Tesla's not trying to reduce the number of cars, it's trying to replace the existing fleet with electric. This will likely increase consumption of electricity.<p>Wider adoption of bitcoin will likewise increase the consumption of electricity.<p>Electricity production (not consumption) is what causes emissions. More consumption will increase the demand for production, which will increase investment in production.<p>Given that we're in the middle of a green energy transition, increasing investment in production will likely accelerate that transition -- the stated goal of Tesla.
Tesla carrying Bitcoin has two main motivations:<p>- to make money<p>- for the memes<p>Anyone trying to justify it with the merit of the technology is either delusional or trying to sell you something.
Is everyone that uses USD complicit in the actions the US uses to ensure it’s the global default currency?<p>I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin is functionally any different.
Hacker News is pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative a bit too hard recently. I am not sure I have seen anything like it on this site before. It feels completely unnatural. I normally see more nuanced discussions about things here.
The very premise of this article ignores the very point of moving toward 100% clean power. If all power is clean, then why does it matter how much power Bitcoin uses?<p>That is: Bitcoin's "dirty baggage" ain't Bitcoin's. Rather, the dirty baggage is that of electricity production as a whole, and that baggage gets a heck of a lot cleaner once we've moved away from carbon-emitting electricity production. Bitcoin doesn't give the slightest iota of a rat's behind whether a miner's running entirely off solar power or entirely off the dirtiest coal money can buy.<p>Kinda disappointed in Reuters for putting their name on an article that is outright antithetical to factual reasoning. This is the precise opposite of good journalism; it's a hit piece, and for asinine reasons.
I think most people are confused about Bitcoin's environmental impact, in particular when compared to gold. I wrote a blog post [0] about it, if you want to dive deeper.<p>[0]: <a href="https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitive-answer-a010b0826f2a" rel="nofollow">https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...</a>
I think Tesla buying Bitcoin is simply reflecting the fact that Bitcoin is looking more and more entrenched - sort of it's here-to-stay realization. Gold probably had similar transition from being a shiny fad to a more entrenched store of value at some point in its history.<p>Personally, my problem with Bitcoin has been that some of the early adopters cornered large portions of it early on and that governments would never accept that reality. However, cat seems to be out of the bag. It seems to be playing out more like gold rush - whoever cornered, great. At some point governments will catch up and start hoarding it. And then it becomes regularized.<p>As for no intrinsic value, the high difficulty of mining and high difficulty of faking it, appears to make it a pretty reliable store of value.
I recently bought some Bitcoin with a bit of disgust but I'm not a fan.<p>It has effectively no utility except "volatile store of value". Most people actually buy it because they expect more than a store of value, they see it as an "investment" which will gain value over time.<p>But at some point an equilibrium will be reached where x % of world wealth will be allocated in Bitcoin and this x will remain stable over time and Bitcoin growth will slow down to global GDP growth (just thinking aloud, maybe this is wrong).<p>At that point, people may start to think, why the hell should I have my wealth in something that is expected to have similar returns to long-term government bonds but is also much more volatile and can go down to zero because unlike gold, there's no floor, it has no intrinsic value, it's all based on what people believe.
This will actually be the strategy for Tesla on long term - supplying clean energy for mining!<p>Interesting that the article totally misses out on that, it's a pretty big opportunity for Tesla and green energy (just have the banks print more money and use aluminum for coins isnt that clean either).
If anyone thinks goverments would let an alternate asset class, which they don't have any control over or visibility into (however much I personally disagree that government should not be regulating this), grow into infinity then they are being delusional. Its just common sense but it's hard for people to think rational during a hype cycle.<p>All it takes is one bad actor(s) to fund something nefarious using btc and the governments will make all this illegal in a few hours.<p>I love the concept of crypto and I think it will be used for lot of use cases in the future, no doubt about that
This article is just bad. Bitcoin's dirty baggage is magnitudes less than anything else companies and countries do to this world through not just air pollution but environment destruction, water pollution etc.<p>I'll keep arguing about this continuously. Bitcoin will never reach the severity that some other industries did.<p>Bitcoin is a non-issue.
> Musk wants clean power<p>Sure... /s That's why the solar roofs are very slow to materialize and the rockets/cars/bitcoins get all the focus.<p>Musk wants to make money. I seriously expect the whole solar-roof brand-bundling of Tesla was a clever PR trick, just like the Mars mission is for SpaceX.
Many solar panels are made by putting quartz and coal into an oven, and using coal to heat it to like 1800 degrees.<p>This releases a bunch of C02 and other much nastier stuff like silicon tetrachloride and radioactive uranium into the environment, and out comes purified polysilicon for making "green" PV panels. :P<p>In contrast Bitcoin can run on green hydro or nuclear power.