>My opinion of Bitcoin will change when it stops using more electricity than entire countries, for something Visa can do for comparatively nothing.

To be fair, Bitcoin does not do what Visa does. Visa uses trust in existing institutions to accomplish transactions. Bitcoin mining creates trust out of electricity. And trust is a valuable resource, no different than any other form of value creation.

There are plenty of other stores of trust. You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot. I know a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts are skeptical of traditional institutions, but really, if all the world's governments go bankrupt you're going to have bigger problems. Heck, if you must use a cryptocurrency, at least pick one of the newer ones which aren't as inefficient as Bitcoin!

> You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot.

That's not trust, that's security in the value of your money. BTC can never be taken from you unless someone either breaks crypto or steals your wallet secret key. The U.S. dollar is backed by the federal reserve, so while I don't think the U.S. is going to have a revolution that destroys or inflates the dollar anytime soon, there's a possibility of such a thing happening. BTC has an actual limited amount that can be distributed (like gold) so it'll always have value.

> There are plenty of other stores of trust. You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot

The point is Bitcoin created a store of trust sans institutions, one which is capable of being transacted across the internet without trusted third parties.

Yes, but is the practical use of that ability worth destroying the planet for?

Do you remember the pictures from the early Covid lockdowns — of the Himalayas becoming visible in parts of India for the first time in decades? City streets deathly quiet everywhere. This is what actually saves the environment: less human economic activity.

Bitcoin contains the built-in incentive to keep you put in place, without engaging in any economic activity. It does so on a massive scale, without sickening people, voluntarily and by design.

Everyone likes to focus on Bitcoin’s cost to the environment, without considering the upsides of Bitcoin adoption, chief of which is a pronounced decline in consumerism.

Consider what would happen if we saw continuously falling asset prices, and dramatically lowered capital investment globally. Consider what would happen if government scrip became worthless, disallowing governments to fund war machines and large public works projects. Bitcoin throttles humanity. This is a big benefit to the planet’s natural ecosystems. Meanwhile the environmental damage Bitcoin can do is capped by the maximum productive output of humanity, which puts a ceiling on the value of one bitcoin.

This is deflation, and turns out everyone hates deflation. Just to be clear, I am with you here.

If all the world's governments go bankrupt I don't see any other currency than bitcoins working!

We’d go to a barter system and BTC would be useless. Are you able to envision a scenario where all governments at banklkrupt but internet is still there to process BTC txns?

I've read that most mining pools are consolidating now, and if they control a majority of computing power it leaves Bitcoin vulnerable to attack. Or what about the hard fork ? My skepticism is not w/ the tech (which is great) its with Bitcoin adoption by non-tech people who have no protection via regulation.

Yes, mining pools are aggregating. None are at 51%. But, the risk is bad actors, not the mining pools. Hypothetically, if a mining pool had 51% hash rate, why in the world would they tank the price of the asset their entire business is based on - They would lose hundreds of millions, if not Billions of value.

I really don't understand this usage of the word "trust".

Especially when one of the actual primary uses of bitcoin as currency (and not speculative investing) so far has been to pay off ransomware.

Who exactly am I trusting? The person I'm transacting with - a transaction that I have no hope of reversing if something goes wrong?

Please, if you can be specific about exactly what is meant by "trust" here, I would greatly appreciate it.

The ransomware thing is a red herring. The trust is not related to the counterparty- the trust is in the ledger itself. Once you have the tokens, you know you have them, and as long as your keys are secure, that fact remains true.

That's not the case with any other monetary or payment system or store of value.

You can trust that your balance in your account is what the blockchain says it is, and that nobody but someone in possession of those keys can use it.

is there some widespread issue with trusting the ledgers of banks currently? I wasn't aware that this is a pressing issue, or really an issue at all.

>You can trust that your balance in your account is what the blockchain says it is, and that nobody but someone in possession of those keys can use it.

And there are definite risks around that too.

This really feels like a solution in search of a problem to me.

Some would think so.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/04/paypal-shuts-d...

There are also many restrictions on how, why, when, and where transfers from those accounts can be made. There is no trust in an institution required, because you know the blockchain will carry out your wishes regardless of any other factors.

>carry out your wishes regardless of any other factors.

It will carry out your inputs regardless of other factors. That is a very important distinction, especially in this case.

Yes, some call this "Code is Law" - it is blind to race, social status or how much money you have.

A carbon price wouldn't damage Bitcoin. Electricity costs for some miners would go up, some would drop out, hash rate goes down, difficulty adjusts to keep blocks coming out every ten minutes, and everything continues as before.

(Still think proof-of-stake is big improvement though.)

Wouldn't the bulk of mining just move to the one part of the world without a carbon tax? I know that's a danger with carbon taxes in general, but it strikes me as far easier to do with Bitcoin than anything else.

Yes, it'd probably need to be some kind of global system to prevent that. Countries doing their own carbon taxes normally add carbon tariffs to imports, but of course that wouldn't help for bitcoin.

I believe the bulk of mining already happens at places where electricity is extremely cheap?

Visa is no medium of exchange - only a payment network. CO2 emissions are bad for sure. CO2 tax would help with the migration to green energy. Energy consumption however also has a reason -> security. I don't think there is a secure alternative and I don't think anyone wants to continue staying in central banking hell.

> I don't think anyone wants to continue staying in central banking hell.

looks like cryptocurrency community's filter bubble

It’s also institutional investors: https://www.scribd.com/document/460382154/May-2020-BVI-Lette...

Visa can't replace Bitcoin because Visa has to obey US and international laws

there is a lot of fuss about bitcoin energy needs, but plenty of proof that it's not well founded.

You compare it to Visa, but actually visa does only part of what bitcoin does (transactions), and does it using _other_ systems themselves also using energy (security, banking, etc).

Nowadays bitcoin is mostly seen as a store of value, to which it should then be compared to gold. Gold has a much higher carbon footprint than bitcoin, both for mining, storing, transactions, etc.

there are a lot of writings about this, some answering a recent article posted on HN here https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit...