[isoprophlex]

But it is pretend internet money! These people are trading "a proof of work backed cryptocurrency", pretend internet money. It is indeed, by convention, worth real dollars, but there's no underlying thing except bullshit.

It could have been a sqlite db file on a raspberry pi somewhere, keeping track of digital jars of goat semen that people then pay real dollars for. But no, instead we're wasting one Australia worth of electricity on Bitcoin.

[throwup238]

> digital jars of goat semen

That is... oddly specific.

[randomNumber7]

If you use a sql db file you would need a trusted party.

Dollar is also just paper, there is no underlying thing except trusting the united states.

Im not arguing its worth the amount of energy, but its not as dumb as you pretend it is

[jcranmer]

Even in the theoretically trustless world of cryptocurrency, you still need to trust that if you give 1USD to someone in exchange for $1 worth of Bitcoin, they will actually give you that $1 worth of Bitcoin, and vice versa. And the history of cryptocurrency seems to indicate that virtually everybody who has ever occupied that role for cryptocurrency is not worthy of that amount of trust.