Bitcoin is not a Battery – it is a Sink
I was not familiar with the original argument but it's so ridiculous at face value that I wonder if a rebuttal was necessary.<p>Mining Bitcoins is like Iceland smelting aluminum? Mining bitcoin "converts electricity into value"? Preposterous.<p>The value of bitcoin is driven by speculation, and in turns that increases the incentive for the miners, not the other way around. There's no value created by crunching random SHA-256.<p>As a thought experiment, let's assume that tomorrow a breakthrough slashes in half the cost of energy worldwide. Nuclear fusion reactors become viable or something. That would probably make aluminum cheaper, since processing it is so energy-incentive.<p>But what about bitcoin? It'd just lower the bar for mining to be profitable, and it'll temporarily increase the size of the mining pool as the difficulty adjusts, but that's about it.<p>There's simply no direct relationship between the cost of electricity and that of bitcoin that I can see. There's not even a direct relationship between the cost of electricity and the <i>service</i> provided by bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't become more or less useful based on the cost of mining, it's always one block every 10 minutes give or take.