Comment by throwaway20875 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway20875 | Hacker News Reader

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>This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all!

Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Read it.

"As an alternative to intervening in emergent cryptocurrency markets through prices (e.g., taxation) or outright restricting their development, there may be a role for government investment into R&D that focuses on designing mining puzzles that greatly reduce energy consumption (and thus production costs) while still allowing for secure validation of anonymous transactions. Fully vetting and encouraging such currency alternatives might retain the libertarian social benefits of the blockchain [35] while making “the last Bitcoin” irrelevant. Although there will still be private benefits captured from mining under possible low-energy design alternatives, as illustrated here there would be significant public good benefits (reduced cryptodamages) to justify such government investments into R&D. Importantly, such investments in R&D are not mutually exclusive with taxing to internalize cryptodamages, and may also come with the potential to generate spin-off benefits from blockchain technology more generally."

I did read it, before I made "numerous comments."

Papers discuss the implications and applications of their work. That discussion is not the work itself; it is meant to give a starting point for fitting the work with other research or doing new research that builds on the work. Thus, the authors "close by sharing our brief thoughts on policy implications of recognizing cryptodamages." That section mentions a wide range of policy implications—several paragraphs that you didn't bother quoting—without advocating for anything in particular beyond reducing harm.

Frankly, that leaves it sounding like what you're really bothered by is that the paper points out that there is harm, and advocates for reducing it. And if that's the real problem—that you don't like it when someone speaks up and says hey, this has quantifiable downsides—just be honest about it.

> That section mentions a wide range of policy implications—several paragraphs that you didn't bother quoting—without advocating for anything in particular beyond reducing harm.

Yes but that is still propagating the unsubstantiated view that cryptocurrency mining is an important cause of societal harm worthy of mitigation/regulation. There is no comparison to other similar or bigger economic activities, no mention of the fact that the pollution happens at power plants and is under direct control of the power plant owners, not miners. It is inordinately focused on societal harms of cryptocurrency mining, it ignores the benefits beyond mining profit(which is uncertain but non-zero and hard to quantify in dollars). Limitation of the paper narrative to such a narrow topic shows bias.

Not doing what you'd personally prefer isn't a bias. Tackling a problem at several levels is perfectly legitimate; it's just that a paper about clean power generation would be a totally different paper.

It's a single paper. One piece of information that's small enough to be digested and connected with other work. And frankly, if the result had been that each $1 created 1¢ of costs, you'd be celebrating it. Your only real criticism here is that you don't like the result.

If you're so concerned about the root cause of power generation, go focus on solving that problem.

>If you're so concerned about the root cause of power generation, go focus on solving that problem.

So ignore the root cause altogether, lol. And when we've banned crypto mining and accrued even worse social costs as a result, we'll rinse and repeat this process with the next ".*damage" power consumer. Totally sane!

The irony of this whole chain is that the paper itself actually acknowledges this other variable (that y'all are pretending is the only variable) directly:

> There is considerable evidence of concentration of mining operations in particular locations, typically where reliable electricity is cheaply available, though, precise data are lacking (e.g., [15], [6]). In the US, perhaps the most well-known concentration is the Mid-Columbia Basin area in central and eastern Washington State, where cheap electricity is produced by hydropower along the Columbia River [4], [6], however, mining in other US locations also occurs (see [11] and news references in [23], [24], and [25]).

> emissions rates per kWh will differ substantially given underlying differences in how power is produced—i.e., China relies extensively on coal power (>60% of electricity generation) while the US is more balanced (32% natural gas, 30% coal, 20% nuclear, etc.).

Saying they ignore this is just a lie. Criticize the paper, by all means, but this simply isn't a hit piece. It's careful in stating exactly what it can commit to, and it reasonably tries to explain how that fits into the bigger picture.

>banned crypto mining and accrued even worse social costs

Could you describe what social costs we'll have by banning crypto mining?

Banning anything that's already widespread implies making a part of the population into criminals. With that comes the costs of enforcement and of government's authority (which is finite). Consider too that crypto is, often, a response by many to perceived policy for fiat.

I'm sure there is a way to turn off phase out Bitcoin without making thousands of people criminals.

The planet is burning, the cost of enforcement will be worth it.

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