[ExI] Sell your Bitcoins!

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 31, 2026 at 1:10 AM Kelly Anderson <postmowoods at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Money has ALWAYS been dirty and cost the environment quite a bit of
> damage.


*Money has always been dirty and costly to the environment UNTIL the
invention of fiat money; it works because it's easy to use and because the
population agrees that fiat money has value. And that's exactly the same
reason why gold can be used as money, although it no longer is in the
modern world. Gold still has value but it's no longer money because if you
want to buy something you must first sell your gold and receive fiat money
for it. When it comes to money, value is a necessary but not sufficient
condition, money must also be fungible (which makes precious gems even
further from being money than gold or silver is) and it must be easy to use
with low or zero transaction costs. *

 > *prior to the Spanish arriving in Peru, gold and silver was used
> primarily as a localized aesthetic or ceremonial item. Once the Spanish
> came and wanted money, the transformation of metal into global commercial
> money drastically accelerated environmental destruction,*


*Yes but as I've already mentioned, unlike the present and the
future, there is absolutely nothing we can do about the past. And the sins
of historic gold and silver miners are trivial compared to Bitcoin's
ENORMOUS waste of energy and even more important, hyper valuable
computational resources that could and probably will determine the winner
of the AI race; harping on the unethical behavior of historic gold miners
will not change that fact one iota. *

* > the damage from Bitcoin is more diffuse and potentially reversible.*


*If China wins the AI race because the Americans lacked sufficient
electrical energy and computational resources, that fact will NOT be
reversible. And if Mr. Jupiter Brain's ancestor is an American AI  I
believe my chances of surviving the Singularity meat grinder will be
slightly greater than if HIS ancestor was a Chinese AI. *

* John K Clark*








> On Fri, May 29, 2026 at 4:52 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 4:43 PM Kelly Anderson <postmowoods at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >>> >> Your history of the many sins committed by gold miners over the
> last few thousand years was quite interesting but unfortunately nobody can
> change the past, however we can do something about the present and future
> sins of bitcoin miners. And the entire issue of gold is irrelevant to this
> discussion because the dollar has not been on the gold standard since 1971
> when Nixon severed the last link between the U.S. dollar and gold by ending
> the ability of foreign governments to exchange dollars for gold, and even
> before that in 1933 Roosevelt made it illegal for US citizens to make that
> exchange. As for the other two major world currencies, the European euro
> and the Chinese yuan, they were NEVER on the gold standard, and yet those 3
> currencies run the world, and they can be directly used to buy things; and
> those are properties that bitcoin does not have, and neither does gold.
> >>
> >>
> >> > Once again, you miss the point. I think perhaps you do this on
> >> purpose. The point isn't that the dollar is linked to gold. Of course
> >> it isn't. I wasn't speaking about the dollar, I was speaking about the
> >> past performance of gold AS MONEY.
> >
> >
> > OK so your point was about the historical mendacity of gold miners.
> Fine, but I thought this discussion was about bitcoin and the advantages
> and disadvantages it has over the paper forms of money that currently run
> the world. I don't understand what gold or gold miners have to do with the
> price of eggs in China.
> >
> > And speaking of "purpose", why did you purposely decide to take this
> debate off the list?  Was it because you lost confidence in the strength of
> your own arguments and didn't wish to be publicly embarrassed?
> >
> >>
> >> > And that all money has almost always come at a considerable cost to
> those who do the proof of work that makes it money.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure what you could call "proof of work" when it comes to paper
> money, certainly not the energy required to run the printing presses. Maybe
> the "proof of work" of a paper dollar is the fact that, although imperfect,
> it helped in enabling the building of a vibrant economy.
> >
> >> > The future of Bitcoin can't be changed without a 51% agreement to
> >> change it. And why do you think ANYONE would agree to that?
> >
> >
> > Agreement has nothing to do with it. In 2016  52.9% of the voters agreed
> that Donald Trump should NOT be the next president, but he became the next
> president anyway.
> >
> >   John K Clark
>
>
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