[notch656a]

>Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for basically no benefit except pure money wonkery, which is no benefit at all. It's a net negative in every possible way.

Well I disagree here. It provides benefit for many people. The example I continually use for me personally is buying precious metals with <30 min clearing without paying credit card fees (and I really hate funding credit card companies anyway). But people in Argentina also using it for reasons just to have efficient way of receiving dollar for free-lance work.

I think we're in agreement we would do well to be as efficient as we can with our resources. It would be great to find a way to eliminate externalities of energy production/consumption.

[kaba0]

But those rules/fees are there for a reason. You (and me also) may not agree with those reasons, but still you are just circumventing a law made through a democratic process.

[notch656a]

What law am I circumventing when I take my legally acquired, W-2 reported salary and buy litecoin and trade it for bullion from APMEX?

[beaconstudios]

Are you buying precious metals in the abstract, commodities market sense or are you manufacturing? Because if its the former, I still don't think that's a net positive.

I do think it has some small benefits like transferring money where there are no other options. But the vast majority of the network's use is in purely financial use and justified by HODLers and libertarian types. Its existence is largely a downside on its own even without the huge energy costs.

[notch656a]

>Are you buying precious metals in the abstract, commodities market sense or are you manufacturing? Because if its the former, I still don't think that's a net positive.

Y'all told me crypto was bad and now I'm bad for dumping crypto to buy precious metals? The litecoin transaction I do uses $0.02 of electricity. $0.02. Ever left a lightbulb on longer than you should have? Spent $0.02 in gas to go to the bank to get fiat? Just can't win. I don't really like holding dollars as the government constantly inflates them, and I see them as part of a system that bombs innocent children abroad and locks up foreign nationals without even a trial. I see it as irresponsible not to store emergency wealth _somewhere_. I'm committed to not become a public charge and I wouldn't resort to begging from family unless there were no other choice and even then I'd probably rather just starve

[tromp]

> The litecoin transaction I do uses $0.02 of electricity. $0.02.

Litecoin processes about 100k txs a day and miners make about 1M$ per day. So that comes to about 10$ in electricity per tx if we assume miners break even and ignore hardware depreciation. While this overestimates electricity costs, it's not off by orders of magnitude. This is the way that people attribute bitcoin's electricity costs to transactions.

Your $0.02 is presumably just your tx fee.

[notch656a]

The marginal cost of the transaction is very close to the transaction fee. The block was going to be mined with or without my transaction. So no it definitely did not add $10 in electricity cost to add my transaction to the chain.

[beaconstudios]

Well, it's pretty simple really - I'm not a big fan of financialisation. I think it's done some pretty serious harm to the world - even many libertarians, simple minded though they may be, have the good sense to point out that wall street is bad. Now I don't really blame you personally for day trading or buying gold as a store of value or whatever, but it isn't helping your argument that bitcoin is doing anything good if it is literally just "wall street but with massive energy costs, less regulation, and full of even more scammers and financially illiterate".

[notch656a]

Well what is your solution for the common man TODAY then, to do in the meantime before all your dreams of a more equitable or reasonable society come true? You don't seem to like wall street so stocks are out. You've bashed precious metals as not being a net positive. Crypto is out because it makes it makes smoky the bear cry. Dollars have reached a ~7% inflation on CPI and even worst inflation against assets. Most bond yields aren't even reaching inflation rate. Just what the hell am I supposed to do? When will you stop thinking of me as a sinner for doing something, anything, to keep some safety for the wellbeing of my family? Would you think better of me if I shorted USD by taking out a loan and over-extending the hell out of myself to buy property instead? (Nope, can't do that last one because that's financialization.)

Are you gonna be there to personally bail out my whole family if we lose our jobs? Can you withstand that burden? Maybe that makes me evil. At least I don't stay awake at night wondering if I can buy more diapers and milk if I get axed at work tomorrow.

>Well, it's pretty simple really - I'm not a big fan of financialisation.

How do you see as buying precious metals with proceeds of labor being financialization? Do you think the $0.02 financial service cost from the transaction as really being larger than the financial cost of if I had went to the bank and got a big pile of cash, or if I had used a credit card? No, the "financialization" has lessened. The wikipedia article I read states it's a period where debt-to-equity ratios increase and financial services account for increasing share of national income. Explain how buying precious metals without debt is financialization. I can't even get a loan against personal custody of precious metals, if anything it _decreases_ my access to "financialization."

>bitcoin is doing anything good if it is literally just "wall street but with massive energy costs, less regulation, and full of even more scammers and financially illiterate".

I don't think that's the advantage of bitcoin, even if you describe it that way. The advantage of bitcoin is decentralization and lack of centralized trust -- packaged into electronic form.

[beaconstudios]

Once again, I don't blame you at all for engaging in investment or speculation or whatever. I'm not concerned with individual action, I'm concerned with the systems that drive those actions. If bitcoin didn't exist you'd presumably be doing something else to feed your family, so the question in my mind is this:

- what real world utility is realised by the introduction of a new system?

- what real world cost is realised?

- how does it shape people's behaviour?

Note that none of these is a criticism of the individuals engaging with the system. It's about the impact of the system itself. Now from where I stand this is how bitcoin plays out:

- negative utility: high electricity and CO2 cost

- negative utility: labour does not provide material benefit (financialised)

- negative behaviour: increased cultural propagation of scamming, speculation and other results of financialisation

- mixed behaviour: cultural hub of libertarianism

- mixed utility: provides a space for unregulated financial transactions. Negative: scams, blackmail, other financial crimes. Positive: paying financially isolated and unbanked people. Mixed: purchase of contraband.

Which is to say, the ratio of positive to negative, especially weighting the impact of increased CO2 emissions (which is a potentially existential threat in the medium term and a mere catastrophic threat in the short term), is pretty shockingly bad.

[notch656a]

While your qualitative descriptions of utility and assessments I mostly find roughly accurate (pure opinion on both our part, and I will nitpick and say it's great when benefit-to-labor ratio is high), the quantitative balance is subjecive opinion. You've simply analyzed and decided the ratio is poor. I've looked at it and find the opinion the ratio is excellent. But it's true crypto doesn't care either way and is exceedingly difficult to squash. Ultimately I think it is on the power producers and consumers to achieve how to eliminate externality associated with electricity use; playing whack-a-mole with whatever people use their electricity on (AI, crypto, video games, whatever) is just patching the issue.

And thus brings us to the reason why crypto is an ever popular debate on HN. At the end of the day even if you find crypto morally bad, there's no universal shock to the conscious for using crypto like there would be for murder/rape/theft. Some see crypto as sinner and other see it as saint. You seem to acknowledge a little of everything but weigh different factors differently than others. At the end of the day given the impossibility of banning crypto and the number of people on both sides, I just don't see it going away without a superior replacement filling the spot. For me this is a great thing, but for many it's going to be a point of contention and outrage for a long time. I will go one respecting the choice for some not to use it and hopefully others will peacefully implore us to stop if they find it wrong, but I think it's going to take violence and an oppressive enforcement mechanism to force me and many others to stop. Good luck.