211–220 of 499 posts
Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide real benefit and utility. But, perhaps power wasted on cloth dryers and Christmas lights are a western frivolity. So, the real argument is Bitcoin useful or not. Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market.
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> I'm not a crypto proponent per se Yet you rolled out the standard crypto talking points flawlessly. > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist Again, I suspect you aren't an environmentalist either. Please just be straightforward with your motivations here.
The standard talking points from Bitcoin proponents.
In the same context: How many top ranking games on steam waste the same amount of electricity? Shouldn't they be responsible for building fusion reactors, too, by that logic? If not, why?
Clearly less than 50, at the very maximum. 2.3% is an absurd amount of power.
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I would be with you, if bitcoin was only allowed to use carbon-free electricity. The reality is that they sometimes buy coal mines ([1]) and burn coal onsite without paying for the externalities. And that's something to be worried about. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
> And that's something to be worried about. not even remotely in my opinion, bitcoin uses cheap electricity, and if carbon-free is cheaper like everyone proposes then it should be quickly adopted by bitcoin miners
The underlying problem is energy creation, not usage. If we had nuclear power plants everywhere and energy "too cheap to meter", no one would bat an eye at BTC energy usage. We need to stop thinking energy conservation, and start thinking on how we can GROW sustainable energy usage. People live better with more energy.
I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…
Digieconomist [1] states that a single Bitcoin transaction is "equivalent to the carbon footprint of 1,044,177 VISA transactions or 78,521 hours of watching Youtube."
Statista [2] estimates a similar energy-cost ratio of about 470,000 Visa transactions to 1 Bitcoin transaction.
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
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> Why do utilities encourage customers to become more efficient when they could sell more power and make more money instead? Because that kind of marketing works on a lot of people.
To accomplish what end? Why are they marketing efficiency?
I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…
> 1. There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a particularly energy-efficient industry. Despite declaring yourself not one, this (and every other one of your points) comes up _every single time_ crypto proponents are trying to seed FUD in any reporting about the energy usage of crypto. This is especially laughable when you then say > ~2% of US p…
And it's worth pointing out that it comes up every single time without a shred evidence, just a hunch that the crypto enthusiast ensures us is correct. I'd love to see some actual numbers on the energy consumption of the banking industry vs. crypto.
Or lets be real, let's compare the amount of energy used by the banking sector to provide the same store of value and 3 transactions per second or whatever minor utility BTC provides.
I work in financial power derivatives, and there are entire trading desks devoted to "congestion trading" - ie the financial right to transmit power between grid locations with inherent transmission congestion. From the EIA map of mining operations, crypto mining tends to take place in remote areas where electricity is plentiful but hard to deliver to major load zones (cities) due to grid transmission constraints. On the whole, most crypto mining operations choose to operate in regions where the price of electricity is cheap (remote locations). Paradoxically, these operations running during off-peak times contributes to grid stability by smoothing the load curve and preventing expensive curtailment of alternative generation resources (think along the lines of a wind turbine needing to shut down on a windy day bc it's generating more power than the grid can consume)
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Heating your house with direct electricity is wasteful. You should get a heat pump. You will get your money back in no time. This changes the equation.
Seriously, I want to know where OP lives, having an all electric heating setup anywhere in the world where it gets cold enough is incredibly inefficient