Crypto Is Mostly Over. Its Carbon Emissions Are Not
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Multiplayer gaming is most.definitely not web, and it's quite popular.
None of the above is esoteric; it's used by tens of millions to billions of people.
Of course the browser has eaten a lot, but there are still large pockets if the internet where it's not really adequate.
At a time when technology improves and moves at lightning paces, crypto still hasn't proven itself to be useful in society in 15 years. In fact, it's proven to be the opposite of useful - it drains talent and promotes scams and ponzis. I see crypto as a disease.
I've also written extensively on HN on how the only use cases for crypto right now is money laundering, easily creating scams, ponzis, rug pulls, and unregistered securities. These use cases do not benefit society.
(Haha)
If you're going to come in with a smug attitude, it's more important than usual to get your facts right. And not get Latin American countries mixed up.
I do still think touting a payment system with the transaction cowt of BTC for poor people is a tad rididcolous, but it’s hard to make that point after my crash and burn mixup.
The Bitcoin network started in 2009. Ethereum, which allows multiple decentralized applications to run on a single chain, started in 2015. The Bitcoin Lightning Network which scales Bitcoin transactions with state channels started in 2019.
Uniswap and MakerDAO are pretty impressive use cases. Ethereum is becoming more efficient as rollups[2] are developed and released which will lead to use cases that we can’t predict yet.
We are in a state that every emission is a problem.
And if you have a particular technology which create megatons of CO2 but does nothing for society besides transering money from a lot of people to less and less people what does a comparison matter?
Some things will forever burn dinosaurs, like a diesel generator keeping a hospital going in a grid down situation for example.
While cryptocurrencies might not rank as important as a hospital to you, the people fleeing Russia who couldn't take rubles with them or the people of Venezuela who can't trust the banking system have a very different opinion.
Should crypto move to non-PoW systems or use renewables? Absolutely. But some CO2 generation is worth the value crypto brings.
One of the best arguments for crypto...
Just that it's as easy or hard to even exchange the local currency with crypto in the first place is probably as harder than getting us dollar or euro...
* The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources.
* Bitcoin mining uses a higher percentage of renewable energy than any other industry.
* A huge amount of Bitcoin mining is also done in partnership with energy utilities in a demand-response model where miners go offline immediately if grid demand spikes and come online exclusively during periods of excess electricity supply that would otherwise go to waste. By this mechanism, Bitcoin miners, for example in Texas, actually make the grid more stable and economically enable utilities to provide excess capacity to manage fluctuating supply and demand.
* Bitcoin mining uses electricity to secure the network and protect billions of dollars worth their depositor's savings, allowing Bitcoin savers to avoid counter-party risk and enjoy a 100% reserve ratio, unlike say a fractional reserve bank that speculates with their depositor savings.
> We are in a state that every emission is a problem.
Notably, the currently dominant global reserve currency is protected, not by clean energy and mostly not even by electricity which has the potential to come from clean and renewable sources. The US military protects the value of the US dollar.
* The US military is not just the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the world, they are the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the history of the world.
* The US military consumes something on the order of 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining, mostly from greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels.
* In 2007 Department of Defense consumed over 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year alone along with almost 30,000 GWH of electricity.
* If the US military were a country it would rank 34th in the world in oil use and 58th in the world by electricity use [0].
I often hear criticisms about how bad Bitcoin mining is for the environment, but rarely hear any concerns about the energy used by the military. Why is that?
If we are going to ban energy use, wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize the largest and most polluting users?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta....
You don't know if I wouldn't criticize this too but it's about crypto and not your military.
Also the green washing of crypto is also dishonest. Crypto is primarily using dirty electric and we're not they actually take clean and good energy away from others because it's buying power is decoupled from the local energy market.
So to be accurate, the real issue is Bitcoin mining, not altcoins. For the record, I am not a fan of altcoins but their energy use is not a sound argument against them.
The US military exists in large part to protect the US Petrodollar system that gives the dollar value. Bitcoin mining exists exclusively to protect the Bitcoin stored on the blockchain.
Why aren’t we talking about the US military since it consumes 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining for a similar use case, Almost all of it in the form of dirty fossil fuels and with no meaningful plan to go green?
Why we are not talking about the us military? Because it's a strawman argument.
Again, it is not a straw man to point out that both the military and Bitcoin miners both serve to protect the value of their currencies, or that while both consume a lot of energy, the US military consumes 1 million times as much energy as Bitcoin mining.
And I already agree that the energy consumption of the us military should also be checked and reduced.
This is due to its unique property to act as a buyer of last resort for stranded or intermittent energy supplies. Bitcoin subsidizes green energy. Ban Bitcoin mining and we get less renewable energy capacity built.
Why should Bitcoin mining be banned?
Pls walk me through a real example were Bitcoin makes more renewable energy net positive.
Because Bitcoin will consume ALL available energy.
Texas is home to more Bitcoin miners than any other state. Up thread, I shared a detailed example from the Guardian explaining how the power purchase agreements between miners and energy utilities encourages investment in wind and solar build out to strengthen the Texas grid.
As someone who personally worked on the financial plan to build at the time the largest wind farm in Canada, I can say with confidence that wind and solar builds live and die on having enough long-term power purchase agreements to justify their financing.
From the article:
“If you were a miner that has a long-term power purchase agreement, then you own power at a fixed price … you’re committing to buying energy for years no matter what,” Les said.
As a bitcoin miner, you essentially own that power, and that allows you to work like a virtual power plant. You can take the power that you agreed to buy at a fixed lower price, and then you can sell that back to the grid.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/17/bitcoin-c...
Do you have evidence that over half of miners are on exclusively clean energy? That is a slightly different claim than this industry group recently makes about the overall energy mix:
"the global bitcoin mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix has improved marginally to 58.9% and remains one of the most sustainable industries globally."[1]
Regardless, I'd have to consider myself unimpressed when a) almost half of a large amount of energy used isn't sustainable b) at least some of that usage is simply pushing other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources, regardless if some of what is used for crypto is purely excess production, and c) unlike the other industries refered to in the quote, this industry's additions to society are negligible d) the vast majority of the energy burden is self-imposed. It is a very peculiar situation to feel compelled to try to defend, I imagine.
1 https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-council-surv...
Per the Bitcoin Mining council,
> 58.9% of global Bitcoin mining uses sustainable (i.e. renewable) energy
58.9% > 50% and higher than any other industry. What am I missing?
> a) almost half of a large amount of energy use isn’t sustainable
Per your own source, it isn’t almost half renewable globally. It it over half renewable (58.9%) which is higher than any other industry.
> b) at least some of that usage is simply pushing other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources, regardless if some of what is used for crypto is purely excess production,
Per the 4th point in my parent comment, using the example of the Texas grid which relies heavily on wind power, not only is Bitcoin mining uniquely suited to consume otherwise wasted intermittent power.
By doing so it actually strengthens the resilience of the energy grid by making a higher baseline energy capacity available to offset spikes in demand.
I challenge you to find a real-world example of Bitcoin mining pushing any other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources.
In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Bitcoin subsidizes building new renewable capacity by enabling grids to monetize highly variable solar and wind energy output. Most other industries rely on consistent power, which Bitcoin mining provides by monetizing otherwise unused variable capacity.
> c) unlike the other industries refered to in the quote, this industry's additions to society are negligible
It is your opinion, cited without substantiation that Bitcoin’s security model has negligible value for society. My bullet #5 in the parent comment cites several examples, so clearly me and hundreds of millions of Bitcoin holders disagree.
> d) the vast majority of the energy burden is self-imposed
I don’t understand the point of your last comment. How does the energy burden of Bitcoin mining compare with the energy Burden of the US military industry which consumes 1 million times the energy, mostly from fossil fuels?
For the record, my post wasn’t an attempt to shill, but I did feel it was appropriate to correct innacuracies I noticed in your earlier comment.
For example, Bitcoin actually subsidizes renewable energy investment by creating a market for intermittent electricity. It doesn’t force would be buyers of renewable energy towards fossil fuels. It helps make more renewable energy available than would otherwise exist.
Would you be so kind as to point out the error in my reasoning instead of accusing me of being a shill?
The problem with this argument is that if it wasn't for Bitcoin, those renewable energy sources could've been used for other activities.
Perhaps you could provide an example of another industry being pushed out by Bitcoin mining that would otherwise operate efficiently consuming electricity only when there is excess capacity on the grid?
1. Consuming as much renewable/ cheap energy possible because of how mining works and consumed energy might heat houses but I have seen only ACs in this mining farms.
2. It decentivie energy usage for real use cases like humans who can't afford to compete with the GDP from some us dude who wants to get rich.
3. It also doesn't add any motivation to try to make this energy more accessible because mining will just eat it up anyway.
We don't need to burn of gas. We can regulate it and don't allow to just reap in profits without also taking care of the rest gas
It's the industry which is fucking with us.
I agree that this is true. However you may have missed the nuance of my argument. Apologies if I wasn’t clearer. Let me explain:
Not all elecricity is the same. For most industries or residential uses, electricity only has value if there is demand for it in real-time. Energy storage technologies are neither mature nor economically viable, with the exception of Hydro dams which depend on supporting geography.
Bitcoin creates a market for this intermittent excess electricity in real time. There is no other market demand for intermittent electricity and therefore no market price.
Were it not for Bitcoin mining the variability of wind and solar would make their energy available when not needed by the grid and the excess load would simply be shed. As a result the cost of these renewables would be higher since they would no longer be subsidized by mining.
Miners are unique in that the capital cost of a miner is dwarfed by the energy cost. So turning off a miner when demand (and therefore price) of electricity is high makes perfect sense economically.
No other industry has a similar use case for stranded or highly variable electricity.
This should incentive people to build energy storage not burn through it...
Until we have those, Bitcoin mining results in more renewable energy investment, not less.
In the meantime are you arguing we should ban Bitcoin mining and eliminate the subsidy that enables us to build out renewables?
How is the world better off with less renewable energy investment?
It consumes them.
Show me a real project which actually had a energy net positive and don't show me all those garbage green washing papers from Bitcoin companies which do not proof any of this.
It describes exactly the scenario I described where miners negotiate long-term contracts at low electricity rates in exchange for miners agreeing to turn off on short notice during periods of high demand.
As a result, energy companies are able to justify investing in highly variable wind and solar power, knowing that they have long-term commitments for this wind power even during periods of low demand.
The wind often blows hardest at night when there isn’t sufficient demand to justify the investment otherwise.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/17/bitcoin-c...
It's like asking "Tumor is bad compared to what?"
Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military.
We are talking here about crypto and not military
Slightly more, like for example, killing over 1 million Iraqis over a lie about WMD, or bringing freedom to the people of Libya which resulted in the country going from the highest per capital standard of living in Africa to one of the poorest and one that now features open-air slave markets?
Notably both Iraq and Libya had the audacity to try and trade their oil in something other than US dollars. I don’t think it is a coincidence that every single country that tried to trade oil in any currency other than USD this century was rewarded with an invasion by the US military. That is simply the US military doing it’s job in protecting US dollar hegemony.
> Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military.
But you still haven’t explained why we should prioritize banning Bitcoin mining over say banning the US military. Especially when, by objective measure Bitcoin mining consumes less than 0.0001% of the energy of the US military, not to mention other externalities like the widespread death and destruction caused by the US military simply to protect the US dollar.
> We are talking here about crypto and not military
Perhaps, maybe we SHOULD be talking about the military. See my points above.
Meanwhile in crypto land, a $2bn airdrop (Arbitrum) is taking up the headlines today and is a huge liquidity event for 650,000 addresses. Lots of people cashed out already and price is holding steady in the expected range.
edit: no, not garbage like Kwiktrust. hope you find higher signal influences.
"KwikTrust is airdropping a total of 3,000,000 KTX tokens plus referral rewards to our exclusive airdrop participants. Complete simple social tasks and submit your details to the below airdrop form to receive 50 KTX ($2.5) tokens. Also get 10 KTX ($0,5) for each referral. "
Oh yeah no no one gets rich of this joke...
For those at home, if you want to jack up your electricity bill, then go for it.