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Comment by foxrob92 | Hacker News Reader

>The problem with people claiming mining btc is a waste

It takes ~1.2 MWh to confirm a single transaction right now. My fridge at home consumes approx 300 kWh/year. Are you saying that a single BTC transaction verification provides anywhere near the utility as refrigerating food for four years?

Even comparing it to gaming, my desktop at home has a 650W PSU. It would take ~76 days of full power for that to consume as much energy as a single BTC transaction. There's orders of magnitude more energy being used by BTC, but I don't think there's orders of magnitude more benefits.

>but why can't they equivalently claim that mining bitcoins would derive enjoyment?

Got any evidence for that?

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> Are you saying that a single BTC transaction verification provides anywhere near the utility as refrigerating food for four years?

judging by the price, yes it does apparently.

And that's where your opinion differs from mine - i don't place a utility judgement on the use of energy. If somebody is willing to pay for their use of electricity, they deserve to use it. As an outsider, i don't get to police anyone else's use of their electricity they pay for, no matter what i think of the actual use.

Of course, this presumes that the cost of the electricity is not somewhat externalized. Unfortunately, that is not quite the case today.

The transaction price does not reflect the true cost of the energy, nor does it reflect the negative externalities. When ~1/3 of BTC mining is powered by coal in Xinjiang, it's horrific for climate change (source: https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env...). The power is cheap, in part because it does not include the externalities of the extreme CO2 emissions used to generate it.

>i don't place a utility judgement on the use of energy.

Attitudes like this are why staying under 2C of global warming is going to be a long shot at best.

>If somebody is willing to pay for their use of electricity, they deserve to use it.

A nice idea, but energy use affects us all. More fossil fuel burnt = more extreme climate change. For where I live, it means cyclones will hit land further away from the equator (and closer to larger population centres), overall rainfall will drop and bushfires will be more severe and frequent.

I feel justified in denigrating BTC because its colossal waste of power is a significant contribution to climate change. This has tangible harms to everyone on this planet.

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