Look just be honest with yourself, you were in a prime position to buy bitcoin early (you are on HN so you likely heard about it before, let's say 2013). And you didn't, so your vested interest is in it failing. The environmental considerations just give you the flag to rally around. Your comment history has plenty of negative mentions of cryptocurrency/BTC but I cannot find anything related to environmental concern that is not cryptocurrency related. I also have never seen a comment where you want to ban something, does that mean that bitcoin is the only " exceptionally pointless wasteful activity" that you know of? If so, even that should tell you something about your true motives, if not where do you protest about these other activities?
I don't protest the obvious. There's little discussion about the harms of global warming in general; this is a generally accepted fact, at least to most people I engage with. The same can not be said about cryptocurrencies and their harms; this is an argument worth having, precisely because people have not yet fully acknowledged the problems. Also: it's remarkable that you've so fully analyzed my personality in 5 minutes.
In any case, to reiterate my counterpoint (which you have not disputed, but given your ad hominem I assume you don't agree with): estimating at least an order of magnitude impact of bitcoin isn't that hard, so your suggestion that it's hopeless to compare somebody streaming gangnam style with a bitcoin transaction is unfounded. One can compare bitcoins environmental impacts with other environmental impacts.
> And you didn't, so your vested interest is in it failing.
Why does he have a "vested interest" in Bitcoin failing? Are you sure you know what "vested" means? :-)
Do you mean to say that he wants Bitcoin to fail because he's bitter?
We will see if Bitcoin is relevant in 5-10 years from now. My guess: it will be a niche thing with a very narrow set of uses.
If anything, you sound a bit like a Bitcoin supporter (maybe an investor?), so you sound more like someone who has a <<vested>> interest in it succeeding.
I know what vested means, there can be a financial element to it but that is not a requirement:
definition:
'a personal reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation'
The personal reason here may well be bitterness, but that was your word not mine.
If, in 2011, we were discussing what bitcoin succeeding looks like, I would have said that if it was worth 5 figures (and I would have meant low 5 figures, so $10,000) it had succeeded. If, alongside the value, my parents knew what it was (not through me) then it would have succeeded.
In truth I would also have expected it to take closer to 20 years to reach that point. So in my mind it has succeeded. It is still around over a decade later, it surpassed the dollar value I would have assigned success even without this latest runup. There are few people in the world, who have internet acccess, who have not heard of it.
So I disagree with you, because on metrics I would have measured it with in 2011 it has met and exceeded them. Therefore it has succeeded already. I have skin in the game, so perhaps I have a vested interest, but only in as much as it would make me more money than it already has. And I dont need more money. If it went to zero tomorrow my life would not change.
