Fixed that for you. Bitcoin mining does about as much good for society as hooking up thousands of 1500W electric resistive element space heaters and dumping the thermal output into the atmosphere.
Might as well install some mini split air conditioners backwards while we're at it.
You could put that power to better use, but if you don't have something lined up then the waste of idle turbines bypassed by water is just as bad as the waste of mining bitcoins.
In the case of a 'stranded' dam, there isn't likely to be a reason to generate power either now or later, so you might as well run BTC generation. I suspect this has been the motivation to build an awful lot of 'stranded' hydro dams, though...
Chips are not made after lunch until evening. They are made weeks and month ahead
Bitcoin demand is a bit erratic so maybe it's more negative than positive, but it's definitely not all bad.
The chip shortage last year which affected cars, roof window, refrigerator etc were also affected by ASIC production for Bitcoin miners
It's possible that without Bitcoin production in the many years leading up to 2020 the supply crunch would have been worse.
Also remember that a huge chunk was based on GPUs and those don't mine Bitcoin, they mine other things.
And the only thing they ever did was guessing a hash.
Our economy needs enough chips without demand from Bitcoin. The only thing this did was making it more expensive for everyone.
I'm serious when I say that if there was less asic demand in 2015 and 2018, no matter what the asics were for, that might have reduced the asic capacity in 2021 enough to make the problems we had even worse.
Fabs (especially the ones who can build the chips we talk about) are not build on a crypto hype and also not build short-term.
A) Make resistive element chips out of wafers and all the normal complex chip patterning, using up the fab side of things and wafer space
B) Subsidize custom chip molecular simulation accelerators for cancer research, by providing the fab side of things and wafer space to design researchers or companies
A is as good as B?
I'm saying that over the course of several years, A is better for chip advancement and availability than nothing at all. And in the real world it's A+B vs. just B, the same amount of B in both scenarios.
I'm not aware of Bitcoin reducing any cancer research budgets anywhere. Are you?
It would not be bad for long-term tractor availability, if they kept up big purchases for many years. Especially if tractors were a hotbed of research and improving by orders of magnitude.
Or to put it another way: It's a hugely inefficient way of boosting tractors, but it will in fact boost tractors. It's not a good idea overall, but it will have some positives.
Perhaps you meant something else?
Have you seen someone trading worthless money into BTC in a crisis? No you have not.
Either you keep Bitcoin and start really using it globally or this argument is wrong.
And you can see in El Salvador how bad it is.
> International accepted
Yes, except China!
> 50% attack
Buddy are you still in 2013?
> Crisis
Yes, there are some accounts of people fleeing the Ukraine war with their savings in a USB stick, Bitcoin sure is great in a time of crisis where criminals would be on the look out for shiny metal!
> start really using bitcoin..
What are you talking about? I'm using Bitcoin right now! I use it every day especially when I am soundly asleep knowing that my Bitcoin is safe and my purchasing power will grow in the long term.
> El Salvador
El Hodlador knows what long term means.
51% is still possible. See the last Blogpost about it on hn 1-3 weeks ago.
El Salvadors people are suffering under Bitcoin.
And yes pls tell me how you actually use BTC on a daily basis.
If that's not good for society, I don't know what is.
Or creating or just using your own currency?
There are a lot more good options than shitcoins
Those "shitcoins" at least pave a way to take power from large entities whose best interest isn't saving world's climate, doing more good than harm indirectly.
It's not wasted any more than it is wasted when you play a game or watch a youtube video or TV. It's just a use of energy which you are trying to make as somehow bad. It's just a cultural preference.
But if someone worked out a way to generate BitCoin for free without any energy input, that would destroy BitCoin, because it depends on proof of work, where work is defined as consuming energy.
But what it brings (decentralization) is well worth all the negative sides anyway.
No, it's not. You can't mine inefficiently and remain profitable. There's a market after all.
This is such a ridiculous comment. I have to wonder why we have such gleeful wilful ignorance whenever the topic of Bitcoin or crypto comes up.
Even worse, it puts a floor on the price of energy, which disincentives everyone else from seeking more efficient solutions to power production, because all that efficiency will be wasted by proof-of-work anyway. We as a species will never have free energy, and this is the reason.
And yes, before you answer, that applies to any hobby you can think of. You won't be astute by pointing out that e.g., car enthusiasts are similarly wasteful.