Bitcoin causing CO2 emissions comparable to Hamburg | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin causing CO2 emissions comparable to Hamburg

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29 pointsconse_lad22 comments

Before anyone makes excuses along the lines of "it's renewable from remote dams", that energy could could have always been used for something more productive. If it weren't for Bitcoin, they would be incentivized to build a datacenter there, build a smelting plant there, or even just build the transmission lines to get it to the grid.

Using renewable energy for Bitcoin takes that renewable energy out of the supply. How much coal is being burned in China because electricity pours into Bitcoin miners instead of onto a grid?

Consider this: in Sichuan and Yunnan, the two most hydro-rich provinces of China, despite the high concentration of miners over there due to cheap electricity, there is such an surplus of electricity that they abandon over a hundred TWh of hydropower every year. This abandoned water is literally run through the dam without spinning the turbines. This is more than the worldwide consumption of electricity of Bitcoin.

This is a result of mostly inadequate grid infrastructure that will take decades to solve.

No not really, most of the hydro excess electricity would have gone to waste. They don’t just turn the rivers off.

This is a sort of lump fallacy. There's only so much energy, thus if you use some of it for something, there's that much less of it for everything else.

Commonly the fallacy occurs when talking about jobs. Someone's taken this job, so there's one less job available.

But like jobs, energy production is a market. Producers will build more plants if they're able to sell their current capacity. The capacity is not fixed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

I'll just leave this other side of the story: https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mini...

Energy is energy. If that energy wasn’t wasted mining bitcoin, it could power any of the other consumers of electricity.

Mining farms are by nature located in areas with cheap electricity, ie. where supply exceeds demand. So it isn't taking away energy from other consumers. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194135

Well, then, thanks to bitcoin we're getting rid of the banking system, which means getting rid of many manual jobs such as clerks and the like. Energy well spent towards more automation!

It's a tradeoff, like every technology. Streaming video infrastructure and consumption probably creates more CO2 than all crypto put together.

People who don't like the underlying premise of Bitcoin (a currency outside of government control) will tend to highlight the negatives, while people who like the premise of Bitcoin will support the positives. Narratives such as the one presented in this article are an attempt to sway the undecided/uninterested to the "anti-Bitcoin" side. Indeed, the conclusion of the article suggests "regulating" cryptocurrency as a method of controlling emissions, exposing this as another attempt to block the spread of cryptocurrency.

Here is the link to the original study: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7

I was part of the peer-review process on this study. High quality research, although they made a last minute edit that IMHO lead them to overestimate CO2 emissions by 50% (15 vs 22 MtCO2/yr): https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/113943906857019392...

What makes me so sad is that bitcoin is an algorithmic solution to a well-defined problem. I can imagine some lucky genius might one day solve the exact same problem better. But the damage is done.

The whole planet is suffering for an algorithm that is not being improved quickly enough.

I want to show the suffering here. Imagine all the arithmetic that was done in Roman numerals, because it was the state of the art. I can really feel the burden of this algorithn. Maybe there is something better.

Compare it to the amount of CO2 that the banking sector is emitting now. All those pointless buildings, branches, offices, computers, employees going to work everyday. To me, bitcoin feels much more efficient.

Sure btc is not perfect, and humanity might come up with something better soon. Until then, let's switch to the better technology that exists today.

Good point. I'm curious how they compare in terms of size.

The amount of transactions performed by bitcoin is laughably low. It performs around 10 transactions per second. This is not even enough to handle the transactions of a small city, yet it consumes as much electricity as an ENTIRE large city. If the banking industry was anywhere close to this inefficient it would be responsible for almost all CO2 emissions worldwide.

Look into layer2 technologies (e.g. Lightning network), scalability is a solved problem.

If you really want to see the amount of suffering that is happening from the banking sector, look at the high house prices that 0% interest rates allow for the selected few insiders (mainly bankers and their friends) who can borrow money for free.

I personally know many people who have to leave far from their workplace in a tiny room because they can't buy an apartment close to their workplace, and they don't even have the means to spare for an apartment.

In case you were wondering what the carbon footprints of the top cities were: http://citycarbonfootprints.info/

    Urban Cluster Footprint(Mt CO2)
    Seoul 276.1 ±51.8
    Guangzhou 272 ±46.2
    New York 233.5 ±75.4
    Hong Kong SAR 208.5 ±37.8
    Los Angeles 196.4 ±43.7
    Shanghai 181.0 ±44.6
    Country of Singapore 161.1 ±34.1
    Chicago 152.9 ±37.2
    Tokyo / Yokohama 132.8 ±21.4
    Riyadh 118.8 ±26.4
    Dubai 110.8 ±31.0
    Wuxi 110.4 ±25.8
    Johannesburg 105.2 ±19.9
    Tehran 104.4 ±28.2
    Moscow 99.5 ±22.5
    London 98.9 ±21.8
    Benha 87.2 ±15.6
    Beijing 83.7 ±19.1
    Jakarta 83.7 ±15.6
    Al - Ahmadi 80.6 ±19.3
    Miami 80.3 ±21.9
    Samut Prakan 80.0 ±17.9
    Paris 78.0 ±25.5
    Dallas 76.9 ±16.0
    Tianjin 71.4 ±20.4
    Istanbul 70.9 ±16.0
    Detroit 70.6 ±15.4
    Philadelphia 70.2 ±19.5
    San Jose 70.0 ±19.7

Hamburg is ranked #129 at 18Mt. By these numbers, Bitcoin's 22Mt is closer to Kansas City at #106. Kansas City and larger cities sum up to 5001.3 MT.

I am tired of people of coming up with these nonsense comparison. Bitcoin co2 emissions is the same as Hamburg. It uses more electricity than Las vegas etc. Have they accounted for the amount co2 the food that 1.8 million people in hamburg consume.

I think the underlying assumption in those comparisons is that Bitcoin is essentially useless.

So while Hamburg produces CO2 because of all the people and economic activity going there, Bitcoin produces the same amount for no actual benefits. In that case the comparison does illustrate the amount of waste.

Now, on the other hand if you're of the opinion that Bitcoin is something of value that makes a positive difference and produces something useful then the comparison does look random and nonsensical.

To secure an international currency this is exceptionally efficient. Compare it to the economic and energy costs of protecting a fiat currency with an army or allying with a country that has an army.

How would the need of an army disappear for a country that would use bitcoin as its national currency? I really see no relation between the two. The currency that is in use has no effects on an invading force.

This xkcd seems relevant as well: https://xkcd.com/538/

>How would the need of an army disappear for a country that would use bitcoin as its national currency?

Bitcoin is not a national currency. It is an international currency. It has not tied to any one country so your question doesn't have meaning.

But, lets humor it anyway. Bitcoin would continue to operate just fine if a country that was using it as their national currency (an absurd premise) was invaded. There are plenty of other countries. This would not be true of a fiat currency. The fiat currency would lose it's value and be controlled.

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