abuse, at least until all war everywhere stops first. .. Wow, that's really just an astonishingly bad comparison. What would you estimate? What proportion of people in the world would support the statement "child abuse is bad"? 99 %? 99.9 %? 99.999 %? Probably significantly more than 99 %, I'd guess. Why? Because the statement is kind of philosophically fundamentally true. The word "abuse" practically implies "bad". You'd sure have to search a long time to maybe maybe find a single person who'd say "child abuse is not bad" and who'd even be okay with "child abuse" having happened to them individually. And you'll have an even harder time trying to find people who'll publicly go on record stating "child abuse is a useful tool for society". And you compare that to a technology where many people argue that it'll be a useful tool and society will benefit from it and they can even give arguments for that? That's just ridiculous. Now, of all people in the world, how many of those that know Bitcoin will support the statement "Bitcoin is bad"? Maybe 50 % or 70 % or it might even be 90 % (from perpetual campaigning against)? Whatever the number is, you'll find hundreds of thousands if not millions of people on the other side who'd be willing to publicly say "Bitcoin is useful" and give reasons you could then try to debate. You think you'll find even one person on the planet who's going to state "child abuse is useful and thus I'm going to make sure I'll have some for my children"? Your comparison is so far off, it's completely meaningless. A better comparison would be ... quite obviously ... gold. You could say: "Gold isn't useful enough to legitimize the harm that's done through its mining even though many people like it. It is just a small dent in the carbon footprint worldwide but still. Compare that to steel production which is much more important for keeping society running but it also produces orders of magnitude more emissions and environmental destruction than making gold bars." Now that'd be a somewhat legit comparison I'd be willing to discuss, but your comparison to child abuse, that's just absurd.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
Ok, I'll go along. Mining gold just to have it in a vault as a store of value is also wasteful energy use (along with the other environmental damage gold mining entails). Now what? Again, the argument that 'other things are bad or worse, so this bad thing is ok' is bad one. Maybe try this another way, if bitcoin used 1% of worldwide energy would that be too much? Where's the line where you would admit that its been crossed and bitcoin energy use is out of proportion to its utility? 5%? 50%?
- ephbit 3y ago
  > Again, the argument that 'other things are bad or worse, so this bad thing is ok' is bad one. There is no consensus for "Bitcoin is bad use of energy" as you're implying. Energy/electricity use isn't inherently bad. All the different uses of energy cannot be classified in a binary way as either good or bad. But they can be sorted along a spectrum according to their usefulness. Their subjective usefulness to individual people which can then be summed up to some total. Energy is limited so people/states/businesses prioritize some uses of energy over others in order to optimize their goals. When other people's energy use appears wasteful to you, you're free to point it out and even try to convince them, you might even try to sue them because their use case expels toxic chemicals that you'd rather not inhale. But just calling their use case bad "because it uses energy" sure won't convince them. Because practically everything humans do consumes energy. At what exact percentage of total energy use the acceptable consumption of Bitcoin lies, no single person can/should decide. As with all purposes it should and will be decided by people collectively (through politics, consumption decisions, cultural discourse, ..) be it 1 % (which I'd say is ok, were Bitcoin to continue functioning for the next 100 years) or 5 % (which I'd personally deem too high for Bitcoin and thus wasteful).
- npoc 3y ago
  If you understood the damage to mankind caused by fiat currencies, then you would see that at 5%, it would be well worth the price. Anything appears wasteful if you don't appreciate the reward it provides. Ultimately the market will decide. The bitcoin network pays for the energy it uses, just as the gamer community pays for the energy it uses. If bitcoin isn't worth it's energy use, then it will use less energy as people won't be willing to pay the transaction fees and the miners will be paid less.

by ephbit 3y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago

Ok, I'll go along. Mining gold just to have it in a vault as a store of value is also wasteful energy use (along with the other environmental damage gold mining entails). Now what? Again, the argument that 'other things are bad or worse, so this bad thing is ok' is bad one. Maybe try this another way, if bitcoin used 1% of worldwide energy would that be too much? Where's the line where you would admit that its been crossed and bitcoin energy use is out of proportion to its utility? 5%? 50%?

ephbit 3y ago
> Again, the argument that 'other things are bad or worse, so this bad thing is ok' is bad one. There is no consensus for "Bitcoin is bad use of energy" as you're implying. Energy/electricity use isn't inherently bad. All the different uses of energy cannot be classified in a binary way as either good or bad. But they can be sorted along a spectrum according to their usefulness. Their subjective usefulness to individual people which can then be summed up to some total. Energy is limited so people/states/businesses prioritize some uses of energy over others in order to optimize their goals. When other people's energy use appears wasteful to you, you're free to point it out and even try to convince them, you might even try to sue them because their use case expels toxic chemicals that you'd rather not inhale. But just calling their use case bad "because it uses energy" sure won't convince them. Because practically everything humans do consumes energy. At what exact percentage of total energy use the acceptable consumption of Bitcoin lies, no single person can/should decide. As with all purposes it should and will be decided by people collectively (through politics, consumption decisions, cultural discourse, ..) be it 1 % (which I'd say is ok, were Bitcoin to continue functioning for the next 100 years) or 5 % (which I'd personally deem too high for Bitcoin and thus wasteful).
npoc 3y ago
If you understood the damage to mankind caused by fiat currencies, then you would see that at 5%, it would be well worth the price. Anything appears wasteful if you don't appreciate the reward it provides. Ultimately the market will decide. The bitcoin network pays for the energy it uses, just as the gamer community pays for the energy it uses. If bitcoin isn't worth it's energy use, then it will use less energy as people won't be willing to pay the transaction fees and the miners will be paid less.