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Comment by steelstraw | Hacker News Reader

Those who live under corrupt regimes and/or hyperinflation have a different view. Furthermore, one could say the frames you're rendering for Netflix or Call of Duty is proof of waste.

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These arguments are getting old and tiring.

How much crypto is traded to avoid corrupt regimes and hyperinflation? 1%? 0.1%? There's probably a few zeroes in there.

Regarding Netflix, it's better for the environment than buying a blu-ray and blu-ray player or driving to the cinema. Can the same be said about crypto?

> How much crypto is traded to avoid corrupt regimes and hyperinflation? 1%? 0.1%?

You can't know, and that's the point.

You can leave a country carrying nothing but a seed phrase in your brain and with it all your wealth, if you need to. Just the fact that governments know that this can happen can change things.

I don't think governments care about this like they do about using foreign exchange to export wealth.

If you have a pile of Fakeistan dollarydoos you wish to convert into USD, spending those dollarydoos in Fakeistan on electricity to apparate some Bitcoin, then converting those Bitcoin into USD in the USA does not create a foreign claim on Fakeistani economic output. On the other hand, directly exchanging your dollarydoos with foreigners for USD does leave those foreigners holding a pile of dollarydoos, which does represent a claim on future Fakeistani economic output.

While I agree with the sentiment - as obviously crypto can sometimes be useful in that context - you're also talking about a tiny fraction of the human population where it's relevant in that way. It's a small fraction even within nations in those conditions.

How has Bitcoin saved Venezuela? Well it helped a small number of people in the country, sure. It obviously didn't fundamentally make any difference, and it's not going to anywhere else either. For the average person Bitcoin is not easier to acquire, use or manage than USD in locations such as Lebanon, Turkey or Venezuela.

Sure, but it's increasingly relevant the more we see governments and currencies fail. If the same thing happens in El Salvador, the people will be in a far better position than Venezuelans were. Or if it happens in the West. The USD is at risk of losing global reserve status, and it's inflating, and some (Jack at Square, for instance) are making the case that hyperinflation is coming for us too. With how unstable things are this point, I would at least entertain the possibility.

Are all these problems caused by the lack of a decentralized currency that requires burning crazy amounts of energy to maintain trustlessness? Even if everything burns away and anyone who is still worth a damn holds BTC, what has actually been solved?

Its... almost as if endless growth is a cancer on our society and psychology?

> furthermore, one could say the frames you're rendering for Netflix or Call of Duty is proof of waste

It certainly is in terms of being only for entertainment and no deeper use. However the amount of energy wasted here (let’s say 300W on a fairly high end machine) falls into the average area of energy spending per person, and thinks like driving or keeping unnecessary light bulbs on is same or worse. Crypto things however seem a whole other level of energy waste.

> Crypto things however seem a whole other level of energy waste.

According to the New York Times, Bitcoin uses a little less than half a percent of all the electricity consumed in the world [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...

Should this now be interpreted as „it’s a lot“ or „it isn’t a lot“, relative to the economical and social importance of bitcoin? How much does all watching of TV consume? Of all personal PC gaming? Of all cooking? Operating every theatre on the planet?

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