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Comment by skyfaller | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately this isn't quite accurate, cryptocurrency support is baked in:

> Payments Built In

> As your app grows beyond the hobby phase, Holepunch lets you evolve into a business without compromises.

> With Bitcoin Lightning and USDt micropayments built-in, it's easy to implement and use powerful paid features in apps.

When asked about this, the founder seems supportive of cryptocurrency: https://twitter.com/ttiurani/status/1551524775402635265

Supporting Bitcoin in any way is a sign that they are incapable of detecting scams that will destroy life on earth, which is a bad sign for them dealing with other scams or ethical dilemmas.

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How is an open, permissionless financial network that uses a fraction of a % of the world's energy a scam that will destroy life on Earth? Uninformed, hyperbolic statements about Bitcoin is a sign you're incapable of basic understanding of anything.

Completely agree. Energy consumption is what enables human flourishing. Quite frankly, "Energy consumption = bad" is pro-human suffering. The lack of nuance in that argument is tiresome.

Humans benefit from using energy, but our current energy systems release terrifying amounts of greenhouse gases. Continued global heating will involve mass death, and a great deal of human suffering along the way. Energy use is necessary to support human life, but limiting energy use is vital to avoid climate catastrophe. It's not a fun problem to have, but you can't wish it away by saying "but people need and enjoy energy!" Of course they do, that's why we need to limit energy use, so that they can enjoy energy in the future, rather than suffering the complete collapse of the systems that allow them to enjoy energy.

You are wrong. You will have incredibly realtime examples of how dangerous this way of thinking is when winter hits Europe this year. Energy is life. It's not a "nice to have" or something people "enjoy".

What part of "Energy use is necessary to support human life" did you not understand when I said it?

Do you understand that heat waves, flooding, forest fires, and other extreme weather events will interfere with the delivery of energy? Do you understand that water shortages will interfere with the delivery of energy (e.g. nuclear power plants need water for cooling)? Do you understand that resource wars will interfere with the delivery of energy? Do you understand that climate change preventing food from growing will interfere with the survival of the people who deliver the energy?

Of course energy is vital to human existence, I recommend e.g. Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil to anyone who wants to understand this in great detail: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization But the climate crisis will interfere with energy production and delivery, just as it interferes with everything else that humans want or need to do. Refusing to reduce energy usage voluntarily will result in involuntary reduction in energy usage as systems fail.

> limiting energy use is vital to avoid climate catastrophe.

This is what I have issue with. Energy use benefits humanity. Full stop.

If you said civilization needs bananas to survive and flourish, then some good samaritan came along and said "I will always buy any leftover bananas you can't sell no matter where or when you grow them", you would get many more banana farms, people experimenting with new banana growing/harvesting technology, etc. It's an undeniable benefit if your goal is to produce more bananas.

I'll try a simple analogy: imagine that your goal is to consume as much corn as possible. (A silly goal for many reasons, but that's a different discussion.) You have all of the corn that you've grown to eat, and then there's the seed corn you would need to plant in order to eat more corn in the future. If you decide to eat the seed corn as well, you will eat more corn in the immediate future, and then much less corn after that. Clearly limits to consumption are sometimes necessary in order to maximize consumption over the long term, even if you grant the premise that maximizing consumption is desirable.

Terrible analogy. Energy production requires large upfront investments in infrastructure. There is nothing analogous to seed in energy. There are only farms and corn that expires extremely quickly and is hard to transport.

To be explicit, one problem with Bitcoin's energy use is that it has the potential to consume any excess energy-producing capacity that we free up by making technology more energy efficient. It could use any fossil fuel-powered energy production that otherwise might be obsoleted by green energy sources. Bitcoin and other PoW blockchains add a strong financial incentive to use all available energy production capacity to its limit. Certainly it is difficult to imagine the market encouraging e.g. carbon capture when the same unit of energy could be used to mine Bitcoin instead for more "profit". (Not that I think carbon capture is likely to make much of a difference, given that simply not releasing greenhouse gases in the first place is always more efficient.)

If energy efficiency and green energy sources will not suffice to reduce our burning of fossil fuels, due in part to Bitcoin and its ilk, then the only way to avoid climate catastrophe would be simply doing less, a.k.a. degrowth. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the typical cryptocurrency advocate thinks of degrowth. (But that would interfere with the numbers going up!)

In short, Bitcoin is a major roadblock to any response to the climate crisis, using any strategy.

> that we free up by making technology more energy efficient

This is 100% a fake problem that clearly does not exist if you understood anything about the energy market. Civilization is at an increasing rate consuming more electricity. Surely, someone who believes carbon emissions are destroying the planet would agree we need to electrify everything. Bitcoin consuming and therefore monetizing stranded and/or temporary excess amounts of energy make accelerated electrification of our society a much more realistic endeavor. Having an electricity dung-beetle, a buyer of last resort, is a revelation.

Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources. It encourages production/consumption of fossil fuels just as much as it encourages production/consumption of green energy sources. There's no particular reason to believe that Bitcoin will accelerate electrification.

> Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources.

BINGO!

If you have something that will buy any left over or unusable stock of product X, the production of X becomes less risky and easier to invest in. This isn't hard. Bitcoin incentivizes energy production and innovation. If you want that energy to be green, bitcoin is still more than willing to buy it from you. Lowering the risk of innovation in the space is obviously good for green energy.

No, this doesn't make sense. If your goal is to reduce fossil fuel usage, and Bitcoin also incentivizes fossil fuels, then there's no reason to expect that Bitcoin will help reduce the share of energy produced by fossil fuels. Worse yet, if it increases total energy consumption, and doesn't affect the percentage produced by fossil fuels, then that will increase the absolute amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

Your arguments work just as well for reducing risk for investing in "marginal" fossil fuel sources.

Bitcoin incentivizes cheap energy production. We need more cheap energy.

Bitcoin does nothing to alter or effect other incentives or disincentives on energy production.

Assuming prices are equivalent, it's net neutral on production mix. However, we've been told renewable energy is cheaper! Therefore it accelerates its adoption.

> monetizing stranded and/or temporary excess amounts of energy

Please stop saying this. Aluminum refining or hydrogen electrolysis fits so much better and actually benefits society.

Seems that the free market is determining that securing an open financial network benefits society more.

How's your at home aluminum refining going? I unfortunately haven't had much luck monetizing my at home hydrogen electrolysis plant :(

I'm talking about scales that matter, not a few kilowatts in your basement.

I subsidized a rather large solar installation on my farm by mining with the excess electricity. This installation drastically lowers my reliance on the grid.

Oil and Gas companies are reducing CO2-equivalent emissions by about 63% by mining with flared natural gas: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/12/23-year-old-texans-made-4-mi...

Large solar farms are being built that otherwise would not have: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-block-blockstream-m...

Bitcoin miners flock to where the energy is cheapest, where it can't be used for anything else, namely stranded renewables. If the energy source can be used for anything else, it is probably too expensive for Bitcoin miners, who are a buyer of last resort. Bitcoin provides a financial incentive for infrastructure build out for these stranded energy sources.

You've made your arguement for "planet destroying", now why is it a "scam"?

One aspect I must mention is Bitcoin miners flock to where energy is cheapest for them, not taking into account negative externalities. This is why you see miners attacking CI services to try to use them for mining crypto: free energy is the best deal, even if it is costly to someone else: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...

Of course, the climate crisis is caused in large part by capitalism failing to deal with negative externalities, so one could argue that Bitcoin is just another facet of our corrupt system privatizing benefits and making the public bear the costs. But nevertheless this is a fundamental flaw in arguments that Bitcoin miners only farm where energy is "cheapest".

As for why it's a scam, it's hard to summarize, but I'll try: cryptocurrency is not currency, not decentralized, and not private. https://jacobin.com/2022/01/cryptocurrency-scam-blockchain-b...

Bitcoin is my and millions of others store of value, it is definately decentralized and is definitely private if used properly. I don't touch any "cryptos".

> cryptocurrency is not currency

Why? Because you said so?

> not decentralized

Bitcoin is quite possibly the most decentralized computer technology ever created. Name something more decentralized.

> not private

I processed around $15k in instant bitcoin transactions this month and have zero insight into who the sender or receiver are

Completely untrue. The amount of money miners spend on bitcoin mining per unit time will never be higher than the value of bitcoin block rewards per unit time.

The block reward gets cut in half every couple years. Right now it’s $18M/day, and at its peak it was $60 million per day. Assuming the price of btc doesn’t shoot back up, that puts an upper limit on the amount of money spent by miners on electricity at $60M/day. To put that number in perspective, the US alone spends $3B/day on energy.

And as a typical cryptocurrency advocate, I always find it amusing when HN programmers, probably in the richest 1% of the world globally, talk about how the line going up even more just isn’t really that important. It already went up for you, maybe we should ask people in brazil or in the philippines or in subsaharan africa if they want their line to go up.

Integration is totally fine, and I think payments are a very valid use-case. But the app doesn't rely on a blockchain or have a token to achieve its core functionality.

> Supporting Bitcoin in any way is a sign that they are incapable of detecting scams that will destroy life on earth

Well, we couldn't disagree more there. A focus on bitcoin while ignoring other crypto scams shows a great deal of sophistication, understanding of the space, and moral fortitude.

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