Oddbean

I want to believe that #bitcoin will encourage society to move towards using durable goods and sustainability instead of infinite growth. Lets steel man this idea. Counterarguments: - While the theory sounds romantic, what has been built in practice by bitcoiners are things like Mt Gox and FTX. Trading platforms that just serve financial markets, which is the very core of this infinite growth mentality - After 10+ years, it's still generally not accepted as payment - The energy required can't be ignored, especially in light of the above. I understand the benefits of replacing load banks, heating, and green energy, but there are more efficent ways to generate heat, and mankind's energy would be a higger percentage of renewables if bitcoin weren't using so much electricity. Even if using miners as load banks is 100% justified, that doesn't justify all the other mining operations. - The theory that it's decentralized is wonderful, but on real life, mining is fairly centralized, Help convince me (one way or the other) using evidence. Better yet, help convince a zero-coiner who is thinking these same things. I want the arguments that really hit hard, not potential solutions. Not the usual suspects like "BitAxe wants to disrupt centralized mining". Yeah, that's great, and I support them, but until they prove they can do it, lets just acknowledge that this is a problem yet to be solved. The same goes for the "Lightning is going to solve the efficency problem". It hasn't yet. #bitcoin is seriously easy to use. Lightning is not. Honestly, I feel that downloading a wallet is easier than signing up for a custodial lightning account, and if we're talking about self-custody, let's come back to that in another 4 years. I'm sure some maxis are going to jump in and call me a fiat shill or whatever, and that's fine, I can ignore anyone who doesn't wasnt to have a constructive conversation. It's the actual discourse that I am interested in. Give me your evidence that #bitcoin is just the ticket to eliminating the growth at all costs mindset.

Dr, I think this quote addresses the last sentence of your note. If Bitcoin helps displace hedonistic consumerism with truly productive investment its energy consumption will be more than justified. “Deflationary money… will give everyone a reason to save rather than overconsume, giving more people access to whatever they want over time because of the falling prices. If you postpone your spending, your bitcoin will buy you more in the future. In other words, fewer transactions. Quality before quantity. The necessity for transactions per second will diminish.” https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/real-scaling-solution-for-bitcoin

#1 the reason that the first applications to trade bitcoin for were dollars, is one of the most normal things ever. If a new currency is created, the main use case is to transact it for something else, most likely the most abundand and usable "good" there is. In our case, this means that people want to transact it for the dollar, its arch nemesis. This is why exchanges are yet the most common usecase.

#2 Things need time to grow, once more people will understand the importance, more manpower will work to enhance it. Right now alot of adoption is halted by wrong opinions of wrong bankers and others, who misinform the public for their own gain. But now, we are at the point were goods other than simple dollars are exchanged for Bitcoin.

#3 if Bitcoin would replace the current financial system overnight, no single government would need to spend alot of wasted energy on securing their own local currency trough war. Administration would be easier and verifiable, no wasted time on transporting banknotes or such. The real-time price discovery that is possible with Bitcoin makes it possible for prices to immeadiatly respond to issues in the global market, real signals. Instead of paying a fraction of a cost for a shirt made by slaves in bangladesh, you would pay higher and thus be more responsible. The slaves in bangladesh wouldn't be slaves because they got access to their own property rights. This would make it more beneficial for everyone to not waste anything because they aren't forced to. Inventions and etc would also help people be efficienter and thus requiring less energy.

#4 Bitcoin mining is indeed centralized. Too much for sure, and other aspects of the network should also be more decentralized. But that is not its job: that is your job. This natural money is just a method of securing transactions economically and globally. How those transactions are carried is a different story, maybe yours. We just need ways to transfer those bytes accross the houses, streets and the globe, a pretty simple task isn't it? Satoshi Nakamoto set already the right path by "the network is robust by its unstructured simplicity" and "messages only need to be delivered on best effort basis". It is up to us to implement the best strategies for this.

If bitcoin is global reserve asset then the fixed supply forces the world into a deflationary spiral of sorts. In such an environment the only way you ever commit to consumption in the present is if you can extract a lasting utility from that good/widget over a long time period. Plastic toys become pointless. Wooden toys that are passed down are a far wiser consumption preference. Construction trends towards homes capable of standing 500 years not 50 years. All this bodes well for a culture enshrining sustainable practices as economic incentives align. What you need to do is adjust your time horizons. I remember being utter infuriated in 1996 over the speed of internet page loading times over a dial up modem. Nothing about anything worked particularly well despite the internet being around and in development for a decade. Yet 10 years later as mobile phones collided with the internet protocols human interconnectedness simply exploded - dematerialising huge aspects of civilisation. I didn't have the foresight in 1996. Bitcoin hash rate is growing, development is moving at a rate commensurate to the importance of getting the foundations right, economic incentives align with sustainability ideals, and in and on. Where are you sourcing information from? Do you follow Troy Cross? Lyn Alden? Have you read any of Fidelity's reports? Do subscribe to any paid research like ARK? Do you have mempool.space bookmarked? Any overarching dashboards you follow like bitbo.io to give you a feel for how the protocol is behaving? Do you follow any of the key capital allocators in the space like ego death capital to better understand the layer 2 scaling strategies? I've barely scratched the surface there. My point here is this - how much work are you willing to do to get your head around a paradigm shift in how we as humans interact? Sorry I realise I haven't given you specific answers but to be fair your post was pretty unstructured and broad!

The deflationary aspect is a good one to lean on to explain the conection to being more resourceful (or thrifty, frugal, economical, etc.). I can't really use myself as an example because I already tried to save money at every opportunity, so it's not like bitcoin pushed me in this direction. Now that I think of it, I can't recall any stories about people who got in early on bitcoin going out and buying a lamborghini or a mansion. Maybe it happened and I missed it or it went unreported, but it seems unlikely because critics would LOVE to connect btc to what they consider wasteful spending.