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Animal agriculture uses more water and yet advocates are silenced. People are willing to denounce anything as long as it doesn't personally affect them.

danShumway 3y ago
Vegan here! If you're an omnivore you have my full permission to complain about Bitcoin's water usage. I personally give you my "vegan blessing" or whatever to do so even if you still eat lots of meat. I would love for more people to become vegan, our current meat industry has a very large negative environmental impact. But please do not use veganism as an excuse to care less about the world. People's inability or unwillingness to give up meat should never be used as an excuse to avoid conversations about other inefficiencies and bad behaviors. I'd love for people who care about the environment to give veganism a try or at the very least to reduce meat consumption. But if I can't get someone to do that, I'd still like for an omnivore to not use Bitcoin, especially given that veganism is an uphill social battle and Bitcoin thrives on hype and vibes and could genuinely see significant reduction with more conscious avoidance of the tech. So at the least, don't use Bitcoin, but also consider looking critically at meat consumption as well.
- npoc 3y ago
  I'm a vegan and bitcoiner and I'm afraid you have no idea what you're talking about concerning bitcoin. I recommend you watch some Michael Saylor interviews.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    I've been watching Bitcoin since the early days, I understand the tech. "Bitcoiners" love to say that critics just don't understand what we're talking about, but unfortunately a lot of us do. Linking to yet another interview is not going to change that. Saylor started heavily pushing Bitcoin in 2020; frankly, I have been in this space significantly longer than he has. And Saylor is particularly funny to link to because Saylor is a poster child for treating Bitcoin as a primarily speculative asset. He is one of the prime examples I would give for why Bitcoin is not a useful currency. Early proponents of Bitcoin used to tell me that people like Saylor wouldn't exist and that the coin would be used as... well, a coin. I honestly wish they had been right, but they weren't. Instead the community pivoted from calling Bitcoin a currency to calling it a store of value; the whole point became getting as much of it as possible, holding it, not using it as a currency, and then trying to spark interest so that the held asset would rise in value. Suffice to say, I don't think there's much real-world value in that, I think it's a pointless shell game. There are lots of speculative assets that people can buy and lots of gambling games that people can play that don't waste this kind of energy. And even if you want to play a gambling game with a speculative asset, Bitcoin is a terrible cryptocurrency to play it with. It's been surpassed by other coins on pretty much every single technical measure from privacy to bandwidth to energy usage, and the fact that people are still consolidating around what is pretty objectively inferior technology at this point compared to other coins is proof positive to me that this is about the confidence game, not about the technology or about a movement. One more interview is not going to change that.
    - npoc 3y ago
      You must still be missing something if you think it's a waste of energy. You might understand the "tech", but probably not the economic side. Do you understand the scam that is central banking? For example, do you realise that the number of dollars is doubling every decade and that this halves the value of each one. Do you understand the Cantillon effect, Gresham's Law and Thier's Law? How about that the banking system is receiving interest on every dollar in existence even though it printed them out of thin air, backed by nothing? Do you know what the 3 purposes of money are (unit of account etc) and it's fundamental requirements (e.g. divisibility, portability, etc) Do you understand why gold is/was so valuable? Why it replaced shells and beads as money?
      - danShumway 3y ago
        > You might understand the "tech", but probably not the economic side. I have heard every argument you make here. I have been in this space, I have heard the talks, I have heard the economic theories. You are starting from a conclusion that if someone thinks Bitcoin is a waste of energy there must be something they don't understand. But there's another possibility here that you're not considering, which is that maybe Bitcoin actually just didn't work, and the economic theories were wrong. If that literally can't be a possibility in your head, then I don't know what to say -- this is like talking to Flat Earthers where every experiment has some mitigating factor that means it doesn't count, or there's some phenomenon that means that anyone who thinks the world is round must just be missing some point or must just have not seen some argument. I don't know how to work through someone starting entirely from a conclusion -- that Bitcoin is good and it's not a waste of energy and it accomplishes its goals -- and then working backwards to try and figure out why the conclusion they've already drawn is right. The possibility you're not considering is that yes, the existing fiat monetary system has tons of problems, and Bitcoin was a cool attempt to build something better. But it just didn't work out. The tech didn't work out, the economic theories didn't end up playing out the way people wanted them to play out, the privacy guarantees didn't hold up, the bandwidth and transaction capabilities didn't scale the way we all wanted them to scale, the energy costs went out of control, and (most importantly) the community behavior didn't match what the founders and early proponents thought would happen. They tried to create a currency and unfortunately failed. They had interesting theories that didn't play out in actual reality. But sometimes I feel like Bitcoin proponents literally can't envision that as a possibility, they're too invested in the thing and so it's become a leap of faith. Questioning it isn't possible. And I can't think of any better example of that then having someone come into a conversation almost directly saying, "I don't know what you don't understand or where you're going wrong or why you think that Bitcoin is a waste of energy, but you must not know what you're talking about because you reached a different conclusion than me." I don't want to be mean about this, but all I can think about reading this comment is that Youtube documentary where the guy goes into Flat Earth comment sections and systematically walks through an experiment and at the end they just say, "well, we don't know what you did wrong to get a result that indicates the world is round, but you must have done something wrong, try it again until you get a different result." The reality is that Bitcoin is not working well as a currency. Come up with whatever theories you want about that, but the economic predictions people made about how Bitcoin would be adopted and used... didn't happen. The evidence isn't there. I'm not saying that as a critic, it would have been great if those people had been right, I'd love for there to be a good, privacy-preserving digital currency that works across countries and allows for low-cost microtransactions. But I also have to be honest about when an attempt to build that thing fails. And continuing to dump energy and resources into a failed attempt to build a currency is a waste of energy. At best it's sunk-cost fallacy preventing people from learning from Bitcoin's mistakes and trying to build something better. At worst it's a speculative confidence game where the tech and theories are irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that the price of the coin (measured in USD, ironically) keep going up.
nickthegreek 3y ago
Animal agriculture feeds human beings.
snakeyjake 3y ago
You can't eat bitcoin. You can eat steak.
stathibus 3y ago
The primary difference is that animal agriculture provides a societal benefit.
- JCharante 3y ago
  A benefit that's entirely unnecessary, just like DeFi
tripplyons 3y ago
A better comparison would be to non-mining datacenters, which are far more prevalent and resource consuming.

danShumway 3y ago

Vegan here! If you're an omnivore you have my full permission to complain about Bitcoin's water usage. I personally give you my "vegan blessing" or whatever to do so even if you still eat lots of meat. I would love for more people to become vegan, our current meat industry has a very large negative environmental impact. But please do not use veganism as an excuse to care less about the world. People's inability or unwillingness to give up meat should never be used as an excuse to avoid conversations about other inefficiencies and bad behaviors. I'd love for people who care about the environment to give veganism a try or at the very least to reduce meat consumption. But if I can't get someone to do that, I'd still like for an omnivore to not use Bitcoin, especially given that veganism is an uphill social battle and Bitcoin thrives on hype and vibes and could genuinely see significant reduction with more conscious avoidance of the tech. So at the least, don't use Bitcoin, but also consider looking critically at meat consumption as well.

npoc 3y ago
I'm a vegan and bitcoiner and I'm afraid you have no idea what you're talking about concerning bitcoin. I recommend you watch some Michael Saylor interviews.
- danShumway 3y ago
  I've been watching Bitcoin since the early days, I understand the tech. "Bitcoiners" love to say that critics just don't understand what we're talking about, but unfortunately a lot of us do. Linking to yet another interview is not going to change that. Saylor started heavily pushing Bitcoin in 2020; frankly, I have been in this space significantly longer than he has. And Saylor is particularly funny to link to because Saylor is a poster child for treating Bitcoin as a primarily speculative asset. He is one of the prime examples I would give for why Bitcoin is not a useful currency. Early proponents of Bitcoin used to tell me that people like Saylor wouldn't exist and that the coin would be used as... well, a coin. I honestly wish they had been right, but they weren't. Instead the community pivoted from calling Bitcoin a currency to calling it a store of value; the whole point became getting as much of it as possible, holding it, not using it as a currency, and then trying to spark interest so that the held asset would rise in value. Suffice to say, I don't think there's much real-world value in that, I think it's a pointless shell game. There are lots of speculative assets that people can buy and lots of gambling games that people can play that don't waste this kind of energy. And even if you want to play a gambling game with a speculative asset, Bitcoin is a terrible cryptocurrency to play it with. It's been surpassed by other coins on pretty much every single technical measure from privacy to bandwidth to energy usage, and the fact that people are still consolidating around what is pretty objectively inferior technology at this point compared to other coins is proof positive to me that this is about the confidence game, not about the technology or about a movement. One more interview is not going to change that.
  - npoc 3y ago
    You must still be missing something if you think it's a waste of energy. You might understand the "tech", but probably not the economic side. Do you understand the scam that is central banking? For example, do you realise that the number of dollars is doubling every decade and that this halves the value of each one. Do you understand the Cantillon effect, Gresham's Law and Thier's Law? How about that the banking system is receiving interest on every dollar in existence even though it printed them out of thin air, backed by nothing? Do you know what the 3 purposes of money are (unit of account etc) and it's fundamental requirements (e.g. divisibility, portability, etc) Do you understand why gold is/was so valuable? Why it replaced shells and beads as money?
    - danShumway 3y ago
      > You might understand the "tech", but probably not the economic side. I have heard every argument you make here. I have been in this space, I have heard the talks, I have heard the economic theories. You are starting from a conclusion that if someone thinks Bitcoin is a waste of energy there must be something they don't understand. But there's another possibility here that you're not considering, which is that maybe Bitcoin actually just didn't work, and the economic theories were wrong. If that literally can't be a possibility in your head, then I don't know what to say -- this is like talking to Flat Earthers where every experiment has some mitigating factor that means it doesn't count, or there's some phenomenon that means that anyone who thinks the world is round must just be missing some point or must just have not seen some argument. I don't know how to work through someone starting entirely from a conclusion -- that Bitcoin is good and it's not a waste of energy and it accomplishes its goals -- and then working backwards to try and figure out why the conclusion they've already drawn is right. The possibility you're not considering is that yes, the existing fiat monetary system has tons of problems, and Bitcoin was a cool attempt to build something better. But it just didn't work out. The tech didn't work out, the economic theories didn't end up playing out the way people wanted them to play out, the privacy guarantees didn't hold up, the bandwidth and transaction capabilities didn't scale the way we all wanted them to scale, the energy costs went out of control, and (most importantly) the community behavior didn't match what the founders and early proponents thought would happen. They tried to create a currency and unfortunately failed. They had interesting theories that didn't play out in actual reality. But sometimes I feel like Bitcoin proponents literally can't envision that as a possibility, they're too invested in the thing and so it's become a leap of faith. Questioning it isn't possible. And I can't think of any better example of that then having someone come into a conversation almost directly saying, "I don't know what you don't understand or where you're going wrong or why you think that Bitcoin is a waste of energy, but you must not know what you're talking about because you reached a different conclusion than me." I don't want to be mean about this, but all I can think about reading this comment is that Youtube documentary where the guy goes into Flat Earth comment sections and systematically walks through an experiment and at the end they just say, "well, we don't know what you did wrong to get a result that indicates the world is round, but you must have done something wrong, try it again until you get a different result." The reality is that Bitcoin is not working well as a currency. Come up with whatever theories you want about that, but the economic predictions people made about how Bitcoin would be adopted and used... didn't happen. The evidence isn't there. I'm not saying that as a critic, it would have been great if those people had been right, I'd love for there to be a good, privacy-preserving digital currency that works across countries and allows for low-cost microtransactions. But I also have to be honest about when an attempt to build that thing fails. And continuing to dump energy and resources into a failed attempt to build a currency is a waste of energy. At best it's sunk-cost fallacy preventing people from learning from Bitcoin's mistakes and trying to build something better. At worst it's a speculative confidence game where the tech and theories are irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that the price of the coin (measured in USD, ironically) keep going up.

nickthegreek 3y ago

Animal agriculture feeds human beings.

snakeyjake 3y ago

You can't eat bitcoin. You can eat steak.

stathibus 3y ago

The primary difference is that animal agriculture provides a societal benefit.

JCharante 3y ago
A benefit that's entirely unnecessary, just like DeFi

tripplyons 3y ago

A better comparison would be to non-mining datacenters, which are far more prevalent and resource consuming.