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Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

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Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#51

Post by tshaddox »

endisneigh wrote: post #3

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency. Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One wa…

You have an interesting way of putting it. I pretty agree with your criticism although I would frame it as "having all the same problems that our large wealthy democratic national governments have" rather than "antithetical to democracy."

I suppose the only difference is our opinions of democracy as it's practiced.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#52

Post by jwbwater »

piggybox wrote: post #32
seibelj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pandora Papers recently released had terabytes of data and 13 million documents of how the richest people and politicians on earth avoid taxes. Bitcoin was used exactly zero times.

By definition, bitcoin transactions are not traceable, right?

Ross Ulbricht will be happy to learn this.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#53

Post by hparadiz »

NoGravitas wrote: post #40
hparadiz wrote: post #17

The energy consumption used by asics per hash unit is NOT known as claimed in this link. The actual rate drops over time. The article makes so many assumptions that are basically estimates that even posting this on HN is sad.

Seethe.

I can say the same to you honestly. These posts are just misinformed and sad. I used to mine on a GPU.... that used way more power than any ASIC for the same computational block. What is there to seethe about? My holdings aren't dropping in value. lol.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#54

Post by ur-whale »

NoGravitas wrote: post #27
jackt89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will have your money's value stolen from you through inflation. You will be forced to consume. And you will be happy.

I don't know about you, buddy, but most people are forced to consume practically all of their income to keep their family fed and to keep a roof over their heads. Having savings that could be eroded by inflation is not really a relatable problem to have, in general.

> most people are forced to consume practically all of their income to keep their family fed and to keep a roof over their heads

I'll take a guess that you be living in USistan.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#55

Post by pjc50 »

cwkoss wrote: post #19

The idea of taxing cryptocurrencies specifically for carbon emissions is some mixture of naive, shallow and sour grapes. There are a lot of wasteful industries - crypto is a small slice of the overall pie and is arguably the most responsive to market forces. Make universally applied carbon taxes across all industries and let the market sort it out. I'm a crypto bull, and fully support greening our energy economy. Adv…

> Make universally applied carbon taxes across all industries and let the market sort it out

Globally?

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#57

Post by foepys »

cwkoss wrote: post #19

The idea of taxing cryptocurrencies specifically for carbon emissions is some mixture of naive, shallow and sour grapes. There are a lot of wasteful industries - crypto is a small slice of the overall pie and is arguably the most responsive to market forces. Make universally applied carbon taxes across all industries and let the market sort it out. I'm a crypto bull, and fully support greening our energy economy. Adv…

The problem with this is that poor people will not be able to keep their fridge powered if energy became too expensive.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#58

Post by chrisco255 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #4
xrd wrote: post #2

I still think war and oil are dirtier and don't see a way to wean ourselves off that consumption and impact. I do see that cryptocurrencies are moving toward energy reduction through things like proof of stake and L2s. https://susanfsu.medium.com/think-btc-is-a-dirty-business-co...

HERE IS THE ARTICLE YOU CAN SEND TO PEOPLE WHEN THEY SAY “BUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WITH CRYPTOART WILL BE SOLVED SOON, RIGHT?” https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issue... The promise of "proof of stake eventually" is just greenwashing.

In Ethereum's case, it's not green washing, they're already halfway to implementation. The proof of stake chain is live. The proof of work chain will be merged into the proof of stake chain in the next six months: https://ethmerge.com/

Clearly with hundreds of billions in economic activity on the POW chain they have to take this very carefully.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#59

Post by anonporridge »

asdff wrote: post #7

Another industry in need of carbon taxes. Stuff like bitcoin would be a lot more palatable if its users paid for the externalities they saddle upon everyone else from their carbon usage.

Bitcoin is just a convenient scapegoat for people to hate on and feel like they have the moral high ground, all while they eat a high meat diet, drive single occupant cars daily, take regular domestic flights and occasional international flights, and live in McMansions with AC 6 months out of the year.

Our entire lifestyles in the developed world are horrifically carbon heavy. Beating up on things like bitcoin without addressing the actual problem of oil subsidies and the lack of carbon taxes is a waste of political capital that will set back actual effective climate action by years or decades.

We can't afford to waste that time.

Re: Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated

#60

Post by tornato7 »

seibelj wrote: post #39
piggybox wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition, bitcoin transactions are not traceable, right?

Bitcoin transactions are far more traceable and easy to scan than it is to track payments in the offshore world, which involves many jurisdictions, subpoenas, judges, delays, getting stonewalled, etc. Night and day difference in ability to track.

Indeed, once you figure out someone's wallet address it becomes trivial to trace their transactions back to the beginning of Bitcoin.
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