People into crypto don't post here because they get shouted down every time they have an opinion that isn't "all crypto is a scam". Articles like the linked are not curious, not thoughtful or substantive: it's all there in the headline. But it gets boosted because the majority of HN has big hate for crypto.

I think there is lots of utility in the space, even if BTC isn't it. My Urbit ship that gives me control of my own data is only partly related (but very useful) in that Urbit IDs are put on Ethereum because it works as a good ledger of ownership and stops floods of spam taking over communities.

A frequent companion of anti-crypto arguments is inflation is good. As a tool for goading humans into behavior like destroying the planet with overconsumption (oddly enough the same flavor of argument anti-crypto people use against crypto), I don't believe inflation is a good. I'd love to have open, curious discussions around this but it never happens. People just say inflation is good because otherwise people would stuff their mattresses and not eat.

We should eat only when we need to and spend conscientiously. Inflation is not a positive force for these two maxims. Somehow that idea has turned into heresy.

They're the ones buying abandoned oil wells and coal power plants and starting them back up for more shitcoin.

Of course, the externality is shoved on ALL of us with worsening environment, climate crisis, higher cost of electronics to do *real* work (no, your 10^15 hashes where -1+10^15 are thrown out IS NOT REAL WORK).

I hope EVERY shitcoin peddler loses everything.

Sounds like a good reason to ban oil and coal eh.

I agree! Let's start with the most useless "use" first, AKA crypto, and then once we have precedent we move into more and more uses.

If we move to renewables, who cares what they do with the energy?

I dont care what source of energy you're using, to provide for any shitcoin.

Shitcoins are climate-destroying ponzi schemes. They're a negative-sum that the world ends poorer with the more they're made/generated/mined.

I see! How does that differ from, for example, owning stocks? Or real estate? I literally don't see a functional difference. Sorry I realise this seems antagonistic but I really want to understand the vitriol.

Apple, along with a bunch of upstream suppliers, brings together some glass, some plastic, some metal, and create an iPhone out of it. The value of an iPhone is greater than the value of the raw materials. Thus, it's a positive sum game. Same goes for owning a stake in Apple the company.

One person buys a Bitcoin that another person sold, which is zero sum. But miners burned real energy paid with not-Bitcoin to process it, thus value exits the system. Thus it is negative sum.

Ok, Im not sure why youve chosen Apple but I'll bite. Those resources aren't actually renewable. And mining that stuff certainly costs the environment more than the value of this conversation we are having on those devices warrants. And at the end they're tossed in landfills. You might disagree, but so would a crypto enthusiast.

I do understand your point though I think. Waste in general is bad.

Aluminum is renewable. So is glass, of course. And no, Apple is actually doing all they can to keep old iPhones from being tossed in landfills, including designing custom robots to disassemble them so that the components can then at least theoretically be recycled.

You don't need to mine more aluminum if you're able to use recycled aluminum in your products. And Apple does.

So Apple is perhaps not the best choice of a company to pick on in this particular part of the argument.

Not on HN.

I spend a lot of time on the internet but I have never bumped into a cursed crytpo bro without seeking them out. Where are you being accosted by them?

Perhaps, fartcannon, you have just been lucky. They pop up in my twitter feed pretty regularly.

However, the main point was that I don't want to deal with them, and under normal circumstances I could just ignore the relatively minimal interactions I have with them.

But because I am effectively fighting back against /their/ externalities affecting me I have to seek them out. To learn about their hobbies, to find out about what it is they are doing.

I don't have a horse in the race (there are other worse things that use more power that we should be focusing our concentrated effort on in my opinion) as I don't own any crypto but I do think there's some powerful PR being used and I'd like to see from where it originates.

There's things that use much more power than crypto. The regular banking system apparently uses twice as much as bitcoin, but it actually does something. It's actually useful. We can try to trim power from other things for sure, and we should, but you tell me what other system we could focus on that uses so much power for such little value.

Of course, if you don't see the value in cryptocurrency, it will feel as though any electricity it uses is wasteful.

Hence the call to point out things that are either better on the blockchain, or of value and that can be only made on the blockchain.

Then it's a case of discussing wether the power consumption is worth it.

So far in this thread all that anyone's come up with is "because I might want to send money to someone that my government has banned money transfers to".

I have previously asked elsewhere and got a load of answers which fall into the "technically can be made on the blockchain, but can be done far more efficiently and effectively using exisint tech", eg. carbon credit trading, and (rather surprisingly) "publishing a website".

Oh. Well the banks are basically the worst so that seems to favour crypto.

No, the banks use twice as much power for orders of magnitude more transactions per second.

At the funeral of my in-law Aunt who died of COVID-19. The crypto bro was her boyfriend, who had been her boyfriend when she was married. Her husband had hung herself 2 years prior and mental anguish over the adultery contributed to his mental health problems.

The jackass was boasting that he’d bought a graphics card from a scalper and was so happy he could mine Etherium. I told him I didn’t want to hear about it.

Sorry for your loss. People cope with loss in strange ways, unfortunately. Hope you and everyone remaining are doing better.

Also, it seems like sexist language is OK now?

Please don't even start with that. Just don't. Trust me. And no, it's not sexist.