I don't think it matters who you ask to investigate it, everyone except bitcoin users themselves will realise that it's an absurd waste of electricity, for very little added value.
BTW, afaik bitcoin has 5million users and Argentina's population is 44 million. Also, this energy consumption by 44million people includes all the activities you can think of to add to this argument.
Or then we let people use their own resources the way they see fit.
scale in general does not excuse, but consumption per capita should.
A Ps4 consume around 100 watt/hour
If you keep it on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, is 876 KW/year.
Which is not very much.
At 120Tw/year with 5 million users BC consumption per capita is an astonishing 24,000kw/year (or 24Mw)
Every bitcoin user consumes 27 times the energy consumed by a (quite powerful) gaming console turned on non stop (which is never the case)
That's why there have been campaigns around the World to replace incandescent bulbs with the energy efficient ones.
Compared to the traditional ones the new light bulbs can save up to the 80% of the energy, compared to a bitcoiner, a non bitcoiner can save ~97% of the energy by simply playing videogames.
You need to take in the manufacturing costs, costs to develop software, costs to run servers too, otherwise you're only measuring marginal energy consumption for a new user.
Marginal energy consumption for a new Bitcoin user is probably small too.
It's not the total amount of energy used to create the BC network, the software, the HW and everything else.
> The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) provides a real-time estimate of the total electricity load and consumption of the Bitcoin network. The model is based on a bottom-up approach initially developed by Marc Bevand in 2017 that takes different types of available mining hardware as the starting point.
> The first number refers to the total electrical power consumed by the Bitcoin network and is expressed in gigawatts (GW). This figure is updated every 30 seconds and corresponds to the rate at which Bitcoin uses electricity. The second number refers to the total yearly electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network and is expressed in terawatt-hours (TWh). We annualise Bitcoin’s electricity consumption assuming continuous power usage at the aforementioned rate over the period of one year. We apply a 7-day moving average to the resulting data point in order to make the output value less dependent of short-term hashrate movements, and thus more suitable for comparisons with alternative uses of electricity.
I disagree the comparison is useful.
BC on the other hand are very expensive in terms of energy consumed, by design
BTC don't make any sense energy wise and in the end don't make any sense to invest in something designed to burn energy in the long run, especially now that we are trying to fix the mistakes of the past
Market caps in speculative, unregulated markets aren't indicators of economic relevance. Gaming facilitates billions in production on a yearly basis. Crypto related activity produces very little in comparison. And no, someone buying billions worth of Bitcoin doesn't count (just like people buying GameStop stock doesn't reflect the economic impact of the gaming industry).
Let's watch for 5-10 years. If you're right about bitcoin, I bet its price will be much lower and you can gloat. If you're wrong, I bet its price will be much higher (because I agree with the basic assessment that gaming "feels" much bigger today). Luckily, we can both place our bets based on our best assessments of the future.
How confident are you that you can present a substantive case against bitcoin that matches the diligence that Ross Stevens has done for years? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lczPTYf_tvA
The comment above, in a nutshell, is what's enveloping the current crypto environment. Maybe one day we'll get past it (or maybe this is just it).
Either he doesn't know what volatility means or he is trying to scam people.
You could make the same argument about any nascent technology that hasn't succeeded or failed yet.
We already do apply such laws. Car manufacturers are required to sell a certain number of EVs. Emissions must meet standards. Appliances have energy ratings. etc. etc.
If Bitcoin were regulated so that those using the excess output of hydroelectric or other fixed output systems could do so for free, but everyone else was taxed appropriately, then that would actually probably do very little because that is largely the situation already: far from being an anonymous decentralized anarcho capitalist future, it is just large organized crime syndicates in China and Russia generating the transactions. And for all these reasons, the US should make it illegal.
And that still doesn't really answer whose job it is to ban all these things, and what mechanism would be used to enforce it.
Enforcing could be done via banning any payment with bitcoin.
If they produce a net negative for the majority and only benefit a small number of people, then yes.
We don't go around driving tanks, do we?
I love tanks, but there's a reason why we can't drive them to go to the mall.
There is a difference between majority not liking and only like 0.2% of the world consuming more energy than _a whole country_. There are 5million bitcoin users, they are consuming more electricity than 44 million people's daily lives. Think about the scale of imbalance here.
For example MGM claims their properties in Nevada consume 171 MW. That's more than 65 of the countries from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
That's an awfully subjective claim and one I find to be contentious. I think even today Bitcoin's impact on global politics has already provided massively more value to global society than all of the resources it has spent on electricity.