Coinbase from YC to DPO
I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream.  It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming.  We are going to bestow a world that will be significantly worse than the one we inherited to our children, and, it's not like the carbon emissions that crypto is creating are used in the service of creating valuable technology - it's literally useless proof of work.<p>I've worked in tech for a long time now, and I believe the stereotype about amoral techies is completely untrue - yet seeing the adoption of crypto among my peers is really depressing.  I'm not sure how so many of my peers who would never ever work for a defense contractor or a vaping company are willing to work in crypto at this point.  My objections are not ideological - if someone invented a cryptocurrency that was completely green and it would take over the market, I'd be totally in favor of it.<p>I would genuinely like someone to explain it to me, because, the kinds of essays I've read that try to argue that crypto is actually good for global warming are so shoddy that I can't believe people would take them seriously absent a huge dose of motivated reasoning.