51–60 of 61 posts
To counter the whataboutisms abounding in the comments thread here, I will start a comment tree differently. How does the bitcoin community solve this problem? Is migrating to a proof-of-stake system viable in the long term? Would doing so affect the value of bitcoin as an asset? Would it improve it's value as anything else?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That. Then, add all the energy consumed by the 24/7 monitoring and safeguarding of every single one of those facilities, and for good measure add to each cost line the energy cost of the whole chain of processes that selects, sets up and maintains enough of both humans and machines to accomplish that task at scale.
Our comments and questions along these lines don't seem to be too popular. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in the industry I'm in with my own locally unique thoughts and conclusions. It's very tiring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't exclusively burn coal to secure bitcoin and China uses a combination of power generation technologies to power its electrical grid. To imply that it's all coal is just wrong. Yes, shut down the coal plants today , but you'll be cancelling more than Bitcoin PoW. So what are you really mad about? Bitcoin or Coal? For goodness sakes, if these activists win at cancelling Bitcoin, all they've accomplished is exte…
I am not saying to shut down coal plants today, and I deny you the right to put words in my mouth. What I am doing is pushing back on your original argument, which was that China has nuclear plants and we have lots of uranium, so it's fine to waste enormous amounts of energy mining Bitcoin. My position is this: Today we have nuclear plants and coal plants, and we waste energy mining Bitcoin. It is a strictly better w…
Food for thought: 65% of bitcoin mining occurs in China [1], China is still building nuclear reactors [2], there are millions of tonnes of uranium reserves on the planet [3]. Just focusing on PoW via nuclear power production, we can power the Bitcoin blockchain for centuries, if not millenia, on clean nuclear energy. This hand-wringing about Bitcoin PoW is hysterically overblown, and amounts to a proxy argument about…
On the other hand, if we were not doing Bitcoin, we could use that nuclear power for something else , like replacing coal plants...
We are producing tons of useless plastic crap thrown out almost imidietely at the purchase. Roughly half of food get throw away. But thats not an issue. Same case for cities not fiendly towards mass transit force huge polution and waste of petrol etc etc.
But only if BTC were dead the global warming would stop and there would be no crime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our comments and questions along these lines don't seem to be too popular. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in the industry I'm in with my own locally unique thoughts and conclusions. It's very tiring.
Crypto only provides a small fraction of the functionality of the federal reserve or banks or credit card companies, so it isn't fair to compare energy consumption. (I know coiners basically don't want monetary policy so the fed has negative value to them but many people disagree.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, if we were not doing Bitcoin, we could use that nuclear power for something else , like replacing coal plants...
BTC is quickly becoming a scapegoat for actual issues. We are producing tons of useless plastic crap thrown out almost imidietely at the purchase. Roughly half of food get throw away. But thats not an issue. Same case for cities not fiendly towards mass transit force huge polution and waste of petrol etc etc. But only if BTC were dead the global warming would stop and there would be no crime.
AND
get-rid-of single-use plastics, half of food waste etc.
There is no singular silver bullet that will tackle our environmental problems including the climate emergency.
I realize that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance on this particular topic and I'll flat-out state that this is a conflict of interest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that actually happening? Is it on track to happen?
The same people who lament the energy usage of PoW have also been stirring up FUD against nuclear. I said that the outrage about Bitcoin is a proxy for lamenting the lack of clean energy while also ignoring or resisting our current, proven ability to generate clean energy. Are you sealioning?
Currently, POW "currencies" burn real coal, divert energy from production applications like metal smelting, monopolize cheap renewables on-site (like Niagara falls) due to the way the markets reward BTC, which, in my opinion, is ridiculous. 60k for a slice of Ponzi pie?
Cognitive dissonance due to vested interests.
DO YOU OWN POW CRYPTO-"CURRENCIES"? - put that in your full disclaimer, please. It colors your output.
To counter the whataboutisms abounding in the comments thread here, I will start a comment tree differently. How does the bitcoin community solve this problem? Is migrating to a proof-of-stake system viable in the long term? Would doing so affect the value of bitcoin as an asset? Would it improve it's value as anything else?
They don't see it as a problem and have no intention of solving it.
To counter the whataboutisms abounding in the comments thread here, I will start a comment tree differently. How does the bitcoin community solve this problem? Is migrating to a proof-of-stake system viable in the long term? Would doing so affect the value of bitcoin as an asset? Would it improve it's value as anything else?
No, PoS is an insecure trick that reinvents TradFi power structures. PoS bitcoin has been tried, and it is worth very little (like other PoS coins). Bitcoiners dont consider energy usage a actually a problem, infact, it is one of its greatest strengths! PoS is not the path forward. Reducing energy is not the path forward. Clean energy generation is the only way forward.
1 megawatt can smelt a lot of metal that can build bridges and electric vehicle parts, for example.
Whereas energy production is finite. Whereas BTC and it's ilk steal from the mouths of babes. Whereas BTC and it's ilk currently cause real externalities, in the real physical communal world we share.