The tale of woe about the harm Bitcoin does to the environment from many a “concern merchant” is built on such a thin veneer that I thought it would be gone by now. The fact that this meme still propagates has driven me to write a post that I can reference such that I can contain it in a tweet every time the issue arises.

In simple terms the argument goes like this.

• Bitcoin is an energy intensive industry that uses polluting energy
• Bitcoin creates no value (at least so little that it does not justify the environmental collateral damage it causes)
• Bitcoin miners should either voluntarily stop, be forced to stop, or the Proof of Work algorithm should be changed to something more environmentally friendly
• Due to the above, it is immoral to mine Bitcoin and accelerate Earth towards catastrophic climate change.

The argument fundamentally misses that the method of energy production is the...

Recently I received a deluge of criticism for the statement “If you understand Bitcoin then you support Universal Basic Income”. This statement was seemingly obvious but was derided as being moronic and non-sequitur. Even when prefaced with the statement that those that are against Universal Basic Income (UBI) generally don’t understand economics or money. The sequential logic here being Bitcoin relates to understanding money relates to understanding economics relates to economic policy = UBI.

The general concept of money has ben confused with wealth, currency, and even dollars. Fortunately our language distinguishes between these concepts, even if the meanings of the words has blurred into each other. Wikipedia does a pretty good job of defining it;

“Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a...