The correct answer to all this type of smear campaign (they do this to beef, among other thigns) is "yah, so what? If there's a sustainability problem raise the price of water until a sustainable amount is being used across all uses. If there's a claimed externality not being priced that externality exists for all uses, so raise the price until the externality is covered and see who is using what after that."<p>This whole line of argument is utterly stupid because it assumes incorrectly that the complainer should have input into what I do in my life and that is the polar opposite of how a western country, especially the USA, works constitutionally.
>In total, bitcoin consumed nearly 1,600 billion litres - also known as gigalitres (GL) - of water in 2021, the study, published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, suggests.<p>It's too bad the study isn't linked, but the math seems a bit fudged to me. Maybe they're using the amount of water per block (144 per day) which records multiple transactions?
For 2021 there were about 250,000-ish[1] daily transactions on BTC, so roughly 91 billion transactions. With 91 billion transactions using 1600 billion liters of water you get about 18 liters of water per transaction instead of the 75,000 or so liters a pool is.<p>If you assume a 24 x 12 x 4 pool and use blocks instead of transactions, each block uses about as much water as a pool.<p>[1]<a href="https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_transactions_per_day" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_transactions_per_day</a>
Every fiat payment is backed by similar energy and resource usage by the standing military (or dependence on another nation's via other exchange) that gives it worth and stability. Bitcoin is laudable in that it's energy and resource use is at least non-violent.
Animal agriculture uses more water and yet advocates are silenced. People are willing to denounce anything as long as it doesn't personally affect them.
Current bitcoin price is around 35k USD. This means that mining of one BTC going to cost you up to 35k USD (including the cost of equipment, electricity and everything else like the probability of finding a block). Why so? If the cost of production was higher than market BTC cost then it would be not profitable to mine. If cost is much lower then it's worth to buy a mining rig and start mining.<p>1 block gives 6.25 BTC for the block and around 0.5 BTC from transactions. 1 block contains 4k transactions.So 35k US/BTC * (6.25 BTC + 0.5 BTC) / 4k transactions ~= 59$ per transaction. That includes all energy spent by all active miners and full cost of equipment.<p>Not sure if a "swimming pool of water" costs 60$. I guess not.
How is this the future of finance?<p>This is such a waste of energy on an unprecedented scale for a 'coin' with no legitimate usecase other than ransomware payments and crime.