Bitcoin Mining Consumes More Energy Than Most Countries in the World
Bitcoin Mining Consumes More Energy Than Most Countries in the World
Expected to exceed the consumption of 181 countries by 2024.
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This is not a problem of Bitcoin, but a "feature".
Framing it this way sounds very bad naturally. But there is another way to think about it.
Having Proof of work means, that each amount of Bitcoin is actually representing something from the real world - energy. It's not possible to simply create Bitcoin out of thin air, you have to spend a lot of energy to do it. And it was designed like this on purpose.
Hard to explain all in one comment, but books like "The Bitcoin Standard" explain in detail why this makes Bitcoin a nice way to store value, especially over time.
The resulting high tx fees are also a thorn in the eye. But I think Bitcoin was not meant to be used to make daily transactions, it is made to enable people to store or save value over long periods of time. To enable everyday transactions, the lightning network is being built, and something else to look into :)
So each bitcoin represents something of real value - energy - that was destroyed. The work done produced nothing of use, nothing of value. Just a lot of GHG emissions.
Well, if the energy wasn't actually used, or destroyed, then this "connection to the real world" would just be fake.
The work done produced a store of value that cannot be tampered with. If we say Bitcoin produces nothing of use, we should also say banks are doing nothing of value at all. But that is not entirely true. Keeping track of who owns what is an essential part of our society. Doing that, without having to trust a single powerful group of individuals, is of immense value from my perspective.
Besides that, the goal of many "Bitcoiners" is to use energy, that would be lost otherwise. Currently, it is a huge problem of renewable energy sources that the energy output is somewhat constant, but our usage is very much fluctuating (night vs day etc.). Storing energy on its own is very expensive and totally inefficient. Using that energy to power this decentralized record of who owns what is an amazing idea to me.
Shit like this is why we as a species are doomed.
Please explain
I struggle to believe whether this written by a human with a connection to reality
What makes you think that?
If my argument is totally wrong and disconnected from reality it should be really easy for you to explain to me why that is.
Sounds like random hate simply because I represent a different opinion. I didn't say "use Bitcoin, the climate doesn't matter". I was just trying to explain why people find Bitcoin positive despite the huge energy consumption.
Bitcoin folks find bitcoin positive because they're invested in it and have either sunk cost phallacy or FOMO on future earnings. People who still think it's a legitimate currency or has any real world use should be committed. At this point, it's worth money because there's enough of you in the weird ponzi scheme to keep it afloat for a while.
who cares! the planets dying!!
I think it’s very unlikely that all that energy would have been “wasted” otherwise. I think it’s also increasing the price of electricity at peak production hours which makes it less appealing to invest in hydrogen production facilities. The problem of attributing money has largely been solved already, Bitcoin isn’t necessary. Even if it was needed Ethereum can fill that role too, either as an independent monetary unit or more likely a method of unregulated gambling.
Bitcoin was an interesting proof of concept that showed that blockchain technology could work, but today it’s obsolete, slow and wasting energy and only used because people haven’t realized that yet.
So is there a Bitcoin mining say where it calculates the electricity consumption and gives back to an association an equivalent in Bitcoin of the Energy used? Where in return for the energy you use to create the Bitcoin you give a part of it back for healthy projects?