[mrb]

"Put a few tons of carbon in the air pointlessly calculating hashes to mine coins"

It's not pointless. Have you read the arguments in http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-mining-is-not-wasteful/ ? It's not Ethereum-specific but the same logic applies. I feel I post that link too frequently, but people get too often mentally blocked on one technical detail (hashing) and fail to think about the big picture (renewables, jobs created, real utility of cryptos, etc). If cars with internal combustion engines were introduced today, would HNers complain its a dumb tech because it wastes 97% of the fuel's energy?[1]

[1] 90% wasted moving 1.5 tons of metal and only 150 kg of useful cargo/passengers, and remaining 7% wasted mostly as heat/friction.

[sillysaurus3]

I'd like to ask more about Proof of Stake's flaws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake#Criticism

These problems seem fairly significant and unresolved. Thoughts?

Statistical simulations have shown that simultaneous forging on several chains is possible, even profitable. But Proof of Stake advocates believe most described attack scenarios are impossible or so unpredictable that they are only theoretical.

Any system that will eventually attain a $1T market cap probably can't have theoretical issues like this.

[RoboTeddy]

AFAIK Ethereum plans to resolve this "nothing at stake" issue by using security deposits. If someone submits a proof that a miner was staking on multiple chains, the miner loses their security deposit.

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ

That said, this all looks hard to get right...

[davidgerard]

> Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs.

... for return to date of zero. This is literally broken-windows economics.

[mrb]

Returns are irrelevant in the context of this argument. Jobs that provide real utility (not "breaking windows and repairing them") were created, and that's enough to justify the energy spent mining. Furthermore, an average investment takes years to generate returns. It's too early to call such investments worthless.

[jstanley]

Thanks for writing this. I've been looking for a decent article to send people who argue that mining is a waste of energy, and this is that.