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

Post by ric2b » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

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…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

Deukhoofd wrote: post #195

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…

They take the average emission per kWh generated in the country, combine that with existing research of the social cost of carbon done by the EPA (which includes damages done through climate change), as well as the change in mortality rate caused by these emissions. Then they combine this by the electricity requirements of bitcoin mining, and they have their results. (in very global terms, there's a lot more work don…

Post by ric2b » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

h4kor wrote: post #312

capableweb wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, organizations built hydro plants for whatever reason in places where supply ended up higher than demand, driving down the prices. With that move, Bitcoin miners saw the opportunity and placed themselves within that ecosystem. Bitcoin miners don't put their operations in the middle of nowhere and then ask someone to build hydro plants...

> In the energy market, demand drives supply > Bitcoin miners don't put their operations in the middle of nowhere and then ask someone to build hydro plants... So now the demand follows the supply?

Post by ric2b » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

karpour wrote: post #235

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.

That is a completely useless comparison. If anything, compare energy usage per transaction. If you would hypothetically scale up the transaction volume of the Bitcoin network to the entire USD financial system, you'd quickly find out that it would use more energy than was ever produced on this planet.

Post by ric2b » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

karpour wrote: post #271

FDSGSG wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military certainly consumes more energy than Ireland.

Nice whataboutism. 10/10. And yes, the U.S. military should massively downscale.