> The cycles are not wasted - they secure a digital currency.

If I use a car that gets 1 mile per gallon to visit my grandma, I'm wasting basically all the gas I buy, despite it getting me to my destination.

Proof of work is waste.

>The cycles are not wasted - they secure a digital currency.

But why though? Is the USD that insecure? Is fraud so prevalent that its debasing the value of currency? Do we literally need to spend 70TWh per year, and that's just in its current state as a semi novelty currency/commodity, to secure the concept of money? Can you imagine how much it would cost to run bitcoin if it was the primary reserve currency of the world?

It's ok, if you believe hard enough and know that your heart is pure then the Emperor's New Currency will have value. I'm just the guy asking why.

Your comments violate rule #1 of Hacker News comments.

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We're discussing ideas here, there is no reason presuppose others ideas or behave snarkily.

I think you replied to the wrong person.

To both of them, but in the case of stillbourne particularly, because he is responding to every post in this thread with that tone.

I don't think he's being entirely partial in targeting me. One of my replies was to him, in that reply I was mostly civil with the exception that I accused him of being a libertarian. My comment got downvoted to oblivion anyway.

I was not trying to come off as snarky. I was being civil, My first and my second comment were actually civil but as others attempted to offer retorts to my metaphor it sort of degraded. I didn't get real snarky until vitaliksghost called me an asshat. I'll exit the conversation now.