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Comment by giantandroids | Hacker News Reader

There are often arguments (with merit) over Bitcoins wasteful use of energy, but I expect a lot of it is from hindight of 'why the hell did I not buy some'.

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Just virtue signaling. If bitcoin replaces gold it would be a net win for the environment. And btc uses mostly renewables and excess energy. Also there are many other random applications that use more energy than btc like HFT, gaming, video rendering, but we dont persecute individual liberty, expression, or advancement. A society moving forward simply takes more energy. The solution is to tackle the entire energy space, not persecute energy users which is a band-aid "solution" and counter to a progressive society.

... All being equal, it probably isn't good to build a system of distributed ledger whose entire trustworthiness and participation depends upon "proof of energy usage".

Pushing one transaction through Bitcoin effectively uses about half the electricity that a typical US household uses in a month.

Going to need you to walk me through that calculation you came up with.

Bitcoin network uses about 120 TWh of electricity per year. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

It accomplishes about 7 TPS.

120 terawatts * hours / 1 year * 1 second / 7 in kilowatt hours = 543 kilowatts * hours.

Average US household electricity usage is about 877 kWh per month https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3

Of course, increasing Bitcoin prices will likely increase the amount of resources dedicated to mining, too...

I was skeptical too, but approached it from this end:

At the moment, one Bitcoin transaction costs me about $10 in network fees. The party pushing it through gets, say, another $90 or so in reward for mining it (6.25 BTC reward per block ÷ 3500 transactions per block × $50000 per BTC).

It's factually a horrific waste of energy. People pointing that out are not looking back in "hindsight", but are actually concerned with the damages it is doing to our planet.

So is Netflix or a ton of other ‘useless’ activities.

Doing one transaction on Bitcoin effectively consumes about half the electricity a typical house uses in a month.

And the trend is only going up, sharply. What will people say when ONE TRANSACTION uses the electricity that a typical house uses in a year?

Meanwhile Visa is doing a hundred thousand per second with capacity for more.

If its so bad then why does Elon Musk himself believe in BTC? - mr green man. Its obviously hyperbole and one dimensional thinking.

Have you delegated all thinking on all topics to Elon Musk?

This seems like a blatant appeal to authority.

If it's not bad, provide reasons it's not bad. Throwing out Elon Musk's name does not provide any actual argument for your position.

I already listed those reasons in my comment also in this thread. Maybe dont jump to conclusions. Just pointing out different people have different opinions but the frantic people seem to be shortsighted in my opinion and those of brightest on such issues. I think Jack Dorsey knows how it works as well but is not startled. Perhaps people yelling at the sky are missing a thing or 2.

If elon musk gave 2 shits about the environment he would promote public transit, not cars

he is a business man who only cares about money, and he uses effective marketing to make people like you buy in

Very true. Just about every North American city would do a LOT more upgrading their transit systems a la Japan or China. Probably for a lower amount than Tesla’s market cap too.

I am, in fact, very disappointed in Elon Musk.

Why? Because an application thats important to people uses mostly renewable energy?

The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more, even if that means giving up things some people consider important. I thought that was the purpose of Tesla. Sure, maybe waiting for an electric car to charge isn't as convenient as filling up at a gas station, but it's worth doing for the planet.

Personally, I have purposefully chosen to live in a tiny apartment, in one of the few parts of the US where I'm not required to own a car at all. My iPhone 6S is six years old and I have no plans to replace it, and just yesterday I wrote an email to my building imploring them to turn down our heat, because opening windows in the middle of winter to stay cool is a terrible waste of energy.

I'm not perfect. I'm not a vegetarian, I don't buy carbon offsets, and I make use of Amazon's inefficient two-day shipping. And I'm not asking anyone else to go sell their cars. But would giving up Bitcoin really decrease your quality of life so much?

"The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more"

That is literally never going to happen through the nature of technological and human advancement. The solution is where you source your energy from, not reverting to the stone age or jogging in place as a society.

Being forced to save in a currency the central banks treat as toilette paper would indeed decrease my life quality specifically through the purchasing power decrease of my lifetime labor.

One can think both that it's a shame they aren't rich because of Bitcoin and that it's a horrific waste of energy, I don't think one really takes away from the other.

The energy usage (and its side effects to the environment) seems like a problematic and valid aspect, and it seems that is the price to pay to have truly permissionless, decentralized system (proof of work).

But I imagine there is also a lot of opportunity for innovation in that realm to move to clean solutions for instance.

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