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The energy consumption of Bitcoin exceeds that of the Netherlands (https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons)
Bitcoin is a crime against our habitat and thus a crime against humanity.
@aral wow. that's fucked up.
@actualsteerpike
Its not true.
Debunked years ago.
@dsfgs you got a link?
@dsfgs @actualsteerpike If you say so. I mean who am I going to believe, Cambridge University or you? ;)
@aral @dsfgs @actualsteerpike No, Bitcoin is not a "net positive for the globe".
Bitcoin set out to disintermediate the banking system, but it failed.
What it produced was a horrendously inefficient energy-guzzling monstrosity, which only really empowers people who already had a lot of money in the economy prior to Bitcoin's invention. The usual suspects got richer out of Bitcoin and the banking system wasn't obsoleted by it.
@bob @aral @dsfgs @actualsteerpike
its also got a whole load of well educated, middle class kids into not just using but dealing hard drugs, from a demographic that rarely got that deep into these substances and tend to have well off and articulate parents.
3 lads from a forum I help moderate fatally overdosed this way, others fed more addictions and the backlash from this will only reinforce drugs prohbition and trust in conventional authority to "sort things out"
@vfrmedia
Are they the drugs they bought courtesy of the #CocaineImportingAgency and #piratesWithPlanes.
Bet they actually paid in physical paper money also given that the vast majority of illicit products and services are still bought with #fiatCurrency.
@dsfgs @bob @aral @actualsteerpike
many of the drugs are diverted pharms produced by legit companies in USA and Europe; they are safe used in moderation but the whole culture associated with capitalism and cryptocurrency doesn't encourage that!
Selling drugs online does course predate cryptocurrency by about 8-10 years - /but/ the extra anonymity provided by it makes it harder to trace the dealers so it became a more attractive "career prospect" for those who might not have considered it. >>
@dsfgs @bob @aral @actualsteerpike
there's a mixture of cryptocurrency and normal cash used on the drugs scene depending on the resources and social class of the dealers and users, but there's a whole new drugs culture now including techbro types that I never saw before in the 1980s and 1990s (in the end, it became dysfunctional enough to make me decide to quit the lot and get sober, which neither my parents, religion nor the cops had succeeded in doing over 30 years 
)
@bob
By what metrics are you judging that #bitcoin has failed?
Its getting better and better.
I prefer #ProofOfWork over #ProofOfLoyaltyToFakeMoneyByWayOfMurderAndTheft
@aral @actualsteerpike
@dsfgs @bob @aral @actualsteerpike If I look at the metric of "is the banking system gone yet?" I notice that indeed, no, Bitcoin has not made even a ding in the banking system. The same crooks are running the same old international scams, politicians are still stuffing their ill-gotten cash in offshore accounts, and Bitcoin has made no difference.
I can also look at the independent variable of "are people spending bitcoins on stuff they actually need?", and indeed again no, nobody around here uses bitcoins, or accepts bitcoins as payment for goods or services.
So really on every measurable indicator, Bitcoin has been a failure.
@bob
We see the elite having to resort to extreme measures to control narratives and workers.
Maybe you are not asking local #smallBusiness whether they accept it.
Seek and you shall find.
@bob @dsfgs @aral @actualsteerpike there is someone who paid for his dental care with btc.
Thats the way.
@bob @dsfgs @aral @actualsteerpike
Bitcoin is the '#geekproblem solution to the worship of money.
The #geekproblem has meany sins, the #Encryptionist project has been a VERY destructive one. It is inhuman to make mashion into gods.
The smile, trust, a helping hand is the currency of life. The fundamentalist money worship of the last 40 years is going to kill billions of us #XR
We need to start to shovelling this shit, not worship it.
Compost, the #OMN is a shovel.
@Hamishcampbell
Pick your machine that will work for you.
The #extremelyWealthy have picked killerDrones and have average people training them courtesy of #hCaptcha. They worship #theBeautyOfTheirWeapons.
People have used machines for hundreds of years. We need to decide what technology is for us and what is for them…
And we better not take too long about it.
Our choices are #AI and #walledGardens that enslave us, or #bitcoin and #libreSoftware to empower us.
@bob Thank you for pointing out that the environmental footprint isn't the only problem with Bitcoin.
Crypto currencies benefiting rich people at the expense of the rest of the world is not an accident, it is an unavoidable trait of a system designed to sidestep oversight from governments that are, with all their flaws, more democratic than the unregulated power relationship between someone with a lot of disposable money and someone with negative net wealth.
@angdraug
Not quite.
Bitcoin is widely adopted in oppressed countries, and has helped their people maintain purchasing power.
Was *is* rich people in the west pretending that bitcoin is for wealthy people. Nope. Bitcoin is for people who need to preserve what little they can. Bitcoin has made a few people rich that saw its importance early. Good for them.
These people weren't the banking elite.
It has helped people in oppressed countries.
@angdraug @bob @aral @actualsteerpike
What *is* rich is people in the west pretending that #bitcoin has only ever been for the wealthy, rather.
The first block in the chain literally quotes the headline, "Chancellor on brink of second #bailout for #banks".
Bitcoin opposes the #bankingCartel, and the #neoFeudalism of the corporate state. Thankfully though it doesn't matter what we say. It matters what the #decentralised community does.
@aral
We just covered this a day ago on the other thread.
(starts to think bot account)
@actualsteerpike
@dsfgs @actualsteerpike Could a bot account do this? *blocks*
@aral I would discuss this too «The amount of electricity consumed every year by always-on but inactive home devices in the USA alone could power the Bitcoin network for
2.0 years» (from your source).
🇪 🇪 🇪@aral
No its not. The elite spawned the same #fakeNews in 2017 with the #DeVries tropes.
#CambridgeUniversity debunked it.
Can influencers please stop pedalling tired tropes, please?
@dsfgs I literally just linked to Cambridge University’s own site.
@aral
Hi Aral,
You may have, yes, but still tired tropes were peddled and statments that bitcoiners are criminals against humanity.
Not good.
#ProofOfWork is necessary. We'd much rather PoW for something good than some of the other uses of computing power.
@dsfgs I literally just linked to the University of Cambridge web site for the stat.
1. Scroll to the original toot
2. Click the link
3. Look at the header
Oh, my! 
Worth also noting that because of the economics of Bitcoin, there is a very large incentive to use cheaper renewable hydroelectric power for mining. Professional miners seek out new hydro dams in China to increase their profit margins, for example.
@aral I'm getting a 502 at that link
@aral For anyone else who's getting server errors (Hug of Death? DDOS?):
https://web.archive.org/web/20210113120442/https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons
Looks like this is the angle...
@aral I like the thried so much i turned it into a blog post http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2021/01/23/on-every-measurable-indicator-bitcoin-has-been-a-failure/ message me if you wont create for your work othersie its from the god of the #openweb :)
@aral Every few years, (when the #Bitcoin price is high..) this FUD comes up again.
Energy consumption is not equal to energy production. Energy production has a carbon footprint. And a very large part of the energy that we produce is wasted (numbers vary, but I'd say electrically at least some 20-30%). Using energy that would otherwise be wasted has no carbon footprint. Zero.
I wrote a tootstorm about it recently:
https://x0f.org/@stevenroose/105746263628604838