[wizeman]

> Not necessarily. The energy generated may be used for purposes such as heating people’s homes, or industrial processes essential for creating medicine, operating schools and hospitals etc.

... or securing a global, permissionless, decentralized, cryptography-based monetary system which cannot be debased or otherwise corrupted by the government-de-jour, including those who oppress their people.

> You can see how this is very different from using the energy simply to operate an online gambling operation or to perpetrate large scale securities fraud.

Indeed, I can see that. Fortunately, miners aren't in either of those businesses.

But since we're deciding who gets or doesn't get to use energy, let's also ban casinos, online gambling (like you said), heck.. anything that might waste energy or use it for things that we don't like (even though other people might like it or even need it).

Instead of, you know, letting the market decide who can or cannot use energy based on what provides the most value for their use of it.

[zen21]

> cannot be debased or otherwise corrupted by the government-de-jour

It doesn’t seem to need the government to corrupt it.