proof-of-work systems should be banned by international treaty and people who implement them should be considered hostis humani generis tbh
i'm not sure a neat academic idea has ever before caused such atrocious damage to the world, let alone a mathematical one
the bitcoin system has probably already burned through an amount of energy greater than that expended in the course of WWII. probably many times greater
i know for a fact the amount it uses *every year* is orders of magnitude higher, almost incomprehensibly vastly so, than the energy of all explosives detonated throughout the war combined, the nukes included
and remember, entire cities were flattened -- the damage it did to Stalingrad in particular makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like they *got off easy*
i know for a fact the amount it uses *every year* is orders of magnitude higher, almost incomprehensibly vastly so, than the energy of all explosives detonated throughout the war combined, the nukes included
and remember, entire cities were flattened -- the damage it did to Stalingrad in particular makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like they *got off easy*
i'm not against cryptocurrencies in principle, as long as we have a digital market economy we're gonna need *some* kind of system for black market transactions, but the PoW system? crime against humanity. we need to find alternatives -- like, just use a fixed number of tokens that are sold off when the currency is established or something
@velartrill One more nitpick that is a common confusion -- bitcoin is not quite anonymous, in fact there are very few anonymous cryptos. People use it for black market stuff only because the tracking around it is not as developed as within banks and it's impossible to undo transactions (so sellers like it). In principle bitcoin transactions could be tracked by governments almost as well as banking ones, and probably easier than cash payments.
@timorl yes, i'm aware. i was thinking something more like monero, tho even bitcoin's level of anonymity (where accounts are public but not tied to a legal identity in any way) is still very useful
@timorl also some dnm users use "bitcoin tumblers" to anonymize their transactions by scrambling the coins with other people's; i always used them but there was some debate over how valuable they actually were
