[divs1210]

Not sure why this is being downvoted.

BTC is not an ecological disaster - just like video games aren't ecological disasters.

Both use lots of energy and GPUs. One is decentralized hard money, the other is a source of entertainment.

[dmitriid]

> BTC is not an ecological disaster - just like video games aren't ecological disasters.

False equivalence.

[jude-]

How so? Videogames are no less useful than Bitcoin. Like, if all videogames disappeared tomorrow, humanity would fundamentally be all right.

[dmitriid]

> Videogames are no less useful than Bitcoin. Like, if all videogames disappeared tomorrow, humanity would fundamentally be all right.

1. What you said, when we normalize logic, is: videogames are just as useless as bitcoin. If videogames disappeared, humanity would be allright. Same goes for bitcoin.

I wonder if that is exactly waht you were going for.

2. Videogames are not useless. You could start with the fundamental need of humanity for games in general. Yes, if videogames disappeared, we would find other things to replace them with. I wonder if someone would then pop up and say something inane like "BTC is not an ecological disaster - just like Gaelic football [1] is not an ecological disaster."

Secondly, videogames are increasingly found to reduce stress. They are used to treat various patients [2]. They broach the subjects such as "games as new medium" and "games as art". They create vast online communities.

Bitcoin (and blockchains in general) laboriously appends entries to an append-only log using the power-equivalent of several countries at a speed of a paraplegic snail [3]. And in ten years it hasn't found a single niche where the same operations can't be done faster and more efficiently (and are usually already done faster and more efficiently).

[1] I jest, but this is a thing of beauty. Watch the entire video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEAbWrdB9XU

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688462/

[3] All-time high for bitcoin was 450k transactions per day: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions To do this, it requires more power than most countries in the world: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-power-consu...

Since we're speaking about videogames, in 2006 Eve Online had 150 million DB transactions per day. To do that, Eve Online needs something like 6 database servers: https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/tranquility-tech-3

Bitcoin would need the heat death of the universe to handle a comparable load.

[jude-]

> I wonder if that is exactly waht (sic) you were going for.

Yes, it was. If you agree that Bitcoin is just as useless as videogames, and agree that videogames are not useless, you must also agree that Bitcoin is not useless.

I personally have no use for videogames, but I don't deny that many people do. I do, however, have use for an extremely resilient distributed timestampping service that takes several countries' energy to disrupt (which is what Bitcoin's blockchain is -- a public timestampping service). Turns out many people do, since running it is profitable.

[CRConrad]

> If you agree that Bitcoin is just as useless as videogames, and agree that videogames are not useless, you must also agree that Bitcoin is not useless.

Seems you missed that he disagreed on the first part. At least I read his "and videogames are useful because of this, and this, and ..." as saying that "as opposed to Bitcoin, videogames are useful because ..."

And, TBH, I've seen no proof of that first part.

[dmitriid]

> you must also agree that Bitcoin is not useless.

Why must I?

> Turns out many people do, since running it is profitable.

Being profitable doesn't make it useful.

[jude-]

Whatever you say, bro. Whatever you say.