[whywhywhywhy]

>I think cryptocurrencies are fundamentally flawed due to their environmental impact, and should be banned on that merit alone

A GPU is a GPU, why is it's environmental impact fine if it's 31 million people pretending to be a cowboy in RDR2 but bad if it's being used for financial transactions.

[MereInterest]

For the same reason that sending a letter to a friend is different from using the "Send-a-Dime" chain letter. One is something that improves the human condition and brings enjoyment, while the other is a pyramid scheme with negative externalities under the guise of a get-rich-quick scheme.

[whywhywhywhy]

My crypto investments have definitely improved my life more than Red Dead Redemption 2 did so I disagree.

[MereInterest]

That is not at all inconsistent with my viewpoint. In the same way that a traditional pyramid scheme enriches a few while the majority lose money, bitcoin speculation can enrich a few before either the bubble pops naturally or it has legislation made against it for being environmentally damaging.

[babypuncher]

The same number of financial transactions can be handled with an exponentially smaller amount of energy. A secure distributed ledger of financial transactions does not inherently need nearly this much computational power to maintain, as is evidenced by Ethereum's impending move to proof-of-stake.

You can't really say the same for video games. To reduce the carbon footprint of a user playing RDR2, you either need newer more energy efficient hardware, or you need to alter the experience the game provides to make it less computationally expensive.

[nybble41]

> A secure distributed ledger of financial transactions does not inherently need nearly this much computational power to maintain, as is evidenced by Ethereum's impending move to proof-of-stake.

You can claim that as evidence after Ethereum has actually moved to proof-of-stake and operated in that mode for a significant length of time without any notable vulnerabilities. Proof-of-stake has some known drawbacks compared to proof-of-work; in particular, at least in naïve implementations, there is nothing to prevent a malicious party from staking the same coins in multiple chains (forks) simultaneously, a flaw which proof-of-work systems are specifically designed to avoid by making the proof depend on each chain's history. One assumes that the Ethereum developers came up with some sort of mitigation for that issue, among others, but it has yet to see real-world testing with significant funds at risk should it fail.

[MereInterest]

I'd claim traditional databases as an example of a secure distributed ledger of financial transactions. Every single credit card processing network does exactly this. What cryptocurrencies do is add "trustless" as a requirement, and that's where the power consumption comes in. I also think that's a weird requirement to have, precisely because treating every interaction as adversarial introduces so much overhead.

[nybble41]

The requirement exists regardless of how hard or easy it is to implement. "Trustless" is a requirement because history shows that there are many circumstances where existing payment networks cannot be trusted. Payment networks sometimes refuse to do business with certain parties merely because it's not profitable due to bad credit, a higher-than-average chargeback rate, public relations, or other reasons. Even when the networks themselves are not actively antagonistic, they are vulnerable to political influence which may take the decision out of their hands.

Where trust is feasible transactions can be settled cheaply in separate records and not on the blockchain itself. The Lightning network is one such protocol; support for inter-account transfers on the same exchange is another. However, it's good that the trustless option exists for the cases where trust would not be justified.

[whywhywhywhy]

>To reduce the carbon footprint of a user playing RDR2, you either need newer more energy efficient hardware, or you need to alter the experience the game provides to make it less computationally expensive.

Or add extra tax on those who play video games to cover the carbon impact or ban high powered GPUs so they can't even cause that impact anyway, keep all gaming at low end mobile device processor levels.

It's all still code running over the same circuits whether it's being used to verify crypto or let people pretend to be a cowboy. If crypto is taxed more for it's impact then so should video games and maybe things like Marvel movies for the impact of their CGI rendering.

or does the argument of environmental impact go out of the window when its Rockstar and Disney making money from running processors full blast rather than some nobody getting rich from crypto.