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Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

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Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#51

Post by dehrmann »

alwillis wrote: post #38
NicoJuicy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The demand is there. Let's talk when covid is over. It wouldn't be the first time it drops 80%

1. COVID-19 isn’t going to be “over” in any conventional sense any time soon. There are too many cases and too many variants. 2. With billions of institutional money and billions more waiting until ETFs in the US are approved, Bitcoin has something it didn’t have back in the day: a floor. The days of 80% drops are over.

> The days of 80% drops are over.

I suppose the NASDAQ only lost 75% from Feb 2000 to Sept 2002. Granted, it got back to its 2000 peak 15 years later. My point is that even normal companies traded publicly, held by institutional investors, with government oversight, see large drops after an asset bubble. I see no reason why bitcoin ETFs establish a floor price.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#52

Post by AlotOfReading »

wqsz7xn wrote: post #11

I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?

We can napkin math the best case comparison for Bitcoin. According to the BLS [1], the entire financial industry employs approximately 2.6% of the US population. Bitcoin's energy consumption is about 129TWh, or ~3% of total US energy consumption. In reality, the population proportional slice of national energy consumption probably vastly overweights the finance industry's direct energy usage and the US is particularly inefficient compared to most countries in per-capita energy consumption. Not to mention, that's the entire financial system. Bitcoin only uses that to run the network, which is a miniscule portion of what the other side is handling.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag50.htm

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#53

Post by rawtxapp »

ralfd wrote: post #50
laurent92 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, 1 BTC is about 30 iPhones in money. It’s as interesting as saying a holiday consumes more than a bus trip: only CO2 / dollar is interesting. Or equivalent-CO2 “per service provided”. Because, with all the remaining dollars, you’re not going to destroy them, you’re going to consume other services/products, and if they are heavier in CO2 emissions per dollars in average, we’re not in a better position.

An iPhone is a physical thing. All kinds of different metals were mined/recycled and manufactured and shipped around the world. A bitcoin transaction is virtual. Some bits have to be flipped. That it is such an energy intensive and environmentally bad clusterfuck is a tragedy.

A bit has to be flipped in a system where no one trusts (or has to trust) each other, that's why it uses energy.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#54

Post by scientismer »

dehrmann wrote: post #43
scientismer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Covid drive up the price of Bitcoin? Sure, the pandemic is being used for attempted government power grasps, but those won't go away with Covid.

Halfway the same thing that's driving the prices of stocks and pokemon cards: people with extra cash from stimulus checks, spare time, and fomo. "Crypto being the future of finance" is a story people tell themselves to justify the price of bitcoin, and while some flavor of blockchain tech could someday back parts of finance, it won't be bitcoin. Buying bitcoin is a bet that more people will buy bitcoin.

Ok I forgot about the money printing, which may or may not stop after Covid. But I think people buy BTC as an alternativ to gold, not because of some banking narrative. The question is still what would be actually good investments. Maybe everything will crash when the money printing stops, but then some things will crash harder than others. Gold will probably remain gold.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#55

Post by incrudible »

barbegal wrote: post #28

This articles makes absolutely no sense. It uses market capitalisation of Apple and bitcoin to compare the CO2 emissions of an iPhone and a bitcoin transaction which is clearly nonsense. You could calculate the rough CO2 emissions of a 1 BTC transaction by dividing annual estimated CO2 emissions by bitcoin miners (35 million tonnes) by the number of annual transactions (100 million) which equates to about 350kg of CO…

> You could calculate the rough CO2 emissions of a 1 BTC transaction by dividing annual estimated CO2 emissions by bitcoin miners (35 million tonnes) by the number of annual transactions (100 million) which equates to about 350kg of CO2.

Even that would be misleading, because the number of transactions is a constant that has little bearing on the amount of work performed. Most of the revenue still comes from block reward, which disappears over time. Transactions fees would not support current levels of work.

If anything the cost of creating a Bitcoin has a carbon footprint, but most Bitcoins haven't been created at current prices and difficulty levels.

Given that creation of a Bitcoin is historically unique event that is certain to cease, it's not really worth losing sleep over in terms of CO2 emissions.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#56

Post by incrudible »

FFRefresh wrote: post #34

I was a bit disappointed in the article given the headline. The analytical methodology used here is a bit odd to me, and there was no explanation as to why this methodology was used. I still don’t know how much incremental CO2 is emitted from buying a Bitcoin or an iPhone after reading it. All I see is a weird CO2 divided by market cap calculation... Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions fr…

> Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions from either of these?

Virtually none. Bitcoins get mined with or without transactions, as long as the expected block reward exceeds operating costs, work will be performed. The amount of transactions is fixed (or rather capped), transaction fees are a fraction of block rewards. By performing a transaction, you are bidding up the price for a transaction. Therefore, in aggregate, you are helping keep those miners in the game that are just about to become unprofitable.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#57

Post by incrudible »

sp332 wrote: post #35
wqsz7xn wrote: post #11

I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?

It's not that power intensive to do a BTC transaction (although the requirement for every full node to duplicate the work kinda limits its relative efficiency). What drives up the power usage is the way miners compete for new bitcoins. 25 new bitcoins are minted every ~10 minutes, and 1 BTC is worth 56,378.78 USD right now, so the miners can collectively spend up $1.4 million (in electricity, hardware depreciation, e…

> 25 new bitcoins are minted every ~10 minutes

Current block reward is 6.25 and it will be half that by 2025.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#58

Post by incrudible »

alwillis wrote: post #38
NicoJuicy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The demand is there. Let's talk when covid is over. It wouldn't be the first time it drops 80%

1. COVID-19 isn’t going to be “over” in any conventional sense any time soon. There are too many cases and too many variants. 2. With billions of institutional money and billions more waiting until ETFs in the US are approved, Bitcoin has something it didn’t have back in the day: a floor. The days of 80% drops are over.

> The days of 80% drops are over.

The days of 80% "over night" drops may be over, but a bear market to wipe 80% off the market cap is not out of the question.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#59

Post by dehrmann »

scientismer wrote: post #54
dehrmann wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Halfway the same thing that's driving the prices of stocks and pokemon cards: people with extra cash from stimulus checks, spare time, and fomo. "Crypto being the future of finance" is a story people tell themselves to justify the price of bitcoin, and while some flavor of blockchain tech could someday back parts of finance, it won't be bitcoin. Buying bitcoin is a bet that more people will buy bitcoin.

Ok I forgot about the money printing, which may or may not stop after Covid. But I think people buy BTC as an alternativ to gold, not because of some banking narrative. The question is still what would be actually good investments. Maybe everything will crash when the money printing stops, but then some things will crash harder than others. Gold will probably remain gold.

> people buy BTC as an alternative to gold

That's a reasonable premise, but the price of gold is flat YoY. Gold actually peaked in Aug. 2020. You'd think that at least some of the bitcoin interest would have gone to gold, but it hasn't. Maybe people are selling gold to buy bitcoin, but again, they don't act similarly. Bitcoin is a speculative asset that has so far gone to the moon. Gold has maintained its value for centuries. You buy them for different reasons.

> The question is still what would be actually good investments

Not bitcoin. It's a speculative asset. It might still 10x, but it has no fundamentals; it's entirely a bet on what other people will do with bitcoin. You could say buying AAPL is the same, but it makes $90B per year. If bitcoin goes to zero, you're out of luck. If AAPL goes to 0 for no apparent reason, you just found an asset that makes you $90B per year.

Re: Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone

#60

Post by sp332 »

incrudible wrote: post #57
sp332 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that power intensive to do a BTC transaction (although the requirement for every full node to duplicate the work kinda limits its relative efficiency). What drives up the power usage is the way miners compete for new bitcoins. 25 new bitcoins are minted every ~10 minutes, and 1 BTC is worth 56,378.78 USD right now, so the miners can collectively spend up $1.4 million (in electricity, hardware depreciation, e…

> 25 new bitcoins are minted every ~10 minutes Current block reward is 6.25 and it will be half that by 2025.

Oh, huh... I thought I might have missed one halving, but not two!
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