system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Could arguments to ban crypto mining also be applied to gold mining?

It's an orders of magnitude larger industry, and also seems rather pointless. There should already be enough gold out of the ground for all practical purposes, and it works as a reserve currency however much of it there is. If a ban was possible, would it be a good idea?
gpt
While gold mining and its processing can be quite bad for the environment (e.g. using Cyanide), it is not the case that there is currently enough gold just lying around that people would want to give up to be used in manufacturing processes for things like circuit boards and satellites. Additionally, expropriating the gold off people is probably a bad idea. For this reason, gold mining makes continues to make sense.

The crucial distinction between crypto and gold is that gold has other uses aside from being a store of value. In addition, more people believe gold to be a store of value. The same cannot be said about crypto.