Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's ok to not like crypto but how about sticking to the truth? * There's many things much more volatile than crypto, the biggest markets being vix if you're a hedgefund and pretty much all derivates like options if you're a gambling man. btc in particular is only 2x from many traditional markets: https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility-vs-other-asset... * The second part of only 5% making a profit is made up and makes no sense. There's not a lot of days since it's inception where you could buy and hold some btc and it wouldn't be more worth later on. Sure if you fomo at a local top and panic sell the bottom you can get burned but it's an easy trade my guess would be more like 80% but like your number it's also just made up. * Energy consumption you need to put it into relation of comparable resources, of course if you're determined it's worthless it's hard to justify any cost even if it's minor in comparison but that's a personal opinion of yours and many disagree.


One might disagree on what exactly is a comparable resource. A digital currency could just as well store everyone's balance in a giant SQL database. In exchange for utter centralization the energy consumption drops to essentially zero. IIUC a PoS coin will also have much smaller energy consumption. So we have a situation where a collection of people are using huge, huge amounts of energy to speculate not only on digital assets, but on decentralized PoW digital assets.


Digital money is as easy as you giving me $10 and me making a record of it in a text file that's not really what the rest of us are talking about.


I also wonder when people voicing environmental concerns will accept that there's a whole slew of newer Proof-of-stake blockchains that aren't using that much energy.

One example being Algorand which is carbon neutral: https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/how-algorand-offsets...

Oh and speaking of usage of crypto in China - i wonder how that affects VET / VeChain which is, largely, used by Walmart China to track their wares:

https://seevechain.com/contracts https://www.vechain.com/




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: