Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by jude- on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @04:40PM (#26095196)

Government competence means hiring officials that do not allow the misappropriation of the people's resources, no matter the upside. It also means structuring the incentives for being official such that doing the right thing is incentive-compatible (i.e. if you steal power, you have to pay it back, go to jail for a while, and get banned from future government work).

If the Iranian government was competent, it wouldn't matter whether or not BTC exists or how valuable it was -- it wouldn't be trying to mine it in the first place. Governments shouldn't be so fragile that the mere existence of Bitcoin poses such an existential risk to the wellbeing of the people.

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Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by paulryanrogers on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @09:11PM (#26097447)

Hyping BTC certainly isn't helping the iranian people solve their government problems. Rather I'd say it's doing the opposite.

Anyway, BTC is a bad fit for a modern world in which non-crypto energy needs already outstrip renewable supplies. Maybe we can talk once just feeding and housing the poor and hungry is solved sustainably.

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Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by jude- on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @09:48PM (#26097678)

I'm not hyping BTC, btw. I'm correcting misconceptions about it, so we can fix the very real problems with PoW causing pollution. I personally have zero exposure to BTC.

Regardless of how we both feel about BTC, it's here to stay, so we might as well figure out a way for it to continue to exist without actively harming people.

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