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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

#351

Post by pwinnski »

moralsupply wrote: post #341

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…

50%? You don't mean 8%? Or 9%? Most recent five-year periods have seen inflation in the 8-9% range[0], but somehow we're going to spike to 50% in the next five years?

Do you hear yourself?

0. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com

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

#353

Post by throwaway20875 »

jf22 wrote: post #347
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…

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.

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

Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark.

The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply?

It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.

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

#354

Post by pwinnski »

S_A_P wrote: post #91

I just don’t see how this is true. Are similar assertions going to be made when we switch to electric cars as a significant percentage of the population? It’s at about 2-3% IIRC and increasing this by several orders of magnitude will have a similar impact on electricity usage.

Electric cars increase electricity usage, but lower overall energy usage due to reduced gasoline demand.

In operation, the benefits are vast.

In production, less so, but still positive.

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

#355

Post by moralsupply »

pwinnski wrote: post #351
moralsupply wrote: post #341

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…

50%? You don't mean 8%? Or 9%? Most recent five-year periods have seen inflation in the 8-9% range[0], but somehow we're going to spike to 50% in the next five years? Do you hear yourself? 0. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

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

#356

Post by effie »

jf22 wrote: post #347
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…

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.

The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power production, not hundreds of minor consumer classes such as cryptocurrencies or aluminum producers. Focusing on minor issue, cherry-picking contorted arguments and advocating targeted policy is not how respectable scientific paper should look like.

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

#357

Post by [deleted] »

kristo wrote: post #136

It’s hilarious to see the coin bros attack this article. The point here isn’t the number, it’s the scale of waste, which is astronomical. I would rather protect the environment than someone’s ability to buy drugs online. What other legitimate purpose does btc serve right now other than illegal activities?

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by engineer_22 »

acd wrote: post #189

System engineer here: An Issue I have with the whole economic system is that external cost to the environment is not priced correctly. I think that crypto currencies is a good thing but must move from proof of work so something which consumes less energy, I think the fix is that you price negative carbon in the atmosphere, carbon capacity and you pay for all carbon you emit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax…

Are you familiar with Charles A.S. Hall? and Biophysical Economics...

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

#359

Post by jf22 »

effie wrote: post #356
jf22 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power p…

>We should focus on the important polluters, not minor consumers

Do you feel the same way about causes of death?

Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!"

Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.

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

#360

Post by jf22 »

random5634 wrote: post #350
jf22 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 HAR…

What good would transaction value per day be? This is like counting your salary twice, once when you earn it, once when you spend it, lol.
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