Cryptocurrency and NFTs Are Evil | Hacker News Reader

Cryptocurrency and NFTs Are Evil

jhamby.medium.com

9 pointsuptown11 comments

There is no argument here, only ranting. I'm not even sure if I agree or disagree with the sentiment. It's so completely devoid of substantive reasoning I can't tell one way or another.

I agree it was a rant, not going to read it again. I am curious if you would agree with this argument:

1. Climate change is very bad and should be avoided at all costs.

2. Atmospheric CO2 causes Climate change.

3. Most electricity that is generated, releases CO2 into the atmosphere.

4. Crypto currencies in their current proof of work form, use an excessive amount of electricity.

5. Therefore crypto currencies cause Climate change and should be avoided at all costs.

If you need proof that cryptocurrencies are evil, here's Tim May, one of the idiological grand-pappies of bitcoin writing about one possible use for cryptocurrency in the Cyphernomicon:

    begin quote

16.10.4. Will I be sad if anonymous methods allow untraceable markets for assassinations? It depends. In many cases, people deserve death--those who have escaped justice, those who have broken solemn commitments, etc. Gun grabbing politicians, for example should be killed out of hand. Anonymous rodent removal services will be a tool of liberty. The BATF agents who murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son should be shot. If the courts won't do it, a market for hits will do it. - (Imagine for a moment an "anonymous fund" to collect the money for such a hit. Interesting possibilities.) - "Crypto Star Chambers," or what might be called "digilantes," may be formed on-line, and untraceably, to mete out justice to those let off on technicalities. Not altogether a bad thing.

    end quote

If I believed in hell, I'd wish that Tim May was rotting in it.

If crypto increases energy demand and new energy capex that is most efficient is as green energy, then you are all wrong and crypto is good for the environment.

Not to mention that it directly couples energy and monetary value

This article is just bad.

There is nothing wrong with proof of work. It is useful. People also use Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies for useful things. Energy demands are nothing compared to other useful human activities.

Also, energy consumption for Bitcoin rarely has other externalities.

Livestock based diet is another collective human activity that wastes enormous amounts of energy, creates disastrous amounts of pollution (water, air, ocean...).

Proof of work, compared to that is really insignificant.

Cryptocurrencies are great. They created a wave of new research for interesting protocols. Confidential transactions (with addresses and amounts encrypted and not public, but still on the chain) are a great invention. A lot of cryptography tricks were discovered. Papers are appearing that support offline transactions, some in the future might get rid of the blockchain completely.

I'd rather humans spend time playing with cryptocurrencies than thinking new and efficient ways to raise and kill livestock while periodically ignoring externalities.

Energy consumption itself has externalities, so it’s a bit odd to say Bitcoin rarely has any.

Well, I'm pretty sure Bitcoin does not have livestock waste, air pollution and similar impact compared to the energy use of Argentina. So comparing Argentina and Bitcoin with just energy use is a bit odd to me too.

Anybody mining Bitcoin in my region of the US is likely using coal power. That doesn’t have air pollution? The components that go into the hardware don’t have their own externalities?

Yes, livestock has real problems, but that doesn’t negate the negatives of other things. Both things can be bad for the planet.

But let's "profile" how bad they are. Comparing Bitcoin to Argentina is not good profiling.

Also, optimizing Bitcoin probably makes less sense than optimizing some of the other offenders in energy use and pollution.

Why are we discussing the scope of "bad for the planet" if we aren't then "profiling" the effect correctly.

Me, traveling to work on a bike probably is probably bad for the planet but there are levels to it.

We went from "crypto is giving control to THE PEOPLE!!!" to "crypto is destroying THE PLANET!!!" pretty quickly.

I agree with the article though.

tl;dr Uninformed rant about the evils of blockchain and crypto-related endeavors

No nuanced analysis of an emergent technology and its growing pains and no mention at all of the benefits of decentralization.

Oh, and the author also fails to point out that there are NFTs which go beyond simply representing ownership. They are used for unlocking premium content, making game assets portable across games, acting as a proxy for real-world assets and many other use cases not yet as high profile as art and sports NFTs.

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