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by Andrew_nenakhov 1811 days ago
Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering.

If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms.

As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.
1 comments
user-the-name 1811 days ago
0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining.

If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.

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Andrew_nenakhov 1811 days ago
Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.
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user-the-name 1811 days ago
There is a whole world of difference between heating homes across the planet, and running a network that can do 7 transactions a second.

A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world.

It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.

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Andrew_nenakhov 1811 days ago
You are clearly missing the point of why it uses so much energy. It is the price of security, decentralisation and permissionlessness.

As for "7 transactions per second", sure, 7 on-chain transactions with the current block size. You don't need them for things like buying a cup of coffee. So this FUD is somewhat outdated.

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user-the-name 1811 days ago
Yeah, it's the price of that.

And that price is ridiculously, stupendously high. Much, much, much too high. It is in no way worth that price.

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Andrew_nenakhov 1810 days ago
Maybe, for you. Probably you're lucky to live in a country that doesn't abuse its financial system. But others pay this price gladly, because bitcoin provides clear and undisputable value for them.
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