This articles makes absolutely no sense. It uses market capitalisation of Apple and bitcoin to compare the CO2 emissions of an iPhone and a bitcoin transaction which is clearly nonsense. You could calculate the rough CO2 emissions of a 1 BTC transaction by dividing annual estimated CO2 emissions by bitcoin miners (35 million tonnes) by the number of annual transactions (100 million) which equates to about 350kg of CO2.<p>An iPhone on the other hand produces around 100kg of CO2 to manufacture according to <a href="https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-an-iphone" rel="nofollow">https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-wh...</a><p>So in summary it's actually only 3 to 4 times.
<i>"the decision to buy one Bitcoin versus about 29 iPhone 12 Pros emits 195 times as much CO₂"</i><p>The headline made it sound like 195x a single iPhone...
<i>"...with regards to NFTs we will see PoW take precedence since it reduces fraud."</i><p>This is a massive assumption, and likely wrong. From Ethereum to Cardano and beyond, NFT's are almost exclusively being created on smart contract platforms that either already utilize PoS or are transitioning to it quickly. So the idea that PoW will take precedent in the NFT space.. how?<p>Regarding fraud, is that to suggest PoS is not secure? Also a massive assumption and likely wrong.
> Does that mean cryptoassets are doomed technology? No, this spells the need for established institutions to adopt and support crypto. The demand is there. Meanwhile, we need to be more cautious of the actors we currently enable in crypto networks and the corners they’re willing to cut in the pursuit of profit.<p>Exactly. Everyone that matters is putting their energy towards creating incentives and software that allows for similar security and confidence of crypto networks, while using less energy.
I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?
I was a bit disappointed in the article given the headline. The analytical methodology used here is a bit odd to me, and there was no explanation as to why this methodology was used.<p>I still don’t know how much incremental CO2 is emitted from buying a Bitcoin or an iPhone after reading it. All I see is a weird CO2 divided by market cap calculation...<p>Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions from either of these?
The title should be 195x as much CO2 as producing an iPhone. In regards of buying and if you are drawing a comparison with fiat currencies you should take into consideration the environmental impact for producing, circulating and securing the money that is used for the transaction.<p>Nobody ever talks about what is around fiat, ATMs, money counting machines, heavy armoured vehicles moving them around, etc.
Actually the costs to mine a block on the blockchain are the same, no matter if somebody buys a Bitcoin or not. At most you could argue that driving up the price gives miners an incentive to mine more.
It's not only about emitting CO2, it's also about wasting the earth's surface to produce electricity, such as damming rivers or plastering it with solar panels, or mining for resources to fabricate the bitcoin-mining hardware (which needs to be replaced every few years). The problem will be increasing as the price of BTC goes up. It's a tragedy of the commons.
Apple operates at pretty comfortable profit margins. At one time it was the most profitable company in the world. I'm not sure this comparison is fair - Apple is famous for creating highly valuable outputs with relatively minimal inputs.<p>This comparison is just for fun, but there seems to be some buzz about Bitcoin not being environmentally friendly I don't know why people are all grumpy about Bitcoin, there are a lot of things that we waste energy on.<p>Maybe if the world governments were a bit more responsible with their currencies then there wouldn't be a need for Bitcoin. It was a direct response to the outrageous actions taken after the '07 crisis.
The higher the price BTC go, the more miners will mine to get it near break even. Imagine 600k price where some pumpers are targeting, you are looking at potentially 10x the energy used to mine blocks. Is that a correct characterization of the problem at hand?
When Hackernews becomes full on irresponsibly bullish on all things crypto - this is when you sell ALL your crypto.<p>That's the only thing I have learned from this forum, by far the best counter-indicator.
I’m trying to understand this. The value of the “emission” would fluctuate with the value of the coin? But the wording is weird. How is “buying a Bitcoin” generating 195x co2 compared to x? The mining of Bitcoin has already happened. That emission is over for that Bitcoin after it has been mined. And tying either Bitcoin emission values to capital values. Or iphone emission values to Apples capital value also doesn’t seem very intuitive. What’s the point?