Listening to a recent episode of the Solarpunk Presents podcast reminded me the importance of consistently calling out cryptocurrency as a wasteful scam. The podcast hosts fail to do that, and because bad actors will continue to try to push crypto, we must condemn it with equal persistence.
Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products.
People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. So that’s a lie, but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation.
Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech.” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades.
Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate.
Update for episode 5.3: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, they caution against accepting superficial solutions—things that appear utopian but really reinforce inequality and accelerate the climate crisis—while doing exactly that by talking up cryptocurrency.
Crypto is cypherpunk not cyberpunk.
You can create new alternative economic systems outwith existing monetary systems. Global mutual credit, local exchange trading systems, etc. There are plenty of solarpunks and leftists in crypto and have been since the start.
“I am a solarpunk in crypto because I want to burn the entire energy output of a second Ecuador in order to help criminals extort ransoms out of hospitals and libraries.” - An idiot
Literally a children’s hospital in my city had their shit locked up by “hackers” – they were using pen and paper to schedule appointments for weeks, using handwritten notes to pass health details from ER to ICU, etc. It could still be down for all i know, I haven’t checked in a while.
I don’t know exactly how much pain and suffering this has caused kids, or how many died because of it, but i know how hard it was when my son was in the hospital for months when he was little, and that was with a fully functional hospital.
It’s fucking disgusting. And I’m like kinda pro-crime a lot of the time…
Why would Satoshi do this
I hope somebody makes righteousness edible until you retire. Otherwise you’re gonna have a bad time.
Confidently incorrect.
Ransomeware is a pretty small segment. Much dodgier shit happens with cash.
PoW can be used to store energy. Geothermal farms in remote areas mining energy credits. Spending energy on important stuff is also fine. We spend much more on inane nonsense. US tumble dryers use more energy than bitcoin. Other countries just use drying racks
Unfortunately an economic system is only as useful as its buy-in, and that’s the hard part. If you want you fight financial hegemony, don’t give wealthy people another lever of control.
Not really. This usecase is infinitesimal compared to speculation.
For now.