Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated • Hacker News Board

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#131

Post by Bokkuren » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #115

chroem- wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. What is this even supposed to mean? Strict state controls on economic activity are more within the realm of authoritarian regimes, rather than democracies.

Democracies depends on transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Cyrptocurrencies are fundementally more anarchic than democratic.

Hmm... They are anarchic in theory but in practice there's a strong hierarchy - few rich guys control the majority of coins.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#132

Post by asdff » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #59

asdff wrote: post #7

Another industry in need of carbon taxes. Stuff like bitcoin would be a lot more palatable if its users paid for the externalities they saddle upon everyone else from their carbon usage.

Bitcoin is just a convenient scapegoat for people to hate on and feel like they have the moral high ground, all while they eat a high meat diet, drive single occupant cars daily, take regular domestic flights and occasional international flights, and live in McMansions with AC 6 months out of the year. Our entire lifestyles in the developed world are horrifically carbon heavy. Beating up on things like bitcoin withou…

So what if other industries are also polluting? That's not a great excuse. Tax it all imo. Once you have a mechanism to quantify and tax carbon usage it wouldn't be hard to expand it to other industries. In the mean time airline tickets will be costly and within a couple of years you will see freight operators laying down electrified double track along their right of ways in order to capture demand for regional passenger transit at a lower price. The market will reshape to capture the most profit it can given the regulatory environment that it resides in. This is the point of these taxes, you force paradigm shifts that ultimately benefit the species as a whole at the cost of perhaps only a few quarters of poor profits for major corporations.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#133

Post by philwelch » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #3

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency. Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One wa…

> The fundamental political issue with cryptocurrency is now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression.

If you're worried about currency falling under the control of an unaccountable group of oligarchs who can't easily be removed, I have some bad news for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Gover...

The most traditional means of removing oligarchs is for an angry mob to murder them and their entire families. Does cryptocurrency prevent that? Maybe if you don't know who the oligarchs are. But cryptocurrency also doesn't really require that, either. A currency is only valuable when enough people believe that it is valuable. If there's an actual problem with a particular coin, people can switch coins--which they can't with fiat.

Oligarchs, or at least powerful elites, are more or less a human universal in cultures of a sufficient size and complexity. The main difference with democracy is that democracy makes it far easier to gain power through demagoguery and propaganda.

> Even if what I'm saying doesn't come to be, at a minimum you've introduced yet another layer to our financial systems for no benefit - our current system isn't here by accident. It's here due to learnings - learnings about human nature, markets, and so forth.

To what ends?

Among other things, fiat currency makes individual human beings more governable. Cryptocurrency makes individual human beings less governable. The more governable the private individual becomes, the easier it becomes for an oligarchy to oppress him.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#134

Post by chroem- » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #115

chroem- wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. What is this even supposed to mean? Strict state controls on economic activity are more within the realm of authoritarian regimes, rather than democracies.

Democracies depends on transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Cyrptocurrencies are fundementally more anarchic than democratic.

Democracy is primarily about representation and individual freedom. "Rule of law" is one of the main selling points of authoritarian ideologies. Are you sure you didn't drop a minus sign somewhere?

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#135

Post by JofArnold » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #4

xrd wrote: post #2

I still think war and oil are dirtier and don't see a way to wean ourselves off that consumption and impact. I do see that cryptocurrencies are moving toward energy reduction through things like proof of stake and L2s. https://susanfsu.medium.com/think-btc-is-a-dirty-business-co...

HERE IS THE ARTICLE YOU CAN SEND TO PEOPLE WHEN THEY SAY “BUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WITH CRYPTOART WILL BE SOLVED SOON, RIGHT?” https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issue... The promise of "proof of stake eventually" is just greenwashing.

There's a lot of issues with that article but to pick on one as you pulled it out specifically:

PoS is here, has been for years and is extremely successful; Polygon side-chain for instance already has surpassed main net in terms of active addresses. Then there's L2 and PoS L1s like Tezos...

The meme of "when PoS?!" died in 2021.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#136

Post by skinnyasianboi » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

rblion wrote: post #76

The carbon footprint is the bottleneck for crypto. How can it scale without accelerating further ecological collapse? New coins will come along with greenwash in their rhetoric but ultimately you have to trust the science. It's funny how everyone trusts the science when it supports their worldview and ignore it when it doesn't.

Science? Cardano published 100+ scientific papers https://iohk.io/en/research/library if you have time check out the ones about Ouroboros (proof of stake)

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#137

Post by endisneigh » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

reedjosh wrote: post #95

endisneigh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - inflation hits the poorest classes the hardest re: devaluing their largely all-cash savings, and they have no accountability measures to change that. who will they call, the fed? their senators who approved the fed chair? Inflation generally hurts the middle-class the most. Poor people generally don't have savings and are debtors. Debtors benefit from inflation. Cryptocurrency being open source isn't really relev…

> Inflation generally hurts the middle-class the most. The middle class typically has a mortgage and student loan debt for which inflation benefits them. The closer you are to the spiket, the more debt based inflation benefits you. The poor do lose the most.

You're not wrong, the the middle class has far more savings than the poorest quartile. Is it this you disagree with?

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#138

Post by zaybqp » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

fuddle wrote: post #49

I'd be in favour of banning corporations from using fossil fuels by to mine POW cryptocurrencies before it gets worse in the future.

It is too late. There are now strong political support for cryptocurrency in the US including members of Congress. Extrapolating the current growth of crypto energy usage gives me chills. This might be the Great Filter for us.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#139

Post by thehappypm » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #3

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency. Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One wa…

Our democratic leaders killed the gold standard. We decided gold wasn't the best currency instrument. A decentralized currency system doesn't have such democratic flexibility.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#140

Post by philwelch » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

DantesKite wrote: post #112

endisneigh wrote: post #3

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency. Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One wa…

Agreed. I like to make this joke often: What's the difference between communism and bitcoin? Communism has actually been tried in practice.

With bitcoin, you can get things the government doesn't want you to have. With communism, you can't even get things the government does want you to have.