Why I Haven't Responded to Your Crypto Job Post

Hi. I know you’re not a bad person. I also know you’re probably wondering by now why I haven’t said boo about your suggestion that I look at coming over to your crypto company since I don’t have a job yet. I feel like I owe you an explanation (fair warning, you’re probably not going to like it) and I respect you, so I’m not going to mollycoddle you. I’m not interested in working in crypto because I think the entire industry is fundamentally ethically bankrupt. I know, that’s strong language, but allow me to explain.

Clarification: I’m not opposed to blockchain, just the use for it pretty much every fintech bro wants to put it to.

Let’s start by considering the difference between cryptocurrency and, you know, currency. Think what you may about the United States, but the country has (last four years notwithstanding) been run by people who will actually make some kind of at least minimal good faith effort to pay their debts. That may not seem like much backing, but compare it to cryptocurrency. Its sole backing is the interest of someone else in exchanging it for some currency which has a legitimate backing. The crypto bubble isn’t the Tulip Bulb bubble. Tulip bulbs still have some kind of inherent value. Cryptocurrencies do not.

That makes crypto a stupid choice, but it doesn’t make it unethical. Here’s where the ethics part comes in. Every crypto coin/token/whatever has to be mined. That mining involves, as you no doubt know, extremely complex computation which can take even an extremely fast, extremely powerful computer designed specifically for the purpose many hours of fully loaded processing. The only result of all of that computation is whatever crypto coin award is associated with the block being mined. All of that requires electricity. A lot of electricity. It gets dissipated as heat. The heat has to be pumped out. And that takes electricity. A lot of electricity. The Bitcoin app alone now consumes an amount of electricity equivalent to the output of seven large nuclear power plants…and throws it out the window as heat. That is waste on a stunning scale…a gut punch to a world in which many millions live in poverty and want.

There are any number of valid reasons to use enormous amounts of power to perform complex calculations. Pissing that power out into the world to perform an arbitrarily complex calculation which creates nothing, builds nothing, solves nothing, and does nothing, is not one of them. It is, instead, a grotesque farce, a useless parody of economics which serves no purpose, does no good, and creates no value. Surely there are better uses of our time, our technology, and our resources.