Flutterby™! : External costs of crypto

I've been thinking a lot about the external costs of things. Automobiles are easy, except that even now, in twenty freakin' twenty four, we're still finding direct ways (tire dust) that cars have huge external costs, let alone all of the far down the list effects like increased personal mobility allowing decreased density which means ideas propagate more slowly leading to less innovation.

Advertising is a cost. I remember writing a very angry screed to a science fiction author who spammed a bunch of us who'd signed on to an ITAR export violation (eg: potential felony) with a "you like freedom, maybe you'd like my book!" ad. Spoiler: Dude had not signed on to the same list. But while that, and, of course, the original Canter & Siegel thing, was something worthy of outrage. Today we've accepted the destruction of all of those amazing email lists, indeed, of email itself, as we buckle under the weight of all of the crap.

Looking back at the early electronic currencies of the '90s, or Bitcoin starting in 2008, I'd like to see who predicted this incredible load on our critical infrastructure that it enabled: Ransomware continues to pile on costs for critical infrastructure victims. and as we hear that AT&T reportedly paid $370k for a video of someone allegedly deleting their stolen call records the external costs of cryptocurrencies that are imposed on all of us are only gonna get worse.