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Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

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Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#31

Post by javert »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #13
wyager wrote: post #12

Good. I want to incentivize the progression of humanity to a kardashev type 1 civilization and beyond.

Even if that's your goal, wasting electricity on Bitcoin might not be the optimal route to getting there...

Are you really incapable of understanding that bitcoin might not be a waste?

An unfathomable transfer of wealth from normal people to the rich is happening because of the Fed. How? The rich can borrow money from the Fed at near zero rates. They use that money to buy assets. Meanwhile, the government borrows money from the Fed at near zero rates. The government spends the money, inflating the circulating money supply. That causes the value of money to go down.

The rich can repay their loans to the Fed using money that is worth less than when they borrowed it. I.e., borrow $100M in 2021 dollars and repay $100M in cheap 2050 dollars.

This is turning America into a nation of renters, rather than a nation of homeowners.

It's also turning us into a nation of debtors, via the Federal debt, which will become overburdensome soon. We will either default, or the debt will be erased through hyperinflation, making the rich even richer again (as they get the money first and buy assets at the old prices).

Bitcoin fixes this.

And only bitcoin, or something almost exactly like it, can fix this.

The impoverishment of normal people via the banking system is exactly what the Jeffersons of the world were trying to prevent the Hamiltons of the world from doing.

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#32

Post by ramesh31 »

This whole thing is a racket. Bitcoin's actual market value is entirely a function of its' utility in facilitating cybercrime payments. There is precisely zero actual use for it beyond that. And now that all the biggest names on Wall Street are getting a piece of the pie, we can be guaranteed it's not going anywhere.

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#33

Post by 1ris »

j_walter wrote: post #14
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious too. Quick Googling shows this breakdown of energy usage by sector and source: https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken... The Tweet is specifically about electricity (kWh). It appears Norway uses mostly electricity in applications where other countries might use more natural gas (heating). This is likely because Norway has plentiful clean hydroelectric electricity, so they export th…

Is there a way to differentiate clean hydro and dirty hydro? In the US the most recent "green" standards exclude hydroelectricity as renewable energy.

The only truly green energy is the energy you don't use. All electric is dirty to some degree. Hyrdo is cleaner than almost anything else, but not a clean as not using it at all. On top of that "clean" is not a very well defined metric. Carbon emissions are not the only thing to consider.

The exclusion of hydro from "green" is of tactical nature. It's mature technology and without spectacular learning curves.

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#34

Post by exporectomy »

Stop ranking things with arbitrary categories! It's meaningless! I'll bet there's some aluminium smelter that has a far higher "per capita" electricity use than his bitcoin calculation if you only count the workers there as the population. Or how about the category "cooks" or "welders" who have high personal electricity usage?

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#36

Post by lhorie »

Uehreka wrote: post #27

Right now very few people are actually using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, and yet still the carbon footprint rivals many large countries. If this became the world’s primary currency (as many crypto fans seem to want) it would increase our total carbon footprint by multiple orders of magnitude. I do not see many people in the crypto community approaching this with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Most convers…

Forgive me if this is a dumb comment, but my understanding is that bitcoin's footprint is largely due to mining, correct? But bitcoin itself is considered an asset (in the US, at least). So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right?

IIRC Polkadot staking has a 28 day minimum unstaking cool-off period, yet one can stake/unstake instantaneously in Kraken, so I'm led to believe that off-chain transactions must already happen to at least some extent.

Am I missing something?

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#37

Post by Uehreka »

lhorie wrote: post #36
Uehreka wrote: post #27

Right now very few people are actually using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, and yet still the carbon footprint rivals many large countries. If this became the world’s primary currency (as many crypto fans seem to want) it would increase our total carbon footprint by multiple orders of magnitude. I do not see many people in the crypto community approaching this with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Most convers…

Forgive me if this is a dumb comment, but my understanding is that bitcoin's footprint is largely due to mining, correct? But bitcoin itself is considered an asset (in the US, at least). So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right? IIRC Polkadot st…

But if you’re trading bitcoins “off-chain”, doesn’t that mean you’re negating the point of a blockchain-based currency?

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#38

Post by bujak300 »

eikenberry wrote: post #30
j_walter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to differentiate clean hydro and dirty hydro? In the US the most recent "green" standards exclude hydroelectricity as renewable energy.

Really? That seems dumb. Have any references for why they made this decision?

Dumb or not, hydroelectric has its own ecological problems and as the dams near the and of life, the costs associated with that will be most likely "externalized"

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#39

Post by arebop »

Uehreka wrote: post #27

Right now very few people are actually using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, and yet still the carbon footprint rivals many large countries. If this became the world’s primary currency (as many crypto fans seem to want) it would increase our total carbon footprint by multiple orders of magnitude. I do not see many people in the crypto community approaching this with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Most convers…

If the cost of electricity rose 100% now, the kwh used to mine bitcoin would drop correspondingly.

IOW, Bitcoin isn't a scheme to destroy the world by exhausting energy or destroying the planet, it's just a bunch of people who want distributed consensus and they're willing to pay for it and you can't fathom why. You don't complain about aluminum fiends or anybody else spending money and potentially exploiting carbon externalities, ask yourself why not.

If you care about the environment so much then impose pollution controls rather than singling out one particular use you don't understand.

Re: Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

#40

Post by FireBeyond »

nanidin wrote: post #17

The tweet makes an assumption that there are 10 million people holding bitcoin, and the tweet goes on to imply that this is actually an overestimate. The first google result for "how many people hold bitcoins" says that an estimated 46 million Americans own bitcoin. The huge inaccuracy shows the author's bias and kills the credibility of the rest of the thread.

That studies claims that 1 in 5 American adults hold BTC. I'm ... highly skeptical ... of that.

Then I look and see that it was a small sample sized survey of higher income individuals, and was commissioned by an "alternative investments firm" who wants to tout Bitcoin annuities and life insurance.

Since we're speaking of bias, after all...

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