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Originally Posted by ShopCat
IMO your entire viewpoint on the subject is twisted in preconceived bias. I'm finding it hard to be blunt enough in this conversation, which is usually not an issue for me. You need to strip your view down and start over on this one, if you end up at the same place so be it but your reply was basically nonsensical.
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Ironically, I feel the same way regarding your evangelicalism with respect to the current set of cryptocurrencies. This closely echoes the one-sided viewpoints that are discussed on the reddit forums (good luck having a balanced conversation there). Crypto fanboys are blind to all of the obvious problems, high transaction costs, downsides, and faults of the current set of crypto currencies. In my opinion, these cryptos are version 1.0.0 and as such, will most likely go the way of Netscape Navigator and MySpace once the next version (like Facebook and Google Chrome) comes along. I'm not anti-crypto at all. I'm anti-crypto version 1.0.0, which is an "environmental scourge on the planet". I'm looking forward to the 2.0 version (perhaps the next version of Etherium) that will hopefully solve a bunch of these issues.
According to the Intelligencer:
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The more widely accepted view at the moment is that bitcoin is an environmental scourge. There is no question that the network requires a lot of energy to function: Its core appeal is security, and the network is secured by millions of super-powerful computers constantly competing to solve difficult math problems. Those computers require huge amounts of electricity. According to the IEA, bitcoin mining consumed 50 to 70 terawatt hours in 2019 — roughly as much as a small wealthy nation like Switzerland, which consumes some 63 terawatt hours annually. But it gets worse: The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a metric tracked at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, indicates that the total could surge to more than 130 terawatt hours this year if miners continue at their current rate. By comparison, companies like Microsoft and Google used 10 and 12 terawatt hours of electricity last year; worldwide, data centers (excluding cryptominers) consumed 250 terawatt hours, according to data compiled by Eric Masanet, who leads Northwestern University’s Energy and Resource Systems Analysis Laboratory. Electricity consumption is, most of the time and in most of the world, strongly correlated with carbon emissions, as we still tend to get our energy from burning hydrocarbons. That is certainly true at a national level in China, which burns more coal than any other country. It is also where most bitcoin mining takes place.
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This indeed is an insane environmental mess due to a "currency" that a small number of crooks, hackers, drug dealers and human traffickers use. The rest of the users are simply speculators.
Eh, maybe I'll be wrong, and you'll be laughing at me as you drive by in your Lamborghini bought by proceeds from your crypto gains. But I will happily wave back, knowing that I didn't contribute to destroying the planet just to make a buck.
-Wayne