[bhollan]

A friend of mine escaped the Myanmar coup via bitcoin, so I don't think it's a purely zero-value enterprise. I agree, and there are many economists who also agree, that there is a strong odor of "tulips". But that's literally been the line from the haters for over a decade.

That said, I was laughing off environmental concerns over it until I read that, electrically, it's effectively a 'ghost state' in the US.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

[rossjudson]

Two questions:

1) How many people do you think are successfully escaping evil regimes via Bitcoin?

2) Energy concerns around Bitcoin/Crypto have been well-known for years. For you, how did it stay in the "laughing off" state until your position changed?

My off-the-cuff answer on energy would be to make it fully illegal to use grid electricity for mining, but that mining operations are free to generate their own electricity (and even sell the excess back to the grid, possibly replacing some set of peaker activities).

[bhollan]

1) I think it depends on how you define all parts of "escaping evil regimes". But it's a fair point.

2) I studied electrical engineering and I just hadn't run the numbers. The numbers I had seen in most of the other articles didn't impress me in terms of national scale.

I have long-envisioned a "solar-miner-in-a-container" that could help impoverished nations. It would be a shipping container with 40-50 solar panels, a satellite internet kit, as well as a small server rack for mining. It could generate electricity, revenue, (shade) and if the mining part fails, it's a power source and an internet cafe.

[LAMike]

Why don't you ask people in Egypt or Venezuela?