Buying a Tesla car in Bitcoins cancels 4 times the CO2 savings for its lifetime

Post by temp8964 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #7

hggh wrote: post #4

And what about the CO2 impact of using traditional banking (air conditioning, heating, commuting...)

What about the people commuting to the factory producing the cpus used to mine bitcoins, what about the people commuting to the car factory producing the cars of the people commuting to the cpu factory ? &c. We can play that game for a long time and nothing of value will be written

Post by cwhiz » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

FranckLeroy wrote: post #2

This is how insanely bad Bitcoin is for the environment : If you buy a Tesla car (around 40 000 $) in Bitcoins, the impact of the mining of those bitcoins is around 80 tons of CO2. This is 4 times more than the savings of CO2 you can expect from this car (compared to a gasoline one) on its entire lifetime (around -20 tons).

Post by lxgr » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #13

FranckLeroy wrote: post #2

This is how insanely bad Bitcoin is for the environment : If you buy a Tesla car (around 40 000 $) in Bitcoins, the impact of the mining of those bitcoins is around 80 tons of CO2. This is 4 times more than the savings of CO2 you can expect from this car (compared to a gasoline one) on its entire lifetime (around -20 tons).

This seems flawed. A single Bitcoin can be split into 100,000,000 pieces and spent infinitely. It may cost some X amount to mine it, but that is not an ongoing cost.

Post by flyingfences » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #12

bluesign wrote: post #5

- I think 80 tons of CO2 for BTC is wrong. It should be around 15-20 tons (75% of BTC is mined with renewables, I think approx 20-25% is coal) - for US, CO2 per $ GDP should be around 0.3 kg - so if BTC is 50000$ value, it is almost same CO2 then something else US produce, (it would be 50000* 0.3 = 15 tons) - if we assume those numbers correct, lets assume they are both 15 tons, it means 50% of the things US produce…

Renewables don't exist in a vacuum: "Green" miners buying up capacity drives up the price, driving others into non-renewables as a consequence (if only temporarily). Until we are at 100% renewables, supporting a more energy-consuming product/solution/process while alternatives readily exist should not be called "green", in my opinion.

Post by temp8964 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #18

flyingfences wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin mining operations are generally located where electricity is cheapest. Electricity is cheapest where there is a surplus of hydro power (or other power with very low marginal cost). Where there is a surplus, use of that surplus does not drive other customers to other power sources.

By that logic, Bitcoin disincentivizes any investment in better grids and more efficient energy storage. Also, any such mining rig could have reasonably been a data center or scientific supercomputer instead.