This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is.<p>Let's say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of the transaction? How much waste heat did it generate? And on the other side: what is the energy cost of making that ice cream, shipping it to the store I bought it from, and keeping it refrigerated? How much waste heat did <i>that</i> generate?<p>If the bitcoin transaction cost as much energy and generated as much waste heat as the production, storage, and shipping of the gallon of ice cream, then yeah, that's a good start for saying one is legitimate as the other. But if one of them cost a couple of orders of magnitude more energy, and generated three orders of magnitude more waste heat, for something that is theoretically the same monetary value (because they <i>are</i>, given that we paid for that whole supply chain with the bitcoin transaction), then there is a pretty clear imbalance.<p>And for a bit more clarity - what is the energy/heat cost of buying that gallon of ice cream with a debit/credit card? How does that compare to both the production/shipping/storage of that gallon of ice cream, and to the cost of buying it with bitcoin?<p>I am not going to do the research and estimation for this. Some quick lazy searching suggests that one BTC transaction consumes about 3x the energy of 100k transactions via Visa's network, though. And that is the issue: Bitcoin is, <i>by design</i>, incredibly wasteful of resources. Ludicrously so.
Try comparing it to smoking instead of ice cream. The personal choice argument depends on considering the externalities in a serious way.<p>It’s a valid argument to explore, but this piece doesn’t do any serious work.
Their argument: Bitcoin isn't bad. Energy production is bad because it's not carbon-free.<p>This is the classic "guns don't kill people" argument. Yes, guns wouldn't be bad if they were being sold in a perfect world with no murder. Bitcoin wouldn't be bad if we had perfect energy production with no environmental cost. But that's not the world we live in!<p>"Bitcoin doesn't cause carbon emissions. Energy production causes carbon emissions."
> mining reward is tending to zero by design<p>The schedule matters. It’s good that the block reward will be cut in half soon, but why do we have to wait <i>four years</i> for it to happen again? There’s no particular reason to believe that Nakamoto would choose to spend 10x Google on electricity if they were choosing a schedule today.<p>The schedule stays the way it is because miners like money and changing the consensus is hard, not because it’s a good idea.<p>And so, the only way to drop electricity spending is to make the price crash. The much easier option of changing a parameter in the software is eliminated because of the impossibility of getting a consensus to do it.<p>This is what happens when you remove centralized decision making.
If Government has the right to ban plastic straws it has the right to ban bitcoin. You're not a bad person for drinking out of a plastic straw and neither are you a bad person for using Bitcoin. It is just that a behavior in aggregate is harmful and this in mind makes it defensible for government to forbid it, especially when a viable alternative exists. So the next time you get annoyed by that disgusting paper straw, think of the cryptogeeks who will be forced to use EMV when they would rather use the silicon based electric heater that is bitcoin.
Aren't you free to use your electricity for whatever you want? Including doing intense mathematical calculations on your personal computer or server farm aka cryptocurrency mining.