Dear Readers,
A number of governments and interest groups in today’s world spend a considerable amount of time focused on the reduction of “emissions” and “pollutants” within all aspects of human life. While I certainly support the development of increasingly efficient technologies, I acknowledge that the mitigation of emissions cannot occur without due consideration of the inherent costs. In other words, the elimination of valuable, and in some instances, lifesaving technology cannot occur for the mere fact that the technology uses energy.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what many critics propose for the future of Bitcoin. It happened as recently as this week when a leader of one of the aforementioned interest groups, Robert Altenburg, provided bombastic testimony during a U.S. Senate hearing against Bitcoin and the Proof of Work algorithm on which it relies. His testimony was full of red herring and strawman arguments, but I’d like to focus today on just a pair of his themes that I found most egregious:
