The future of Bit­coin min­ing appears to be in the hands of a small minor­i­ty of users who can afford ASIC equip­ment, mak­ing the “dis­trib­uted” nature of Bit­coin some­thing of a joke. In addi­tion, the Bit­coin net­work now must use vast amounts of pow­er just to main­tain itself, pow­er typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed by fos­sil fuel plants and in amounts far out of pro­por­tion to its actu­al use­ful­ness. It is a tremen­dous waste of actu­al real-world resources that could be bet­ter used on some­thing impor­tant (like, for exam­ple, watch­ing cat videos).

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.