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Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

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Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#81

Post by Me1000 »

paulgb wrote: post #31
Me1000 wrote: post #26

My problem with these takes is that they're missing the forest through the trees. I don't believe you'll ever be able to solve climate change by shaming people based on their usage of electricity. The problem is not HOW people use electricity, it's how the electricity itself is generated. The electricity might be used to draw triangles on my screen, hash some value, keep me warm in my apartment, or make my car move;…

This would be a reasonable stance if Bitcoin were just another activity, but it’s unique in its energy profile. What other technology is designed so that energy efficiency improvements are absorbed and nullified (through the difficulty adjustment mechanism)?

This is both a good and a fair critique of bitcoin. But I don't understand the endgame. Should the use of bitcoin be banned or just shamed?

Let's assume for a moment that I live "off the grid" and run my full BTC node using my own solar power. Is that something that should be banned? Should it be shamed?

I don't know where to draw the line.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#82

Post by frongpik »

hannob wrote: post #61
frongpik wrote: post #43

Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.

Maybe it's, you know, people caring about a livable planet. The "Big survival of humanity" lobby.

It's the same people who allow coca cola to poison the planet with plastic so it could make money by poisoning people with sugar. It's the same people who let adtech eat energy budgets of large countries. Same people that encourage the planned goods depreciation economy so we have city sized dump sites. They speak about bitcoin only to remove the spotlight from the real polluters who make some respectable people very rich.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#83

Post by ur-whale »

hannob wrote: post #61
frongpik wrote: post #43

Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.

Maybe it's, you know, people caring about a livable planet. The "Big survival of humanity" lobby.

You're right to focus on the really important issues, it is clearly Bitcoin that's going to ruin it for us all and it should be an absolute priority on every self-righteous internet user's agenda.

Oh, btw, did you heat your house today?

Or did you happen to drive a car?

Or did you fly in a plane prior to COVID?

How much fossil fuel was burned to move your 80-ish kg from point A to point B in the air?

Energy consumption is on an exponential growth curve. Has been, will be for the foreseeable future.

The problem is how the energy is produced, not the fact that we use energy.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#84

Post by paulgb »

ballenf wrote: post #60
paulgb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a reasonable stance if Bitcoin were just another activity, but it’s unique in its energy profile. What other technology is designed so that energy efficiency improvements are absorbed and nullified (through the difficulty adjustment mechanism)?

Bitcoin is far from unique in this. When gas prices fall people have been shown to drive more. And buy less efficient cars and drive them less efficiently (faster, more aggressively). When water prices are lower people water their lawns more and take more baths. When shipping ePackets from China is cheap, people buy more stuff from there. I just don’t see how Bitcoin responding to supply and demand is different from…

> Bitcoin is far from unique in this. When gas prices fall people have been shown to drive more.

This is human behavior responding to incentives. Yes, more energy is burned, but more people get places.

What I’m talking about is like if a car responded to the price of gas decreasing by 50% by revving in neutral until the total cost per mile was the same.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#85

Post by BitwiseFool »

frongpik wrote: post #43

Someone's really serious about pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative. Too many articles like that recently. Nevertheless, upvoting because HN should see this.

Probably the same group of journalists always trying to associate Tesla with fires.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#86

Post by ur-whale »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #8

Video gaming has more environmental impact than bitcoin. So do porn sites. Bitcoin just seems like an easy target because people are more directly profiting off of it.

>Bitcoin just seems like an easy target because people are more directly profiting off of it

There's a name for that particular ailment: it's called acute nocoiner syndrom.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#87

Post by insert_coin »

stouset wrote: post #28
bufferoverflow wrote: post #22

Most bitcoin mining is done with hydro or solar electricity, because it's either very cheap or free. Both are renewable. And even if it wasn't, who are we too tell people how to spend their energy? What we really need is a proper carbon tax.

Even if we accept this argument at face value, every Watt-hour of hydro or solar that goes to mining Bitcoin could have been used to reduce demand for power generated from fossil fuels. Power generation isn't perfectly fungible, but it's enough so that this argument falls completely on its face. I wish people would stop making it. Bitcoin is an environmental disaster.

You are wrong. A lot of solar is being built because of bitcoin, they are not taking energy away from other enterprises but adding renewables to the pool. The good thing is all are benefiting, now solar is becoming economically feasible as an alternative to oil for example, that wouldn't have happened so soon without the demand from bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#88

Post by gruez »

praxulus wrote: post #64
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No design needed. If the price of gold doubles, twice as much resources can be invested to dig up a ton of gold.

That applies to bitcoin too, but gold doesn't also become twice as hard to dig up just because mining equipment became twice as efficient.

>gold doesn't also become twice as hard to dig up just because mining equipment became twice as efficient.

it does, kind of. as we use up the easy to find deposits, the remaining deposits are harder to mine/refine, so essentially it does get harder.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#89

Post by defen »

ur-whale wrote: post #72
AlexandrB wrote: post #44

I'm a Bitcoin skeptic, but mentioning "fundamental value" when talking about currency seems incongruous. The "fundamental value" of bitcoin is whatever people think it's worth. Just like USD.

The "fundamental value" of anything is whatever people think it's worth. I have a very hard time understanding why people can't wrap their heads around this very basic concept. It's just a restatement of the law of supply and demand.

Currency is a special case of this because most other things have some sort of inherent-use value independent of what someone will pay you for it. In other words, for most things, even if the most someone will pay you for it is $0, it may still be useful to you for some reason and therefore not worth giving it away for free.

Re: Bitcoin's fundamental value is negative given its environmental impact

#90

Post by suikadayo »

wmf wrote: post #9
pjfin123 wrote: post #2

I wonder if Bitcoin could ever migrate to Ethereum technology/proof of stake? It seems like a good idea but the Bitcoin community seems very resistant to change (see block size debate).

Bitcoin will never change. In the future we'll probably see large amounts of BTC wrapped on Ethereum/Avalanche for DeFi trading.

We’re already seeing more wrapped BTC on Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning, so that’s very telling.
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