This is exactly why one-person-one-vote republics fail on every level.
Lies are used to manipulate public sentiment.
Your friend (and many many others) are being misled by blatant propaganda. Big Oil and Central Banks around the world have a financial incentive to attack Bitcoin from any and all vectors.
The entire argument is doublespeak. Bitcoin is criticized for "wasting energy", thus it must be bad for this new Green initiative. In reality, it is funding renewable energy by allowing full scale operations to be built anywhere on the planet.
Before Bitcoin it was impossible to build an array of solar panels out in the middle of nowhere (say the desert). Sure, you can generate a lot of electricity, but how do you transport that resource to people that actually need it? This problem becomes compounded when considering energy monopolies and requiring permission to tap into the grid.
Solving the Byzantine generals problem is a legit miracle that allows energy to be turned into currency anywhere on Earth. So now we have the ability to build full scale renewable energy anywhere and mine Bitcoin with all of the excess energy generated: making the entire project financially viable. This in turn allows growth in that sector of the world to start flourishing because they have a cheap and renewable source of power.
Not only that, the byproduct of mining Bitcoin is heat itself, so if the Bitcoin is mined inside of buildings that required heating anyway, that's a double-whammy in efficiency. The days of Bitcoin miners just sitting in a warehouse collecting dust will not be a thing forever.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Fuck - I hate failing to mention things to people at the right time. I feel like George Costanza.
Yeah but there isn't any easy way to do it.
They hit you with one sentence and the response is five paragraphs :D
An alternative would be...responding like a true Freudian — with a one line question of your own. Now that would save energy.
Also, they say no energy is lost. Turned into heat, as you pointed out, yeah.
Digitalize me that, Batman ;)