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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

#391

Post by stjohnswarts »

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.

The issue is that the US dollar is actually achieving something. Bitcoin is just causing people to froth at the mouth and burn up huge amounts of energy while polluting the environment heavily. When it pops lots of people are going to be left hurting because they bought into bitcoin fever.

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

#392

Post by stjohnswarts »

FDSGSG wrote: post #185
konjin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US military certainly consumes more energy than Ireland.

So what do you think would happen if the US military disappeared tomorrow leaving China and Russia as the two big guys? World War 3 for years? How much would change if bitcoin disappeared tomorrow? Probably a stock market dip.

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

#393

Post by effie »

joshspankit wrote: post #260

There was an excellent discussion about this last night in CH. The takeaway was that because solar is now the cheapest source of electricity, miners are flocking to it. An estimated 30% of the BTC network is running on solar. It’s not perfect, but as long as the most ecologically friendly electricity is the cheapest, I feel like miners will drive straight for it at record speed.

Thank you for a valuable contribution to this discussion. Could you explain what is "CH"? Can you link to it?

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

#394

Post by stjohnswarts »

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.

I agree as long as China and Russia also eliminate their military down to equivalent levels with unlimited auditability between the 3 countries.

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

#395

Post by joshspankit »

effie wrote: post #393
joshspankit wrote: post #260

There was an excellent discussion about this last night in CH. The takeaway was that because solar is now the cheapest source of electricity, miners are flocking to it. An estimated 30% of the BTC network is running on solar. It’s not perfect, but as long as the most ecologically friendly electricity is the cheapest, I feel like miners will drive straight for it at record speed.

Thank you for a valuable contribution to this discussion. Could you explain what is "CH"? Can you link to it?

That’s nice of you to say. Thank you.

For sure I can expand on “CH”. I’m referring to Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/

It’s a realtime audio app for topic-based discussions.

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

#396

Post by effie »

joshspankit wrote: post #395
effie wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for a valuable contribution to this discussion. Could you explain what is "CH"? Can you link to it?

That’s nice of you to say. Thank you . For sure I can expand on “CH”. I’m referring to Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/ It’s a realtime audio app for topic-based discussions.

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately this seems very exclusionary. Do I have to have an iPhone to listen?

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

#397

Post by teekert »

pwinnski wrote: post #352
teekert wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then $'s spend on armies!

Because if the US adopted BTC, we wouldn't need an army at all? Is that the claim?

The US spends a lot of $ on waging war, $ that could have been spend on Healthcare, or funding initiatives that help combat climate change. I'm saying Healthcare and climate are hardly a priority for the US, so why is BTC the bad guy here?

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

#398

Post by joshspankit »

effie wrote: post #396
joshspankit wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nice of you to say. Thank you . For sure I can expand on “CH”. I’m referring to Clubhouse: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/ It’s a realtime audio app for topic-based discussions.

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately this seems very exclusionary. Do I have to have an iPhone to listen?

You are correct: you have to have both an iPhone (for now) and an invite.

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

#399

Post by effie »

GavinMcG wrote: post #378
effie wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding the point. Of course, cryptocurrencies have externalities and it is good to quantify them. In that respect, the paper could be useful. The objection is, this paper makes no attempt to analyze and show cryptocurrencies are worth attention any more than other 1000 consumer classes. It just states "crypto has externalities", does not weight them properly in perspective and advocates for "more re…

It's a single paper. It responsibly limits itself to a manageable conclusion and responsibly points out where there are still open questions. Can you point out where in the paper the authors leap to "let's regulate" as you put it? There seems to be one small section about regulation, but it doesn't exactly advocate for it: it describes how their pricing research could be used in regulation. It describes challenges in…

The whole paper shows implicit interest in taxing/regulating cryptocurrency mining instead of unbiased dispassionate scientific analysis. You can see this explicitly in the last section, starting with

> However, the ability to locate, and re-locate, cryptomining almost anywhere (e.g., following the cheapest, under-regulated electricity source) and fund mining camps from anywhere with complete or near anonymity create significant challenges to implementing effective regulation

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

#400

Post by effie »

jf22 wrote: post #359
effie wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you feel the same way about causes of death?

Yes? Polluting power plants kill many more people than the whole bitcoin mining operation.

> 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.

Okay, we agree on something here. I fully support assessing Bitcoin mining and operation costs and comparing those costs to other consumer classes to get perspective. When we do this, it is easy to see bitcoin mining is a non-issue climate-wise (for now). The main issue is pollution done by Big Polluters such as naval transport and coal/gas power plants.

These bogus calls for regulation/shutdowns of minor electricity consumers just spoil the climate discussion, distract us from the real polluters.

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