Thread by @johnkvallis

I love this beautiful planet & I want it, & those who inhabit it, to flourish.

So today, on #earthday, it’s an ideal time to expose the ill-considered arguments that undermine environmental progress by claiming ‘#bitcoin is bad for the environment’. (‘How dare you!’)

Thread👇

What do people mean when they say ‘bad for the environment’? If the concern is merely to avoid disrupting the natural harmony of the earth ex-humans, then nearly all human action is ‘bad’ for it.

However, if we take a human-centered perspective (what else?), our primary concern should be to judge the benefits of our actions, against the costs incurred in taking them.

Now, if we had the benefit of a true free-market, we would be receiving far more accurate signals to more precisely quantify and react to these costs, but that argument is for another time.

The point is that we should not be attempting to have ‘no impact’ on the earth, but rather trying to make sure that the impact we do have is maximally worthwhile.

‘Worthwhile’ meaning that the action contributes to the ability to perpetuate human flourishing, more than it impedes it.

Seen in this way, the question becomes, does an activity lead to the production and proliferation of life-enhancing resources in greater amounts than it consumes them?

If the answer is ‘yes’, then such an activity would reasonably be called ‘good’ for *our* (not ‘the’) environment.

So, considering this, how then should we assess the cost/benefit analysis of bitcoin? The potential ‘benefit’ of a thing can be considered as the utility, multiplied by its useful life (utility x useful life = benefit).

If bitcoin truly does become the dominant global money, then it will, by definition, become the most useful thing in the world (money being the ‘most saleable good’, used for coordinating all other market activity).

Furthermore, given bitcoin’s distributed, digital nature, it does not degrade whatsoever, and can therefore be infinitely ‘recycled’ (maintain or increase its utility), at least as long as bitcoin remains the monetary standard.

Put simply, there is literally nothing more beneficial than something that serves the highest possible use in society (money), which suffers no degradation of utility.

The benefit of this would be the continuous coordination of an unprecedented and inexhaustible wellspring of human flourishing, including the requisite innovation and market-led coordination to solve whatever ‘environmental problems’ emerge.

Said another way, bitcoin appears to have the highest ‘human flourishing-to-resource consumption ratio’ (lowest cost/benefit ratio) of anything, ever.

This means that, regardless of how it is produced, bitcoin may not only be erroneously labeled ‘bad for our environment’, but may instead be literally the best possible thing for it.