I don’t like it

It’s anti-tech propaganda. The same is happening with crypto. Certain groups don’t like it, so they try to convince the public that it is bad for the environment so it will be banned

This isn’t a good situation, but I also don’t like the idea that people should be banned from using energy how they want to. One could also make the case that video games or vibrators are not “valuable” uses of energy, but if the user paid for it, they should be allowed to use it.

Instead of moralizing we should enact a tax on carbon (like we have in Canada) equal to the amount of money it would take to remove that carbon. AI and crypto (& xboxes, vibrators, etc) would still exist, but only at levels where they are profitable in this environment.

Humanity:

It seems to be a lightweight alternative to Mastodon that is easier for individuals to run on a private server

Yes, of all the problems in the healthcare system, the problem of letting AI help patients diagnose their own problems is definitely top of the list /s

That would be great! And I’m sure there are people doing it. And if 2.3% of the US Power grid were dedicated to that I’m sure some people would be upset about it too

My basic point is I don’t think there is anything morally wrong with Bitcoin miners using energy, even though this is a narrative that is very popular now. There are plenty of other valid criticisms of Bitcoin, but I don’t think this one stands up to scrutiny.

I would love if this were an option, but it’s not. The current battery technologies don’t have the scale for grid level storage capacity. The only grid scale storage solution that is really being done is to build very expensive infrastructure that moves water between two dams of different heights, and building more of those doesn’t seem politically likely at the moment

The reality is that there is much a whole bunch of excess energy supply that is produced because power plants can’t cycle up and down with demand. So they have to keep producing at peak demand 24/7 (there is some nuances based on the type of power plant, NatGas is faster to turn on/off, but this is broadly true)

I have my qualms with Bitcoin. As a currency it has significant transaction speed problems, and potential security ones after a couple more halvenings. But I don’t see a problem if Bitcoin miners want to pay energy producers to use energy that would be produced anyway and earn the producers nothing.

I agree with everything you’ve said

Pretty much the only things Bitcoin has on Ethereum today is a better brand and Lindy effect

Oh yeah there are many criticisms of Bitcoin one can make, I just don’t think the energy one is very convincing if you think about it a bit

It does NOT fucking matter if it’s “”“”““waste””“”“” energy

Sounds like you don’t actually care about the energy use, you just hate this for moral reasons. Using excess energy has zero externalities

I’ve always found this argument against crypto to be a bad one. The headline will say something like “Crypto mining uses XYZ total energy” and we’re supposed to infer that this means crypto is polluting a lot. But it doesn’t say how much pollution there actually was. For economic reasons, these miners often use cheap excess energy that would have been produced anyway or green tech. Not all of it obviously, but that level of nuance is missing.

Also, we don’t make the same moral arguments against other energy uses. Air conditioners use more energy than Bitcoin mining does, but we don’t go around saying the government should ban people from using AC.

There are legitimate problems with crypto, but this one never convinced me

Tbf, most money nowadays doesn’t physically exist nowadays. Only a tiny fraction of the “money” that is out there has a physical instantiation. Most of it is just numbers in bank servers

I think the 32 ETH lockup + slashing does make it riskier to stake, but it also makes the chain more secure. As a malicious Ethereum staker, every failed attack costs me a lot of money. As a Cardano staker, I can attempt an attack many times because there I don’t lost that much if it fails.

The lack of liquid staking is the only real drawback I see here, as it has allowed some centralization in the Lido token. Ethereum has yet to address that issue

Yeah I’m pro PoS in general, but I don’t think we should forbid people from running PoW on their own computers. Seems like a step too far.

Side note, what’s wrong with Ethereum’s PoS in your opinion?

I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to establish the precedent that gov’t can decide what you can and cannot do with your energy. You may think it’s a waste of energy, but if the externality is properly taxed, I don’t see the problem with letting it continue

And what about the open source models? Or the AI companies in countries that have more lax copyright laws? (Japan for example)

This technology exists now. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Copyright came out of the printing press, which allowed cheap copies to be made. Now a new technology has emerged so we likely need a new set of rules to replace the role that copyright performed, which was incentivizing artistic creation

Yes, but it’s not Sybil resistant. Anyone can make as many PGP Keys as they want.

What is really needed is the ability to sign messages proving:

• that I am a specific person (“I am John Smith”)
• that I am a unique person without revealing my ID (“I only have one account here”)
• attributes about me without revealing my ID (“I am 18+”, “I am a French Citizen”, etc)

This is all possible with ZK cryptography today if you have a trusted data source for the key storage. Governments might be able to set something like this up, but that comes with a lot of privacy concerns. There are other projects like WorldCoin, Idena, and Proof of Humanity that attempt to do this in a decentralized way, but they’ve all had issues with adoption

PGP isn’t tied to a specific person though.

I’m starting to come around to the idea of gov’t backed crypto ID, but I am very worried about the potential abuse of that system

I agree! There’s a campaign pushing to avoid giving kids phones until 8th grade, but I think even that seems a bit too young