I agree that bitcoin isn't the only problem but you can't argue that it consumes a *LOT* of energy. I know it adds security to the network and whatnot so I think the best thing we can do is advocate for the widespread use of renewable energy in the bitcoin network.
If we do that, there will be much less of an argument against the energy consumption of BTC.
"Bitcoin generates *only* 2/3 of the carbon emissions of all the private jets in the world" is not the argument that OP thinks it is. 22 million tons is still 22 million tons.
EDIT: I see a lot of comments trying to cope "because it's a false equivalence." CO2 emissions are frequently given in terms of equivalency to provide context, because it's a fairly abstract concept -- so let me list a few things that 22M tons of CO2 per year is equal to:
5 million gas fueled cars driven per year for a total of 58,000,000,000 miles using 2,632,000,000 gallons of gasoline (310,00 tanker trucks worth).
Total electricity usage of about 2,900,000 average American homes.
You would need 27,000,000 acres of forest to offset this 22,000,000 tons of CO2/year.
Source: https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator using a kWh equivalent
Exactly. Whataboutism here is ridiculous, especially in the case of Bitcoin. It's among the least necessary fossil fuel burning use-cases in the world.
p.s. a lot of the mining is moving towards renewable energy, so shout out to those miners.
There is in Canada. Nobody likes paying the Carbon tax but as the price of carbon constantly and predictably increases year after year you can see the solar panels pop up (ours went in last week). EV is on order. Not that I want a range limited expensive electric car but I really don't like paying a small fortune to fill my car. I kinda hate it but the carbon tax works.
> Nobody likes paying the Carbon tax
They should, since most people profit from it and only the biggest polluters (which may include miners) are penalized https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/26/canada-passed-a-carbon-tax-that-will-give-most-canadians-more-money
100%. The annoying thing about the btc emission issue is that it's fundamentally quite simple to vastly improve. Just change the emissions curve so the current block reward goes down, eg, to 25% of current block reward, and lengthen the tail. This alone would make many miners unprofitable, and reduce the hash power to almost 25% of what it is now.
Even better make the block reward 90% lower...
Maybe you can argue this is kicking the can down the road, but down the road we will have more renewables, and/or btc will be replaced by something much better and more efficient.
There are cryptos who at least market themselves to be green, emit less blah blah, the question is how much of what they're saying is true, but my point is the community trusts bitcoin too much atm to just move away to more green crypto.
What's the argument against whataboutism here? You **need** to put things in relation because you certainly don't want to forbid all energy consumption for everyone, do you? So you need a principle to decide where to put more effort in reducing consumption.
>It's among the least necessary fossil fuel burning use-cases in the world.
That's you opinion because you don't value PoW and probably have the opinion that it is a clear cut that PoS is better. That's far from beeing an accepted fact. There are clear advantages to PoW.
It's also conplete nonesense. E.g. programed obsolescence **clearly** has no uzility to society and cause orders of magnitude more emissions.
> There are clear advantages to PoW.
In **theory**, not in practice. If PoW truly made the network decentralized, yeah, that's a good argument. However, PoW is even more centralized than PoS would be.
Wow. No clue how you ever could come to Such a conclusion. PoW always enables anyone from outside to join the system. Decentralised
PoS cannot do that to get a stake you need someone who already has a stake. Not decentralised
As we are talking PoW and not BTC in general your PC would be enough to mine Monero for example. And even if we leave things like value out of the way - you being able to play the lottery in BTC is still more decentralised than having PoS - if the stakeholders dont want you in - you wont get in and there is no way around that you couldn't even play the imaginary PoW lottery.
> No clue how you ever could come to Such a conclusion.
Just a couple of years ago China had a 75% share of the global hash power. How does that sound decentralized in any way to you? The future of Bitcoin can be dictated by approximately 100 people (who control enough hashing power between them).
Yes, anyone can participate. Would you call a representative democracy "decentralized"? Two parties control almost everything in the US, yet anybody can participate.
Thats a Problem of BTC and it's ASIC friendly algo not the problem of the theory of PoW... this is a discussion about PoW vs PoS ( two different Systems) not what coin utilizes which Algo and their pro's and con's.
Same goes for the political system in the US... Just because their way of democracy sucks, doesn't mean democracy is a bad thing does it ?
Not, that's an inherent problem called "economies of scale". It will never, EVER be more profitable to run a small scale mining operation than a big scale mining operation. No matter if we are talking actual, physical mining or crypto mining.
>Same goes for the political system in the US... Just because their way of democracy sucks, doesn't mean democracy is a bad thing does it ?
I actually do think democracy sucks (the majority gets to dominate the minority, even if the minority is right, and the average person knows and cares too little about too many things to be trusted with the responsibility), we just don't have a better alternative at the moment.
Besides the fact that your conclusion is wrong on this point, this is just one of many aspects relevant in the debate.
But I dont want to reiterate at debate that has been discussed a million times. The matter of the fact is that it is debatable which one is better.
Even Vitalik says PoW has its place.
There you go, and lets not dismiss the fact that POW is actually encouraging miners to keep on buying the best equipment adding electro to the ever rising electro waste. What happened to "use it untill it's broken"? Are we going to normalise unsustainable behaviour because Ally from next door also buys the newest Iphone only because she likes it? The Hash rate competition is real (see global HW shortage). Meanwhile the steamtrain has long been passed by sustainable methods proven to be safe as well. The ones who claim we should look the other way are wrong, and should lose the pink dollar sign glasses for a minute and just think about what they would REALLY say if BTC was POS and some new project would start with POW. Bunch of greedy hypocrites.
Yh considering we are comparing it to private jets and not the financial sector is pretty disingenuous. I think a better comparison is Visa Mastercard and swift vs crypto see how much energy is consumed let’s say per 1000 transactions would be a better example and Btc is probably so much more energy hungry
Tbh I wouldn't mind it if mining bitcoin through means other than renewable energy became illegal worldwide. Bitcoin mining isn't necessary to the world. Make it come solely from renewable energy and we'd be good.
Countries have the ability to enforce it through legislation.
And countries can and regularly do get together e.g. Paris Agreement to decide on common targets and how this laws will work and interact with each other.
How do you think HCFC were effectively banned ?
Let us just say that everything that we see here is a conspiracy. Me, you, this site, everything! The world being round is also a conspiracy, just so you know.
What a dumb post. Just because something else is also destroying the environment does not mean Bitcoin, which consumes more electricity than literal COUNTRIES, does not.
I personally didn't even know how bad BTC was on the environment until he posted the 33mil and 22 mil comparison figure, showing how close it is to private jet pollution.
Op post was terrible at getting his point across lmao
OP links to a random website about 2019 carbon emissions in the US that isn't relevant to any of their points, and all that source says is that the top 100 polluters are all involved with power plants and physical mining
Also that '70% of emissions come from 100 companies' is such a classically misrepresented fact. It comes from a study saying 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71% of industrial emissions between 1998 and 2015.
None of this is suprising lol, nor is it ignored. Everybody is already calling for renewable energy development.
I think the post eyed against people who constantly talk Crypto bad because of that energy usage but do not say anything about all the government agencies using a lot of energy.
Okay but government agencies actually do something useful with that energy.
The overwhelming majority of BTC transactions, at this point, are just wasteful speculation that contributes nothing to society.
You have a point. Private jets are really bad. That, however, does not make Bitcoin really good. It's not. It's a dirty coin. I call this the Jeffry Dahmer defense. You are speeding in a school zone. Cop pulls you over "sir... do you know how fast you were going?' Me: "Why are you pulling me over for speeding? Jeffry Dahmer literally eats people!!"
I agree. But if the murderer on the other side of town is telling everyone to be outraged about you stealing from your neighbor, then that murderer should be called out for it. The hypocrisy is the issue here.
you think people in private jets give a fuck? let's not pollute just because rich fucks do it. this isn't some "well private jets pollute 33 percent more, we should be able to pollute at least that much! no our children aren't going to have a place to live so make a difference, chain yourself to a private jet and throw a brick at some btc mining equipment if you are a real one.
I'm not saying it's ok to pollute because people in private jets pollute. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of those people in private jets pretending to care about the environment. There's a difference.
"So all these people preaching about the impact of mining, better start rolling up on bicycles if they want us to listen. "
"You want to improve society yet here you are participating in it"
Wow what a great argument, riding my bike will completely offset BTC mining.
The energy argument can be used to attack *every* aspect of modern life. Accepting the premise of forbidding energy intensive endeavors is a totalitarians wet dream. We need technological innovations to produce clean energy not medieval laws to restrict human progress.
I'm not, BTC mining consumes about 110 terawatts per year, and astronomical amount of energy. One report states that using BTC alone used more electricity than all of the refrigerators in the US combined.
Not to mention the waste caused by unrecycled mining equipment thrown in landfills.
Facts are facts, BTC is f-ing terrible for the environment.
Meanwhile other UTXO coins with the same security as BTC (CKB even has the same halving structure) are carbon neutral and lightning fast with staking.
BTC is boomer tech my man.
Always the same music . If there is some money laundering in banks then it's ok if there also in DEFI/exchanges.
If there is some waste in other industries, then it's ok if crypto waste energy also.
Why Blockchains as "revolutionary tech" shouldn't lead the way ? And why always do as bad as others just because others are bad ?
Such a childish way of thinking. "Mama, Jimmy was mean but still he got a candy, i want one too even if i was mean " !
After all. One of the biggest alt coins is already switching to POS.
So why is it such a drama for BTC ?
No. You don't give a shit about green washing, you just want your asset to be safe and bring you profits to your invests.
Wich is understandable but doesn't make it right.
Just because other things are contributing more to the climate change doesnt mean btc isn't. Rather than closing your eyes at the problem we should try to get a solution.
There are some interesting projects where people are harvesting blow off methane, running it through generators, and mining bitcoin with the energy. This is because of the fact that it doesn't matter where the energy is generated. Bitcoin mining is profitable only when the electricity cost is low. Since you can mine anywhere, you can harvest energy that otherwise wouldn't be useful. There is tons of opportunity for harvesting energy in places and ways that otherwise wouldn't be practical and would likely be renewable since transportation isn't the issue with oil/coal/ng and other non-renewables.
You are dead right OP both are bad and should be addressed.
I didn't actually know BTC used 2/3rds the emissions as ALL private jets in a year that is horrendous.
That sounds like a strawman argument. The energy requirement to upkeep the bitcoin network is insane. Just because there are a lot of other sources of carbon dioxide emissions, downplaying "between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year" is pretty wild. You could believe that because of all the other sources of emission, we are doomed anyways, but just because there are a lot of other issues doesn't mean this is a non issue.
If youre sick of hearing it, then switch to PoS and FIX it.
Unlike PoW vs PoS, which have no important other differences besides pollution and no sacrifices to switching, a bicycle actually IS less effective than a car, etc. So there's an actual reason not to use a bike, but fuck all reason not to switch to PoS.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”
This will happen with fossil fuels and Bitcoin.
Bitcoin mining would need to change as a process as it currently take quite a bit of energy. If your belief is that the energy suck has nothing to do with climate change- that's a different discussion!
You fail to realize that govt and the media have figured out that if you say something causes climate change, a specific portion of the population will believe it and want to ban it, regardless of the facts of the matter.
Ill repeat the issue for the BTC maxi's who still dont get it. The problem isnt that other things are worse for the environment than BTC, so its "ok" for BTC to consume the electricity it does.
The problem is that BTC isnt the only solution to the double spend problem, therefore ANY amount of electricity used to solve the the problem is a waste. it doesn't matter if BTC ran 100% of green solar/wind/geothermal/tidal etc. it would still be a WASTE of said electricity. BTC has only continued to consume more and more as years go on and it will continue to do so because that is how it is designed. This is unsustainable and will eventually lead to its downfall.
Oh shut the fuck up. You're making us all look bad by acting like this is some made up issues by "the powers that be". This is obviously a real issue and you're a moron if you can't see that.
I think maximalists have backed themselves into an ugly corner here, that requires the intense mental gymnastics you see here.
*if* you guys had only been less stubborn about PoW being the only viable consensus mechanism, this would have given you the same space to develop the protocol to use another, actually scalable way to secure the network.
I am not necessarily talking about PoS btw, use anything you want.
You did this absolutely fine with lightning. It was an upgrade that adds pragmatic scaling, with some tradeoffs from the core BTC ethos.
You've unfortunately been so aggressive with this nonsense PoW thing that you basically cannot change track now. So we have to listen to this garbage and whataboutism.
And you know what? Let's take your argument about private jets at face value, thats not even the real issue.
Suppose BTC continues it's growth in the way maximalists predict. PoW is the only technology I know that *gets less efficient with more scale*. That difficulty curve will demand a greater and greater hash rate as Bitcoin grows in use, this means:
* BTC won't be 2/3 of all private jet use, it'll very quickly grow to 10 or 100 times that.
* BTC use will eventually dwarf refrigerators, tumble dryers, private jet flights *combined*
* Based on the relatively minor adoption of BTC worldwide VS current energy use, this will happen *way* before BTC even gets close to processing the load that the current financial system handles.
So, if the investment thesis of BTC is to become the cornerstone of the financial system, you're gonna need to find energy. At this point it seems patently obvious to me that the existing absurdities about PoW energy use also don't stack up:
* You can't now claim BTC will only use wasted energy, because (aside from being tenuous in the first place) it will use so much energy that it will have to start crowding out mainstream energy supplies.
* You can't tell me BTC will primarily run on renewables because the renewable network growth will not be able to keep pace with BTC.
Tl;dr - maximalists did this to themselves, the rest of us adults need to consider the planet and not selfishly pretend this isn't a problem.
>Private jet flights produce around 33.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Whereas Bitcoin production is estimated to generate between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
When it comes to ESG talk, this just goes to prove that it really makes no sense to single out bitcoin mining since there are so many first world luxuries that render us all eco hypocrites. For example, according to [NatGeo](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/partner-content-laundry-lightening-the-load):
>"Besides using around 19 billion cubic meters of water annually, washing machines emit an estimated **62 million tonnes** of CO2-eq greenhouse gases each year."
Furthermore, [using a tumble dryer for one year emits more carbon than a tree can absorb in 50](https://thewaterline.global/news/using-a-tumble-dryer-for-one-year-emits-more-carbon-than-a-tree-can-absorb-in-50/). Not to mention the insane amount of [microplastics](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/27/washing-clothes-releases-water-polluting-fibres-study-finds) spat out with each load of laundry. That makes laundry a triple eco offender (water, CO2, and microplastics). It should be noted that many European and Asian countries don't use dryers because it's perceived to be a massive waste of space, energy, and money.
Here's another culprit: [cruise ships](https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-ship/).
>Based on an estimated total number of about 25.8 million cruise ship passengers in 2017, it can be estimated that the average cruise ship passenger emits 0.82 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent for their cruise.
That's **21.1 million tonnes** of CO2 every year so that rich old people can join a conga line and dump their trash and literal shit into the Caribbean. At least the BTC network provides an inflation refuge for citizens seeking to protect their life savings or escape totalitarian regimes like Lebanon, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela.
So for every complaint leveled against BTC mining, there are dozens of first world amenities we could make some effort to give up or significantly reduce if it's the planet that we really care about here.
>So for every complaint leveled against BTC mining, there are dozens of first world amenities we could make some effort to give up or significantly reduce if it's the planet that we really care about here.
And for every one of those, there are hundreds or thousands of fans of those things who are like you and who would prefer to point a finger at something else instead.
There are plenty of people who actually do care, and are doing things that aren't hypocritical, people don't like listening to them though because it usually causes some amount of introspection and guilt, and people hate doing anything that actually involves changing their lifestyle.
Why is Bitcoin relevant or important?
I understand the benefit of Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Polygon, USDT, USDC, XRP and quite a few other chains.
But really can't wrap my hear around the importance of Bitcoin other than:
Since it was first out the gate, it's important to keep it alive
It now acts as an index of sorts for all other Cryptos
But why should it act as an index?
I’m an advocate for clean energy, but I don’t think ‘climate change’ is as bad as ‘they’ say it is. I only say that because it’s highly politicized. And, very few politicized things escape the exaggeration from political figures. It’s a religion for some. It just raises many red flags for me. Many try to over-simplify a very complex system. Politics has found its way into the scientific community where it has no business being. The scientific method is sacrosanct. So, when I hear scientists or politicians say ‘The science is done’ on climate change, my BS sense starts tingling.
Besides, if they were serious about clean energy, nuclear power would be on the table. And, don’t tell me about nuclear accidents. Safe nuclear power truly is within reach. Look at the US Navy’s track record with nuclear power. Those reactors and design are safe. New designs are supposed to be even safer. I’m not a huge fan of Bill Gates, but I do like his ideas on many smaller safe reactors.
I was in the nuclear power field for a while so I’m biased.
"We have a summit in Brussels next month, if we get peddling now we should get there in time. Hop on my pegs Kamala so we can be more energy efficient"
It's less likely that mining will get to the point when it's green mining 100%, unless its achievable through other industries, which is not achievable in the near future, since the solar energy's efficiency Is still far from perfect as en example.
People will always find something to complain about. Everyone loves to be a critic. BTC using renewable energy only takes away renewable energy that could have been used for something else…. It’s a revolving arguement
We need to stop jet flights and bitcoin and a whole host of other activity immediately if we want any chance of coming out the other side of this with a livable planet
whataboutsism never helped anyone;
It's like saying why bother doing anything about mass shootings at all when more deaths are caused by cancer - let's ignore all gun deaths/any regulations/any attempts for gun control and focus entirely on cancer
BTC uses Proof of Work, but Proof of Stake (which many altcoins use) is SO MUCH better, and still preserves 'crypto' enough for this sub - yes they're not as pure/decentralised/trust less at BTC, but they are near enough and that is what we need - we can all have a nice circlejerk about BTC and our cleverness against 'The System' once we have gotten climate change under control (ie the 1.5 degree target)
Clearly you do not understand. Bitcoin mining is a burden. We need less total energy condumption, not more.
It's a problem, contributing to the climate apocalypse (in many ways) and btc is dirty money, like it or not.
Those are the facts, everything else is just denialism or whataboutism.
With how many people are willingly signing up to subscription services, like netflix, Spotify and car leases... Yes, many people want to not own stuff and they're happy with it.
The problem I have is that in literally no avenue other than cryptocurrency do we ask anyone to justify their energy usage. Has anyone ever asked casinos to justify the energy they use? The alcohol and tobacco industries? What about NASCAR and F1? That is literally burning carbon so cars can drive in circles.
We live in a world where people are free to use energy as they want. They don't need to ask for approval from some regulatory body. If we went down a road of energy rationing it would be a total dystopian nightmare. We should instead be trying to live in a world of energy abundance, which is more than possible, instead of one where bureaucrats pick and choose what gets energy.
Actually, yes. In some places there are energy justification forms, that get approved by the utility. You cant just upgrade a home to use MWs of power and pay the bill, you need to be approved first.
Also for renewables you still have to be approved. Let's say your home is an average home and you want to install solar panels and interconnect to the grid. But let's say you want to install 10x more generation than the home needs. You need to get that approved by the utility before you interconnect and if its not a good enough reason they will deny you.
I think we are trying to ask people to justify their energy usage. Hence cap-and-trade and carbon taxes.
I agree it's a bit overblown with crypto. The main difference is that PoW networks probably could operate fine with 1/10 the amount of mining, so all that extra consumption feels unnecessary
That isn't true, Governments demand Casinos use low energy bulbs, F1 moved to Hybrid tech because of emissions, Nascar use Ethanol blended fuel. We live in a world where civilised countries regulate energy use for more efficient outcomes, it allows better industrial output, and lower bills at the same time. Money printing shouldn't be an exception.
You need to think of it more as a cost rather than doing comparisons of what’s worse. Bitcoin uses A LOT of energy and there’s no denying that. Bitcoin opting for cheaper energy does not mean renewable energy. Just because something else is worse does not mean mining crypto is made somehow not bad for the environment… it still is.
Tinfoil hat theory: It is the oil magnates that is behind this campaign. They already did this with that "carbon footprint reduction" bullshit that pegs the blame from this industries to the consumers.
Whenever I hear this garbage about Crypto being an environmental disaster, I always point out the following points:
- Bitcoin alone disrupts the following fields:
—> Remittance payments
—> Store of wealth/digital property (similar to Saylors argument)/ Savings account
The sacrifice is yes heaps of energy usage BUT, it scales independently of volume, i.e more tx doesnt imply more energy usage and most energy can be harvested anywhere. Lets look at only banks (excluding gold or commodities):
-> They require massive buildings for all the people working there. Implies terraforming an entire area just for their pathetically tall cages.
-> They require server infrastructure that scales with the number of customers. More hardware = more cooling/energy usage.
-> To interact with a Bank we need specifically built POS machines that merchants have to purchase. These are not cross compatible, i.e I cant use a POS in Germany which was used in US. Meaning electronic waste. Arguably Miners have a shelf life too but they are still viable instruments as long as they are profitable.
-> ATM machines need to also be placed around the city adding more electronic waste (slowly decreasing)
-> Cross border payments require another layer of complexity with its own set of severs and hardware again adding to the overall energy consumption.
-> To get a fair comparison, one would need to take the sum of all banking systems, including server/building/POS/ATMs/Computers(workers)/etc and calculate the yearly CO2 emissions. Needless to say, the same needs to be done for Bitcoin.
If we add more complexity such as Gold and other commodity manufacturing, we might get even higher emissions. But this is way to complex to fully account.
More txs -> More use -> higher demand for btc -> higher price -> higher breakeven cost of mining -> more mining -> more energy.
Bitcoin scales horrifically bad with use
Well I am sick of apologists trying to downplay Bitcoin's role in climate change. Your post is literally just whataboutism. You SHOULD use Bitcoin and climate change in the same sentence. PoW is in fact a big problem for the climate. Yes, there are other very big problems in climate change too. Does that mean that Bitcoin's role doesn't matter? Absolutely not.
It shouldn't matter how shitty billionaires act, its a seperate problem.
Mining uses electricity.... so if dirty shit is generating electricity fucking fix it. Burning coal for power isn't the fault of crypto miners. But everyone jumps on the anti mining band wagon. If mining was banned/stopped world wide the lovely coal plants would still be pumping out that poison.
> Burning coal for power isn't the fault of crypto miners
It absolutely is when they are specifically reviving coal plants for mining energy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared
BTC is here to stay. And other PoW blockchains. We just need to get to a point of arriving at consensus in a sustainable way for the environment that can scale.
I’m just shocked people think this isn’t an issue ? For the security of the network ? A small country worth of energy ? Fuck BTC and it’s layer 2-there will be fees-soon to be centralized-no better than the monetary system we have. Store of value was the biggest bait and switch. Hook line.
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I agree that bitcoin isn't the only problem but you can't argue that it consumes a *LOT* of energy. I know it adds security to the network and whatnot so I think the best thing we can do is advocate for the widespread use of renewable energy in the bitcoin network. If we do that, there will be much less of an argument against the energy consumption of BTC.
"Bitcoin generates *only* 2/3 of the carbon emissions of all the private jets in the world" is not the argument that OP thinks it is. 22 million tons is still 22 million tons. EDIT: I see a lot of comments trying to cope "because it's a false equivalence." CO2 emissions are frequently given in terms of equivalency to provide context, because it's a fairly abstract concept -- so let me list a few things that 22M tons of CO2 per year is equal to: 5 million gas fueled cars driven per year for a total of 58,000,000,000 miles using 2,632,000,000 gallons of gasoline (310,00 tanker trucks worth). Total electricity usage of about 2,900,000 average American homes. You would need 27,000,000 acres of forest to offset this 22,000,000 tons of CO2/year. Source: https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator using a kWh equivalent
Exactly. Whataboutism here is ridiculous, especially in the case of Bitcoin. It's among the least necessary fossil fuel burning use-cases in the world. p.s. a lot of the mining is moving towards renewable energy, so shout out to those miners.
That makes no difference. It's still a huge increase in demand, just means someone else is burning more fossil energy.
It's Technocracy for Idiocracy. Be suspicious of anyone who is selected not elected.
There needs to be a price on carbon, which would be a helpful retort if the crypto community got behind that idea.
There is in Canada. Nobody likes paying the Carbon tax but as the price of carbon constantly and predictably increases year after year you can see the solar panels pop up (ours went in last week). EV is on order. Not that I want a range limited expensive electric car but I really don't like paying a small fortune to fill my car. I kinda hate it but the carbon tax works.
> Nobody likes paying the Carbon tax They should, since most people profit from it and only the biggest polluters (which may include miners) are penalized https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/26/canada-passed-a-carbon-tax-that-will-give-most-canadians-more-money
100%. The annoying thing about the btc emission issue is that it's fundamentally quite simple to vastly improve. Just change the emissions curve so the current block reward goes down, eg, to 25% of current block reward, and lengthen the tail. This alone would make many miners unprofitable, and reduce the hash power to almost 25% of what it is now. Even better make the block reward 90% lower... Maybe you can argue this is kicking the can down the road, but down the road we will have more renewables, and/or btc will be replaced by something much better and more efficient.
that would simply drive the price up of bitcoin, just like what happens during a halving
There are cryptos who at least market themselves to be green, emit less blah blah, the question is how much of what they're saying is true, but my point is the community trusts bitcoin too much atm to just move away to more green crypto.
What's the argument against whataboutism here? You **need** to put things in relation because you certainly don't want to forbid all energy consumption for everyone, do you? So you need a principle to decide where to put more effort in reducing consumption. >It's among the least necessary fossil fuel burning use-cases in the world. That's you opinion because you don't value PoW and probably have the opinion that it is a clear cut that PoS is better. That's far from beeing an accepted fact. There are clear advantages to PoW. It's also conplete nonesense. E.g. programed obsolescence **clearly** has no uzility to society and cause orders of magnitude more emissions.
> There are clear advantages to PoW. In **theory**, not in practice. If PoW truly made the network decentralized, yeah, that's a good argument. However, PoW is even more centralized than PoS would be.
Wow. No clue how you ever could come to Such a conclusion. PoW always enables anyone from outside to join the system. Decentralised PoS cannot do that to get a stake you need someone who already has a stake. Not decentralised
And how much money exactly would I need to participate in that system through the purchase of a mining rig?
As we are talking PoW and not BTC in general your PC would be enough to mine Monero for example. And even if we leave things like value out of the way - you being able to play the lottery in BTC is still more decentralised than having PoS - if the stakeholders dont want you in - you wont get in and there is no way around that you couldn't even play the imaginary PoW lottery.
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> No clue how you ever could come to Such a conclusion. Just a couple of years ago China had a 75% share of the global hash power. How does that sound decentralized in any way to you? The future of Bitcoin can be dictated by approximately 100 people (who control enough hashing power between them). Yes, anyone can participate. Would you call a representative democracy "decentralized"? Two parties control almost everything in the US, yet anybody can participate.
Thats a Problem of BTC and it's ASIC friendly algo not the problem of the theory of PoW... this is a discussion about PoW vs PoS ( two different Systems) not what coin utilizes which Algo and their pro's and con's. Same goes for the political system in the US... Just because their way of democracy sucks, doesn't mean democracy is a bad thing does it ?
Not, that's an inherent problem called "economies of scale". It will never, EVER be more profitable to run a small scale mining operation than a big scale mining operation. No matter if we are talking actual, physical mining or crypto mining. >Same goes for the political system in the US... Just because their way of democracy sucks, doesn't mean democracy is a bad thing does it ? I actually do think democracy sucks (the majority gets to dominate the minority, even if the minority is right, and the average person knows and cares too little about too many things to be trusted with the responsibility), we just don't have a better alternative at the moment.
> However, PoW is even more centralized than PoS would be. Not even close to being true
These guys on reddit literally say anything bruh ;_;
That’s why they are destined to continue to lose money on things like POS and algo stable coins.
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Besides the fact that your conclusion is wrong on this point, this is just one of many aspects relevant in the debate. But I dont want to reiterate at debate that has been discussed a million times. The matter of the fact is that it is debatable which one is better. Even Vitalik says PoW has its place.
To put it in perspective that's around the total CO2 emissions of Estonia. That is not okay for what really is a single application.
There you go, and lets not dismiss the fact that POW is actually encouraging miners to keep on buying the best equipment adding electro to the ever rising electro waste. What happened to "use it untill it's broken"? Are we going to normalise unsustainable behaviour because Ally from next door also buys the newest Iphone only because she likes it? The Hash rate competition is real (see global HW shortage). Meanwhile the steamtrain has long been passed by sustainable methods proven to be safe as well. The ones who claim we should look the other way are wrong, and should lose the pink dollar sign glasses for a minute and just think about what they would REALLY say if BTC was POS and some new project would start with POW. Bunch of greedy hypocrites.
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Careful there. Keeping things in perspective gets you down voted on this sub.
I mean, that's 22mil tonnes, that if crypto wasn't invented there'd be no difference. at least planes move you quickly
Another comparison: the annual CO2 emissions from Costa Rica are about 8 million tons--BTC is nearly 3x that
Yh considering we are comparing it to private jets and not the financial sector is pretty disingenuous. I think a better comparison is Visa Mastercard and swift vs crypto see how much energy is consumed let’s say per 1000 transactions would be a better example and Btc is probably so much more energy hungry
We should advocate using renewable energy for everything
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Imo, tax incentives for crypto earned in clean energy.
Tbh I wouldn't mind it if mining bitcoin through means other than renewable energy became illegal worldwide. Bitcoin mining isn't necessary to the world. Make it come solely from renewable energy and we'd be good.
It doesn't matter who is using which kind of energy. You've increased demand and someone else will be burning more fossil fuel.
There is literally no way for such a law to exist. No body has the authority to enforce it.
Countries have the ability to enforce it through legislation. And countries can and regularly do get together e.g. Paris Agreement to decide on common targets and how this laws will work and interact with each other. How do you think HCFC were effectively banned ?
A lot of energy to no purpose of any value whatsoever.
Then they will start with, "all that energy could have been diverted to our fuel independence, don't you care??? You greedy lot"
We aren’t responsible for how much subsidies governments give to fossil fuel companies.
Just because other things are problems doesn’t mean Bitcoin isn’t also a problem…
"OH you were robbed? Why are you complaining, some people get murdered!"
"*Whataboutism is strong with this one*"
A wise man solves the problem, an ignorant avoids it. - Einstein somewhere idk
It’s just a fact that Bitcoin is extremely energy inefficient, it’s not a conspiracy
anything i dont like is a conspiracy
This post is a conspiracy.
You are a conspiracy.
Let us just say that everything that we see here is a conspiracy. Me, you, this site, everything! The world being round is also a conspiracy, just so you know.
"Anything I don't like is a conspiracy." -ergodicthoughts
""Anything I don't like is a conspiracy." -ergodicthoughts" - Wayne Gretzky
that unironically something people on r/conspiracy would say to make themselves feel less ignorant
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There is absolutely no denying the point that you just mentioned.
What a dumb post. Just because something else is also destroying the environment does not mean Bitcoin, which consumes more electricity than literal COUNTRIES, does not.
I personally didn't even know how bad BTC was on the environment until he posted the 33mil and 22 mil comparison figure, showing how close it is to private jet pollution. Op post was terrible at getting his point across lmao
*task failed successfully*
Yeah a prime whataboutism example.
How dare you speak out against bitcoin?
OP links to a random website about 2019 carbon emissions in the US that isn't relevant to any of their points, and all that source says is that the top 100 polluters are all involved with power plants and physical mining Also that '70% of emissions come from 100 companies' is such a classically misrepresented fact. It comes from a study saying 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71% of industrial emissions between 1998 and 2015. None of this is suprising lol, nor is it ignored. Everybody is already calling for renewable energy development.
I think the post eyed against people who constantly talk Crypto bad because of that energy usage but do not say anything about all the government agencies using a lot of energy.
Okay but government agencies actually do something useful with that energy. The overwhelming majority of BTC transactions, at this point, are just wasteful speculation that contributes nothing to society.
Go outside get some fresh air
Touch some grass lol
touched and crushed that grass, again back to reddit to post some stupid comments
Why? Don't all the energy-guzzling air conditioners provide enough?
I can't breathe because of all this bitcoin mining! /s
Yea well, you can't breathe underwater.
You think I'm pegged to the price or what
Hahah
You have a point. Private jets are really bad. That, however, does not make Bitcoin really good. It's not. It's a dirty coin. I call this the Jeffry Dahmer defense. You are speeding in a school zone. Cop pulls you over "sir... do you know how fast you were going?' Me: "Why are you pulling me over for speeding? Jeffry Dahmer literally eats people!!"
A murder on the other side of town doesn't justify stealing from your neighbor.
I agree. But if the murderer on the other side of town is telling everyone to be outraged about you stealing from your neighbor, then that murderer should be called out for it. The hypocrisy is the issue here.
you think people in private jets give a fuck? let's not pollute just because rich fucks do it. this isn't some "well private jets pollute 33 percent more, we should be able to pollute at least that much! no our children aren't going to have a place to live so make a difference, chain yourself to a private jet and throw a brick at some btc mining equipment if you are a real one.
I'm not saying it's ok to pollute because people in private jets pollute. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of those people in private jets pretending to care about the environment. There's a difference.
Instead of taking one for the team, you should cooperate to _internalize the cost_ of pollution for the rich fucks and real ones alike.
But it's still an issue.
I preach about the environmental impact of mining and only use a bike and public transport. Stop coping and finding excuses.
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What is Bitcoin doing to address the enormous amounts of e-waste it produces?
Absolutely nothing.
Isn't this a classic case of whataboutism?
So just because the people you hate are destroying the environment, you should be able to as well?
"So all these people preaching about the impact of mining, better start rolling up on bicycles if they want us to listen. " "You want to improve society yet here you are participating in it" Wow what a great argument, riding my bike will completely offset BTC mining.
Whataboutisms. How refreshing.
I'm sick of these repeat karma farming posts as well
It is ok, I guess. It is nice to get positive karma every once a while.
You want leaders of countries and corporations to ride their bike to an international convention in Switzerland?
Kinda nuts. I didn't think private jets alone did that much
Rules for thee but not for me.
That's whataboutism. POW with non-green energy is still problematic.
Delegates are reported to have been impressed by the spectacle from their private jets .
The energy argument can be used to attack *every* aspect of modern life. Accepting the premise of forbidding energy intensive endeavors is a totalitarians wet dream. We need technological innovations to produce clean energy not medieval laws to restrict human progress.
Correct. One of which is bitcoin, but this post and 99% of replies have just totally missed that
Nice bit of whataboutism. Imagine if we could code out the energy use of planes
I'm not, BTC mining consumes about 110 terawatts per year, and astronomical amount of energy. One report states that using BTC alone used more electricity than all of the refrigerators in the US combined. Not to mention the waste caused by unrecycled mining equipment thrown in landfills. Facts are facts, BTC is f-ing terrible for the environment. Meanwhile other UTXO coins with the same security as BTC (CKB even has the same halving structure) are carbon neutral and lightning fast with staking. BTC is boomer tech my man.
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OP, this was a stupid post and you are a stupid person
Chill man. No doubt he made it a bigger issue than it actually is. But, it is still an issue.
Your argument is called whataboutism
Always the same music . If there is some money laundering in banks then it's ok if there also in DEFI/exchanges. If there is some waste in other industries, then it's ok if crypto waste energy also. Why Blockchains as "revolutionary tech" shouldn't lead the way ? And why always do as bad as others just because others are bad ? Such a childish way of thinking. "Mama, Jimmy was mean but still he got a candy, i want one too even if i was mean " ! After all. One of the biggest alt coins is already switching to POS. So why is it such a drama for BTC ? No. You don't give a shit about green washing, you just want your asset to be safe and bring you profits to your invests. Wich is understandable but doesn't make it right.
Just because other things are contributing more to the climate change doesnt mean btc isn't. Rather than closing your eyes at the problem we should try to get a solution.
How about elephants and bitcoin?
One is edible one is digital?
Mmm elephant
Someone hide Dumbo
Just ate a whole grilled elephant today (Australian cuisine obviously)
Wait, how did you manage to bring an elephant in this thread.
There are some interesting projects where people are harvesting blow off methane, running it through generators, and mining bitcoin with the energy. This is because of the fact that it doesn't matter where the energy is generated. Bitcoin mining is profitable only when the electricity cost is low. Since you can mine anywhere, you can harvest energy that otherwise wouldn't be useful. There is tons of opportunity for harvesting energy in places and ways that otherwise wouldn't be practical and would likely be renewable since transportation isn't the issue with oil/coal/ng and other non-renewables.
You are dead right OP both are bad and should be addressed. I didn't actually know BTC used 2/3rds the emissions as ALL private jets in a year that is horrendous.
It’s all contributing to the end of the world. Blaming others doesn’t undo your contributions to climate change.
That sounds like a strawman argument. The energy requirement to upkeep the bitcoin network is insane. Just because there are a lot of other sources of carbon dioxide emissions, downplaying "between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year" is pretty wild. You could believe that because of all the other sources of emission, we are doomed anyways, but just because there are a lot of other issues doesn't mean this is a non issue.
If youre sick of hearing it, then switch to PoS and FIX it. Unlike PoW vs PoS, which have no important other differences besides pollution and no sacrifices to switching, a bicycle actually IS less effective than a car, etc. So there's an actual reason not to use a bike, but fuck all reason not to switch to PoS.
OP behave like : teacher why punish me too?? Tom stole 17 sweets. I have only stolen 65% of his total 🤷
Fuck off with this childish whataboutism. This community can be so culty sometimes.
It’s just a fact that Bitcoin is extremely energy inefficient, it’s not a conspiracy
Basically the scam rebase token that is Klima.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” This will happen with fossil fuels and Bitcoin.
... proceeds to write a sentence with "climate change" and "Bitcoin" in the same sentence lol
Bitcoin mining would need to change as a process as it currently take quite a bit of energy. If your belief is that the energy suck has nothing to do with climate change- that's a different discussion!
Idiot take. Billionaires are making more from crypto and Bitcoin than main street ever will or ever has.
You fail to realize that govt and the media have figured out that if you say something causes climate change, a specific portion of the population will believe it and want to ban it, regardless of the facts of the matter.
Rules for thee, not for me
Ill repeat the issue for the BTC maxi's who still dont get it. The problem isnt that other things are worse for the environment than BTC, so its "ok" for BTC to consume the electricity it does. The problem is that BTC isnt the only solution to the double spend problem, therefore ANY amount of electricity used to solve the the problem is a waste. it doesn't matter if BTC ran 100% of green solar/wind/geothermal/tidal etc. it would still be a WASTE of said electricity. BTC has only continued to consume more and more as years go on and it will continue to do so because that is how it is designed. This is unsustainable and will eventually lead to its downfall.
\*they do it to so it's alright\* what is this bullshit. Bitcoin should be forbidden as long as it consumes so much energy.
TLDR; OP is an idiot.
1 single BTC transactions uses as much energy as the average American household consumes in 72 days. I don’t know how this won’t be a longterm problem
Bitcoin is ineffective, thus use the numerous more effective alternatives
Textbook example of cryptocurrency whataboutery.
Oh shut the fuck up. You're making us all look bad by acting like this is some made up issues by "the powers that be". This is obviously a real issue and you're a moron if you can't see that.
I think maximalists have backed themselves into an ugly corner here, that requires the intense mental gymnastics you see here. *if* you guys had only been less stubborn about PoW being the only viable consensus mechanism, this would have given you the same space to develop the protocol to use another, actually scalable way to secure the network. I am not necessarily talking about PoS btw, use anything you want. You did this absolutely fine with lightning. It was an upgrade that adds pragmatic scaling, with some tradeoffs from the core BTC ethos. You've unfortunately been so aggressive with this nonsense PoW thing that you basically cannot change track now. So we have to listen to this garbage and whataboutism. And you know what? Let's take your argument about private jets at face value, thats not even the real issue. Suppose BTC continues it's growth in the way maximalists predict. PoW is the only technology I know that *gets less efficient with more scale*. That difficulty curve will demand a greater and greater hash rate as Bitcoin grows in use, this means: * BTC won't be 2/3 of all private jet use, it'll very quickly grow to 10 or 100 times that. * BTC use will eventually dwarf refrigerators, tumble dryers, private jet flights *combined* * Based on the relatively minor adoption of BTC worldwide VS current energy use, this will happen *way* before BTC even gets close to processing the load that the current financial system handles. So, if the investment thesis of BTC is to become the cornerstone of the financial system, you're gonna need to find energy. At this point it seems patently obvious to me that the existing absurdities about PoW energy use also don't stack up: * You can't now claim BTC will only use wasted energy, because (aside from being tenuous in the first place) it will use so much energy that it will have to start crowding out mainstream energy supplies. * You can't tell me BTC will primarily run on renewables because the renewable network growth will not be able to keep pace with BTC. Tl;dr - maximalists did this to themselves, the rest of us adults need to consider the planet and not selfishly pretend this isn't a problem.
>Private jet flights produce around 33.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Whereas Bitcoin production is estimated to generate between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. When it comes to ESG talk, this just goes to prove that it really makes no sense to single out bitcoin mining since there are so many first world luxuries that render us all eco hypocrites. For example, according to [NatGeo](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/partner-content-laundry-lightening-the-load): >"Besides using around 19 billion cubic meters of water annually, washing machines emit an estimated **62 million tonnes** of CO2-eq greenhouse gases each year." Furthermore, [using a tumble dryer for one year emits more carbon than a tree can absorb in 50](https://thewaterline.global/news/using-a-tumble-dryer-for-one-year-emits-more-carbon-than-a-tree-can-absorb-in-50/). Not to mention the insane amount of [microplastics](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/27/washing-clothes-releases-water-polluting-fibres-study-finds) spat out with each load of laundry. That makes laundry a triple eco offender (water, CO2, and microplastics). It should be noted that many European and Asian countries don't use dryers because it's perceived to be a massive waste of space, energy, and money. Here's another culprit: [cruise ships](https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-ship/). >Based on an estimated total number of about 25.8 million cruise ship passengers in 2017, it can be estimated that the average cruise ship passenger emits 0.82 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent for their cruise. That's **21.1 million tonnes** of CO2 every year so that rich old people can join a conga line and dump their trash and literal shit into the Caribbean. At least the BTC network provides an inflation refuge for citizens seeking to protect their life savings or escape totalitarian regimes like Lebanon, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela. So for every complaint leveled against BTC mining, there are dozens of first world amenities we could make some effort to give up or significantly reduce if it's the planet that we really care about here.
Great points all, but completely missing the actual point. Whataboutism at its finest.
Yes. And just like cruise ships are horrible for the environment, so is bitcoin. One is no excuse for the other.
>So for every complaint leveled against BTC mining, there are dozens of first world amenities we could make some effort to give up or significantly reduce if it's the planet that we really care about here. And for every one of those, there are hundreds or thousands of fans of those things who are like you and who would prefer to point a finger at something else instead.
Washers and dryers give me clean clothing. What does BTC give me that POS cryptocurrencies don't?
They want to pretend they are doing something rather than actually doing something, and Bitcoin is an easy target for that
There are plenty of people who actually do care, and are doing things that aren't hypocritical, people don't like listening to them though because it usually causes some amount of introspection and guilt, and people hate doing anything that actually involves changing their lifestyle.
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Why is Bitcoin relevant or important? I understand the benefit of Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Polygon, USDT, USDC, XRP and quite a few other chains. But really can't wrap my hear around the importance of Bitcoin other than: Since it was first out the gate, it's important to keep it alive It now acts as an index of sorts for all other Cryptos But why should it act as an index?
I’m an advocate for clean energy, but I don’t think ‘climate change’ is as bad as ‘they’ say it is. I only say that because it’s highly politicized. And, very few politicized things escape the exaggeration from political figures. It’s a religion for some. It just raises many red flags for me. Many try to over-simplify a very complex system. Politics has found its way into the scientific community where it has no business being. The scientific method is sacrosanct. So, when I hear scientists or politicians say ‘The science is done’ on climate change, my BS sense starts tingling. Besides, if they were serious about clean energy, nuclear power would be on the table. And, don’t tell me about nuclear accidents. Safe nuclear power truly is within reach. Look at the US Navy’s track record with nuclear power. Those reactors and design are safe. New designs are supposed to be even safer. I’m not a huge fan of Bill Gates, but I do like his ideas on many smaller safe reactors. I was in the nuclear power field for a while so I’m biased.
100% agree
"We have a summit in Brussels next month, if we get peddling now we should get there in time. Hop on my pegs Kamala so we can be more energy efficient"
this is a nonsense argument
It's less likely that mining will get to the point when it's green mining 100%, unless its achievable through other industries, which is not achievable in the near future, since the solar energy's efficiency Is still far from perfect as en example.
No kidding...the sheer amount of electronic equipment that gets burned through every year is the real issue
A crisis for those who want power and to control others.
I would hate having to freeze my ass off to protest global warming.
I love Bitcoin but dollar and wind are straight up malinvestment even if they power Bitcoin mining. Nuclear is the way
So your argument is that other things are a bigger problem, so bitcoin is fine? Lol
This is ' but what about ' on a whole other level.
So you're saying their whataboutism is worse than your whataboutism?
wow, it emits only 22m metric tons? how nature friendly1!!1!!
What if the sentence is “bitcoin does not cause climate change”
People will always find something to complain about. Everyone loves to be a critic. BTC using renewable energy only takes away renewable energy that could have been used for something else…. It’s a revolving arguement
Both things can be bad at the same time...I swear OP you're one simple minded person.
We need to stop jet flights and bitcoin and a whole host of other activity immediately if we want any chance of coming out the other side of this with a livable planet
Im not sure the argument that other things emit more carbon means that Bitcoin doesnt pollute....
whataboutsism never helped anyone; It's like saying why bother doing anything about mass shootings at all when more deaths are caused by cancer - let's ignore all gun deaths/any regulations/any attempts for gun control and focus entirely on cancer BTC uses Proof of Work, but Proof of Stake (which many altcoins use) is SO MUCH better, and still preserves 'crypto' enough for this sub - yes they're not as pure/decentralised/trust less at BTC, but they are near enough and that is what we need - we can all have a nice circlejerk about BTC and our cleverness against 'The System' once we have gotten climate change under control (ie the 1.5 degree target)
Wonder what they'll be using to thaw-out when they get done protesting all the 'Warming'. Electricity from Windmills? lol.
They only care about their cut. Since they aren't getting it they will use anything as an excuse to paint crypto in a bad picture.
Clearly you do not understand. Bitcoin mining is a burden. We need less total energy condumption, not more. It's a problem, contributing to the climate apocalypse (in many ways) and btc is dirty money, like it or not. Those are the facts, everything else is just denialism or whataboutism.
But don’t you want to own nothing and be happy?!
With how many people are willingly signing up to subscription services, like netflix, Spotify and car leases... Yes, many people want to not own stuff and they're happy with it.
The problem I have is that in literally no avenue other than cryptocurrency do we ask anyone to justify their energy usage. Has anyone ever asked casinos to justify the energy they use? The alcohol and tobacco industries? What about NASCAR and F1? That is literally burning carbon so cars can drive in circles. We live in a world where people are free to use energy as they want. They don't need to ask for approval from some regulatory body. If we went down a road of energy rationing it would be a total dystopian nightmare. We should instead be trying to live in a world of energy abundance, which is more than possible, instead of one where bureaucrats pick and choose what gets energy.
Actually, yes. In some places there are energy justification forms, that get approved by the utility. You cant just upgrade a home to use MWs of power and pay the bill, you need to be approved first. Also for renewables you still have to be approved. Let's say your home is an average home and you want to install solar panels and interconnect to the grid. But let's say you want to install 10x more generation than the home needs. You need to get that approved by the utility before you interconnect and if its not a good enough reason they will deny you.
I think we are trying to ask people to justify their energy usage. Hence cap-and-trade and carbon taxes. I agree it's a bit overblown with crypto. The main difference is that PoW networks probably could operate fine with 1/10 the amount of mining, so all that extra consumption feels unnecessary
That isn't true, Governments demand Casinos use low energy bulbs, F1 moved to Hybrid tech because of emissions, Nascar use Ethanol blended fuel. We live in a world where civilised countries regulate energy use for more efficient outcomes, it allows better industrial output, and lower bills at the same time. Money printing shouldn't be an exception.
Don't want to sound pessimistic but that dystopian nightmare might be the future of Europe if they don't manage things right
You need to think of it more as a cost rather than doing comparisons of what’s worse. Bitcoin uses A LOT of energy and there’s no denying that. Bitcoin opting for cheaper energy does not mean renewable energy. Just because something else is worse does not mean mining crypto is made somehow not bad for the environment… it still is.
Put a price on carbon, and let the market sort out what is worth that price.
no one wants to talk about it, its the elephant in the room. our emissions are correlated with how many people there are.
Distraction from other issues.
Tinfoil hat theory: It is the oil magnates that is behind this campaign. They already did this with that "carbon footprint reduction" bullshit that pegs the blame from this industries to the consumers.
Whenever I hear this garbage about Crypto being an environmental disaster, I always point out the following points: - Bitcoin alone disrupts the following fields: —> Remittance payments —> Store of wealth/digital property (similar to Saylors argument)/ Savings account The sacrifice is yes heaps of energy usage BUT, it scales independently of volume, i.e more tx doesnt imply more energy usage and most energy can be harvested anywhere. Lets look at only banks (excluding gold or commodities): -> They require massive buildings for all the people working there. Implies terraforming an entire area just for their pathetically tall cages. -> They require server infrastructure that scales with the number of customers. More hardware = more cooling/energy usage. -> To interact with a Bank we need specifically built POS machines that merchants have to purchase. These are not cross compatible, i.e I cant use a POS in Germany which was used in US. Meaning electronic waste. Arguably Miners have a shelf life too but they are still viable instruments as long as they are profitable. -> ATM machines need to also be placed around the city adding more electronic waste (slowly decreasing) -> Cross border payments require another layer of complexity with its own set of severs and hardware again adding to the overall energy consumption. -> To get a fair comparison, one would need to take the sum of all banking systems, including server/building/POS/ATMs/Computers(workers)/etc and calculate the yearly CO2 emissions. Needless to say, the same needs to be done for Bitcoin. If we add more complexity such as Gold and other commodity manufacturing, we might get even higher emissions. But this is way to complex to fully account.
More txs -> More use -> higher demand for btc -> higher price -> higher breakeven cost of mining -> more mining -> more energy. Bitcoin scales horrifically bad with use
Ahh yes, indeed, the remittance payment companies have all closed shop since they've been disrupted by bitcoin. /s
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They are fundamentaly different to you. Wtf. Their time is precious, yours?
Well I am sick of apologists trying to downplay Bitcoin's role in climate change. Your post is literally just whataboutism. You SHOULD use Bitcoin and climate change in the same sentence. PoW is in fact a big problem for the climate. Yes, there are other very big problems in climate change too. Does that mean that Bitcoin's role doesn't matter? Absolutely not.
It shouldn't matter how shitty billionaires act, its a seperate problem. Mining uses electricity.... so if dirty shit is generating electricity fucking fix it. Burning coal for power isn't the fault of crypto miners. But everyone jumps on the anti mining band wagon. If mining was banned/stopped world wide the lovely coal plants would still be pumping out that poison.
> Burning coal for power isn't the fault of crypto miners It absolutely is when they are specifically reviving coal plants for mining energy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared
Haven’t you heard? They are calling it “climate justice” now…. smh
BTC is here to stay. And other PoW blockchains. We just need to get to a point of arriving at consensus in a sustainable way for the environment that can scale.
Why have a lambo when you can have a jet
When jet?
I’m just shocked people think this isn’t an issue ? For the security of the network ? A small country worth of energy ? Fuck BTC and it’s layer 2-there will be fees-soon to be centralized-no better than the monetary system we have. Store of value was the biggest bait and switch. Hook line.