[aresant]

If you want to get a read on the "Reduce your carbon footprint" camp's success, check out the top selling vehicle in America (1)

Treating this as a "crypto problem" and not a general energy / fuels problem does almost nothing but sell clicks / views / newspapers.

Trying to contribute here though on where we really are in crypto and angles of attack for discussion, vs an alarmist view:

1) BTC maximalists don't care and will argue to the teeth that the energy costs are baked into the economic value of the network. From a purely market argument they're not wrong here. BTCs energy use is "worth it" to a lot of people who truly believe BTC to be a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a vote for decentralization.

2) Short term companies like Crusoe Energy are working on solutions to onboard "trapped" energy stores to reduce the carbon footprint. The most likely outcome of these efforts is likely not an overall reduced carbon footprint given the continued growth and interest in the overall market. (2)

3) Proof of Stake is much more efficient than Proof of Work (3) but it is unlikely that BTC moves in that direction short term. Or perhaps ever.

(1) https://www.torquenews.com/9539/ford-f-150-continues-its-sal...

(2) https://www.crusoeenergy.com/

(3) https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...

[aresant]

I'm not sure what I'm writing above that isn't objective

I would love to hear responses vs downvotes to the floor

Do you think that we can regulate crypto into lower energy use?

Change hearts and minds?

[jessaustin]

Objectivity or its lack has very little to do with downvotes on bitcoin threads. These bring out all the would-be authoritarians to impose their will on HN posts in a way they can't impose it on crypto in the real world.

[aresant]

Thank you.

I get the lightning rod component of these threads.

But head-in-the-sand won't get us anywhere.

I've been on HN looks at profile for 13 years now, not going to register a complaint now but makes me sad to have no discourse.

[randomhodler84]

This. I strongly feel that anyone anti-BTC at this point is basically a state boot licker who loves to push for authoritarian policies. It was designed exactly to ignore these authoritarians. Honey badger doesn’t give a shit.

[burnished]

The network is designed to consume all available resources until it achieves financial equilibrium. It produces junk computations and heat. It does this very well. I'm glad its helped some people, but you can talk about 'BTC maximalists' all you like it still doesn't address that bitcoin is fundamentally a huge resource sink.

[randomhodler84]

PoS is more energy efficient, but so is an xls running on a single desktop. The argument is if PoS can replace the security model of PoW. I have been arguing for a long time now it can’t, in fact, those pushing us towards PoS are throwing away everything we have gained in decentralization and censorship resistance with PoW/Bitcoin.