Virtual Bitcoin Mining Is a Real-World Environmental Disaster

Given that all work takes energy, it seems vastly stupid to call "a disaster". It also costs money to click cows, watch cat videos, make toast, and cuddle babies. Relatively speaking the impact is low. The intrisic value is based in the difficulty of obtaining it, like many other assets.

Unless I am mistaken, the majority of energy that goes into generating bitcoins (and any computation) is generally lost as heat.<p>It would be interesting if a bitcoin miner could replace a large building's furnace with their equipment, using the "waste" energy to provide heat to offices/apartments.

I wonder if any large bitcoin mining operation has thought about locating themselves in Denmark:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547979" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547979</a><p>As bitcoin mining boxes can be spun up at a moments notice, they could be used to take advantage of the "free" electricity that is generated when Denmark's wind turbines are producing more electricity than there is demand.

If new bitcoins were worth billions, billions in energy would be wasted mining them.<p>(the denomination of newly-created bitcoin is adjusted to keep the growth rate at the prescribed amount regardless of how much CPU power is dedicated to mining. So regardless of the bitcoin price, the energy needed to mine new bitcoin is close to the value of bitcoin created. Otherwise mining would be a free lunch.)

US dollar and economy prospered for last 40 years with its power to print paper money without anything to back it. with 2 trillion dollars debt, US Paper money is now worth the paper and this bubble will burst someday , so people are going behind a currency with some Mathematical principles .

So this is turning real coal into imaginary value. Great.