Yet the amount of environmental destruction and pollution done by Argentina to support their massive livestock industry is something Bitcoin will never achieve.
Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#12Does anyone have any figures on what regular banking systems use for accepted/official currencies? I feel like this has blown up so much that it makes sense to compare and contrast.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#13Criticism a about bitcoin power consumption betrays an understand of even elementary economics. Replace bitcoin with beanie baby, and one could have made a similar argument in the late 90s about beanie babies causing a fabric shortage or fabric being wasted on toys that could instead be used for better purposes. When the beanie baby market crashed, the problem effectively fixed itself, as there was this sudden glut o…
That doesn't explain how humanity can reach collective consensus to burn energy to further ruin our planet because we can't reach collective consensus on how to efficiently exchange goods and services.
That's what, you know, governments are supposed to be fixing.
I am being brainwashed on a daily basis to turn off electronic devices, I pay extra for electronic devices to be marginally more energy efficient, I am crossing local law if my car idles for more than 60 seconds but it is fine to be burning energy on massive scale as a detail of computing algorithm.
Not to mention I can't buy decent graphics card because of how prices are inflated by miners.
Let's face it. If you are mining bitcoin you are effectively engaging in a destructive operation where you accept small extra payment for burning much larger amount of energy away. While the rest of the world tries to minimize our carbon footprint you are wasting part of the infrastructure that makes it possible for a cut.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#14If we could burn bitcoin apologists we would have infinite energy because you are the densest bunch I've ever met
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#15Genuine question: how much does this matter if much of it is renewables and cheap hydro? I feel like the negative externalities of using a lot of electricity are very very tied to where that electricity came from
That would depend on how much heat the computations/mining itself generates - has to be some - and the total effort to make graphics cards or other hardware for a lot of clients that would not really exist if crypto wouldn't be a thing
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#16And as Bitcoins get more scarce and get adopted by more and more banks and companies as reserves, the value of mining rewards is only going to continue rising, until Bitcoin will consume more electricity than the rest of the world combined. (Around the time it is worth $1.2 Million a coin.) Change my mind. Bitcoin rewards miners in Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value”, and has the world mindsh…
How does it scale when a block can only contain about 3,000 transactions?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#17Question that came to mind after reading the headline: could this become a future reason for governments to criminalise the trading / use of Bitcoin because of negative environmental effects? On the surface it seems the value of Bitcoin is directly tied to its energy consumption and thus environmental harm. I get that Bitcoin itself is decentralised and cannot be banned outright. But could it be neutered in such a wa…
If governments banned the on/off ramps to normal currency, then yes it would be effectively neutered. There is an audience that wouldn't care, but it's a small audience.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#18And as Bitcoins get more scarce and get adopted by more and more banks and companies as reserves, the value of mining rewards is only going to continue rising, until Bitcoin will consume more electricity than the rest of the world combined. (Around the time it is worth $1.2 Million a coin.) Change my mind. Bitcoin rewards miners in Bitcoin, which is the ultimate deflationary “store of value”, and has the world mindsh…
SpaceX could probably help usher in a new age where we have mining nodes in space, big solar arrays (100 or so) powering a small 100-GPU cluster or ASIC cluster....
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#19Yet the amount of environmental destruction and pollution done by Argentina to support their massive livestock industry is something Bitcoin will never achieve.
One could argue that livestock is more useful than Bitcoin, since it feeds people. Of course I agree we should reduce meat consumption.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#20Perhaps not all of it is entirely "wasted" though. I've largely been able to avoid heating this winter as a result of crypto mining. A computer pumping ~300W into the air 24/7 is remarkably effective for a small apartment
With a heat pump you'd get about 3x the heat for the same amount of power