One thing is for sure. HN community has never gotten any trends correct. That must say something. FAANG, crypto, AI, javascript etc gets hate. Post about lisp, shell, emacs and if will be hailed :-
Bring the downvotes now.
Leaving the arguable utility and purpose aside, why is consuming electricity for securing traditional finance ok, but not for securing crypto based financial system? Isnt traditional systems consuming arguably needless electricity for ATM security, severs, surveillance, transportation, software and its resources that go into securing the system, etc etc? If thats acceptable i wonder why is the energy spent, in the name of PoW, unacceptable?PoW grabs a lot of eyeballs and also lets these paper analysts to easily quantify the consumption. While quantifying the energy consumption of traditional systems is difficult and hence becomes ok..