Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Why bitcoin is evil

Bitcoin mining, which is at times profitable (especially when using a botnet), wastes electricity for absolutely nothing. The same effort could be put into, for example, folding@home, or into something enjoyable at least.

That, in my eyes, is reason enough to consider bitcoin to be evil, even without getting into any other details (such as assassination markets). The number one problem with libertarianism is the tragedy of the commons, and waste of energy due to bitcoin is a good example of how libertarians do not even try to respect the commons. On the plus side, the mining is capped and so the amount of damage is limited, so an argument could be made that it is necessary evil.

3 comments:

  1. 1.All Bitcoin Assassination Sellers have no reputation or feedback of any kind, and they never offer to use an escrow service. This can only point to one conclusion: they are all scams.

    2.Bitcoin Mining is no more wasteful than the wastefulness of mining gold out of the ground, melting it down and shaping it into bars, and then putting it back underground again.

    Bitcoins are evil and you are an idiot.

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    Replies
    1. 1: For now, yes, it is mostly a theoretical concern.

      2: Who said tying up useful metals as currency was not evil? It is only not evil because it happened without anyone's deliberate design.

      No, you are.

      Delete
  2. 1) If you think Bitcoin wastes electricity for money, you should see what kinds of resources feed into the legacy monetary system. It's atrocious. Bitcoin is actually likely to be much, much more efficient and ecologically sustainable. Not to say that it isn't a waste --

    2) If you're concerned about this waste, use ripple instead. It clears faster, and sidesteps the whole expensive mining aspect of bitcoin while maintaining most of its benefits (and it interoperates well with it, you can fairly easily convert ripple credit to bitcoin these days, if you have it in the right places).

    ReplyDelete