Same logic could be applied to just about anything that uses any resource at all.
Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#32> As more of the tokens are mined, the puzzles get harder
Difficulty doesn't automatically increase over time. Rather, it has tended to increase for two major reasons:
1) bitcoin price going up, increasing miner competition chasing the higher reward. The reward halvings every 4 years have done little to counter this uptrend.
2) mining efficiency going up. after transitioning from CPUs through GPUs and FPGAs to ASICs, efficiencies have started to level off now.
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize that energy being used to mine crypto is generated in good part by those fossil fuels you care about, right? https://www.govtech.com/news/bitcoin-mining-in-upstate-new-y...
Apparently it's around 56% renewables-generated electricity. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/07/06/bi...
Luckily electricity is non-fungible so that the green electricity used by bitcoin does not create increased demand for fossil-fuel generated electricity elsewhere.
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#34A lot of the comments are whataboutism and strawman arguments (big corporations, fossil fuel, military). To de-emotionalise the discussion, it makes sense to separate the two aspects:
1. Is the argument from the linked article factually (and semantically) true? 2. If that is the case, what are the moral and political implications?
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#35China sure made the right choice to ban crypto. 0.5% of the world's energy is insane
You want to know what's insane? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta... .
So, because the DoD uses a lot of energy, we should be okay with the energy a speculative asset consumes?
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#36I’m paying to subsidise the fossil fuel industry, I care more about that, I’m just not outages about this.
Welcome to climate change in the 21st century, where we'll be outraged/distracted by everything but how ~100 companies are responsible for 70% of global emissions[1]. Today we’ll be talking about evil terrorism enabling cryptocurrencies. Tomorrow we’ll be talking about individual choice and SUVs. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
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Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#37energy is a finite resource sold on a market. if bitcoin miners are willing to pay higher price for it - what's your problem?
if you want population to pay less for energy - vote for a government that will subsidize that.
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#38Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
You want to know what's insane? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta... .
So, because the DoD uses a lot of energy, we should be okay with the energy a speculative asset consumes?
you should be ok with market participants paying market price for a finite resource sold on a market.
Re: Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses
#40Same logic could be applied to just about anything that uses any resource at all.
Yes, there's a surprising number of people commenting on this thread who are really upset at marshallian scissors - it's funniest thing I've read this week.