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Comment by originalvichy | Hacker News Reader

How can it be interpreted as misinformation if the information is pretty solidly based? Everyone is looking for low hanging fruit in the race to slow down the climate disaster and it’s an easy target.

I’m glad online currencies exist as a technology but I’m not glad an energy intensive one is currently #1 when at the same time the entire tech is taken over by investors/speculators instead of users.

And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. It’s far from a small little thing to not care about.

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> And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level.

Compare for example with MGM's properties in Las Vegas which they claim consume 171 MW. That's not quite as much as Bitcoin, but it's still higher than 65 of the countries listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

So it's actually pretty easy to surpass the usage of "an entire country". And that to me seems like a much more useless waste than Bitcoin, which has significant uses besides entertainment

To rephrase that, Bitcoin uses more energy that all of MGM's properties in Las Vegas.

Yes, which seems reasonable to me. It would be more interesting if a global monetary system could use less than a bunch of casinos. (And maybe that will even happen with the adoption of proof-of-stake)

I don't have any of the calculations, but I would argue that we probably have one and it is the fiat global monetary system.

If bitcoin was a proof of stake and was the global monetary system I would have to re-think my opinions - at the moment it just seems like a cross between the worst aspects of Wall Street, the cookie clicker game, and the AI Paperclip Maximiser problem.

I would caution you to make your own judgements with such a hyped technology as cryptocurrencies. Everyone tends to have strong opinions about the way it "seems", both positive and negative.

I guess misinformation isn't the right term. It's not _wrong_, it just feels like it gets a disproportionate amount of attention.

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