[stormbeta]

And this is exactly why I'm so skeptical of cryptocurrencies in general. There doesn't appear any viable way to make them work as currencies that doesn't either have horrendous externalities, simply replicate what existing currencies already do (often poorly and with many downsides), or often both.

I don't think it's a coincidence that even a decade plus later, the primary use cases for crypto still seem to be grey/black market deals, speculative investments, and pyramid schemes.

[abecedarius]

> way ... that doesn't either have horrendous externalities

The CO2 emission externality need have nothing to do with Bitcoin or any other proof-of-work chain. Tax carbon at whatever level makes sense and Bitcoin will adjust. (As I understand it, even currently Bitcoin mining mainly uses renewable energy, because it's cheaper; and it's trending cheaper still.)

The externality is at the power plant, not the use. Banning a use is like basing your server's security on client-side Javascript.

[jsiepkes]

> Tax carbon at whatever level makes sense and Bitcoin will adjust.

> The externality is at the power plant, not the use. Banning a use is like basing your server's security on client-side Javascript.

How would that work? Applying the same carbon tax on farming as on bitcoin? You always need to differentiate on use. Otherwise we could also just have a single income tax and be done with it. However taxing food as much as a Ferrari doesn't really make sense.

[Moodles]

Not to even mention the even more useless buzzword application of blockchains to business to pump up stock prices. I'd go as far to say that cryptocurrency is the most "useful" application of blockchain to date. And even then, it appears only truly useful for dark web transactions and pyramid schemes. Why else would we use a wildly fluctuating currency that takes 20 minutes to send a payment?

[cwkoss]

Dollar hegemony has many horrendous externalities as well.

[danimal88]

While that -might- be true, the question is whether the dollar, the RMB, the CAD, and every other currency have anything like the -direct- pollution cost of bitcoin, which my understanding is that they do not

[gonehome]

I remain cautiously optimistic about the underlying idea and core technology (even if there's a lot of pyramid scheme snake oil surrounding it).

Interesting applications do exist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24242005

Its applications are more interesting in countries that have unreliable governments and inflationary currencies (for now).

It also does provide something new (one way 'cash' transfers across a decentralized network).