[angry_albatross]

> Instead of trying to discuss that (and I could) - on HN there are plenty links to thinks I don't consider useful, like retrocomputing, programming in AGDA or yet another rust rewrite of some tool. I don't go around and leave nonproductive comments there, i just don't click them. Why do you feel a need to do so?

Mostly because unlike those other examples, cryptocurrency is actively doing harm to society by accelerating climate change, enabling various forms of crime, and doing financial damage to many people who have been convinced to put their savings into various ponzi schemes. So I view it as a sort of moral obligation to be a dissenting voice in these conversations.

I don't intent to be actively nonproductive with things I say though, and you might be right that it would be better to not engage with my original comment. The parent comment I replied to was not very productive either though. Mostly just "this is good". So my intention was just to represent the opposition and say something like "I disagree, and think this is part of something that is harmful."

[everfree]

> accelerating climate change, enabling various forms of crime, and doing financial damage to many people who have been convinced to put their savings into various ponzi schemes

Bitcoin accelerates climate change - no other cryptocurrency has a measurable environmental impact. The internet also enabled various forms of crime. Bank wires do financial damage to people who invest in ponzi schemes, in more volume than blockchain transactions do if I'm not mistaken.

Basically, I don't look at distributed ledger systems and think immediately of all the crimes that they enable. But I also don't look at a knife and immediately think of all the crimes that have been committed with knives. On the other hand though I've never known anyone who was a victim of a knife-related crime, so perhaps my opinion would be different if that were the case.