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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

#341

Post by moralsupply »

I actually love how much the HN community is invested in demonizing Bitcoin for its energy consumption.

It gives us, the ones who understand Bitcoin, more time to enter the market before it runs yet another full cycle.

I truly wish for you bashing Bitcoin to keep all your wealth allocated in assets associated with fiat currencies.

I also wish that you spend lots of time running political narratives in order to stop a decentralized piece of technology from growing.

Good luck trying to reach out the Bitcoin CEO in order to ask him to shut down his "environmentally damaging operations".

In 5 years time, however, once the US dollar has lost 50% of its purchase power, you'll be begging your employer to pay you in Bitcoin.

By that time you'll conveniently forget the narrative about energy consumption.

You'll even claim that Bitcoin is one of the most important technologies ever invented, and that you always believed in it.

Screenshot this.

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

#342

Post by throwaway20875 »

pwinnski wrote: post #335
throwaway20875 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is undermined by its arbitrary focus on crypto. The premise is that crypto mining drives consumption for power, and power production results in "health and climate damage". Are we going to police consumers of power now? Will we invest our time and energy in determining the "good" and "bad" consumers of power. Or are we going to invest our time and resources in building out a sustainable, clean, and effici…

If you're not just reacting to the focus on crypto mining, but actually interested in the answer to your question, then the answer is yes. In fact, energy efficiency[0] is a large area of focus, especially with regard to ongoing climate change[1]. You might have noticed a shift in things like light bulbs building standards and so on. We've made progress[2], and so it is really hard for people celebrating that progres…

>a boom in use that threatens to undo all of our progress and then some

Then we're back to policing people's energy use. There will be little ROI in going down this path, and a huge opportunity cost.

This is all not to mention the incentives driving crypto. We have many smart minds engaging in this realm - imagine if those same minds were allocated, via a better economic system, to improving our energy production and distribution. Addressing that dilemma is real policy. Unfortunately, in the West we play whack-a-mole and end up with policies to address the effects of prior policies.

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

#343

Post by random5634 »

jf22 wrote: post #168
random5634 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think this “scientific” study qualifies as a contributor to intelligent discourse think again.

I love how most of the criticisms of this study amount to saying putting the word scientific in quotes and calling it a day.

For every dollar spent building a train station there are $50 dollars of health and climate damages.

This ignores the USE of the train station, and just focuses on energy costs to build it.

This study is only focused on mining new coins. Heads up, some of the (wildly inflated) value of bitcoin is tied to (arguable) uses and the ability of the blockchain to operate as a non-repudiation public ledger that allows global transfer of value with strong guarantees totally independent of any other central party.

Some quick math.

1 bitcoin is lets say worth $50,000. Let's assume $10K in electricity to mine this. So for every $1 in bitcoin, you need 20 cents of electricity.

Reduced to it's simplest, the claim here is that for every 20 cents of electricity, there is another 50 cents of health impacts.

Fair enough, but if you believe this, then a lot of other things have huge damages.

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

#344

Post by me_me_me »

karpour wrote: post #216
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 mi…

there are people who are sending their ashes to space. And nobody care, just like nobody cars about btc being utility less.

There are countless bigger issues that HN doesn't talk about can we add btc's env impact to it?!

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

#346

Post by jf22 »

random5634 wrote: post #343
jf22 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how most of the criticisms of this study amount to saying putting the word scientific in quotes and calling it a day.

For every dollar spent building a train station there are $50 dollars of health and climate damages. This ignores the USE of the train station, and just focuses on energy costs to build it. This study is only focused on mining new coins. Heads up, some of the (wildly inflated) value of bitcoin is tied to (arguable) uses and the ability of the blockchain to operate as a non-repudiation public ledger that allows global…

Right, other things have huge damages too.

Pointing out other things also have an environmental impact just dilutes the discussion about Bitcoin and doesn't add anything to it.

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

#347

Post by jf22 »

throwaway20875 wrote: post #263
Certhas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven't actually looked at how the damages are modelled have you? You just in your head inveneted a naive way in which to estimate damages and then argued that that doesn't work. There is a large and robust literature to assess these type of damages (search for Social Cost of Carbon). The methodological challenges are discussed really well in the paper actually. Much of the damages calculated here aren't…

The article is undermined by its arbitrary focus on crypto. The premise is that crypto mining drives consumption for power, and power production results in "health and climate damage". Are we going to police consumers of power now? Will we invest our time and energy in determining the "good" and "bad" consumers of power. Or are we going to invest our time and resources in building out a sustainable, clean, and effici…

The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!"

Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.

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

#348

Post by pwinnski »

ric2b wrote: post #329
karpour wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't this entire discussion the definition of whataboutism? We're all focusing on Bitcoin as if killing it would stop global warming or something. There are dozens of different things we could be criticizing when it comes to pollution.

And we do! For many years! Just not on this thread.

Global climate change won't be slowed or stopped by a single silver bullet. It will take reduction in many, many areas combined, and many of those are already underway, have been underway for years now.

Meanwhile, all of those savings are being offset by wasteful-by-design crypto mining that benefits extraordinarily few people. So yes, in addition to the many, many, many reports on various other major contributors to ongoing climate change, it's time to talk about crypto mining, too.

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

#349

Post by jf22 »

aww_dang wrote: post #279
Certhas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven't actually looked at how the damages are modelled have you? You just in your head inveneted a naive way in which to estimate damages and then argued that that doesn't work. There is a large and robust literature to assess these type of damages (search for Social Cost of Carbon). The methodological challenges are discussed really well in the paper actually. Much of the damages calculated here aren't…

Are there parties that benefit disproportionately by establishing a cost for carbon and the definition thereof? Is this all an altruistic exercise in saving the planet? If so, it sounds very nice. We are lucky to have the concern of such well funded saviors.

Ah yes, the "this is obviously a conspiracy" defense despite offering no evidence of such a conspiracy at all.

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

#350

Post by random5634 »

jf22 wrote: post #346
random5634 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every dollar spent building a train station there are $50 dollars of health and climate damages. This ignores the USE of the train station, and just focuses on energy costs to build it. This study is only focused on mining new coins. Heads up, some of the (wildly inflated) value of bitcoin is tied to (arguable) uses and the ability of the blockchain to operate as a non-repudiation public ledger that allows global…

Right, other things have huge damages too. Pointing out other things also have an environmental impact just dilutes the discussion about Bitcoin and doesn't add anything to it.

And neither is highlighting bitcoin, especially by focusing ONLY on the mining aspect of it. The use of the network is also part of the bitcoin story. If instead of using new bitcoins mined they did transaction value per day (ie, $20B+) the math would be totally different.

If you applied this same damage model to something people had fondness for (ie, driving an electric car) you'd realize we should be working as HARD as we can to kill EV cars dead, because there is a MASSIVE unaccounted for cost to charging them (using this model).

Reality though is bitcoin chases low cost power, and that is currently often actually green (hydro, excess solar during day when their is curtailment and negative pricing etc). I can't imagine the economics making sense to mine using coal power.

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