Bitcoin Mining Is Not Wasteful

  • To paraphrase:

    1. I'm going to make the energy use of Bitcoin sound small by taking it as a fraction of the entire goddamn world. Also, some of it is hydro power, which forgives everything.

    2. Even if it were 0.74% of the entire world, that would still be worth it because Bitcoin is the most important thing in the world.

    3. If we didn't use all this energy, there wouldn't be any Bitcoin, and that would make me sad.

    4. Bitcoin companies employ a lot of smart people and give VCs something to invest in. Clearly none of these people would accomplish anything in the absence of Bitcoin.

    5. Even though I just said mining is good, people are mining relatively less now, and that's also good. Everything about Bitcoin is always good.

    What an argument.

  • > Bitcoin is already a net benefit to the economy. Venture capitalists invested more than $1 billion into at least 729 Bitcoin companies which created thousands of jobs.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window