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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

BTC works perfectly fine without carbon output, its depends on energy creation though (just like any other form of money). The Paris agreement was a big step moving humanity towards sustainable energy. US made progress in voting for a politician who promised to join the Paris agreement again. We'll see whether it will really happen.

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> The Paris agreement was a big step moving humanity towards sustainable energy

How so? That is a non binding resolution where the world's greatest polluters are still allowed to increase their carbon footprint. Countries receive all sorts of praise for signing it and their so called commitment to "battle climate change", even though it's still business as usually, but at least they signed it I guess.

And since a lot of mining is done in countries where the majority of their energy comes from fossil energy sources it has a footprint.

The Paris agreement was not enforceable, and the US is one of the countries that has actually done most to reduce carbon output.

But hey, at least the rest of world leaders are virtue signaling about their greenness, that’ll help the planet!

US leadership was actively pushing for rolling back energy standards (that California was fighting for quite strongly).

US has achieved a lot (especially Tesla) _despite_ the leadership working against it for a long time.

True. Unfortunately many still think a centrally planned system of picking winners and losers is superior to the free market, but luckily the past 4 years was enough to send capable entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk into the stratosphere (and beyond).

I don’t know, we all owe Germany quite a bit for their solar subsidies.

> BTC works perfectly fine without carbon output

I’m not sure I follow this (admittedly I don’t know much about how BTC actually works). Doesn’t mining also serve the purpose of verifying transactions?

I think GP is saying that the energy can come from non-carbon-emitting sources, which is technically true but besides the point. Bitcoin mining currently incentivizes tremendous carbon emissions, higher per dollar than other forms of money.

Except that this isn’t true. Bitcoin currently uses 80-90% renewable sources or opportunistic power capture, which is effectively zero-carbon. The incentives of bitcoin mining drive this, since carbon-neutral energy sources have lower marginal costs.

Here’s a recent study from Cambridge that puts it at 39%. The studies I’ve seen with higher numbers always seem to be funded by firms involved in crypto trading.

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternati...

39% renewable, which is actually higher than I expected. I said renewable and opportunistic power capture. The latter is a large proportion of mining because it is effectively free income. There are a lot of places in the world where excess power is generated and wasted because there aren’t uses on site. Bitcoin mining is a relatively cheap way to offset cost of operations in these areas.

Where does the 80-90% number come from, though? Is that just you speculating or has someone come up with that estimate?

No, node software verifies transactions. Miners are supposed to also verify transactions because they should also run a validating node. There have been blocks in the past mined by miners who did not verify the transactions before putting them in the blocks (doing this would give you competitive edge) only to find out that the rest of the network rejected their blocks.

Yes- the OP means to say the issue isn't necessarily the tech but how the energy powering the tech is generated. For example a large amount of miners in China run on the cheapest local electricity source which happens to be hydroelectric.

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