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Comment by bluesign | Hacker News Reader

- I think 80 tons of CO2 for BTC is wrong. It should be around 15-20 tons (75% of BTC is mined with renewables, I think approx 20-25% is coal)

- for US, CO2 per $ GDP should be around 0.3 kg

- so if BTC is 50000$ value, it is almost same CO2 then something else US produce, (it would be 50000* 0.3 = 15 tons)

- if we assume those numbers correct, lets assume they are both 15 tons, it means 50% of the things US produce is less carbon friendly for environment than bitcoin.

- also BTC will be reused ( it is on article though )

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Renewables don't exist in a vacuum: "Green" miners buying up capacity drives up the price, driving others into non-renewables as a consequence (if only temporarily).

Until we are at 100% renewables, supporting a more energy-consuming product/solution/process while alternatives readily exist should not be called "green", in my opinion.

Bitcoin mining operations are generally located where electricity is cheapest. Electricity is cheapest where there is a surplus of hydro power (or other power with very low marginal cost). Where there is a surplus, use of that surplus does not drive other customers to other power sources.

By that logic, Bitcoin disincentivizes any investment in better grids and more efficient energy storage.

Also, any such mining rig could have reasonably been a data center or scientific supercomputer instead.

That's not "logic", that's reality. What you said is pure speculation.

Indeed, speculation offering a counterpoint to the implicit assumption that renewable energy used by Bitcoin miners would not have any capability of impacting the energy market when used more efficiently.

I think your second point here often gets missed/understated. That energy and those computers could have been helping forecast severe weather events or working to fold proteins or any other number of useful tasks that don't involve tracking a ledger of other people's wealth.

The energy perhaps. The "computers" aren't. They're just ASICs that can calculate hashes at a phenomenal rate, they're not general purpose.

And the argument about energy isn't straightforward either. Most bitcoin mining sites are set up where there is an excess of energy - when I had miners a while ago, I used a place in Newfoundland, Canada to host them, because of the local hydro dam. The water falls through the sluices or goes via the generators, it's just based on demand.

>The energy perhaps. The "computers" aren't. They're just ASICs that can calculate hashes at a phenomenal rate, they're not general purpose.

The chips are made with recent-ish nodes, so the silicon/fab capacity could theoretically be used to make CPUs.

edit: looks like at least one bitcoin ASIC maker is using TSMC 7nm, the same process used to make AMD CPUs.

[1] https://blog.bitmain.com/en/bitmain-announces-next-generatio...

>could have reasonably been a data center or scientific supercomputer instead.

Which would have been used for what? Supercomputer centers are having difficulty selling their cpu cycles. A data center for what? Figuring out how to better serve ads?

Before you say protein folding, I was in on meetings where s major pharma company was considering decommissioning their computational data center in the bay area because it was underused and the real estate was worth too much to leave on the table

Doesn't that take away from useful aluminum production?

> Renewables don't exist in a vacuum

Yes they do, like all energy sources there's a physical limit on how far you can transmit it, all power generators live in a regional bubble.

There's a reason all that excess hydro energy in Sichaun province goes into negative prices multiple times a year and can't be bought elsewhere in the country or even exported to other countries, it's simply too far away.

> it's simply too far away.

Brazil has a 2500 km long ultra high voltage direct current line running from a hydroelectric power plant to Rio de Janeiro. I'm pretty sure there's a medium-sized city or two within that radius of Sichuan.

That's the longest in the world, not exactly representative of the norm. There's grid bubbles everywhere, they do all live in a "vacuum", you can't just magically transport it without decades long mega infrastructure projects to build super grids and accepting large transmission losses.

GDP is a very questionable metric. Burn down your house, buy a new one and you have contributed a great deal to the GDP of your nation. If a cat. 5 hurricane makes landfall and destroys thousands of homes which have to be rebuilt, the GDP increases. That way a little bit of global warming raises the GDP (of industrial nations).

Another perspective then, worldwide bitcoin co2 emission is less than residents of Tampa, FL, which has less than 0.1% of US population

Bitcoins emission is big, but in the bigger picture it is not that much at all.

US military emission alone should be like 200x bitcoin alone

With an estimated 178TWh/a electric energy dissipation for bitcoin mining and 0.416kg CO2 released for every kWh electric energy produced in the USA and 15500kg CO2/a per capita released (total, not just for electricity) in the USA, the CO2 released from bitcoin mining corresponds to the release of about 27 million citizens of USA. Not sure why the residents of Tampa would release so much more.

From the article energy usage is around 77 Twh according to article ( actual number can be around 100 TWh now) Which 75% is from renewables. That leaves us around 20 Twh, 8k tons of CO2 (10k for 100Twh)

Tampa has population around 400k each emitting 15 tons, 6.2k tons.

As I said emission of bitcoin is big, but in total it is very small percentage.

>I think 80 tons of CO2 for BTC is wrong. It should be around 15-20 tons (75% of BTC is mined with renewables, I think approx 20-25% is coal)

80 tons is already the lower estimate. The upper bound is closer to 200 tons.

That last point is key. Bitcoins once created exist forever.

Until somebody loses their wallet in a discarded HDD.

But obviously people will by then move into NewerCoin (TM) . Would there be _any_ reason, considering the primary motivations and utility behind bitcoin, not to do it?

Yes and every transaction henceforth incurs an economic cost. The gift which keeps on giving.

If they dont get lost, forgotten or seized to be destroyed.

The average is not the median.

true but you don't need median here:

if you produce 1 hammer, 1000 nails. average thing produced is not 50% chance hammer, 50% nail, it should be weighted.

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