Hacker News Reader

Comment by Helitio | Hacker News Reader

Are you advocating to use renewable for Bitcoin mining instead?

Because that will only work as soon as we reached full saturation of renewable energy production and consumption.

Otherwise it will always be more lucrative to consume the renewable through Bitcoin than using it for everything else.

A EV car fuel consumption would need to cost more than what Bitcoin can make. A very unhealthy relationship Bitcoin has on consuming energy.

The only real possibility is creating a Bitcoin heater system but most of the time I see Bitcoin mines I'm seeing also AC's which increases the energy consumption even further.

And no, the demand for renewable from Bitcoin will not mean we will create and invest more money into renewable energy overall with a net positive it will only add to more Bitcoin mining.

View on HN

Yes, I am advocating for this.

My take on what you are saying is that you deem other uses of energy more appropriate — “you can’t use it that way! You must use it in this way”. Ultimately it is market forces that determine if using energy for a particular purpose. If there are no pollution externalities to add complexity, it is up to whomever is paying the bill on what they want to spend it on.

I appreciate that some miners will find it rational to use their entire renewable power to mine Bitcoin; and that is ok. Not everyone wants to mine. For some, the utility of an EV is greater than that of mining, and so just looking at a energy/cost ratio ignores demand and utility.

Additionally, the PoW paradigm was invented, and exists today, and there is not a lot one can do to stop it. From 2009 onwards, humanity has decided to dedicate some percentage of global energy output and to the purposes of maintaining ledger security. I have always said this is a good thing, and if you have a problem with this, complaining about it achieves nothing.

We can do plenty against it. We can advocate for laws etc.

And it's not just me who thinks 'other' uses are more critical: even you prefer light over bitcoins. You probably prefer goods and services also higher than Bitcoin hashes.

And in a world hurt by co2, everyone who has to suffer the consequences from climate change would also tell you what they think if they knew and could tell you.

Laws, ok good one.

You better not own a clothes drier or a set of Christmas tree lights (2 things that use more energy globally than Bitcoin) because in a world hurt by co2, everyone has to suffer the consequence from climate change.

What you are currently doing is called a strawman argument.

I have not mentioned IF I think those use cases are less or more bad than Bitcoin. Your argument becomes irrelevant when I say 'yes! Good point let us also stop doing Christmas lights etc.

Independent of this, I even have the feeling that I read the exact example before on hn.

But just for the fun of it: yes we need to do much much more. It would be a good way to list the biggest energy consumers and rank them based on alhow helpful they are for the whole world and how critical.

Bitcoin would be below plenty of things.

Anyway I can and will continue to advocate against Bitcoin as it consumes terrawatts of energy, has very little benefit to the rest of the world and people try to play this issue down by putting weird renewable arguments out there which are just lie's.

We need to push back. Most of us are getting hurt by Bitcoin. Either to additional climate change, speculation/gambling or by hardware supply issues.

I bet 99% people here paid for Bitcoin more than they made through it. The higher GPU price, higher taxes through climate changehigher utility costs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com