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Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

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Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#211

Post by abstractbarista »

konjin wrote: post #115
maxharris wrote: post #97

What is the energy cost of the entire USD-based financial system? At a minimum we need to total up what the US Mint, the Federal Reserve, Visa, Mastercard, Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and thousands of other companies and government entities do. It is obvious that amount of energy used to keep the USD going absolutely dwarfs Bitcoin.

Smaller than the energy required to run Ireland, unlike bitcoin. An algorithm designed to be wasteful in energy wasting energy is not something we should be shocked at.

You have to include the energy used to power the US military, among other things too. The value of the Dollar is inextricably tied to the threat of force. Bitcoin, on the other hand, offers trust through proof of work, not violence.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#212

Post by trident5000 »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #126

While this is sad, this is a self correcting problem. Miners and other people using bitcoins are going to get tired at some point of the loss from buying all this energy to keep their bitcoin assets going. The most scary part of cryptocoins is the deflationary cycle that makes these crypto asset potentially displace productive investment on an economy wide scale. This is not self correcting. This is Moloch, it's a pr…

"displace productive investment on an economy wide scale"

Yes we need to keep buying overvalued equities. Instill fear.

The matter of the fact is if something is worth investing in, it will get the investment regardless if btc is with us or not with us. Venture capital is still thriving today.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#213

Post by cbzbc »

eigenvalue wrote: post #6

This is about the furthest thing from “science”. Just sensationalist propaganda. It’s so far from being even remotely plausible. Maybe 1 BTC is responsible for $0.49 of “damage” if you could ever actually quantify it. Most of this electricity comes from the cheapest source of power, which is hydro.

Even if this were true, hydro also has an environmental cost, doubly so if the demand from crypto is causing hydro to be constructed in places where it cannot be used for other purposes (which is often a linked claim).

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#214

Post by k2enemy »

kryogen1c wrote: post #100

> responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages red flag this article is steeped in pseudoscience. you could spend a lifetime trying to model and predict global weather patterns _with no outside intervention_. the idea that you could even make an attempt at attaching a number to this phenomena is laughable. what are the error bars here, 10,000%? lets pretend, for example, you tried to estimate the impact of tsu…

Did you actually read the article? I'll make it easy for you: https://scihubtw.tw/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101281

They make no attempt at trying to predict global weather patterns. Rather the article seems to be mostly "glue" -- connecting energy usage of cryptocurrencies with previously done work trying to measure the externalities of pollution and energy usage. The research that the article builds on gets used all the time in government policy etc. Which doesn't make it correct, but deserves a little more than a knee-jerk reaction and outright dismissal because the method you came up with in thirty seconds doesn't hold up.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#215

Post by throwawayyy1986 »

The idea that you could sum up something so infinitely complex like the combined spheres of "health", climate and cryptocurrency into one number and then reduce it to 49 cents! Really?! Anyone even remotely sensible would say 50 cents cause there is no precision in what they're estimating.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#216

Post by karpour »

rkachowski wrote: post #132

I don't understand where all these "cryptocurrency vs the environment" posts are coming from recently. The core problem is energy use, no? Things using electricity - of which bitcoin is a huge one - are powered by environmentally damaging supplies. I don't care about BTC at all, but if it were to be wiped out of existence tomorrow it would prevent further damage to the environment in exactly the same way that getting…

I don't think you realize the scale of it. Bitcoin is primarily used for speculation, the value is only based on more and more people buying in, and the energy usage is overwhelming. We are in dire need of reducing overall energy usage, but Bitcoin works against this in a huge way. And even if the energy comes from "sustainable sources", solar cells still need to be manufactured, the hardware that does nothing but mine and ends up as e-waste needs to be produced. The environmental impact doesn't end with energy usage.

Overall, Bitcoin has an overall negative impact on society and environment, none of the claims that proponents made really hold up. There are many fundamental flaws that prevent Bitcoin from functioning as a practical currency, even is energy use wasn't an issue.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#217

Post by rkalla »

rmorey wrote: post #130
kryogen1c wrote: post #100

> responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages red flag this article is steeped in pseudoscience. you could spend a lifetime trying to model and predict global weather patterns _with no outside intervention_. the idea that you could even make an attempt at attaching a number to this phenomena is laughable. what are the error bars here, 10,000%? lets pretend, for example, you tried to estimate the impact of tsu…

This is not just some article, it's a peer-reviewed study from the University of Arizona. Surely it has fault, but honestly I don't think a "cursory glance at wikipedia" provides a compelling counterargument

University of New Mexico? (clicked 'Show More' under author names - maybe I missed a reference?)

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#218

Post by boomboomsubban »

permo-w wrote: post #150
ricardobayes wrote: post #13

And I'm especially angry at hypocrites like Elon Musk who are profiting from climate change and then proceeds invest those profits in bitcoin that accelerates climate change.

But then none of his enterprises have been explicitly exploitative, unlike many billionaires, and he’s pushed the car industry into moving away from combustion engines, so personally I give him a pass

The people that inhabit the areas around the Bolivian lithium mines might disagree with you, as would former Bolivian president Morales.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#219

Post by qertoip »

hashhar wrote: post #61

The whataboutism from cryptocurrency proponents every time the power use of mining is brought up is astonishing.

Protecting integrity of the most sound money human civilization ever had sounds like a worthy use of energy to me.

Re: Every $1 of BTC value responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in US

#220

Post by gowld »

arghwhat wrote: post #149
skinkestek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you deny that hydro is cheap or do you claim that miners choose to use power in more expensive locations?

Cheap is not necessarily renewable, but is often just a cheaper country which in turn tend to be more lenient. Also, it is wrong to assume that consuming 1GW near a hydroplant is fine. That 1GW would have been sold to someone else, and unless the net has an abundance of renewable energy, a non-renewable plant is going to have to cover for that.

Energy is not fully fungible. Local cheap energy can't be transported for use elsewhere, or else it would already have been.
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