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Comment by user-the-name | Hacker News Reader

Proof of work also boils the planet. It needs to be banned, yesterday.

Just put a carbon tax on everything with environmental side effects and let the market sort it out, otherwise who decides what get's banned?

For example, I think cars contribute very significantly to global warming and use lots of fossil fuels, do I get to say, let's ban all cars and force everyone to use public transport? No!

Bans of future sales of ICE vehicles are a thing, a lot of countries either have them or are proposing them.

Gonna have lot of exemptions. Long haul and industrial/farm/mining equipment cannot always run on batteries.

We are going to have ICE's for a long time.

Mindless bans like that, if overzealous, will just push even more of industry to Asia/China, where most of pollution happens today anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if China funds quite a few green causes, big boost for their industries, and they get to just ignore all emissions rules.

I agree that there will likely be exceptions, but long-haul isn't one of them. The trucking industry is already subject to a lot of regulations around mandatory rest stops, so there are well-established break points along every major long-haul route.

This has lead to things like [1] where it is significantly more economical for long-haulers to electrify their existing fleet than continue using diesel fuel. I suspect long-haul will reach 90% electrification long before last-mile trucking and private-use automotives.

That said, I imagine you are spot on regarding farming - and pushing industry to less restrictive jurisdictions.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/29/swap-...

I'm willing to bet that Bitcoin mining will be 100% renewable (compared to 40-70% depending on whose numbers you look at today) before ICE vehicles are all gone. I'm basing this on the fact that miners are incentivized to always seek the cheapest source of energy and that renewable/stranded energy is only going to become cheaper over time. At one point, hydro/wind/nuclear will become much more cheaper than coal/fossil fuels, it's inevitable.

As long as there are fossil fuels being used for the production of electricity, either non-clean energy or a mix will be cheaper as a purchaser (regardless of production costs).

All the electricity gets mixed together in the power network anyway, so if you buy 'renewable' electricity you are effectively just paying a premium to say yours came from the pool of renewable electricity. If you increase the power load on the network though, and in-aggregate the power requirement increases, chances are that increase still comes from fossil fuels.

I think we will be waiting a long time until global electricity is 100% renewable, although I hope it happens quick and it's good that you are more optimistic than me :)

If bitcoin mining is 100% renewable, that is 100% of renewable energy being destroyed instead of being put to use displacing other, more polluting energy.

It doesn't matter if bitcoin mining specifically uses renewable energy. What matters is used in total by everyone. And bitcoin mining will always make things worse, no matter what kind of energy it uses.

if renewables can't power a computer network - sounds like it'll never power the world.

What.

So do dishwashers and hot tubs, hypocrite.

The provide actual value and usefulness.

Bitcoin does three transactions per second while using the energy of an entire country. The bitcoin network could be run on a single PC from 2004, but it uses, again, an entire country's worth of energy.

There is nothing in the entire history of humanity that has been as obscenely inefficient and wasteful as bitcoin.

Banning it is a no-brainer. The lowest hanging of low-hanging fruit for environmental improvement.

Ask Argentines, Zimbabweans, Cypriots, Greeks, Venezuelans, Turks, Lebanese and a few other billions around the world who are not privileged enough to have a stable monetary environment why they choose Bitcoin.

It has little to do with tps.

They do not have any real property rights, unable to access world's financial market, unable to save, unable to better their lives by accumulating wealth, and whatever little wealth they are able to accumulate is confiscated on the regular by the oppressive regimes.

Of course, your dishwasher is much more important than their human rights.

They don't choose bitcoin, dude. That is pure propaganda, spinning a handful of people doing it into some big movement. It's not real, it's not happening.

"not real"? Do you have any data to back this up?

Penetration of crypto in Turkey was 18% (page 9) in 2018, likely a lot higher now. Expected to own in the future 45% (page 10): https://think.ing.com/uploads/reports/ING_International_Surv...

One in five own it, half expect to own in the future.

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