81–90 of 119 posts
This is all FUD. Miners largely use renewable power that is excess, not expensive dirty power plants. Here's a good breakdown of the counter argument: https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587
Electric power is fungible. Any renewable power used for Bitcoin is power that cannot be used to offset carbon emissions.
- 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…
GDP is a very questionable metric. Burn down your house, buy a new one and you have contributed a great deal to the GDP of your nation. If a cat. 5 hurricane makes landfall and destroys thousands of homes which have to be rebuilt, the GDP increases. That way a little bit of global warming raises the GDP (of industrial nations).
- 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…
GDP is a very questionable metric. Burn down your house, buy a new one and you have contributed a great deal to the GDP of your nation. If a cat. 5 hurricane makes landfall and destroys thousands of homes which have to be rebuilt, the GDP increases. That way a little bit of global warming raises the GDP (of industrial nations).
Bitcoins emission is big, but in the bigger picture it is not that much at all.
US military emission alone should be like 200x bitcoin alone
The difficulty of mining bitcoin is variable, whereas for gold it is (comparatively) constant. The energy cost of creating $40,000 worth of bitcoin right now is very different from the energy cost of $40,000 worth of bitcoin having been created. It is estimated that 190,000 Tons of gold have been produced in history, which is 53.8 years worth at current production rates. That current production rate requires 132 TWh…
A good share of the gold mined is not in circulation. Besides other uses, the bond wires of every chip are made out of gold. Bitcoin is "the gift which keeps on giving". Every transaction, not only the original "mining", incurs a substantial ecological cost. The share of gold otoh used as financial tool is often not moved at all in transactions. E.g. a good share of it is stored in some vaults and virtually never mov…
Like gold, bitcoin does not actually have to change hands to be used. If people deposit bitcoin into a virtual vault, they can exchange it with eachother all day long without anything being processed on the network. It's only when someone withdraws their bitcoin from that vault that they need to process a real transaction - equivalent to physically moving gold. The difference between bitcoin and gold is that the environmental costs of transferring value by gold increase with distance and quantity: it takes a lot more to ship a ton of gold around the world than handing a coin to a person next door. Bitcoin, on the other hand has a fixed cost - the transaction to buy a pizza is no different from the transaction to buy a pizzeria. Of course you're not going to wire a bitcoin to the local pizza boy, you're going to go through an intermediary that provides a lower cost transaction. You use bitcoin for the big transfers where it is competitive both financially and ecologically with transporting similar value in physical assets.
Lol, that the author isn't accounting for Bitcoins being used more than once makes this comparison one of the most laughable "bitcoin is too energy inefficient" arguments I've seen yet. This is basically like saying, "If you only account for the first passenger on the bus, busses are way less efficient than everyone driving their own sportscar!".
This is all FUD. Miners largely use renewable power that is excess, not expensive dirty power plants. Here's a good breakdown of the counter argument: https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587
Earlier quoted context omitted.
GDP is a very questionable metric. Burn down your house, buy a new one and you have contributed a great deal to the GDP of your nation. If a cat. 5 hurricane makes landfall and destroys thousands of homes which have to be rebuilt, the GDP increases. That way a little bit of global warming raises the GDP (of industrial nations).
Another perspective then, worldwide bitcoin co2 emission is less than residents of Tampa, FL, which has less than 0.1% of US population Bitcoins emission is big, but in the bigger picture it is not that much at all. US military emission alone should be like 200x bitcoin alone
Lol, that the author isn't accounting for Bitcoins being used more than once makes this comparison one of the most laughable "bitcoin is too energy inefficient" arguments I've seen yet. This is basically like saying, "If you only account for the first passenger on the bus, busses are way less efficient than everyone driving their own sportscar!".
Each subsequent transaction still uses a significant amount of energy, no?
There are still many caveats and nuances when analyzing this number, but at least it would be a valid comparison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric power is fungible. Any renewable power used for Bitcoin is power that cannot be used to offset carbon emissions.
It is not. Transmission is not perfectly efficient, so location is extremely important. Hence why energy markets have varying prices in varying locations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another perspective then, worldwide bitcoin co2 emission is less than residents of Tampa, FL, which has less than 0.1% of US population Bitcoins emission is big, but in the bigger picture it is not that much at all. US military emission alone should be like 200x bitcoin alone
With an estimated 178TWh/a electric energy dissipation for bitcoin mining and 0.416kg CO2 released for every kWh electric energy produced in the USA and 15500kg CO2/a per capita released (total, not just for electricity) in the USA, the CO2 released from bitcoin mining corresponds to the release of about 27 million citizens of USA. Not sure why the residents of Tampa would release so much more.
Tampa has population around 400k each emitting 15 tons, 6.2k tons.
As I said emission of bitcoin is big, but in total it is very small percentage.