I wish I could upvote this twice!
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@qwachansey The problem I have with this argument is that itâs simply not rooted in facts. There are a lot of emotional heart strings and some insults being thrown about here but no actual data.
You do realize that regardless of if an NFT is minted, bought, sold, traded⊠none of that has any impact on the amount of usage or draw or environmental impact right? The blocks are mined regardless, the miners are running regardless. This entire space is now a multi trillion dollar industry being run on a fraction of gold output/footprint and an infinitesimally small fraction of banking output/footprint and itâs constantly improving. Here is an article from Forbes last month (Bitcoin Mining Uses A Higher Mix Of Sustainable Energy Than Any Major Country Or Industry) on BTC mining using a heavier % of sustainable energy than almost any other industry/country⊠and that number is INCREASING and has continually increased. ETH2.0 and PoS? Going to decrease energy requirements and other few orders of magnitude.
I get that youâve read some articles (most of them pointing to a brutally discredited article out of U Hawaii) or watched some tiktoks about how harmful NFTs are but most of it is again, just not based in fact at all, all of this happens with or without NFTs and actually the last few months where NFTS have really exploded and we have less hashrate than we did just a few months ago
So please, as someone who collects cardboard wrapped in single use plastic and tossed out in the hundreds of thousands, make a more compelling argument than âinput = electricity, output = pixelsâ. All of that happens on a computer / the internet which weâre all already using, and put into blocks that are mined with or without them. It has exactly 0 impact on the environmental draw or net watt usage or anything else related.
/rant
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I just searched the energy consumption. Didnât realize Ethereum consumes the same energy as entire countries. Thats unreal!
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haha I love you guys but just so so out of touch itâs honestly so hard to fathom. BTC is adopted as legal tender at the nation-level, held on balance sheets of multiple nations, held on balance sheets of many of the largest companies in the world, being discussed regularly at the congressional level (typically extremely net pro despite wanted to find a reasonable way to tax it), integrated in multiple ETFs (so in pensions, retirement accounts, etc.) and somehow you guys come away with
âitâs mainly used to speculate and buy drugs onlineâ
Itâs honestly unlike anything Iâve ever seen, itâs like a boomer sitting here yelling why cell phones and the internet are going to turn our children into vegetables or why cars will destroy the world. I canât even begin to wrap my head around the âmental gymnasticsâ that need to be done to still have this stance at this point. Like there is barely anything left to be done that could prove a higher level of adoption but somehow people find a way to still move the goalposts 
.
The advice Iâve given 100x in this thread is still my best and only advice. Keep an open mind, ask yourself âwhat if youâre wrong?â â how often do you need to be wrong for it to be a great spot. I.e. you may think X is a scam, but if itâs not a scam it would be a new paradigm. If youâre only 94% sure then 6% may be wayyyy more than enough. 65% sure then itâs laughable. 100% sure then youâre a god among men, and then obviously⊠stick to facts, not random narratives. It helps to learn about something before entirely discrediting it.
But again, there were millions of people just like this through every major shift over the past century. Tons of people on the exact same side of every major technological breakthrough from nuclear energy to the internet. Itâs far eclipsed escape velocity at this point but you guys still consider it nascent. I guess thatâs where the opportunity comes from
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Market cap of ETH alone: $366 BMarket cap of all things on top of ETH: Close to $1 Trillion
about 700% growth YoY
Ok thatâs enough arguing on the internet for me today 
@primordialaa, âheld on balance sheetsâ as a speculative asset.
There is a big difference between not caring and thinking a speculative asset is short sided, and thinking cell phones will turn kids into vegetables. Its just another speculative asset, and majority of its success is based on it being unregulated.
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Iâm permanently stuck in the ridicule stage. The fact that some soft skull paid 1.1m for this image 
as in literally that image, not a replica, not a duplication, that exact image that I copied and pasted onto this forum is so retarded I physically cannot find the words to express it.
inb4"urâe jus jelis cuz im more money"
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Incorrect though, S&P500 companies do not have mandates that allow them to speculate on assets. They arenât hedge funds, it literally is not legally allowed. Itâs held as a part of their core strategy (as signed off by their board) for a hedge against catastrophic scenarios and currency risk.
Also, all of this is EXTREMELY heavily regulated. Publicly traded companies (especially those in S&P500), ETFs, etc. bear extreme regulatory burden and these are held in almost every single pension and retirement fund in the world. Do you think the US Gov (or any gov) would allow them to just randomly speculate on something that adds a massive default risk to one of the most well protected structures in the history of government (pension accounts)?
I often see this analogy when crypto is discussed. A similar one is âThe train is running regardless of what happens, we can extract ethereum or not.â
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of energy use and demand. If there is no demand for X cryptocurrency, blocks will not be mined. If there is increased demand, more infrastructure will be built in mega factories to mine. In train terms â if people stop caring about bitcoin, the train will slow down or halt, using less energy. If the price of bitcoin increases to where increased mining activity is profitable, engines and additional cars will be added to the train, boosting consumption.
Gold and banking are massive global industries, not speculative cryptocurrencies. To compare a cryptocurrency to âthe global economic banking systemâ is ludicrous.
As for âETH2.0â, I have been hearing about future ways to make crypto more efficient for a decade. These are always âfutureâ projects, in development, advancing, bla bla bla, never actually extant.
In regards to other hobbies such as Pokemon, I already mentioned that the order of consumption is magnitudes higher for NFTs. Should Pokemon focus more on sustainable packaging? Absolutely. Does that magically absolve NFTs of their environmental impact? No.
Unfortunately, it doesnât seem to occur to you to look in a mirror. Iâve kept an open mind. I purchased my first bitcoin for $11. Iâm happy to admit when Iâm wrong. Assuming that anyone who rejects your opinion is coming from a place of ignorance is simply narcissistic â especially when the consumption of crypto is public knowledge. It makes you look like a flat-earther.
Hereâs a relevant anecdote for when I considered âwhat if Iâm wrong?â on a social issue from people with a clear self-interest. A few years back I was at a panel disccusion and one of the panelists worked in global corporate responsibility for Exxon. He discussed in very matter-of-fact terms that Exxon invested heavily in healthcare infrastructure in African countries, not out of moral duty, but because Exxon employees in these countries were constantly getting sick and unable to work, hurting their bottom line, and the existing government healthcare was inadequate or nonexistent.
At first this seemed quite morbid, that Exxon was investing in mosquito netting and water treatment solely to ensure employees could keep working at their oil wells. But then I considered, what is the alternative? Would these workers prefer *not* to have healthcare? Isnât the outcome more than justified over the intent? Heck, isnât it morally indefensible to deride Exxon out of a misplaced sense of moral superiority when this is lifesaving work?
Then of course, multiple corruption scandals were uncovered of Exxon bribing local officials in Africa to create an Exxon healthcare monopoly so that employees would be further dependent on the company and unable to quit. So sure, sometimes Iâm wrong. But in the case of NFTs, Iâll stick to the facts at hand, the obvious greed of those pushing them and their meaningless PR statements about future environmental goals, and my simple gut instincts as someone who wasnât born yesterday and, contrary to what you may think, does not get my news from TikTok.
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exactly the same argument for why some absolute knob would pay $1m for a piece of cardboard from a childrenâs game when you can just print one out or get a knockoff. People have been using this argument against tcg/ccg/collectibles from the beginning of time. Welcome to humanity. The fact that you think itâs the image and not the ownership is the problem, and yes, provenance matters.
Arthur wrote a nice piece recently on a lot of this culture recently. Would recommend reading (heâs a fantastic writer regardless): cryptohayes.medium.com/rock-paper-scissors-says-go-a3641dfe132c
Iâm actually with @primordialaa on this one. Iâm indifferent towards NFTs, but clearly they matter to a lot of people and I donât fully understand that world yet. so i try to stay open minded even though they do nothing for me on personal level.
As of this past winter however, Iâm totally onboard with Bitcoin. I used to think it was a speculative waste of energy. Then I read a couple books about Bitcoin this year and dove into monetary history to understand how we even got to this Quantitative Easing money printing madness we find ourselves in and how Bitcoin can alleviate the inevitablity of the devaluation of government issued fiat. Bitcoin is the hardest and most sound money humans have ever discovered. After 30 or so hours of study, I am now convinced it will become the world reserve currency and the global economy will function on a Bitcoin standard as the base layer of our money (just like the gold standard was).
I could be wrong of course, but I believe everyone should have at least 1-3% of their portfolio in Bitcoin even if you doubt it completely, at the very least it functions as a hedge in case it does succeed.
If you are concerned about the environmental impact itâs important to note that you can buy and store your coins in a private wallet and while the balance is stationary (not being transacted with) itâs NOT contributing to additional energy usage. You can add some in your portfolio, store it away and forget about it, maintain moral centeredness knowing your possession of the Bitcoin isnât using any energy only by holding them (only a relatively small amount used when you make your purchase), and if it does end up succeeding you have not missed out on potential 100x or more over the next couple decades.
It is still speculative until itâs not, but the more I learn the more convinced I am. Itâs a beautiful piece of monetary engineering.
The book titled âThe Bitcoin Standardâ is a great start if youâre interested in further understanding.
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Left unsaid here is that if the GDP of Qatar, Kuwait, or Oman unexpectedly dipped 50% in a single year, it could cause a massive geopolitical ripple across the Middle East, in particular Qatar, which funds many proxy battles across the region. You cannot compare a countryâs GDP to a cryptocurrencyâs ever-fluctuating market cap.
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@qwachansey of course Iâve thought about if I was wrong, which is why I actually take the time to do the research 
. Itâs just so tiresome to be hearing the exact same arguments for 8 years straight and every time they are eclipsed or challenged people just⊠move the goal post. Technology (especially heavily adopted technology) tends to have a way to improve quite rapidly. The % of green energy used mining has an extremely high âupwards and to the rightâ trajectory and has been trending that way for a very long time. I have spoken with many of the largest mining operators in the world and that seems unlikely to change. Things are getting BETTER, and continue to get better and yet the opposing stances never change. Exactly like the âdrugs and illicit activityâ argument which was a reasonable argument 7-8 years ago but is a total joke now but itâs still being thrown around regularly while nobody updates their belief state to the current level of adoption or integration into the broader world around us.
Find me a better metric because I will bet almost any amount of money that the value built on and secured by Ethereum is far greater than $1T 5 years from now.
But again when ETH price is lower itâs energy draw is lower too, so you canât have it both ways. Energy draw/hashrate track price very very closely
Gee wiz, no kidding, the largest mining operators in the world are optimistic that technology will improve and their operations will become more efficient, donât worry about the current environmental cost 
äœ ä»„çșæć»ć
ć©ïŒPerhaps weâve been arguing the same thing for 8 years because consumption has rapidly increased during these 8 years.
As for value, I donât understand the comparison. With the right access, you can go see a trillion dollars of fine art in an offshore waters vault if you want. No one would think, âah yes, this is a relevant comparison to a Middle Eastern countryâs GDPâ.
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âLook guys, the My Little Pony url I bought for 5K before lunch sold for 7 million before dinner, that is more money than you and all your neighbors are going to spend on everything youâll ever own before you die, YAY me!!!â
âŠand this provokes an EMOTIONAL response!!! Iâm shocked and appalledâŠ
You canât claim people are moving the goal posts when you are saying crypto is heavily regulated. The lack of regulation is the main appeal for average crypto traders.
Also you made a comparison to physical art, there is a difference. Physical has vulnerability. Born in a moment of history. You could claim the latter with nftâs, but the aesthetics & preservation are more easily replicable. Speaking of regulation again, physical art has more copyright protection. NFTâs currently are the wild west. Half the pokemon nonsense alone would be shut down if it were physical.
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If NFTs required the same tiny fraction of a watt as scribbling something on MS Paint I would think, hey, not for me, but to each their own, glad people are happy with their virtual collectibles. But that is not the reality of the situation.
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No, they are saying they will continue to move towards a higher % of green energy usage is what I was referring to
Itâs difficult to find a Fortune 500 company that *hasnât* released a PR statement along the lines of âWe will be carbon neutral/use X% renewable energy by 20XX year that conveniently isnât any time in the immediate future.â These releases play well and get positive earned media but at the end of the day Iâll believe it when I see it.
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