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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

#211

Post by xiphias2 »

not2b wrote: post #194
endisneigh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation isn't a bad thing necessarily.

Moderate inflation is good for debtors and keeps money circulating around the economy: those with savings can invest it in a way that keeps up with inflation. Deflation causes hoarding of money and economic collapse (like the Depression of the 1930s). Central banks try to manage inflation to keep is low but nonzero.

Can you explain how that Ponzi scheme works? I read parts of the source code before I invested in Bitcoin, and it looked to me like an open, honest system with easy-to-understand, clean code (unlike what Ponzi was doing, which is basically lying about customer deposits).

I had doubts about elliptic curve digital signatures being safe enough to hold my money (I’m still thinking of using Lamport signatures in a multisig, as I trust them more), but I don’t see other serious problem with the system.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#212

Post by me_me_mu_mu »

bparsons wrote: post #106
mwattsun wrote: post #25

The counter argument is that Bitcoin is a battery [1] so that if you live in a place like Iceland with plentiful energy, so much that even exporting it as aluminum leaves extra, then you can turn it into Bitcoin and export it that way. But most Bitcoin mining is not that. I feel like Joni Mitchell in the Big Yellow Taxi: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" [2] Why are we allowing this to happen? (Well, at…

How do I power my house with a JPEG of an ape?

Convince a bunch of renters that it has value and when they’re broke their wealth has been transferred to you to power your house.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#213

Post by BenjiWiebe »

lowkeyokay wrote: post #170

I’ve been told mining for Bitcoin is almost done, and therefore the energy needed for Bitcoin will drop. Is that true?

If Bitcoin mining ends, then it's because Bitcoin ended too.

The block reward is lessening, yes. But miners also get the fees from the transactions in the block they mined, which incentivizes them to keep mining (mining is also what secures the whole thing).

I'd speculate that energy usage will go down somewhat in the future, but not significantly.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#214

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

spenrose wrote: post #86

The world used about (12,000 Mtoe = ) 140,000 TWh [1], making this 0.1% of world consumption. OP claims 64 MtCO2e of associated GHG emissions, which is also about 0.1%. I'd call these figures under "troubling but not yet material to the climate." [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2020...

> making this 0.1% of world consumption

I believe that your info makes it sound even worse than the headline if you take into account how few people use cryptocurrencies vs. the amount of people worldwide using electricity directly or indirectly.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#215

Post by tor11 »

oneoff786 wrote: post #153
frutiger wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and unwilling to sacrifice a modicum for others I agree with your sentiment but I have to disagree with that phrase. The vast majority* of people of people pay quite a lot of money in taxes, which ostensibly** only exist to help others. (*) I know the billionaires have their wealth as unrealized gains; I chose my words carefully (**) I know we all disagree on how that revenue should be spent, but the purpose of tax…

People pay taxes to avoid going to jail. Your tax return has an option to pay more for no reason. Guess how many people choose that option.

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Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#216

Post by Cycl0ps »

gimme_treefiddy wrote: post #180

Slightly tangential question: Couldn't Bitcoin be implemented on something other Blockchain, since Blockchain is so computationally intensive. Like why not use a SQL database instead. It's definitely not technically infeasible, and you can reliably achieve all objectives of Bitcoin by doing so. The idea of independent financial system is great, but the inefficiency of it's usage is something I am very doubtful about.

The blockchain model is designed to be immutable, a block of transactions are locked in place by the blocks before and after it. A traditional database structure wouldn't have that form of baked-in security, though I'm sure there are other models that could work.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#217

Post by tor11 »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#218

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

hocuspocus wrote: post #140
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of countries where people need anything but centralised money. Because they have every reason not to trust the ones who would run the central authority. It's hard for some first-world country citizens to imagine that.

Political problems don't have technological solutions. Telling these people to use Bitcoin is just giving their government another tool to send them to jail.

Any arguments against bitcoin are shattered by one simple fact: currently bitcoin is the least risky and simultaneously the easiest way for russian citizens to fund anti-Putin opposition. Any first world do-gooder who wants to ban it because 'it is bad for environment' should first ban himself from existence because humans are bad for environment.
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