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So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
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This is a false dichotomy. They can subsidize the startup costs for harvesting geothermal energy from Bitcoin mining and then use the geothermal infrastructure to produce electricity for the country.
It's not a false dichotomy. The infrastructure does not exist and they can't do both things at once
Almost half the electricity produced in El Salvador is from fossil sources (they don't have nuclear power): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS?location... Option A: invest in that volcano and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Option B: invest in that volcano and mine bitcoin. B makes them richer so long as other people keep expecting Bitcoin prices to rise (increasing demand), so I can see why they do…
El Salvador is the largest producer of geothermal energy in Central America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_El_Salva...
So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
Imagine if there were a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-driving-things-between-cities with a mining reward, and Los Angeles invested in it. There would be an incredible incentive for expanding LA's highway infrastructure, and you'd expect LA to get a lot more highways, to but there would be no positive impact on actual commuters trying to use those highways to get around greater LA, and quite possibly a negative impact, because the more direct incentive is to use whatever highways are there - building more highways is an indirect incentive.
So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
But it s like there's ONLY the reward. You imagine if there was a way to make gold with electricity? We d live in the dark just to get more of it...
And there is nothing stopping us from extracting gold using electricity. It's in basically all soil and sea water. Sure there are some required materials, but I'd water a guess that those materials are no harder to obtain than GPUs.
The only thing that stops this reckless mining are the forces of the market, and the same is true with crypto. Crypto miners tend to be extremely frugal, and I doubt any are any who are doing unprofitable mining in expectation of crypto going up.
Now from a crypto maximalist perspective, which I don't necessarily hold, isn't the cost of the electricity worth having a decentralized currency which enables all sort of different markets?
Crypto is always held up as wasteful in terms of energy, but I'd be curious to see the energy cost in comparison to current payment processing systems.
So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
It's actually a complete waste. All it produces is more security for the blockchain, which is of low marginal value. They could use that energy to produce something of actual value, like hydroponic food, or desalinated water, or run a data center, or literally anything else.
So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
It's actually a complete waste. All it produces is more security for the blockchain, which is of low marginal value. They could use that energy to produce something of actual value, like hydroponic food, or desalinated water, or run a data center, or literally anything else.
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They will literally have more money in their pockets. Good things happen when people have more money in their pockets - people save more, invest more, build more.
I have a sneaking suspicion the folks with "more money in their pockets" from this are most likely to be President Bukele and his friends.
Additionally ill ignore your point completely and only address Z now.
Almost half the electricity produced in El Salvador is from fossil sources (they don't have nuclear power): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS?location... Option A: invest in that volcano and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Option B: invest in that volcano and mine bitcoin. B makes them richer so long as other people keep expecting Bitcoin prices to rise (increasing demand), so I can see why they do…
And of course: why not do both, and more?
Edit: lots of downvotes, but at least a higher quality comment is on top now.
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Just one example, PayPal is also for peer-2-peer transfers
The World Bank provides a table of remittance fees to El Salvador. https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/en/corridor/United-St... MoneyGram is free if you do it to a bank account. https://imgur.com/a/6B5G2ax