[cyphertruck]

There are so many false premises here that it’s not worth listing them.

But if the power in the area is coming from coal then every use of that power is equally coal based.

Hair dryers use more power than bitcoin mining, ban them first.

The attempt to demonize certain uses of power is just the attempt to demonize certain people in order to oppress them.

[kibwen]

The problem is not bitcoin's energy usage per se, the problem is that proof-of-work is a feedback loop where the more one person mines, the more everyone else needs to mine to keep up. In other words, the mere existence of proof-of-work puts a floor on the price of energy; in the presence of proof-of-work it is impossible for us as a society to ever have energy that is "too cheap to meter", because when the price of energy falls below the production price of bitcoin it economically incentivizes more miners. It's self-fulfilling conspicuous consumption for the electronic age.

In contrast, one person blow-drying their hair does not create a feedback loop of more people blow-drying their hair.

[SparkyMcUnicorn]

> the mere existence of proof-of-work puts a floor on the price of energy

I thought this was backwards, or maybe there's a balance between the two? I assumed that the price of energy acts as a soft floor for the price of bitcoin. Mining pauses when it's unprofitable, or the cost difference is eaten in speculation. The hash rate graphs appear to align with this.

[microtherion]

Yes, hash rates are sensitive to the price of energy. But the price of bitcoin is not inherently sensitive to the hash rate. The network adjusts the difficulty to ensure a constant production rate of bitcoin, so supply is not dependent on the hash rate, and miners do not buy bitcoin, so there is no reason for demand to be dependent on it.

So for any given bitcoin price, rational miners will hash until their cost to mine a bitcoin exceeds its price. If energy is cheap, miners will use more of it, if it's expensive, they will use less.

[zekrioca]

Don’t forget the mining efficiency improvements are reaching their limits, regardless if they keep creating new ASIC for it.

[usea]

All energy use is bad for everyone. The question is how much utility is gained from that use, and does that utility outweigh the downsides of consuming the energy.

Criticizing uses of energy based on their cost and utility isn't persecution or oppression of cryptocurrency people.

It's not clear to me that hairdryers are worth it for society.

[rollcat]

> It's not clear to me that hairdryers are worth it for society.

They do make long hair look fabulous, which in my opinion is much better value than crypto.

[zekrioca]

Couldn’t agree more.

[spandextwins]

You hit the nail on the head. In today’s society the playbook is to find something, get some kind of science to write some lengthy research to justify the point, whether correct or not, it doesn’t matter. Then it’s either think of the children, the environment, race or sex. Once you have the critical mass of online bullies you can make it a political statement and leverage it for votes. Remember, don’t actually solve the perceived problem, that would waste all that efforts because you wouldn’t have the votes. Rinse and repeat.

[Aaronstotle]

A hair dryer use a high burst of energy to dry someone's hair, and this is a short amount of time.

Bitcoin miners run at high energy costs 24/7 to make the operator more money.

[vkou]

Hair dryers are far more socially useful than all the cryptoshit we've seen over the past 14 years.

For one, I've yet to see a hairdryer be a critical component of a large-scale swindle.

[crtified]

I realise I'm getting into the 3-level-deep silly semantics of a comparison I don't really care about here (and certainly have no interest in defending that which you poetically label 'cryptoshit'), but if we're going to play Bastardly Inventions comparisons, hairdryers have apparently killed quite a few people over the decades - the cause of many a tragic house fire. Google "hairdryer fire" and you'll be scrolling a looong time.

And how many million$ of cryptoswindle funds would the family of each victim pay, in theory, if they could have their loved one back? How would that overall balance sheet conclude?

[microtherion]

I suspect con men pay above average attention to their hair (as well as other aspects of their appearance).

[vkou]

They also probably eat food, but no reasonable person would accuse bologna of having any part of import in your run-of-the-mill fraud.