[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8
[2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
Even an extremely efficient car uses a ton of energy to move around. New cars often have engines in the multiple hundred kW range, which is insane compared to any other appliance you own.
If fossil fuels were taxed properly, that would discourage using/wasting fossil fuels. But please don't tax based on what you feel is acceptable usage was wasteful usage, cause the atmosphere does not care if the CO2 came from kerosene on a plane bringing tourists to vacation, or if it was used to power the ambulance that brings you to the hospital.
But when we tax all fossil fuel uses equally and heavily, I'm sure the ambulances will still drive around cause they save lives, but weekend trips to the other side of the Atlantic will be a thing of the past.
"Wasteful" = "using more resources than it genuinely needs". We're saying very, very similar things here. I don't find the difference between them significant enough to be worth arguing about honestly. I'm just suggesting an alternative that I think might be more viable, but if we go with your proposal, that's enough progress to make me happy.
The latter is roughly equivalent to the US's CAFE standards and leads to gaming the system by manufacturers.
The former is much harder to game - either you use the gasoline (and paid the tax at purchase) or you don't. Doesn't matter (to the tax authority) what car you drive - only how much gasoline you burn.
Are you going to create a commission which decides what a "genuine resource usage" is?
Uhm... if it's necessary, sure? I already suggested a starting point: the current state-of-the-art provides a baseline to compare against. If we need a commission to gauge this, then sure, how about have an agency like the EPA or DoE figure it out. We can even give a good name to products that meet high energy-efficiency standards... like, I don't know, maybe "Energy Star"?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...
meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin.
and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better to store, better to transport, better to divide into units.
and it can use energy anywhere, whereas banks and gold mining have to use it where there is gold and people to use banks, which means that energy for these uses is actually newly made for this purpose. Bitcoin often and increasingly uses energy that was made, but not used: 1/3 of all global energy production is produced and then just seeps into the metaphorical ground, which is necessary as a network safety measure. Bitcoin miners put their ASICs there and take it, meaning no additional energy was produced and the opposite of waste occured: it prevented waste. Not to speak of the fact that bitcoin incentivizes green energy, because solar and wind are problematic for everyday use (bc you're so highly dependent on the whims of nature). Bitcoin is not your dryer; it can run whenenever it happens to be there, thereby increasing the efficiency of renewables massively.
This whole argument suffers from a lot of ignorance about what's actually going on here.
It seems fairly utopian to me, given that wars existed on the gold standard too, and if they were less destructive it was for want of technology. But maybe if I held Bitcoin I’d be more inclined to believe it was the solution to world peace.
Also, it's trivial to freeze BTC accounts too; that just means controlling the network - which in the even of a physical occupation is going to be obvious anyhow.
Then there's the fact that occupiers may be able to engage in a 50% attack (assuming occupation is large scale and impacts many miners) - and may well force usage of their fork of the chain, even in absence of a global 50% control, making the whole thing rather tricky to predict.
Let's hope it never comes to that, but I'm certainly not convinced BTC would be immune from a physically occupying force's influence. I bet it depends hugely on the details of that occupation.
Or we ban heating in houses because you can just wear warmer clothes instead.
Note that I didn't claim it's easy to come up with a good way to do this. You might have to settle for some partial progress. But that doesn't mean I'm putting up a strawman either.
I would actually support this for urban areas. I wish more people would see that this would significantly benefit everyone.
If a technology is objectively more wasteful than it could be it should be penalized, and as we move forward with newer/better/more efficient technologies the standards bar should raise with them.
For anyone who has further concerns: let’s imagine that we have a magic calculator that tells us the total and complete cost of anything, from the true local socioeconomic impact of extracting materials to the CO2 emitted in production to the cumulative future cost of disposing of it. And that we could use that as the measuring stick.
E.g. a quick google finds this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22256-3 or this https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 - so let's say bitcoin uses 150 TWh in 2021. Here's another one: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
By contrast, various sources list global datacenter power usage as "just" ~200TWh (e.g. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-str... or https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...) and it's likely the average datacenter isn't as reliant on coal power plants in china as bitcoin is, so I'd say it's at least plausible that bitcoin by itself emits as much if not more CO2 than all the worlds datacenters combined. Let alone just teeny singular sites like youtube.
Of course, if you're going to include client power consumption, that's a different story... Then again, a youtube video is an actual desirable product in and of itself, whereas a bitcoin transaction is not; it's just a way to (perhaps in the future) acquire something desirable.
Ideally we'd price carbon conservatively (i.e. higher than necessary), and then this would all be a moot point. However, by the time we get all the relevant countries on board with that, and get democrats and republicans to sufficiently cooperate (even harder), the universe's heat death is likely nigh, so perhaps in the interim it's reasonable to just outright ban exceptionally pointless wasteful activities such as bitcoin mining.
In any case, to reiterate my counterpoint (which you have not disputed, but given your ad hominem I assume you don't agree with): estimating at least an order of magnitude impact of bitcoin isn't that hard, so your suggestion that it's hopeless to compare somebody streaming gangnam style with a bitcoin transaction is unfounded. One can compare bitcoins environmental impacts with other environmental impacts.
Why does he have a "vested interest" in Bitcoin failing? Are you sure you know what "vested" means? :-)
Do you mean to say that he wants Bitcoin to fail because he's bitter?
We will see if Bitcoin is relevant in 5-10 years from now. My guess: it will be a niche thing with a very narrow set of uses.
If anything, you sound a bit like a Bitcoin supporter (maybe an investor?), so you sound more like someone who has a <<vested>> interest in it succeeding.
definition: 'a personal reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation'
The personal reason here may well be bitterness, but that was your word not mine.
If, in 2011, we were discussing what bitcoin succeeding looks like, I would have said that if it was worth 5 figures (and I would have meant low 5 figures, so $10,000) it had succeeded. If, alongside the value, my parents knew what it was (not through me) then it would have succeeded.
In truth I would also have expected it to take closer to 20 years to reach that point. So in my mind it has succeeded. It is still around over a decade later, it surpassed the dollar value I would have assigned success even without this latest runup. There are few people in the world, who have internet acccess, who have not heard of it.
So I disagree with you, because on metrics I would have measured it with in 2011 it has met and exceeded them. Therefore it has succeeded already. I have skin in the game, so perhaps I have a vested interest, but only in as much as it would make me more money than it already has. And I dont need more money. If it went to zero tomorrow my life would not change.
This is not a fair comparison. Did you count all the banking services and data centers? Also, cryptocurrencies provide features which banks can't provide, e.g., independence on a third party.
I mean, not that this kind of ban is likely to happen; it's probably not even a good idea (unless we can be much more specific about what counts as wasteful, and what counts as comparable existing technology, and have a way to make that simple, please no patent prior art search 2.0 nonsense).
The whitepaper is pretty detailed about how they avoid the proof of work and the energy waste associated: - https://minepi.com/white-paper
If cryptos really make it in their ideological goal of a truly free capitalistic society, something like Pi which can be mined by everyone will have to win out over Bitcoin which can be "produced" only by already rich.
There are real, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies which are much more energy efficient than proof of work. Cardano currently being the biggest one by market cap. It's still a relatively 'new' space, but I hate seeing it crowded by so many scam products.
Even if you ban crypto exchanges and money transfers to them, you cannot ban a single entity called Bitcoin Co, nor you can ban individuals from possessing it.
You could potentially ban crypto miners from using the electrical energy, but that doesn't ban Bitcoin either.
Any other ideas? :)
Laws already exist requiring gatekeepers of the financial system (e.g. Banks and payment processors) to monitor transactions on illegalities, e.g. money laundering. Bitcoin would just be added to the list. Banks are required to set-up their own systems for this. It'd be trivial for banks to find out which bank accounts are owned by exchanges or bitcoin companies like Coinbase, and close those bank accounts, as well as freeze any transactions to these bank accounts. New companies can't open new accounts. If you try to make transactions you get your money frozen/seized. And even if you hold bitcoin, to use your profits (e.g. to buy a house, a car, pay rent) you'd need to go back to dollars through a bank, or launder tons of cash, or find a counterparty to your transaction willing to illegally accept bitcoin e.g. when selling his house, all things extremely unlikely to happen at any scale by regular joes.
At that point the amount of capital flowing to bitcoin will massively decline and bitcoin plummets. Nobody is investing in an asset class speculatively if the only way to buy it is to go to a street corner and meet up with an Internet Guy with a bunch of cash. That's fine for buying drugs, it's not going to drive a trillion dollar market cap (like today) illegal virtual coin that's otherwise useless.
All of the following are entirely feasible measures for "banning bitcoin" that are already applied to other things:
- directly ban sales or receipts through normal financial intermediaries (banks etc). Try to wire money to Coinbase and get prosecuted.
- directly ban advertising of cryptocurrency products (problem here is you hit the celebrities, good luck prosecuting Musk in NL)
- directly ban holding or making cryptocurrency transactions. Not very effective, but provides an additional charge that can be made against people who've been prosecuted and had their computers seized for other reasons (e.g. drugs, CP). Incidentally criminalizes paying ransoms!
- use all the anti-CP measures against Bitcoin related sites; put the exchanges and known network nodes on the IWF blocklist.
- put bitcoin related software on AV alert lists (I think this has already happened with miner software because it keeps getting installed by malware)
- add it to the list of things checked in border phone sweeps. I don't think NL does a lot of these, but you occasionally hear about the US doing them. Some countries have also started doing device searches as part of other police searches, e.g. https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/zqxibu3s/cyber-kios... ; combine with the ban on crypto tech and this can be used to prosecute people for having cryptocurrency apps on their phones.
Does anyone else remember the "crypto is a munition" era? It used to be illegal to export actually secure crypto from the US, which meant in practice it was illegal to host it on US-based websites. I'm not sure it's possible to go back to that era, but it's possible to imagine github banning crypto-related apps due to international pressure.
The point is that bitcoin exited before there where institutions built around it, you can ban those institutions you can ban coal power plants you can ban whatever you want people will still continue to use it the way they currently do.
Mine bitcoin on renewable energy not connected to the grid and transact with each other not large institutions, if you want to ban bitcoin you need to prevent the core value of bitcoin not just show off your fud.
Let's see.. i earn my wage with money. I pay my taxes with money. I pay everything with money. I can pay almost nothing with bitcoin and it's getting worse.
> people will still continue to use it [bitcoin] the way they currently do
They are using it for speculation and for ransomware. Seems like both of these uses will be hindered by outlawing all official exchanges.
Yeah, make it illegal.
Good luck with that :)
I guess we might just as well make murder legal as well, since it's some people will still kill each other no whether it's illegal or not.
It is basically saying: You are forced to participate in our inflationary financial system or we will arrest you.
Climate change will probably kill millions and Bitcoin is creating an economical incetive to accelerate it.
By shopping for food you are also creating an economical incentive for companies to produce which accelerates climate change.
Please, lets be serious and reasonable.
Bitcoin probably creates more incentives for renewable energy (because it enables to "store" it) than any other initiative.
Banning crypto isn’t going to fix the root cause.
Why would someone be a Bitcoin detractor if not for environmental reasons?
I have a really low expectation of it being able to provide price stability.
> Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage
New regulations are here about polluting ships. Single use plastics are (progressively) being banned - in the EU they're heavily taxed and will be absolutely banned since ~2022.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/ozone-layer-recov...
You think China will care? they will keep producing whatever makes money until they are caught, and not just Chinese companies, plenty in the developing world will circumvent legislation. And in the US they just don't bother with regulations to disregard. The Mississippi River carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year, creating a “dead zone” in the Gulf each summer about the size of New Jersey.
This happens because there are no regulations to prevent the dumping of untreated waste into the Mississippi
To me, the value Bitcoin brings to the table is much, much greater than the one from countries that enforce unjust embargoes and overthrow governments only to replace them with even worse dictators... and also pollute the planet.
Also, specifically on the second article you linked: it references the first and even mentions why such runaway growth necessitated by that argument wouldn't happen.
EDIT: Before some tries to gotcha me with the same old tired memes or accuses me of building up the typical "oh, but X uses more power than the entire crypto system" strawman argument, what I'm trying to say is: value is relative. If you have a comfortable life and live in a reasonably free country, Bitcoin is very likely to have negative value to you, as its cons outweigh its pros. But that's not going to be the same for the rest of the world, and blanket bans on things are reductionist and hardly ever get anywhere good, especially when you should be looking at why such thing exists.
[1] https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36672/renewable-energy-...
SHA-256 came out of the NSA. Didnt the FBI retrieve the Bitcoin from the pipeline ransomware attack? They have lots of tradecraft at their disposal that we cannot know of.
Pollution causes fucking global warming, ships, cars industry concrete. This idiotic scapegoat of BTC is killing the planet is akin to the crying Indian campaign.
Its a misdirection to avoid talking about real causes and solutions to global warming.
You mean to facilitate money transfer between banks it only take a bit of electricity. But you dont consider the needs of whole organisation called bank to work. Staff commuting, maintenance, running bills etc. All of that produces pollution. So your simple analogy suddenly is not that simple (as any simple explanation to complicated problem).
> stop destroying the world of our children!
Gtfo, what is this republican rally?? 'Think of the childed, oh no, oh woes!'
How about we stop fossil fuel lobbies attacking green initiatives, how about we stop cruse ship industry and mindless consumption from a cheap plastic crap to new electronics iterations every 1/2 a year. Wasteful packaging, imports of non-seasonal foods, rocket lunches of useless crap into orbit akin to star link at el. American army was running country wide program of air-conn desert camps for it troops for what 20 years. A fucking 24/7 AC of a desert not to mention about of carbon wasted shooting/bombing/occupying Afghanistan to literally zero effect. What about those ''none issues'' ?? But no, the evil BTC is the only thing to fight to save the world for the children.
So nice to see that bitcoin is giving out loans. Is available to my grandmother. Can be used to pay at every corner in the city. Or does it?
> Gtfo, what is this republican rally??
I am always amused by the limited world view. Its not about democrats or republicans, in this world (you know, that thing outside the us?). There are more political views than their agendas.
> How about we stop fossil fuel lobbies attacking green initiatives, ...
It's nice that you know so many other things that should be addressed as well. But it's no reason not to stop bitcoin from wasting all that power.
Its funny that you say that and then present a 1 dimensional view of the world.
Haven't really addressed my point just running around the issues trying desperately to shift the goalpost. Address my actual point or don't waste my time.
This is just demonstrably false.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-m...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-27/bitcoin-m...
https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/news/newsbitcoin-mining-p...
I could go on, but I won't, I just wanted to show how hysterical and full of BS you and people like you are.
The world is already struggling to keep up with the rising power requirements from all the sectors, from production, households and transportation. One of the large problems moving to renewable power sources is, that it's hard to replace current power sources and keep up with the rising power demand. By increasing power demand, older power plants that are worse for the environment must be kept running for a longer time.
So what is your point in relation to that? Am I wrong? Is my evidence not sufficient? Do you also believe all bitcoin mining is powered by coal?
>Everybody mining bitcoin is using the cheapest energy source available which currently is coal.
'Some website said...' some other website said vaccines will make my arm magnetic. Doesn't make it true. Don't spout nonsense just because you agree with it, check the veracity of the statement first.
>Thats about 24 Coal power plants that could be shut down, if bitcoin would disappear today
No they wouldn't. They existed before bitcoin, they will exist even if bitcoin is outlawed and shut down. The demand would come from elsewhere, but if you understand power generation you would also know that gas and coal power stations are used to keep a base level of power on the grid, solar doesn't generate at night and wind doesn't always blow. Hydro power cannot be transported everywhere it is needed. So coal, gas and nuclear make up the rest. Until we get better storage they will continue to be used and required.
Honestly this comment of yours has just highlighted how little you know about the subject. You don't even mention which website but I can guess it's digiconomist, which has been debunked before. That site relies on showing extreme figures to get page views.
How nice that all energy magically appears out of nowhere to generate the power needed by youtube cat videos.
Netflix
Porn
insert anything that uses electricity.
Bitcoin has a small effect compared to everything else we do and everything else that will happen.
Human civilization isn't exactly living as optimal as possible and I do not see why Bitcoin needs to be the thing we optimize.
There's Las Vegas, having AC 24/7, cooling the streets from open casino doors. There's individuals feasting on steaks every single day, every single meal.
Looking through the eyes of a frugal optimizer, should we ban that too?
Although, which one do you think is easier to ban?
If cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, would the everyday life change? And if we ban meat? Which one do you think will encounter the most resistance? So which one is the most feasible? And then, which one do you think has the best return on investment?
Anything else is a minor dampener to an exponential process.
Getting rid of Bitcoin is absolutely nothing compared to our exponentially increasing energy needs.
Lowering greenhouse emissions to 0 today would still result in dire consequences when the temperature increase comes, just from the massive n-th order effects.
I have no idea how the opinion of Bitcoin being so detrimental to climate came to fruition and how it's considered plausible at all.
Lowering to zero doesn’t solve the problem, but it would help give us a longer runway.
This is why I think it is important.
Further, Bitcoin is not the main issue. BTC being clean or dirty is based on the underlying issue of dirty power generation. How about we ban dirty power generation instead? Attack the actual, underlying problem.