[syntheweave]

There's quite a big elephant underneath this argument, which is the "zero utility in crypto" assumption. If utility exists then the question of energy use and externality is simply a matter of cost/benefit like everything else society does with resources.

And then you go back to why the stuff was invented, and it was for exactly the thing that you're dismissing, which is to evade authorities and enhance privacy through cryptography. That is the utility Satoshi identified, and it drove initial adoption, and continues to be pursued through privacy coins. A zero utility stance amounts to "Satoshi had no justifications". The rest is negotiation of the price.

Everything after that - copycat coins, distributed computation on Ethereum, NFTs and so on - is "what else can we do with this stuff", which is actually a much more challenging problem because it suggests no particular specification, hence the entire space is in the midst of a random walk in which features are developed with few concepts grounding our ability to determine whether they do the things we're imagining they do. The scams have a playground, but that's not actually different from capitalism in other times and places.

[e28eta]

> There's quite a big elephant underneath this argument, which is the "zero utility in crypto" assumption. If utility exists then the question of energy use and externality is simply a matter of cost/benefit like everything else society does with resources. And then you go back to why the stuff was invented, and it was for exactly the thing that you're dismissing, which is to evade authorities and enhance privacy through cryptography.

Passing laws and then prosecuting offenders is a major way that society codifies what costs are acceptable and what’s unacceptable.

If you believe that offering an bypass around that control has utility (corrupt regimes, whatever), I don’t think it’s fair to handwave the really sticky part: how does society add controls so that we don’t destroy the planet through runaway energy consumption, or end up with the smartest, most ruthless, and least ethical folks controlling all the resources.

[beaconstudios]

I'm aware that there is utility in crypto in being ungovernable (though ideologically I only partially agree with that utility - I think tax evasion is immoral under the current system, for instance) but I'm saying the cost/benefit weighs massively in the cost side: not only the positive feedback loop of energy consumption, but the fraud, the wasting of skilled engineers' time building ever more elaborate scams, the empowerment of ancap types like Buterin, the enabling of actual immoral crime like ransome ward, just so so many negative utilities. Proponents don't even invest what I consider the actual upsides like remittance or harm reduction in buying drugs - they invest in get rich quick schemes. That should tell you where their priorities lie.