Crypto and NFTs Are Environmental Disasters...But Do They Have to Be?

The world of cryptocurrency and NFTs is riddled with controversy, but somewhere amid all of that blockchain there's some reckoning with reality that must be done.

Hosted by: Hank Green

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[timedebtor]

whenever I see this sort of stuff, I am reminded of one of the old coins that never took off. folding coin tried to address this energy problem not by using less energy but by making the math problem useful. they attempted to solve protein folding problems instead of a random hard math problem. this would mean that as coins were mined scientific progress would be made in this large search space of protein folding. It may be sad that this project never got very big

[youremakingprogress]

I was both appalled and amused a couple weeks ago when artists were saying, "Happy Earth Day! Let's fight for Mother Earth! Also, buy my NFTs."

[SciShow]

Seriously, y'all. Don't make us pause the comments. People disagree with each other, and if they didn't, nothing interesting would ever happen again! - Hank

[stockingsstuffer]

Im not shedding any tears over the cryptobro gougers losing the money they poured into ridiculous setups. Maybe computer parts will finally be more accessible.

[xanedan]

Thank you for this short overview. I work for a few environmental non-profits (mostly focused on stopping sand mining in pine forests and improving migratory fish habitat) and needed something brief to share with my members (who are pretty old and not tech savvy) whenever crypto gets brought up. There are a lot of other good videos but most of them are incredibly long or a little too wacky.

[estivalbloom]

My biggest issue is that even alternative systems which resolve environmental issues with crypto still put disproportionate power in the hands of people with the capital to invest, resulting in a rich-get-richer system that's even harder to regulate than conventional economies

[deborahbloom]

Ok. NOW I know what a block chain is. Thank you!

[bobdobbolina]

If you ask me, blockchain is a realtime experiment modeling capitalism & consumerism. The hope was that people would quickly realize that the system was completely unsustainable, hastening a change to a more sustainable economic system. So far, it has instead confirmed that human greed is immeasurable & that capitalism will not be dislodged without enormous resistance from its 'winners'.

[denys-p]

About proof of stake - as I know (I might be wrong here) it is designed to give better chances to owners of bigger wallets. So it means that rich people will get richer and richer because of this mechanism. It is literally “money make more money”

[oasntet]

Etherium has been a couple months away from the switch to proof of stake for almost as long as Etherium has existed.

[avanfield]

"you can make it even able to fight back global warming and still a system where everything and any interaction is reduced to a transaction still sounds like a horrible dystopia"

[billyalarie]

this is literally the only time my head didn't wanna cave in from trying to keep track of all the information to follow so as to understand wtf this is.

thank you Hank. this is why you're One of The Good Ones.

[lexaprobabes]

If they can make it less awful for the environment it'll be less objectionable, I still think they're pointless and frivolous but the environmental impact is the worst part for me

[ccgarciab]

5:55 you're right that it gets worse as miners compete against each other, but there's also a progressive worsening of mining efficiency (math problems get harder) in the design of Bitcoin.

[argledotorg]

How does Proof of Stake work 20 years down the road when someone new tries to enter the mining pool?

Can they do so on an equal basis, or does it raise barriers to entry that grow higher over time?

[AynenMakino]

So proof of stake is essentially a filter: Only people with financial means can invest in getting selected. And does anything stop that group of people, who all have in common that they must be wealthy, from making agreements amongst themselves? And what do the wealthy do when they can make agreements with each other? They gate-keep wealth. Being selected gives your group exclusive ability to authorize transactions with such a currency. It's too powerful a tool for the wealthy to not wanna try and use it.

[gmsherry]

I don't understand cryptocurrency and I'm never going to. I thought they solved the hard math problems to create (earn) NEW crypto. You're saying they have to solve a problem to record a transaction?? To move existing crypto from one person to another? To use crypto to pay for something? That's ridiculous. That's like I work an hour to earn $10 and then I have to work another hour to get the right to SPEND the $10. Can that be right?

No matter what the answer to that is, thanks for confirming for me that the math problems are useless -- that the solutions don't do anyone any good. That solidifies my opinion that this whole thing is a scam. And it's a very sad scam. Here's exactly what it's like (to me; just an old guy's opinion based on how this has been explained): It's like little kids watching their mom bake a cake or a pan of brownies. They observe the actions of baking and see that it produces a valuable result -- a result that's worth something. So then they go out in the back yard and make some mud pies and bake them in a cardboard box with "Oven" scrawled adorably on the side. And then they present the result to their parents as if it was actual food. That's cute in children. But now we have adults who should know better doing the exact same thing. They think they have discovered the following truth: "Putting work into something makes it valuable." They think that effort or exertion -- IN AND OF ITSELF -- creates value. They think a mud pie is as valuable as food. But this is a fundamental error. Work or effort that leads to a USEFUL RESULT creates value. You can spend all day pushing against a wall or moving dirt from one side of a yard to another and wind up exhausted but create nothing of value, and nobody in their right mind will pay you for it. Work, to create value, must be USEFUL to someone. Crypto is adults making mud pies and expecting them to be treated as if they were food. Ridiculous and pathetic -- and yet everyone is going along with it. WHY?

[HardcoreHobo]

The problem of "Proof of Stake" is that it is still designed to reward the wealthy, as the richest miners will likely always win by virtue of owning more. That could be one major criticism of crypto in general is that is it designed to make the rich richer; a zero sum game that tricks average people into losing money to the rich through complex systems that are very hard to understand.

[pumpkinpie]

For a second I thought SciShow sold out to The Man. But Hank has a point. Crypto along with the rest of the world need to transition into renewable energy.

[nathanrichard]

🌈 *I'M THINKING OF INVESTING IN THE CRYPTO MARKET BUT I'M TAKING MY TIME TO FIGURE OUT HOW THE WHOLE THING WORKS* 🔥🔥🔴