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I work in energy efficiency, so bitcoin makes me cry. Any sane clean energy transition plan requires significant savings (no you can't just build a bunch of PV)

I work in energy efficiency, so bitcoin makes me cry. Any sane clean energy transition plan requires significant savings (no you can't just build a bunch of PV). But while we are killing ourselves trying to get people to adopt green buildings and low energy appliances, along comes Bitcoin where people just burn energy for nothing.

kenpomeroy 9y ago
It doesn't sound like you really understand how Bitcoin works. If Bitcoin were to become widely adopted and supplant traditional financial institutions, the environmental impact would be enormously net positive. Sure, it takes energy to confirm transactions. But, we could massively decrease energy consumption by eliminating the need for: bank buildings, armored vehicles, physically printing money, etc.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  But you could eliminate all of those things without bitcoin, and they are actively being reduced already. There's nothing special about blockchains that will mean people suddenly won't use physical money, have a bank on their high street etc.
- simias 9y ago
  I don't believe that at all. The idea that everybody would walk around with their own hardware wallet and sign transactions directly when buying bread seems as likely to me as having the average public drop facebook chat for IRC. People want simplicity, people want convenience. People don't want to risk losing their life savings because they get scammed or because their secret keys become compromised or destroyed. People want banks, or at least a subset of what banks do. People want insurance, people want chargeback. People want to get loans to buy houses and cars. Bitcoin solves a tiny portion of the service provided by banks. A lot of what bank does is getting automated anyway, now you have banks that are only available online who probably need a lot less personnel and obviously fewer buildings. Armored vehicles and printing money can be replaced by credit and debit cards, no blockchain needed. I personally use cash less and less, and I know it's a trend in many (albeit not all) countries.
  - teekert 9y ago
    The wallet app I use is the very definition of simplicity, both paying and receiving are as simple as scanning a QR code, many people already do that when paying with the European Ideal system. As for safety, central storage with insurance and a police that understands cyber crime will still have a role in a BTC(-like) economy.
    - simias 9y ago
      >The wallet app I use is the very definition of simplicity Simpler and more convenient than Visa? What if I buy something online and the other party scams me by not delivering the goods? There's more to the economy as a distributed ledger. If bitcoin was to replace fiat entirely it'd still need 3rd parties to settle disputes, provide insurance, distribute the risks etc... In other word banks, or "central storage with insurance" as you prefer to call them. The cost of the PoW algorithm is on top of all of that, not an alternative to it. It's not the problem it's solving. PoW is there to solve the "distributed ledger without trust" issue. Except that if you end up having to trust your bitcoins to a "central storage with insurance" anyway I'm not sure I see the added value over the current solution.
    - wila 9y ago
      The iDeal payment system is great. Unfortunately it is only used in the Netherlands. Not quite a European system yet.
- GhostVII 9y ago
  Unless Bitcoin becomes more efficient by orders of magnitude, it will still take far more energy than bank buildings, armored vehicles, etc. when everyone is using it.
- lightedman 9y ago
  "It doesn't sound like you really understand how Bitcoin works." Bitcoin as of right now uses over 5000x the energy of a credit card transaction. That's a flat-out waste that none of your suggestions could ameliorate - at a rate of ~325,000 homes worth of power per year and rising. It really sounds like you don't understand how Bitcoin works, nor how blatantly wasteful it is.
- root_axis 9y ago
  Banks are not going anywhere regardless of what happens with bitcoin. Physically printed money is not going anywhere; people need to be able to buy and sell when the power is out or the internet is down, bitcoin is something new, it will not replace existing financial infrastructure.
cellularmitosis 9y ago
How many megawatts are being consumed by electric heaters up north? Replacing those heaters with GPUs seems to be a “green” mining strategy.
- mankyd 9y ago
  All you're suggesting is replacing an electric heater with ... an electric heater. That's not "green". It is perhaps more practical, assuming one considers crypto-mining practical, but not green.
  - derefr 9y ago
    It’s green if the 1:1 conversion of a “useless” heater into a money-generating heater, partially displaces the logistics pipeline of the US Mint, no? No matter how efficient it is to dig up/farm materials and process them into coins and bills, it can’t be 100% efficient.
    - mankyd 9y ago
      Until cryptocurrency proves that it can use less energy than our current system while being equally useful at the same time, it's hard to argue that it's an improvement. The same can be said of this new "Chia" network, but it's much easier to call it "green" in relative terms compared to other existing crypotcurrencies, at least.
- obmelvin 9y ago
  while computers give off heat, they are terribly inefficient creators of heat and in no way make a good replacement for dedicated electric heaters
  - scatters 9y ago
    Computers are well over 99% efficient as heaters. The only energy they emit is a tiny amount of EM from LEDs, clock signal and the transformer, and a minuscule amount of fan noise (which is almost all absorbed by the immediate environment anyway). Electric heaters similarly emit EM and noise, so I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually less efficient as heaters than the average computer. It is possible for a heater to be over 100% efficient by removing heat from an external environment, but heat pumps require significant supporting infrastructure.
ojr 9y ago
it is not for nothing but for wealth protection, it is impossible to do a DDOS attack because you have to burn energy as a collateral, people will exploit anything when it comes to money so this is the only fair one
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
teekert 9y ago
If you think it's for nothing you don't understand bitcoin. If it would require no energy to create Bitcoin it would be completely useless. Moreover, banks also burn energy. Arguably Bitcoin is potentially even more green than other carriers of value because it can be completely produced from natural resources such as wind and sun, whereas mining gold or other precious metals often requires more damaging techniques. Can it be improved: Yes, wholeheartedly, for me BTC died a little when I wanted to give the money for a beer back in BTC to a friend, as we used to do in the old days... but soon I realized that the transfer cost is 2 times the cost of a beer. Somethings has to change.
- te_chris 9y ago
  The parent commenter literally discounted your 'even more green' argument in his comment but you still made it as a rebuttal? Ye gods.
- m-p-3 9y ago
  Yeah, isn't the heavy computational work what's provide value and security to the blockchain?
- heptathorp 9y ago
  > If it would require no energy to create Bitcoin it would be completely useless. Why would an alternative consensus mechanism that doesn't involve finding a low target hash make it useless?
- mangecoeur 9y ago
  It's for nothing as in, energy is consumed and nothing of value to society is produced. When a bank uses energy to run its services, those computers actually achieve something (like, for instance, managing to process more than a handful of transactions per second). Bitcoin's 'proof of work' is just a very complicated heating system. You are literally going through the whole rigmarole just to increase the entropy of the universe. Considering the effort we are putting in to squeeze more efficiency out of everything from washing machines to jumbo jets, this is kind of waste is pretty shocking.

kenpomeroy 9y ago

It doesn't sound like you really understand how Bitcoin works. If Bitcoin were to become widely adopted and supplant traditional financial institutions, the environmental impact would be enormously net positive. Sure, it takes energy to confirm transactions. But, we could massively decrease energy consumption by eliminating the need for: bank buildings, armored vehicles, physically printing money, etc.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
But you could eliminate all of those things without bitcoin, and they are actively being reduced already. There's nothing special about blockchains that will mean people suddenly won't use physical money, have a bank on their high street etc.
simias 9y ago
I don't believe that at all. The idea that everybody would walk around with their own hardware wallet and sign transactions directly when buying bread seems as likely to me as having the average public drop facebook chat for IRC. People want simplicity, people want convenience. People don't want to risk losing their life savings because they get scammed or because their secret keys become compromised or destroyed. People want banks, or at least a subset of what banks do. People want insurance, people want chargeback. People want to get loans to buy houses and cars. Bitcoin solves a tiny portion of the service provided by banks. A lot of what bank does is getting automated anyway, now you have banks that are only available online who probably need a lot less personnel and obviously fewer buildings. Armored vehicles and printing money can be replaced by credit and debit cards, no blockchain needed. I personally use cash less and less, and I know it's a trend in many (albeit not all) countries.
- teekert 9y ago
  The wallet app I use is the very definition of simplicity, both paying and receiving are as simple as scanning a QR code, many people already do that when paying with the European Ideal system. As for safety, central storage with insurance and a police that understands cyber crime will still have a role in a BTC(-like) economy.
  - simias 9y ago
    >The wallet app I use is the very definition of simplicity Simpler and more convenient than Visa? What if I buy something online and the other party scams me by not delivering the goods? There's more to the economy as a distributed ledger. If bitcoin was to replace fiat entirely it'd still need 3rd parties to settle disputes, provide insurance, distribute the risks etc... In other word banks, or "central storage with insurance" as you prefer to call them. The cost of the PoW algorithm is on top of all of that, not an alternative to it. It's not the problem it's solving. PoW is there to solve the "distributed ledger without trust" issue. Except that if you end up having to trust your bitcoins to a "central storage with insurance" anyway I'm not sure I see the added value over the current solution.
  - wila 9y ago
    The iDeal payment system is great. Unfortunately it is only used in the Netherlands. Not quite a European system yet.
GhostVII 9y ago
Unless Bitcoin becomes more efficient by orders of magnitude, it will still take far more energy than bank buildings, armored vehicles, etc. when everyone is using it.
lightedman 9y ago
"It doesn't sound like you really understand how Bitcoin works." Bitcoin as of right now uses over 5000x the energy of a credit card transaction. That's a flat-out waste that none of your suggestions could ameliorate - at a rate of ~325,000 homes worth of power per year and rising. It really sounds like you don't understand how Bitcoin works, nor how blatantly wasteful it is.
root_axis 9y ago
Banks are not going anywhere regardless of what happens with bitcoin. Physically printed money is not going anywhere; people need to be able to buy and sell when the power is out or the internet is down, bitcoin is something new, it will not replace existing financial infrastructure.

cellularmitosis 9y ago

How many megawatts are being consumed by electric heaters up north? Replacing those heaters with GPUs seems to be a “green” mining strategy.

mankyd 9y ago
All you're suggesting is replacing an electric heater with ... an electric heater. That's not "green". It is perhaps more practical, assuming one considers crypto-mining practical, but not green.
- derefr 9y ago
  It’s green if the 1:1 conversion of a “useless” heater into a money-generating heater, partially displaces the logistics pipeline of the US Mint, no? No matter how efficient it is to dig up/farm materials and process them into coins and bills, it can’t be 100% efficient.
  - mankyd 9y ago
    Until cryptocurrency proves that it can use less energy than our current system while being equally useful at the same time, it's hard to argue that it's an improvement. The same can be said of this new "Chia" network, but it's much easier to call it "green" in relative terms compared to other existing crypotcurrencies, at least.
obmelvin 9y ago
while computers give off heat, they are terribly inefficient creators of heat and in no way make a good replacement for dedicated electric heaters
- scatters 9y ago
  Computers are well over 99% efficient as heaters. The only energy they emit is a tiny amount of EM from LEDs, clock signal and the transformer, and a minuscule amount of fan noise (which is almost all absorbed by the immediate environment anyway). Electric heaters similarly emit EM and noise, so I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually less efficient as heaters than the average computer. It is possible for a heater to be over 100% efficient by removing heat from an external environment, but heat pumps require significant supporting infrastructure.

ojr 9y ago

it is not for nothing but for wealth protection, it is impossible to do a DDOS attack because you have to burn energy as a collateral, people will exploit anything when it comes to money so this is the only fair one

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

teekert 9y ago

If you think it's for nothing you don't understand bitcoin. If it would require no energy to create Bitcoin it would be completely useless. Moreover, banks also burn energy. Arguably Bitcoin is potentially even more green than other carriers of value because it can be completely produced from natural resources such as wind and sun, whereas mining gold or other precious metals often requires more damaging techniques. Can it be improved: Yes, wholeheartedly, for me BTC died a little when I wanted to give the money for a beer back in BTC to a friend, as we used to do in the old days... but soon I realized that the transfer cost is 2 times the cost of a beer. Somethings has to change.

te_chris 9y ago
The parent commenter literally discounted your 'even more green' argument in his comment but you still made it as a rebuttal? Ye gods.
m-p-3 9y ago
Yeah, isn't the heavy computational work what's provide value and security to the blockchain?
heptathorp 9y ago
> If it would require no energy to create Bitcoin it would be completely useless. Why would an alternative consensus mechanism that doesn't involve finding a low target hash make it useless?
mangecoeur 9y ago
It's for nothing as in, energy is consumed and nothing of value to society is produced. When a bank uses energy to run its services, those computers actually achieve something (like, for instance, managing to process more than a handful of transactions per second). Bitcoin's 'proof of work' is just a very complicated heating system. You are literally going through the whole rigmarole just to increase the entropy of the universe. Considering the effort we are putting in to squeeze more efficiency out of everything from washing machines to jumbo jets, this is kind of waste is pretty shocking.