The other thread (which now points to the original source) is here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536</a>. There are paywall workarounds posted in the comments.<p>I don't know if it makes sense to merge these threads, because the point about environmental impact is mostly just a side comment in the original article.
My problem with these takes is that they're missing the forest through the trees. I don't believe you'll ever be able to solve climate change by shaming people based on their usage of electricity. The problem is not HOW people use electricity, it's how the electricity itself is generated. The electricity might be used to draw triangles on my screen, hash some value, keep me warm in my apartment, or make my car move; each of those things might be objectionable to someone.<p>Ever since humans learned to harness electricity our usage has increased, and with it our quality of life has also increased. That's not going to change. The only way to prevent electricity usage from causing climate change is to regulate emissions themselves (either through carbon taxes or outright bans: that's for regulators to decide) and invest in alternative forms for electricity generation (that includes nuclear).
I'm a Bitcoin skeptic, but mentioning "fundamental value" when talking about currency seems incongruous. The "fundamental value" of bitcoin is whatever people think it's worth. Just like USD.
FIAT is backed by the military. The countless wars to maintain hegemony are surely very environmentally destructive. Has anyone done a comparison study between the US dollar and Bitcoin from this environmental perspective?<p>Edit: I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this:<p>>In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity, at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD's electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.3 million average American homes. In electricity consumption, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 58th in the world, using slightly less than Denmark and slightly more than Syria (CIA World Factbook, 2006).[1] The Department of Defense uses 4,600,000,000 US gallons (1.7×1010 L) of fuel annually, an average of 12,600,000 US gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. A large Army division may use about 6,000 US gallons (23,000 L) per day. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_S...</a>
I’m biased but I wonder whether these outlets write more about Bitcoin hurting the environment than oil companies and other energy producers pushing back so hard on alternative energy.
Internet advertising's fundamental value is negative given its environmental (not to mention psychological and sociological) impact. So can we get rid of ads?
For this critique to be meaningful, it should compare vs. alternative approaches of storing and transferring value - including cash, which can’t possibly be environmentally friendly. Not just in production, but storage, transfer (I wonder what the MPG is on those Brinks trucks), and so forth.<p>I suspect Bitcoin still comes out behind, but at least it would be a meaningful comparison.
Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.
Bitcoin or anything really should be allowed to use however much energy it is economically feasible. The real question is, why is there no better use for that electricity than to compute numbers? How our economies became so stagnant the best return for capital investment is bitcoin?<p>Bitcoin was designed in part as a challenge to the monetary system, but it has ended up shining a light onto a much bigger problem: the economy itself is broken, it is sick, energy usage is just one of the symptoms. Resources in most industries are being wasted so much investors see no value in generating 'real' productivity. Hence the demand for cryptocurrencies.
I think its wild that when the absurd energy consumption curve of bitcoin used to be brought up the defense was "you're blowing it out of proportion", whereas now it's "so what.. don't you have a fridge?"<p>(Same pattern I recall about climate change, ice caps melting, etc. Deny until it's impossible and then dismiss instead)
Most bitcoin mining is done with hydro or solar electricity, because it's either very cheap or free.<p>Both are renewable.<p>And even if it wasn't, who are we too tell people how to spend their energy? What we really need is a proper carbon tax.
Video gaming has more environmental impact than bitcoin. So do porn sites. Bitcoin just seems like an easy target because people are more directly profiting off of it.
The USD and all the banks must really have some serious negative value if this farce is to be believed. What about automobiles? I won't go on, so tired of this phony narrative. Things cost electricity and money to create. Has anyone tried to add up the power consumption of all the banks collective offices total power consumption? Just to manage money hmmm?
This is a blatant smear campaign as Bitcoin gains popularity.
I'm genuinely curious to know how much power is being used for things like machine learning (tons) and AWS hosting and various other large power consumers and what "value" they have vs, anything else.<p>Edit: I know I said I won't go on, but I started thinking about total power consumption from Netflix and all streaming servers, the load, the bandwidth etc because I'm quite familiar with how much a datacenter full of video streaming/conversion servers can pull. All just so people can sit at home totally unproductive sapping up bandwidth and power through multiple points.
This is a rehash of a previous post of mine regarding electricity consumption. Just wanted to repost this to get more eyeballs and critiques:<p>Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or even negative (eg, during periods of higher winds and lower demand.)<p>I predict that in the future as bitcoin mining becomes more and more of an efficiency game that you will see bitcoin mining be kind of a load balancer the grid, effectively turning off during peak demand (or low supply) times and contributing to the base load during regular times.<p>For example, it may even help the economics of building new wind plants. Eg, currently it may not be profitable to build a new wind plant because base load is too low that the excess power generated would need to be sold off at 0 or even negative prices. However if bitcoin mining could be turned on during these times and off during periods of high demand, there will need to be fewer peaker plants in operation and it would positively affect the economics of opening a new wind plant.<p>Bitcoin mining only cares about the cost of electricity at a given time, it is not like most other electricity demands that are very time based. With the large variance of electricity generation by renewables, I think bitcoin can in the future help smooth demand according to the real supply/demand curve.<p>It's kind of like a different implementation of the Tesla utility grid batteries. Instead of deploying power, you force the grid to build more renewable capacity (that the miners are paying for) that you use except in peak periods, where you turn off and effectively provide the grid with more power.<p>Here are 2 articles of a bitcoin mining company doing just this:
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-miner-is-scoring-700-profits-selling-energy-to-grid" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-m...</a>
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/how-this-billionaire-backed-crypto-startup-gets-paid-to-not-mine-bitcoin/?sh=1a6f86e97596" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/ho...</a>
Bitcoin can be carbon neutral but it has a long way to go.<p>Energy usage itself is not a bad thing, it’s the energy source that can be environmentally problematic.<p>Currently 39% of mining power is driven by renewables [1]. It’s not much but a good start.<p>The simplest solution to speed this up would be to create a law requiring that all mining must use renewable sources (or at least tax those that don’t). It would drive innovation, jobs, and make locations with renewable sources competitive places to live.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study" rel="nofollow">https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternati...</a>
As a miner, I'm running a machine that takes electricity as input and outputs bitcoin.<p>Since I have to pay for the electricity in dollars, and since I sell the bitcoin for dollars, I'm actually operating a machine that takes dollars as input and outputs dollars.<p>As long as I get more than a dollar out for every dollar I put in, I basically want to put as much money through the machine as it can handle, and I want to build as many more machines as I can afford. That will only change if the $ input:output ratio drops below 1.<p>If the cost of electricity goes up, my ratio suffers. I have to pay more to get the same amount of bitcoin out.<p>If the price of bitcoin goes down, my ratio suffers. I get less dollars out for the same input.<p>If you want me to burn less electricity, you need at least one of those two things to happen: Increase my electricity cost or decrease the price of bitcoin.<p>You may be rolling your eyes at the obviousness of this. That's because all industrial capitalism operates this way. You put money in to pay for power (to extract resources and fabricate), and you get money out the other end when you sell your product. The "use value" of the product never comes into it for the capitalist. All that matters is what it costs to produce vs what someone will pay at the end.<p>You may say "but industrial capitalism produces actually useful things like food and clothes" but when it does, that's just coincidental! The situation with bitcoin isn't unique, it just illustrates the phenomenon especially elegantly: the economy does not care whether it's producing useful things or destroying humanity. It only cares if the math works.
I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change (see block size debate).
Bitcoin could be using clean energy in future (at least there is the opportunity for it) - maybe Tesla does something in this place. Regular finance, banks and money printing are also using a lot of resources. Why does the article not attempt to compare these? Seems more of an opportunistic write up, than an in depth analysis of the problem space.<p>I guess news outlets also have to ride the hype whenever it happens.
I think BTC mining provides a needed incentive to invest renewable power. You have a customer that needs infinite electricity and they’re okay if supply is not 100% available as long as the price is low.<p>In the future I hope we use this supply for something else but in the short term it solves the issue of no one wanting to invest in and improve renewables.
More likely to be coincidence than malice, but after crypto got some positive attention through tweets and dogecoin, I wonder if these negative stories are a push against it in order to suppress their value.
I love the angle these attacks on BTC has been taking lately, it really seems somebody is getting desparate for it not to succeed.<p>This however seems a particularly bad attack on BTC, because we are not (spoilers) going to be able to to solve global warming, or even to mitigate it much. That ship has sailed, if it ever existed at all.