| > Opportunity cost of having lots of smart people focusing on cryptocurrency who could have been researching medicine, clean energy, or space tech It's doubtful many of those smart and obsessed enough to contribute to medicine, clean or space tech would be moved. What we would have seen is the same smart decentralized consensus obsessed people still working on formal proof systems, distributed consensus algorithms robust to adversaries, precursors to the vile offspring and post-capitalist or post-communist economies. It's interesting that a lot of people lodge similar claims as you have, against crewed space missions even though you count it as having value. > Those factories could be making other products that directly benefit peoples' lives. Things were like this before cryptocurrencies and what you say is already possible despite cryptocurrencies but still does not happen. You might be interested in [Dives, Lazarus, and Alice](http://bactra.org/weblog/841.html). > We currently have a shortage of electronics because of the pandemic. Robustness sacrificed at the alter of efficiency means extra vulnerable to shocks and surprises. > Coal Powerplants Countries with or without PoW mining presence are still building coal fired and other CO2 generating powerplants. The world has not been smart about moving to clean tech fast enough. |