- Anti-Proof-of-Work groups have sprung up in recent months, protesting against its environmental impact
- Opponents try to argue that Bitcoin without PoW would be less secure and not in the protocol design
- Such groups don’t give a crap about Bitcoin or its protocol, so don’t waste your time arguing it
Environmental groups have been campaigning harder than ever against cryptocurrencies that use the proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism, with much more focus now being put on the mining process than the coins themselves. This has included a push to force Bitcoin to move to the more energy efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, a conversion that one group, Change the Code Not the Climate, described as “basic”. One of the arguments put forward by supporters of coins that use this mechanism, such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, and Monero, is that PoS isn’t as secure as PoW, which is true. But guess what? They don’t give a shit.
PoW Opponents Want Bitcoin Banned
The cryptocurrency space is known to be an insular one, with people frequently “falling down the rabbit hole” and inhabiting this strange world of diamond hands, moonshots, rug pulls, and yield farming. However, what they tend to forget is that while all these terms and more may make absolute sense to them, to the point where they can engender fervent and heated debate, to the outside world they mean nothing and, more to the point, they couldn’t care less.
Greenpeace, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and all the rest of them don’t give a crap that Bitcoin would be less secure with PoS than with PoW – if anything they would be for it because it might precipitate Bitcoin’s demise.
These groups want Bitcoin banished from the face of the Earth, but if it must survive then it must exist in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Arguing that PoW is cemented in the Bitcoin protocol because Satoshi designed it that way and that a departure from this would mean it isn’t Bitcoin is the worst possible argument to use because it will fall on utterly deaf ears – they simply don’t care.
Fight the Right Battles the Right Way
Arguing Bitcoin protocol with groups that believe that removing 0.2% of the CO2 produced in the world will make a big impact on preventing climate change is a waste of your keyboard. The only argument that can be made against groups like this is to show how Bitcoin mining is in fact driving renewable energy uptake, that in many cases it uses only excess electricity, and other factors that they will understand.
Whining about whitepapers and code is pointless against groups that have an entirely different agenda. They don’t value your objections and it’s time to realize this. Fighting them on their battlefield is the only way to win.
