Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#2proof of work is immoral if you’re an environmentalist. that’s why tesla acquiring BTC was especially egregious
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#3Genuine 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
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#4Perhaps 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
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#5And 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 mindshare as such. Even if a network arose that was better in every technological way, if it was a “sidechain” to Bitcoin, then BTC would just be locked up as people migrated to that network, so “unstaked” Bitcoins on the original network would become even more scarce, thus mining rewards would go up even more. Bitcoin would be a store of value / collectible just like gold, except its supply would always be shrinking and mining rewards rising.
PS: Consider I am right. How would governments even begin to stop it, if this use of electricity would net the provider more profit than powering a home?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#6Criticism 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 of fabric. Additionally, increased demand for bitcoin production means more power will generated, similar to how increased demand for cloth due to beanie baby production lead to more total cloth being produced overall. It is not like cloth for clothes was diverted to create beanie babies. The increased production of power to mine bitcoins is funded by bitcoin profits, and represents a consensual economic transaction between two parties, not wastefulness.
Of course, then you can talk about externalities such as climate change but I am ignoring this for now and just talking about the criticism of wastefulness.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#7Question 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 way that renders it more and more worth / useless?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#8Genuine 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
Is there reason to believe even a majority comes from renewable sources? And then, how much of that clean energy could be powering other things which are instead using fossil fuels?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#9Genuine 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
Even if it were all green energy, why not use it to produce aluminum or to get rid of coal instead of wasting it on math puzzles?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#10Slightly off topic, but does anyone have any good resources on how alternative consensus protocols work, like proof of stake and proof of importance? I either see really simplistic explanations or ones that assume a lot of domain knowledge. I also recently saw a crypto coin that claims to be energy efficient, and I don’t quite understand how that’s possible without the possibility of a 50.1% attack.