31–40 of 325 posts
Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it still doesn't waste as much energy as the standing armies fiat currencies rely on. And if your country doesn't have a large standing army then your currency is being subsidized by those you ally with who do have standing armies of significance. And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive g…
Why should Fiat money use more energy than global bitcoin adaption? Bitcoin already used as much energy as medium-sized countries (I believe it was as much as Ireland last year or the year before) and nearly no one uses it for daily payments. Compared to that, I'm not aware that the Swift Network or Visa/Mastercard would run whole power plants to support their energy needs. They just need a medium sized data center t…
Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
Bitcoin transactions don’t use a material amount of energy: no matter how many miners the transaction capacity is fixed. Energy use just increases as miners compete for the block reward.
It's not linear at every stage (for example, more USD per block reward will reboot Bitmain to produce even more efficient miners, which will eat up some of the rewards) but it's close enough to be concerned.
From an energy-consumption standpoint, I'm not too surprised at this. They have better uses for their mostly-non-renewable power generation. This will probably continue the push towards bitcoin mining in places with stable renewables (like hydro and geothermal). That being said, I just found https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax-subsidy-for-b... , which makes me wonder if current prices would be able to supp…
Actually, most crypto mines in China are located in Sichuan or Yunnan, precisely because of an oversupply of hydroelectricity. More than a quarter of the world's hydropower is generated in China (350 GW) and most of that is from Sichuan & Yunnan. 350 GW is more hydropower generated than the next three biggest hydro producers combined (US + Brazil + Canada.)
Because of the demand-supply imbalance in Sichuan an Yunnan, kWh prices are cheap, hence mining is profitable. ~90% of the electricity in these regions is generated from hydropower.
The oversupply is a result of inadequate grid infrastructure preventing the transport of electricity to resell it to neighboring regions, and a slowdown of China's economic growth.
Sources:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2018.01.090 — Hydropower curtailment in Yunnan Province, southwestern China: Constraint analysis and suggestions — "The increasing curtailment of hydropower generation not only caused large-scale waste of sustainable energy [...]" In 2016 alone, Yunnan was forced to waste 15% or 31.4 terawatt-hours of hydroelectricity.
https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/chinese-... ("In 2016, for instance, overcapacity from hydropower stations in Sichuan and Yunnan amounted to a whopping 45.6 terawatt hours")
It's so bad that China is now restricting the constructions of dams in Sichuan an Yunnan to not exacerbate the overcapacity problem.
In the early days of crypto, it used to be that China would ban it and the price would drop as the market would freak out. This is just another scare tactic that won't go anywhere. China makes so much money from mining and crypto, there is no way they would get rid of it.
In the total Chinese economy it’s a blip. I don’t think the central planners at the Party care about crypto very much.
From an energy-consumption standpoint, I'm not too surprised at this. They have better uses for their mostly-non-renewable power generation. This will probably continue the push towards bitcoin mining in places with stable renewables (like hydro and geothermal). That being said, I just found https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax-subsidy-for-b... , which makes me wonder if current prices would be able to supp…
from planet's perspective. everyone can be thankful
Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
But it still doesn't waste as much energy as the standing armies fiat currencies rely on. And if your country doesn't have a large standing army then your currency is being subsidized by those you ally with who do have standing armies of significance. And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it still doesn't waste as much energy as the standing armies fiat currencies rely on. And if your country doesn't have a large standing army then your currency is being subsidized by those you ally with who do have standing armies of significance. And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive g…
Why should Fiat money use more energy than global bitcoin adaption? Bitcoin already used as much energy as medium-sized countries (I believe it was as much as Ireland last year or the year before) and nearly no one uses it for daily payments. Compared to that, I'm not aware that the Swift Network or Visa/Mastercard would run whole power plants to support their energy needs. They just need a medium sized data center t…
The problem was the original poster in this thread setting up the strawman that bitcoin is for every single transaction (or even a decent fraction of them).
But to answer your direct question: because the security and processing of it's transactions depends on the security of a nation state. That nation state's security stems from the military among other things. The energy expenditure is enormous and the influence of the nation state's desires on what transactions are processed is an everyday factor. This is obvious in watching the Justice Dept. interact with the major credit card companies.