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Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

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Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#161

Post by krono »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #66
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Dyson spheres and stellar engineering to power cryptocurrency mining rigs. I shudder at the thought.

One day a swarm of self replicating probes will turn up and start building a Dyson sphere around our sun. The purpose is to power the alien equivalent of Bitcoin mining. Another storyline I came up with is this: Imagine that an alien civilisation has the ability to send electromagnetic signals faster than light by some mechanism such as a micro wormhole but not ships and such. They still want to destroy other civilis…

This is gold!

Considering Humanity's capacity and even drive for destruction (entropy incarnate, that's us), by having handed us this concept they will have certainly accelerated the destruction of potentially hostile civilisations... but also their own, the rest of the universe, and whatever surrounds it.

There is some really good fiction to be found in this vein on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#162

Post by arcticbull »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #135
sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

Energy isn't scarce, its actually abundant. At this particular moment, clean renewable energy capacity is more scarce than fossil fuel, but there is simply far more potential energy in solar, wind, nuclear, etc. Remember, our planet is bombarded by solar rays 24/7 and will continue to receive this energy for billions of years. Human energy consumption has been exponential over time. We started by harvesting crops wit…

> Rather than scapegoat Bitcoin for our climate crisis, start by...

I too enjoy whataboutism to distract folks from the environmental impact of my favorite Ponzi scheme.

> Do those things, and Bitcoin will literally subsidize and accelerate clean energy infrastructure investment.

If you invest in massive solar and wind plants then use that energy to roll rocks up and back down a hill forever like Sisyphus, that's just more waste. Different waste, but more waste. Any energy you spend rock-rolling is failing to de-carbonize the existing grid.

Bitcoin isn't incentivized to chase renewables. It's incentivized to find the cheapest power it can get its hands on anywhere on earth and then waste it. That's why PE firms are re-opening fossil fuel plants to mine with.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#163

Post by latchkey »

acover wrote: post #29
hrhrhrhrhr wrote: post #8

Gold mining consumes 240.61 TWh per year, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Australia. Source: https://globalenergyprize.org/en/2021/11/24/the-bitcoin-gold...

> DePaul University suggests that this number should be closer to 35 tons of CO2 for jewelry, which accounts for roughly 50% of global gold demand. It is assumed that refinement uses a similar amount of power to recycling; therefore, a total of 79.9 MWh is used for the mining and refinement of each gram of gold used in jewelry. Each kilogram of recycled gold produces 37 tons of CO2 and uses 31.3 MWh of energy. This b…

> transactions with gold basically 0 energy.

Transactions with gold often involve transporting it from one location to another location.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#164

Post by endisneigh »

xiphias2 wrote: post #141
hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

Sure, if you are serious, the Bitcoin Standard book is a worthy read. But what’s important is that Bitcoin solves the inflation problem, and proof of work is the only system that we have for getting rid of the Cantillon effect of modern banking: the closer people get to the top of the central banks, the richer they get and destroy life for those who don’t have access to the inner layers of central banking. With Bitco…

Inflation isn't a bad thing necessarily.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#165

Post by unicornmama »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #110
clippablematt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like lots of people forgot about 2007/08 and the impact on so many people around the world. It was truly painful and destructive. And very clearly people responsible got off free, with bonuses and some even ended up with jobs in the treasury. A lot of people I know working in crypto saw their families hurt badly by that crises and will happily spend their lives trying to build something else (even if the odds…

Serious question: how would cryptocurrencies and defi have helped avoid/mitigate the subprime lending crisis specifically?

It wouldn’t have. CoinBros don’t understand that IOUs (debt) have existed across human history and will likely continue to exist. And that most economic activity is done through debt.

Once a set of “trusted” actors can issue debt, you have monetary expansion.

In Crypto, we have Coinbase, Binance and Tether - the defacto crypto banks. They have the ability to expand the crypto money supply and promise IOUs multiples in excess of their true deposits.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#166

Post by boramalper »

My personal opinion is that whilst Bitcoin is not the answer, many seem to miss the point of cryptocurrencies, which IMHO is, to enable a permissionless electronic cash system. Being decentralized is an important aspect of it, and TPS and time-to-finality etc are important metrics for any practical use, but the appeal of cryptocurrencies is that you don't need the permission of others to open an account nor have to pay premiums to send or receive money. It is also truly global so there is no difference whatsoever between splitting a bill in a restaurant or sending remittances to your family back home.

I guess many people live their lives on the "happy path"[0] thus never really experience how difficult the simplest tasks can get. In the country I have emigrated to, to open a current account you need a proof of (permanent) address, and to be able to rent a flat, you need a bank account to pay the deposit---a Catch 22 that I was able to break only thanks to TransferWise and Revolut. Another example is cash being deprecated for convenience and hygiene reasons, yet banks being just as difficult to give a POS terminal to self-employed and small businesses (hence the emergence of Stripe Terminal and Square) yet alone marginalized groups such as sex workers. Neobanks and fintechs really make life easier for many, but they are still not as free as cryptocurrencies aspire to be, and to be fair, cryptocurrencies are not there yet either... I am looking forward to the day I can spend my stablecoins as easily as using my Visa/MasterCard.

Hence, in the end, it may not matter as much whether some chains are more centralized than others or if stable coins are backed by the assets of some central custodians. Bitcoin is far from providing that, I think, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_path

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#167

Post by it_citizen »

xiphias2 wrote: post #141
hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

Sure, if you are serious, the Bitcoin Standard book is a worthy read. But what’s important is that Bitcoin solves the inflation problem, and proof of work is the only system that we have for getting rid of the Cantillon effect of modern banking: the closer people get to the top of the central banks, the richer they get and destroy life for those who don’t have access to the inner layers of central banking. With Bitco…

Inflation might a problem but a world where countries would no longer be able to adjust the value of their money isn’t scarier?

Wouldn’t we be giving up an essential lever to adjust to changing economical conditions?

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#168

Post by kmlx »

robomartin wrote: post #36

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago. We both installed larger solar systems than we need. We are net exporters of energy. And we are both disgusted by how the energy company takes this energy and, effectively, pays us nothing for it while charging our neighbors who use it full rate. One of the ideas that was floated in the conversation was to setup a Bitcoin (or some other crypto) mining sy…

> We are net exporters of energy. And we are both disgusted by how the energy company takes this energy and, effectively, pays us nothing for it while charging our neighbors who use it full rate.

Solved in other countries by passing a law forcing the energy companies to either subtract the electricity you produce from your bill (in kW mind you, not $), or if you produce more than you consume, make a record of the surplus for later (again, in kW). This way you get to produce more during summer and use that excess to offset during winter. And since it's in kW, it's independent from the electricity price.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#169

Post by cableshaft »

arcticbull wrote: post #112
sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

The worst part is that according to Cambridge some 40% of that is coal power [1]. Frequently the dirtiest coal power in the world, between Xinjiang (no longer, probably...) and Kazakhstan. Coal power causes excess mortality of anywhere between 25 and 278 deaths per TWh generated depending on how you're counting it and (most importantly) where it's generated. [2,3,4] Bitcoin's addiction to dirty coal killed between 15…

You really think that China banning bitcoin means they no longer use those dirty coal power plants? For a country that has such a huge demand for power that it's had blackouts and struggled to keep businesses powered even AFTER they banned all bitcoin mining[1]? Maybe that might even have to do with why they banned it in the first place?

It sucks that bitcoin uses so much power, but these countries using fossil fuels would still use them with or without bitcoin mining. We need to keep the pressure up to get these countries (and our own) to convert to 100% green renewable sources.

Right now China has only promised to reduce its fossil fuel to 20% of its total energy use by 2060, which is still 38 years away and way too late. In fact they're planning to keep INCREASING fossil fuel use up through 2030!

"China is targeting a clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media."

"The cabinet document, released on Sunday, follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later."

There's no bitcoin mining in the country now to use it as a scapegoat either.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/business/economy/china-el...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/25/china-to-cut-f...

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