Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

We need to change everything else to renewable before this really starts to be effective.

It would make a much bigger impact if some countries, where users want to use cryptocurrency, make it illegal to use proof-of-work-based goods or currencies (whatever it's classified as). Suddenly a coin with PoS or something else becomes much more popular and we might, perhaps, shift over to a digital coin that is not a climate disaster.

That's assuming that a transaction comparison even makes sense, which it doesn't really because:

Bitcoin is not a currency. People use it as a way of getting rich, which they could also do with any other currency by just having a limited number of numbered paper bills, some guarantee that no more will ever be printed (e.g. agree that nobody will use a bill number higher than 10 million), and publishing on a forum who owns a specific bill number. It doesn't need proof-of-work to function as an investment scheme.

Anywhere you drag your thesis out beyond that needs to take into account that you are fighting a straw-man. That's not what currency is for. Currency is a temporary, intentionally lossy (to encourage investment and velocity of money), store of value and medium of exchange. It is not an investment. It is not a long-term store of value.

> What this really means is that Bitcoin is out of reach of a nation state attack.

Right except 70% of the hash power is concentrated in a few mining pools in the PRC. A strongly worded memo from Xi that unless you permit their compromise of the network you'll find a new hobby mining minerals in Xinjiang, and party's over.

Never say never. Humanity has successfully banned itself from using CFCs in refrigerants, for example. I also agree that regulating pollution from PoW specifically isn't as high of a priority as, say, regulating pollution from coal-fired power plants or concrete production. But it's something that could, in theory, be regulated if we find the will to do so. And if we don't believe that we can regulate CO2 production, then we must also believe that humanity is doomed anyway, and thus PoW pollution ought to be beneath our concern.

> We need to change everything else to renewable before this really starts to be effective. It would make a much bigger impact if some countries, where users want to use cryptocurrency, make it illegal to use proof-of-work-based goods or currencies (whatever it's classified as). Suddenly a coin with PoS or something else becomes much more popular and we might, perhaps, shift over to a digital coin that is not a climate disaster.

Why stop there? Why not impose a global carbon tax on all goods and services known to produce pollution? Then it doesn't matter what the goods are or how the goods are procured; what matters is that CO2 concentration stays steady or goes down.

My original point was to channel focus on what matters -- energy-intensive industries are in need of pollution regulation. But as you point out here, this need isn't specific to PoW.