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Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

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Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#161

Post by lottin »

yrgulation wrote: post #91
reedf1 wrote: post #14

I am so conflicted about the environmental impact of Proof-Of-Work. In many ways it feels like an arbitrary energy spend - but I think criticizing cryptocurrency for it seems a little disingenuous when we don't apply the same logic to other areas. What's the environmental impact of better refresh rates on monitors? What's the environmental impact of large scale cctv systems? What's the environmental impact of western…

I see a lot of whataboutism when debating crypto currency issues. We assess the env impact of everything you just listed - monitors and cctv have energy ratings, and if you google for eco friendly mattresses you will see there is a lot going on in that area as well. So, really, whats the issue with making sure cryptos are energy efficient?

I imagine the scale of the problem is much bigger.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#162

Post by [deleted] »

viklove wrote: post #104
ashtonkem wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a silly counter argument. First of all, countries secure energy because people want energy. Even in a world where we use Bitcoin, people are still going to want HVAC, cars, cell phones, and all the other things that we use/buy that consume energy and damage the environment. The idea that a country will magically stop wanting oil because it's using Bitcoin is just laughable. Second, Bitcoin uses a ton of…

This take is like reacting to the Ford Model T by saying how much energy it uses, how you can't access fuel to put in it, etc. BTC isn't the end-all crypto solution. It's the first attempt. It will continue to evolve and mature into something better like a Ford Fiat you can buy today. I don't really care about the USA, and I want to be in control of my own money . Maybe from your perspective of being able to control…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#163

Post by beambot »

Glench wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning the cryptocurrency that Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent) is creating that is explicitly designed to be low-energy usage and more distributed: https://www.chia.net/ It uses "Proof of Space" (proof that you're allocating a certain amount of storage space) instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake. Pretty interesting and they're coming out of beta into their mainnet in the next few weeks. Their on-c…

How does this differ from Filecoin?

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#164

Post by ryanmarsh »

reedf1 wrote: post #14

I am so conflicted about the environmental impact of Proof-Of-Work. In many ways it feels like an arbitrary energy spend - but I think criticizing cryptocurrency for it seems a little disingenuous when we don't apply the same logic to other areas. What's the environmental impact of better refresh rates on monitors? What's the environmental impact of large scale cctv systems? What's the environmental impact of western…

How do you feel about the externalities of central banks and oligarchs?

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#165

Post by tor11 »

Nursie wrote: post #113
viklove wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The benefit of BTC is that when your bank mismanages their assets a la 2008, resulting in a bank run, you know your assets are safe instead of having to rely on the Fed to bail out your bank. Your money is in your control, not in the control…

> Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of service…

> The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of services that Bitcoin does not.

this is true. bitcoin should be compared with everything required to run or "back" USD. which is a lot more energy use than most states on this planet

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#166

Post by lottin »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #151
ForHackernews wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other systems I know of are deliberately designed to continuously become less efficient. That's why Bitcoin/PoW is in a different category to me: It's a Red Queen's Race where all the miners are incentivized to keep wasting more and more energy (for no greater benefit) or else risk that somebody else can execute a 51% attack. Imagine if your email host needed to keep burning more and more energy, not to send any m…

All the major industries are built on people consuming and buying more, from clothes to phones. They give power ratings for electronics themselves but that is for that one unit not how they expect you to keep buying more and more. We could ban tons of industries if we wanted to and life would go on, it's difficult to say what deserves the energy spent and what not.

An industry can simultaneously increase its output and be more efficient. Look up 'efficiency'.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#167

Post by traeregan »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #89
ComodoHacker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare the energy footprint of cryptocurrency with that of our traditional fiat currencies. Including all computing power used by banks to settle their transactions.

Bitcoin uses about 1/3 the energy of all datacenters in the world put together. Datacenters use about 205 TWh/year. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-pow... Bitcoin uses about 75 TWh/year. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption And that's with everyone on the planet using normal money every day and just about no one using Bitcoin.

There's some overlap there too. Some of the Bitcoin is being mined in some of those datacenters.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#168

Post by simiones »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #157
simiones wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. If anything, limited supplies of anything, including bitcoin, are a likely to spark wars, not end them. If you truly wish to help stop wars, join a peace-loving organization, attend marches, lobby politicians. You'll find all of the real work on this are in leftist organizations, which fight against the real foundations of war, such as inequality, ideas of excepti…

> Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. Quite the contrary. You'll find that many currencies were created specifically to support an army or war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency

Oh yes, ~400 years ago many things worked differently. In particular, currencies were less tied with states than they are today, leading to many kinds of financial manipulations that no longer happen, at least outside open conflict zones.

If the US government wanted to go to war, was lacking money for this, and for some reason didn't want to seize the entire bitcoin network (which it could pretty easily do, make no mistake), it could simply issue its own cryptocoin, just like in 1652. And people will buy it, because they know the US is good for it, for the same reason that dollars don't particularly devalue even if you print another hundred billion of them today.

It's important to understand that you can't fight social problems with technical solutions. The disgusting amounts of power that big states have make it impossible to oppose them with fun projects like bitcoin. If you are truly serious about combatting US imperialism, try reading some Noam Chomsky - that is a man that has spent his life fighting against these things, but also understanding the levers of power.

Financial games are in the end games; they may seem important because it is where the rich spend their time, but if push comes to shove and the system is threatened, the game is quickly stopped and any necessary controls is asserted. Just look at what happened with the GME stock (and we haven't even seen the end of that). Make no mistake, if BTC ever becomes a real threat to any monetary system, you will see much worse than that.

This can only be combatted in the arena of politics and democratic control, by changing the rules, not playing the game.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#169

Post by yvdriess »

Nursie wrote: post #72
Glench wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning the cryptocurrency that Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent) is creating that is explicitly designed to be low-energy usage and more distributed: https://www.chia.net/ It uses "Proof of Space" (proof that you're allocating a certain amount of storage space) instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake. Pretty interesting and they're coming out of beta into their mainnet in the next few weeks. Their on-c…

If that takes off, aren't we liable to see a rocketing demand for storage, doing to the storage market what PoW does for the graphics card market? And while it may be low energy to run, creating hard drives just to prove you have space seems a less than environmentally friendly activity. It looks just like another proof of waste

I was looking into their whitepaper trying to find a counter argument to this. My conclusion is basically this:

The probability of being awarded a transaction is proportional to your reserved space 'plot' compared to the globally reserved space. Assuming it takes off, and enough 'overprovisioned' storage has been added to the pool, then it makes little sense to buy hardware just to farm storage-coins. The tiny increase in probability just wouldn't pay off.

Re: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare

#170

Post by rspeele »

dsukhin wrote: post #30

It's worth comparing Bitcoin's proof of work to other schemes of maintaining currency value to understand this in a relative sense. The Military Industrial Complex which arguably is the mechanism by which the dollar maintains its position as the global reserve currency puts out 152MtCO2/yr [1]. Without making any judgement on if this ratio is reasonable: this is 3-5x more than BTC POW but arguably also contains other…

I can't wait till the whole world is using Bitcoin and we no longer have to spend money on militaries, banks, and investment companies.

At least I assume Bitcoin obviates all of those things since I keep seeing them brought up in comparison to Bitcoin's energy usage.

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