On top of being hard to argue against, it just isn't true. It's a net positive for the environment, at least it will be in a couple of years: https://batcoinz.com/50-landfills-mining-bitcoin-a-zero-emis...
We could also use this energy for better things than Bitcoin.
And while BTC doesn't make any value besides moving money from one person to another, it also produces hardware garbage like ASIC chips and power supply.
It also steals demand from others too.
There is only downside for most of us than benefit of allowing Bitcoin mining independent of it's source.
If there are landfills out there that are just spewing methane gas (20x worse than CO2, btw) into the atmosphere, why not make sure that is burned and used more efficiently? Please show me a realistic plan to do this. Bitcoin does it without forcing anyone and without taxes directed towards it.
Where are landfills too remote to transport electricity away from?
In the US 70% of the methane from landfills is vented, rather than flared. That means that for some reason, either it's too expensive to do or something else is blocking this. And that's just the US.
You can also imagine that landfills in the developing world are better targets. Infrastructure is not as good there as it is in the US or in Europe.
Easy to solve with laws. Shouldn't be allowed anyway to just pick the good things from a gas field...
It's not a gas field, it's a land fill.
Riddled with subjectivism. You cannot do less since there are no objective limits to what is "acceptable levels of destruction of the planet" means. It has a different subjective weight to different entities arguing the position. In the limit, this would mean we erase humanity all together and leave the planet alone.
You can bully a lot of things your way before any one can speak up against it. There is a level of insidious moral superiority built into it which makes it prime for exploitation. Corporations are doing exactly that.
"Based on the estimated average growth rate of bitcoin mining operators using vented methane of 6.9 MW/month, the Bitcoin network will become Carbon Negative in Dec ’24."
Oh and increasing the power usage of this fire pile will, as you say, “improve the current situation”?
Your point is that the only way we can avoid burning methane is to use that to power bitcoin mining rigs???
Burning methane (flaring) is most definitely an improvement over not doing it. That's just a fact. It accounts for about 20% of global emissions and is 25 times as potent as CO2. https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
You would use Bitcoin mining as a monetary incentive to flare methane. You could do other things but it requires more infrastructure investment and might not even be possible in certain locations that are far from where the electricity would be used.
Bitcoin mining results in a profit.
Why would you pick the first one?
Transporting miners is not the hard part, you just keep them in containers. What is hard is building the necessary stuff to actually flare the gas properly.