[vanusa]

All without any meaningful service costs

No we can't, because there's no way you can dismiss the climate costs (and the impact on energy prices and chip supply) as not meaningful.

It is this blue-sky pollyanna-ism among crypto advocates which generates much of the "hate" against it, btw.

[camjohnson26]

Those are externalities, not service costs. Hal Finney didn’t have to pay a dollar to keep the network running, the users pay all the costs, and the users are miners or accounts.

Nuclear bombs can be cheap and bad at the same time, the 2 things aren’t mutually exclusive. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement because it had externalities, then that’s short sighted.

[vanusa]

Those are externalities, not service costs.

In strict accounting terms, yes.

But in practical terms -- the cost offloading that is inherent to BTC is so blatant and direct that it barely qualifies as an "externality" (and only in an abstract, technical sense).

The gist of the GP comment was, in essence: "Isn't BTC nifty because it can do all these things, and it costs basically nothing to run." When in fact the exact opposite it true. And in fact there are still countless people running around trying to downplay its true cost.

If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement

I will accept that the bomb was "an engineering achievement". But I'm not going to get out my pom-poms try to lead the room in a cheer to the effect of: "The Bomb was an astounding engineering achievement that keeps the world safe for democracy, and at minimal service cost".

[camjohnson26]

I never said Bitcoin was good or bad, I said it was an engineering achievement. Crypto discussions are so toxic.

[vanusa]

An "astounding" achievement, you called it.

We get the achievement part. But the astounding part, no.