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I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storag

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being. Of the 203 comments (at the time I am posting this), there are only two uses of the word "environment". One of these is about the "regulatory environment". Let's say Bitcoin, Ethereum, or another coin achieves an economic value & level of efficiency that makes mining an accessible investment for low-income people. Instead of server farms in Iceland, mining would be done by millions of people around the world. Some of the energy used for this would be renewable - but plenty of this is going to be coming from coal. In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute (there are plenty of these already), and there's no way to regulate that kind of decentralized network. (That's the whole point) My favorite summary of crypto is something along the lines of: leaving your car running while it solves sudoku puzzles in exchange for drugs. The drugs part isn't as relevant anymore, but the rest is. I'm not here with an answer. There are many problems that I think crypto can solve and I'm glad it is something on the horizon. But we need to talk about the environment.

throwaway415415 8y ago
There is no energy waste with Algorand's pos. It doesn't use bitcoin's pow. So yeah the environement doesn't matter here.
etherael 8y ago
No, we don't, because what it replaces is already much more energy intensive than it.
r1b 8y ago
I feel the same way about the amount of energy used to serve advertisements & send marketing emails.
- rspeer 8y ago
  That's not very much.
  - rplnt 8y ago
    Maybe they meant human energy (and potential).
  - handzbagz 8y ago
    That's literally all Facebook and Google do.
    - IanCal 8y ago
      It absolutely and obviously is not. They do significantly more than this, even if you wanted to (incorrectly) classify all of their products like this, they actually do more than that to entice people in.
      - IanCal 8y ago
        It seems remarkable to me that anyone can honestly hold the opinion that Google do not do anything other than serve adverts or send marketing emails. They have a search engine. Does that really need actually pointing out?
  - pandapower2 8y ago
    Serving advertisements is certainly very bandwidth and energy intensive at least when talking about news/media sites. The majority of the data that is getting pushed around during a page load is ad delivery or tracking code to inform the ad delivery. That is a lot of servers, load balancers etc etc working hard pushing around ad code. The actual text of a news article is a tiny part of the whole workload. Once the site is being loaded by your browser (ie you have downloaded all the JS and your machine has parsed a few MB of ad/tracking code), depending on the site's ad provider(s) there is potentially a real time auction going on for every ad slot on every page load. Multiple ad networks hold automated auctions within themselves which are rolled up into an auction between the winner of each of those auctions. There are literally banks of big beefy servers scattered around the world bidding on ad slots 24/7. A breath-taking amount of energy and bandwidth get used up to display an annoying 'sweater for dogs' ad next to a news article.
seanyesmunt 8y ago
> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute I think if anything it creates an incentive to use renewable energy. If miners are able to pay less for power, they make more money. As the cost of renewables continue to drop, more miners will move to it.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this. A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.
  - sparkie 8y ago
    Energy is created to meet demand. It is not consumed to meet supply. The exception to the latter is where excess energy is created because a method of energy production is created to meet peak demand, but generates more energy than is needed off-peak. While some of it could be stored, storage is inefficient and it is better to sell the excess energy cheap, so that you can continue to expand your energy production capabilities. Miners take advantage of off-peak energy excess, whilst at the same time, increasing the on-peak demand. This means that the provider of the cheap renewable energy source needs to invest in producing more, and cheaper energy to meet the higher peak demand.
    - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
      Nothing is created to meet demand. Goods are consumed based on supply, demand, and other factors.
      - sparkie 8y ago
        I work in the FMCG industry, and we treat supply is effectively unlimited. You will constantly have suppliers begging you to buy more, and to buy new products as they expand their range. However, as a trader, you will only ever buy what you expect to be able to sell. It would be pointless stocking up on goods which you aren't going to sell, especially in FMCG where you need to sell them before they go out of date, else you lose all of the money on your purchase. Sales are almost always the constraint under normal operation. Suppliers are attempting to create new demand by creating new markets. They usually offer freebies or discounts for new products in order to gain penetration, but it is then up to the market to decide whether that demand warrants them to continue producing the good. Without demand, they cannot continue to produce, because it would be a loss making endeavour. Electricity can be seen under the same lens. Like FMCG, it loses value with time rapidly, because it gets lost as heat through storage, and it also costs to store. An electricity producer is never going to create more than they expect that they can sell. They might produce a bit more than actual demand as the means to try and capture new markets for greater long-term profits. Mining is part of this - if they can capture a new market for bitcoin mining, they will generate profit in the long term by continuing to supply that demand.
fabianfabian 8y ago
The reports of bitcoin environmental damage are garbage. (https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...) Bitcoin mining will accelerate environmental friendly energy production because excess energy can be converted into Bitcoin instead of going to waste. Miners who don't use excess energy will be priced out and there is plenty of excess energy around the world.
SkyMarshal 8y ago
Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon, it’s an open secret in the industry.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  I don't have a citation either, but you can empirically determine this to be likely by just comparing the reward per kW spent and noticing that it has become less than the cost per kW of non-renewable energy.
- yqx 8y ago
  Independent of whether this is true (and I'm sceptical), Bitcoin mining requires computation (and lots of it). Computation requires power. Even if that power is renewable and would be difficult to use for things other than computation, there is still a huge demand for computation. Hence it's still a choice to spend that power on Bitcoin mining rather than other computation tasks such as simulations for scientific research.
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    You're asserting that there's a huge demand for remote offline computation by scientists, but no such market exists as far as I can tell. Cryptocurrencies might end up creating such a market eventually, since they're researching solutions to the problems of verifiable and secure decentralized computation (e.g. Golem) and incentive for file storage (e.g. Filecoin).
  - SkyMarshal 8y ago
    Yes that’s a thing. The problem for cryptocurrency is there’s no free lunch, and to gain significant security of a public ledger you have to spend some resources to do so. Bitcoin spends electricity, Chia.Network is working to spend unused disk space instead which is an interesting approach. Others like Algorand, Dfinity, Ethereum 2.0 etc are working to hopefully prove that rule can be overcome with less resource-hungry sources of cryptographic randomness. Hopefully they’ll succeed, but overcoming that rule would be a significant technical accomplishment, and not a given.
cjbprime 8y ago
I'm not sure whether this is true, but I expect that electricity-from-coal for Bitcoins isn't a massive problem because doing so is simply unprofitable: the electricity costs more than the value of the Bitcoins, so it would be irrational to do. I would expect that mining has become an arbitrage market that narrows in on the cheapest possible electricity anywhere in the world, and as such is dominated by excess "free" electricity from e.g. hydroelectric power that is generating more electricity than can be used (or transported).
- rspeer 8y ago
  Well, it's not true. Bitcoin has increased the demand for coal power in China. Bitcoin miners flocked to New York State for cheap natural gas power. Green energy is not necessarily the cheapest form of energy. If it were, it wouldn't even be _hard_ to stop burning fossil fuels and prevent climate change.
  - keymone 8y ago
    What’s your source? From what I’ve heard bitcoin mining farms in China are located in regions taking pretty much all energy from hydro.
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    Here's a NYT article about Bitcoin miners moving to New York State last year, but not for natural gas -- instead to a depressed ex-industrial town that has overprovisioned hydroelectric, as you'd expect: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyregion/bitcoin-mining-new-york-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyregion/bitcoin-mining-n... When did miners go to NYS for natural gas power? Are they still there, or did they get undercut by hydro from somewhere else in the world?
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    Green energy isn't the cheapest source everywhere in the world, but Bitcoin mining has no geographic restriction. Instead of picking a location and then choosing an energy source once there, as most of us do, they can first pick a green energy source and then choose a location anywhere in the world that provides it. Thus, there's no analogy to the challenge the rest of the world faces in moving away from fossil fuels.
yarrel 8y ago
It's weird how many people only want to talk about the environment when it's Bitcoin. Anyway - https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c900b7d5 https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c9...
- good-idea 8y ago
  I feel that people aren't talking about the environment enough when it comes to bitcoin (and many other topics). More in-depth research and knowledge on the matter (like this article, thank you for sharing) might be better known among those who spend more time reading about crypto, but most of the time environmental concerns are left out of the conversation. Problematic topics are usually omitted from discussions when they are complex or not obvious and in the forefront. The conversation goes elsewhere, and we turn our heads to follow it. From this article: > As with many dubious claims, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that much of it is underpinned by a single, leisurely researched source: Digiconomist. > In fact you’d be hard pressed to find many articles in the press pushing the environmentalist, anti-PoW narrative that do not link back to that one source. But hey, can you really blame them in today’s sound bite media environment? Research is hard and time consuming. The author's POV is a little different in that he is addressing anti-bitcoin alarmists - but, underlying this is the argument that research and shared knowledge on the topic is scarce. This is the kind of content I want to see more of. I'm happy this comment sparked some discussion here.
- mr_spothawk 8y ago
  it'd be great if more people would read this link... but, since that's not where we're at on this forum here's the synopsis: """ The Takeaways * Contrary to what you’ve heard in the media, bitcoin mining is not an environmental disaster. In fact, it is one of the cleanest billion-dollar industries on the planet. * The combined total bitcoin mining network draws less power than global gaming consoles running 4 hours per day. * Bitcoin mining is mainly powered on renewable energy, at levels more than four times higher than the global average (>77.6% vs ~18.2%). * Every year, enough hydro power is wasted in Yunnan and Sichuan alone to power the Bitcoin mining network many times over. * Bitcoin miners are highly mobile and can therefore serve as cornerstone demand for low-cost stranded renewables. * By increasing profitability and lowering reliance on subsidies, bitcoin mining can positively contribute to the development and scaling of renewable energy projects wherever conditions are the most favourable. """
ttoinou 8y ago
I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when comparing crypto and our current banking system. We all want a faster, more efficient, cheaper cryptocurrency, and those features are linked to its ecological efficiency.
- root_axis 8y ago
  There is simply no comparison. The banking system is many many, many orders of magnitude more efficient and to suggest otherwise is frustratingly disingenuous.
  - keymone 8y ago
    No it isn’t, banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy but also is open for corruption, is run by greedy bankers that governments have to bail out all the time for taxpayers money, etc, etc. current financial system is many orders of magnitude more expensive and dangerous. Suggesting otherwise is not just disingenuous - it is malicious.
    - root_axis 8y ago
      > banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy It uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet. Bitcoin dubiously services the needs of a handful. This is so obvious that I suspect you're not arguing in good faith.
      - keymone 8y ago
        Yeah, way to miss the point. Bitcoin is money where security is expressed in terms of energy. Banking system uses energy and military to achieve the same job. Do i really need to elaborate further?
        root_axis 8y ago
        I am not missing the point, you're moving the goalposts You: "the banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy" Me: "it uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet".
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute (there are plenty of these already), and there's no way to regulate that kind of decentralized network. (That's the whole point) And that's also the solution. The reason people are interested in decentralized trust is that the existing system of centralized trust is a dumpster fire. Politicians want to use the banking system to attack their enemies, but not all politicians are good and not all of their enemies are bad, and there is a vast amount of collateral damage. You can't get your payments processed if you're a terrorist, but also if you're suspected of terrorism without any real evidence, or suspected of political heresy without any real evidence, or suspected of supporting someone else who is suspected of political heresy without any real evidence or due process etc. People who are afraid to reveal their identities because they have powerful adversaries are impeded from raising money for their cause, or even just making a living, and it's really not obvious that this results in less radicalization. Things that make people angry and scared generally don't. But it's all caused by AML/KYC laws. The promise of Bitcoin is that you can't have your accounts locked out and your funds stolen because a lazy or corrupt politician in a foreign country leaned on a bank that leaned on a corporation that decided your business was worth less to them than the effort required to resist, regardless of your guilt or innocence. So now we have a choice. Either we stop using the banking system as a tool for surveillance and political pressure, which cuts the legs off the demand for cryptocurrency, or we keep trying to do that and then all the innocent and guilty people who it was impacting get together to build a workaround, and the rules are ineffective regardless but now people burn an extra billion tons of coal.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  I find it baffling how much power Visa and MasterCard have over people's lives. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be banned from using or benefiting from one of them.
- Mengkudulangsat 8y ago
  This is my primary motivator for supporting Bitcoin. No one supports criminal activities, but we underestimate how much AML/KYC laws have produced a chilling effect on an open society. The relative ease with which your assets can be frozen, compared with how difficult and opaque it is to get them unfrozen; is something I have witnessed many times and I feel is absolutely unfair. This leads to self-censorship and dissuades the public free exchange of ideas. If Bitcoin can eventually fund for example; a pro-democracy movement in China or a pro-secular movement in the Middle-East, then it is definitely worth all its flaws.
darawk 8y ago
> I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) You know that one of the major motivations for Proof of Stake is environmental, right? Proof of stake eliminates the energy waste problem. That is one of its major motivating factors.
- good-idea 8y ago
  yes, definitely, and that's why I'm excited about it. What I was writing about when I posted that comment was more about how the environmental impact is often just left out of the conversation - and I was surprised that the original article didn't even give it a mention.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Ah, I guess I just assumed it was implied at this point. People in the space consider it pretty important, I think, and it's well understood as one of the principal motivations for the switch to proof of stake.
- keymone 8y ago
  Proof of stake may not involve energy costs directly but it has far worse consequences - costs are just shifted into political plane. Which is essentially what bitcoin was designed to avoid. You do know that idea of pos is older than PoW, yet nobody cared for it exactly because you end up with financial system run by politicians - exactly where you started.
  - darawk 8y ago
    I see people say this sometimes, and then provide no real evidence that it is at all true. PoS systems exist now, they don't have political problems to speak of any moreso than PoW coins. I see no reason to think that PoS would induce any sort of great political struggle that PoW wouldn't.
celticninja 8y ago
I dont think we have any real evidence that cryptocurrencies are predominantly using polluting methods of power generation. The entire argument falls over if it is all renewable energy.
- Scarblac 8y ago
  Then it's still using up renewable energy that could have been used on something else. Electricity is mostly fungible.
  - keymone 8y ago
    Energy is a product on the market. Whoever wants to pay for it is free to do it, what’s your problem? Besides you seem to be missing one important fact about energy - it is very expensive to store much of it, which is why many bitcoin farms use up available excessive energy because that way it makes them more profitable and the grid more stable.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      > Energy is a product on the market. Whoever wants to pay for it is free to do it, what’s your problem? Carbon output, on a global scale, which is already hard enough to keep under control. We don't need yet another massive source of energy use, particularly one that gives us virtually nothing in return.
  - saint_fiasco 8y ago
    How is electricity fungible? Conductors waste power proportional to the distance. Bitcoin, like aluminum before it, can be used to "export" electricity from places where it's cheap and hopefully renewable, like a hydro power plant.
  - mightybyte 8y ago
    This is decidedly not true. Electricity transmission has substantial losses over long distances. Check out this article for more information about how the crypto mining industry uses electricity. https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...
beiller 8y ago
Since many people including me compare bitcoin to gold in terms of it as an investment that is not based on any real-world usage, how does the environmental impact of mining bitcoin compare to the environmental impact of the total amount of gold mined from the earth that is only used for investment purposes?
- rplnt 8y ago
  Is that a real question? If so, I don't know the answer (I can guess that gold is better per value, worse in total). But phrasing it like this makes it sound like that would be a good excuse to pursue crypto anyway.
  - beiller 8y ago
    It is a good reason to pursue it anyways. Its environmental impacts compared to actual mining of the earth is little. And we can't just say that energy usage by humanity in Kilowatt hour is inherently evil. Why not power the mining equipment using nuclear power? Humanity in my opinion won't use energy at some status quo into the future. I predict we will use more and more as we venture into the solar system, and we may see energy as following some sort of Moore's law into the future in terms of cost and local environmental impact. Wouldn't that change the situation?
coinward 8y ago
you've got it wrong mate. Bitcoin just reinforces the existing incentive to capture and utilize energy as efficiently as possible. The reality is closer to Bitcoin leading the push toward renewable energy than it is to Bitcoin destroying the environment. Your thinking is regressive
pcstl 8y ago
As far as I know, large bitcoin-mining setups usually include their own solar farms (or other energy production facilities), as it is cheaper to generate your own electricity than buying it from the grid.
SilasX 8y ago
No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided, the use of (harmful) energy to run bitcoin miners doesn't justify its environmental cost. Which is great, but I could say the same thing of Ferraris for show-off producers in LA, or Hello Kitty backpacks. What justifies focusing our attention on Bitcoin per se, and not those? Do you plan to publish a universal, agreed-upon list of things whose social value doesn't justify its environmental cost? The real problem is energy users not bearing the full environmental costs of what they do. The thing is, we have a well known solution to that: cap the total carbon emissions, or tax them in a way that reflects the harm. Yes, Bitcoin creates an incentive to use energy. And it will be spent by miners who weigh the costs of the energy against the value of the Bitcoins produced. Like every other good on the market, it will respond to incentives created by laws. If the damage of energy isn't priced in, then there will be too many resources spent on mining relative to the environmental cost. But this is true of every other good as well. All Bitcoin does is amplify the problems of the existing failure to appropriately price energy. But this is true of literally every other energy-using good in existence! There is no reason to single out Bitcoin. To blame it for environmental problems is special pleading or privileging a hypothesis. "I don't want wiggins at my university. They cheat!" 'Well, a certain percentage of any demographic is going to ch--' "Irrelevant! We're talking about wiggins!" EDIT: Should probably add the disclaimer that I'm long Bitcoin.
- aidanlister 8y ago
  Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people. Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresses [2], most of which contain less than $100 [3]. So what are we actually getting for all this energy usage, and couldn't we get that same result for a fraction of the energy usage? [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.... [3] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses...
keymone 8y ago
Your understanding of why bitcoin uses energy is completely skewed. Bitcoin doesn’t use energy to process transactions or ensure a functioning p2p network, bitcoin is the first time in history of money, that money can be expressed as energy units. Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy, or more specifically bitcoin is as much energy as people value the function and security of money. Trying to reduce it is absolutely misguided - if you figure out a thousand times more efficient way to generate sha hashes (mine bitcoin), it won’t matter in the slightest - bitcoin mining difficulty will rise thousandfold and exactly the same amount of energy will be spent going forward.
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  > Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy Or a little more precisely a bitcoin is a provable record that a significant quantity of free energy was once turned into heat. So it does use energy, in the creation and once it is created, that energy is wasted unless the created also needed to heat something.
  - keymone 8y ago
    energy would be wasted if it wasn't possible to prove the thing you said bitcoin proves. proof is the product of spent energy, therefore it's not wasted.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      ...which is a trivial result, and could be reproduced by simple trust (which is essentially free)
      - keymone 8y ago
        that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Trust is dangerous, we’ve been dealing with trust based financial system failures for hundreds of not thousands of years.
vb6lives 8y ago
What is the environmental cost of building and running physical banks?
netsa 8y ago
Anyone still believe this shit after the bitcoin pyramid?
konschubert 8y ago
The energy bill is being paid by the users and holders of the currency. It’s an expense that will make bitcoin lose against its more energy-efficient competition. Personal plug: https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake-will-kill-proof-of-work.html https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake...
dpacmittal 8y ago
How much energy does our collective banking infrastructure use? I'm pretty sure the number would be far bigger.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  I'd like to see comparison with energy VS monetary volumes VS risk...
porpoisely 8y ago
In the greater scheme of things, how much energy use is mining bitcoin responsible for? 0.000000000001% of the world's energy use? I used to be very skeptical of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I'm even more skeptical of the recent anti-crypto propaganda all over social media. 3 years ago, crypto was going to save the world. Now, we are talking about environment? What gives? What's with the relentless anti-crypto propaganda?
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Way off. 32TWh last year in the US. As much energy as Denmark. Its huge and growing alarmingly. That's what this whole conversation is about.
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  Around 0.02% according to Wikipedia. It’s not nothing.
- borntyping 8y ago
  Bitcoin is currently estimated to be responsible for ~0.21%, more than either Hong Kong or Iraq use [1]. Criticisms of Bitcoin have been around as long as the hype - cryptocurrencies were never going to save the world. [1]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Lerc 8y ago
Bitcoin does use a lot of electricity, exactly how much is hard to judge, most of the shock headlines seem to trace their way back to Alex De Vries who uses some questionable assumptions. He seems to calculate the energy use by taking the price of BitCoin and guessing how much profit is being made by miners and how much they pay for electricity. Nevertheless it is safe to assume that the energy use is significant, even at half or a tenth of Digiconomist estimates it is still quite large. It is broadly true that the energy use of Bitcoin is related to the value of Bitcoin, via the mining reward. The arguments against the energy use that are based upon the merits of Bitcoin are not valid. If Bitcoin is useless and doomed it stands to reason that the energy consumed is a waste, but that is true of anything. To argue specifically against the energy consumption you have to make the case that it is not worth the cost even if Bitcoin is a success. If you assume that the costs and profit for mining are more-or-less static then the mining network will use roughly the same amount of energy if Bitcoin doubles in value every reward halving. That flattens out to about a 20% increase in value every year. To accept that the energy use will continue at this rate you would have to also accept that Bitcoin will increase in value at that rate. To date Bitcoin _has_ increased in value quicker than that, which is why the energy use has grown so high. Hardly anyone would argue that the increase in value will be sustained perpetually. If just holds its value the mining reward and power consumption will reduce accordingly. If Bitcoin ends up worth pennies, the consumption will be minima. Furthermore, Bitcoin mining adds options to _how_ electricity is generated and consumed. Being able to convert electricity into money not only acts as a stimulus for cheaper energy generation but as a motivator for building new capacity. We are already at a point where Solar and Wind are becoming the choice not only for Environmental but also Economic reasons. Any new power plant needs customers, those customers take time to appear. If a power plant sold excess generation at cost to mining facilities the investment required to build a new plant is greatly reduced. This presents the possibility of developing nations introducing power generation to areas that currently have little or none. If Bitcoin did end up stimulating the increase of carbon neutral capacity and efficiency, then people in the future might end up making the argument that Bitcoin ended up carbon negative.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
The best way to make a service provider care about the environment is if trees can somehow be the customer. A big part of a decentralized database's design is its protection against DDoSing. Proof of stake is very low environmental cost but you'll discover that the proof of stake networks with low fees can be DDoSed extremely cheaply. Other networks use the networking architecture to protect against DDoSing. > amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem Yes, it is. Although I'd like to say that if bitcoin energy use has a crowding-out effect, like an electric car does, then I'd favor mining bitcoin resulting in more hydropower dams being built than people doing business that can't be centralized like mining can and requiring liquid (dirty) fuels. Datacenters as a whole can be made really efficient and are, in my opinion, a decent investment that can be repurposed better than e.g. an office building full of people doing traditional banking. So it's not super straightforward even if on net we don't need cryptocurrency miners and I of course agree that it's bad for the environment.
bearmcbearsly 8y ago
You mention proof of work vs proof of stake, and then two sentences later you claim that nobody is paying to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. The whole point of proof of stake is to avoid the energy waste that proof of work requires to secure a blockchain. It's not just a technical challenge -- it's one potential solution to very problem you're describing. Is proof of stake actually going to work at scale? I don't know for sure, and I don't think anybody else really does -- but the point is that not only are people talking about the environment, they're actively working on solutions.
craigc 8y ago
I am not going to make the argument that Bitcoin is energy efficient cause I know that it isn’t, but it is designed to be inefficient on purpose in order to provide trust in a decentralized way. Does that make it a good use of energy? That is debatable, but energy is used for all sorts of things. How much energy is spent producing weapons, bombs, tanks, etc.? How much is spent producing addictive drugs? Cigarettes? Non-recyclable plastics? How much is spent on illegal surveillance of individuals? Why is it that no one ever talks about these examples? It is very likely that Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, etc. each use orders of magnitude more energy than Bitcoin does yet no one ever talks about that either. Bitcoin gets trashed because people believe that the energy used to run the Bitcoin network is wasteful, but the energy used for other things is not. I am sure that opinion is shared by the majority of folks here as well, but that is what it is. It is an opinion. Does Facebook really improve our lives in a way that can totally justify the energy needed to run it?
DigiMortal 8y ago
Dude, who cares about the energy used. Just make MORE energy
altern8 8y ago
Banks do a LOT more damage than computers running.If cryptocurrencies get them out of the picture, it's well worth it.
h1d 8y ago
Since the point of PoW is to consume your limited resource exclusively for it to avoid anyone from cheating the race, you can try to come up with a way to waste money in a fair way without environmental impacts.
DigiMortal 8y ago
The only reality for the human race is space expansion. Make more energy.
- johnisgood 8y ago
  Or... ITER.
johnisgood 8y ago
> My favorite summary of crypto is something along the lines of: leaving your car running while it solves sudoku puzzles in exchange for drugs. The drugs part isn't as relevant anymore, but the rest is. Seriously? By the way, the negative environmental impacts will be significantly reduced after ITER is ready.
- foxrob92 8y ago
  You're saying that we just need to make fusion a reality in order for bitcoin to be environmentally friendly?
  - johnisgood 8y ago
    I am saying it will not be an issue in terms of environmental impact after fusion becomes a reality, as far as electricity goes.
    - foxrob92 8y ago
      I mean that's a bit of a tautology isn't it? Once we have clean energy production for everything, bitcoin will have minimal environmental impact? That's ignoring the fact that fusion is still a very long way from commercial availability.
      - johnisgood 8y ago
        Why is it a tautology, and why would it be ignoring the fact? I am not. I am only stating that it will be less of an issue, because well, it will be... that is, if everything turns out to be working as ITER "predicted". Isn't this correct? We are aiming for "cheaper" and "greener" electricity, some even call it "infinite electricity".
        foxrob92 8y ago
        Maybe tautology is the wrong word. I just feel like it's a bit ridiculous to downplay the environmental impacts of bitcoin mining by saying "it'll be fine when we have fusion!" because we don't have fusion today, and it's likely to be a very long time before fusion is commercially available. Also, your initial comment said: >By the way, the negative environmental impacts will be significantly reduced after ITER is ready. ITER is not a commercial reactor. Even after it's construction is completed (expected to be, what, 2025?), we still have a long way to go before you can use fusion power to mine bitcoin. Meanwhile, climate change is happening now. We need to be reducing emissions now.
resters 8y ago
Isn't the environmental concern temporary? Once all the bitcoin has been mined, the computational requirements for maintenance of the network will certainly decrease significantly. One could argue that Bitcoin should reach the limit sooner, so that mining difficulty would not increase so much, but the mining incentive is mainly a bootstrapping strategy for a currency. Now that everyone is familiar with how the ecosystem works, another coin could launch that was identical in every way except a shorter period of time before all coins were mined.
- AgentME 8y ago
  The energy cost isn't exactly in creating bitcoins. The energy cost is in securing the network against people doing 51%-attacks, and bitcoins are set to be minted out of thin air and transaction fees are paid out in order to incentivize people to protect the network. Mining will still be necessary after all bitcoins are minted, or else anyone could 51%-attack the network and double-spend bitcoins.
  - resters 8y ago
    What percentage of CPU power do you think will be mining bitcoin 5 days before vs 5 days after all of the coins have been mined? If you think the amount will be roughly equal, then you are predicting that transactions that end up in blocks will need to voluntarily contribute an amount equivalent to the block reward in order for the system to continue functioning. This seems unlikely to me.
    - AgentME 8y ago
      Transactions already include fees today. The minting rate of new bitcoins goes down over time, so when minting finally ends, it won't be a sudden change to the mining rewards. It's expected that the mining reward will be mostly transaction fees by the end, so the mining reward will only be a little affected by the minting being stopped.
      - resters 8y ago
cdestroyer 8y ago
nothing triggers me more than the superficial environmental concerns people bring up while talking about bitcoin. Very hypocritical.
scarejunba 8y ago
All we have to do is price externalities into power generation and we’ll be fine.
- AgentME 8y ago
  Every country would need to, or else all the cryptocurrency mining will just happen where the externalities aren't priced in.
mightybyte 8y ago
The "blockchain is bad for the environment" argument has been shown to be grossly uninformed and overstated. It is pretty much all based on one source that has been thoroughly discredited. See this article for more information: https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...
naasking 8y ago
> But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being. How much energy was used to establish and perpetuate the existing fiat currency infrastructure? Has any such comparative analysis been done? Without such an analysis, it seems a little premature to unilaterally declare that bitcoin is a real problem by comparison.
- Nursie 8y ago
  This canard is tiresome. The exiting infrastructure does far, far more than cryptocurrencies do, including credit, investment, protection of funds and all sorts of stuff.
  - naasking 8y ago
    And you think the existing infrastructure for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies cannot support such services? The smart contract languages were designed for such things as far as I understand.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      Currently? No I don't believe that this infrastructure comes close to providing the functions of the financial industry, and as such the energy comparison are completely spurious. The smart contracts languages can have whatever intent they like, the fact is that comparing the power use of a full financial system to something which is effectively operating as a bad payment processor is so wrong it's funny.
      - naasking 8y ago
        You seem to be missing the fact that the infrastructure in place is sufficient to not only specify but also enforce the properties needed for all the functions you describe. So while you call the comparison spurious, the fact is that no additional energy would be required to achieve the functions you think are missing. So the comparison is not as spurious as you imply.
really3452 8y ago
On the other hand I am shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing the cost of maintaining the US dollar as a currency. Specifically, it takes a huge amount of energy to maintain the military and police power that backs the US dollar.
chemmail 8y ago
You want to help the environment? Then stop consuming totally. Do you eat things? It is wasteful, just drink ocean water. Do you use any form of entertainment at all? Movies, games, songs? TOTALLY WASTEFUL for the environment. DOES NOT HELP HUMANITY AT ALL. Time to go live in a hole and die, because living is about consuming and waste.
nonbel 8y ago
>"But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being ... But we need to talk about the environment." Great, put it in context then: A. What is the total energy content of the resources consumed each year? B. What percent of A is lost to "waste" such as powerplant and grid inefficiencies? C. What percent of the remaining is spent on crypto? D. What other things are consuming the same order of magnitude or higher than crypto? E. Which energy use described in D is easiest to make more efficient without harming the purpose/quality? Then improve #1 discovered in E until it is below #2, then start work on #2, etc. I think you will find stuff like getting everyone to use i.reddit.com instead of reddit.com and netflix to stop their annoying auto-playing previews should come before anything to do with crypto.
antidesitter 8y ago
Actually, cryptocurrency mining serves an environmentally-friendly function in energy markets because it absorbs excess capacity in the geographic regions where mining is done (i.e. where electricity is cheap) and allows it to be “exported” rather than go to waste. Interesting stuff.
- Gpetrium 8y ago
  Did you know that some governments subsidize energy prices to make it easier for their populace to pay the bills and to encourage businesses to come to their country? If cryptocurrency mining goes to countries with subsidized energy and they become part of maxing out that country's energy output, the country may be forced to create new energy sources to provide to the population (aka, higher environmental impact + cost). This push may be partially blamed by the cryptocurrency servers. In other words, not all cryptocurrency mining servers as utilizing just the extra capacity casually created by a city/state.
  - dorgo 8y ago
    > and to encourage businesses to come to their country? Bitcoin mining is a business and it comes to the country. Goal achieved.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    > the country may be forced to create new energy sources to provide to the population Do you have any evidence that this is happening and, if so, that its costs outweigh the utility of energy exported to the rest of the world?
dorgo 8y ago
Environmental costs are( to some minor degree ) included in the energy costs and payed by Bitcoin users. Markets tend to favor efficiency and bitcoins compets with less energy intensive crypto currencies. In the end, the most cost-efficient project should win - which will also reduce environmental costs. This process is slowed down by the fact that only a tiny part of the environmental costs is represented in the energy costs.
Natanael_L 8y ago
Coal is to expensive to use as a power source for mining, don't worry about that one
5partan 8y ago
If you care about the environment the best you can do is to stop using bitcoin and become vegan. And don’t use the Internet. Every single human wastes energy. Make something more efficient and it will gain currency, thus harming the environment even more. Technology and environment just don’t mix. You can talk as much as you want, but unless you become a full fledged Amish, that talk will always be hypocritical.

throwaway415415 8y ago

There is no energy waste with Algorand's pos. It doesn't use bitcoin's pow. So yeah the environement doesn't matter here.

etherael 8y ago

No, we don't, because what it replaces is already much more energy intensive than it.

r1b 8y ago

I feel the same way about the amount of energy used to serve advertisements & send marketing emails.

rspeer 8y ago
That's not very much.
- rplnt 8y ago
  Maybe they meant human energy (and potential).
- handzbagz 8y ago
  That's literally all Facebook and Google do.
  - IanCal 8y ago
    It absolutely and obviously is not. They do significantly more than this, even if you wanted to (incorrectly) classify all of their products like this, they actually do more than that to entice people in.
    - IanCal 8y ago
      It seems remarkable to me that anyone can honestly hold the opinion that Google do not do anything other than serve adverts or send marketing emails. They have a search engine. Does that really need actually pointing out?
- pandapower2 8y ago
  Serving advertisements is certainly very bandwidth and energy intensive at least when talking about news/media sites. The majority of the data that is getting pushed around during a page load is ad delivery or tracking code to inform the ad delivery. That is a lot of servers, load balancers etc etc working hard pushing around ad code. The actual text of a news article is a tiny part of the whole workload. Once the site is being loaded by your browser (ie you have downloaded all the JS and your machine has parsed a few MB of ad/tracking code), depending on the site's ad provider(s) there is potentially a real time auction going on for every ad slot on every page load. Multiple ad networks hold automated auctions within themselves which are rolled up into an auction between the winner of each of those auctions. There are literally banks of big beefy servers scattered around the world bidding on ad slots 24/7. A breath-taking amount of energy and bandwidth get used up to display an annoying 'sweater for dogs' ad next to a news article.

seanyesmunt 8y ago

> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute I think if anything it creates an incentive to use renewable energy. If miners are able to pay less for power, they make more money. As the cost of renewables continue to drop, more miners will move to it.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this. A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.
- sparkie 8y ago
  Energy is created to meet demand. It is not consumed to meet supply. The exception to the latter is where excess energy is created because a method of energy production is created to meet peak demand, but generates more energy than is needed off-peak. While some of it could be stored, storage is inefficient and it is better to sell the excess energy cheap, so that you can continue to expand your energy production capabilities. Miners take advantage of off-peak energy excess, whilst at the same time, increasing the on-peak demand. This means that the provider of the cheap renewable energy source needs to invest in producing more, and cheaper energy to meet the higher peak demand.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    Nothing is created to meet demand. Goods are consumed based on supply, demand, and other factors.
    - sparkie 8y ago
      I work in the FMCG industry, and we treat supply is effectively unlimited. You will constantly have suppliers begging you to buy more, and to buy new products as they expand their range. However, as a trader, you will only ever buy what you expect to be able to sell. It would be pointless stocking up on goods which you aren't going to sell, especially in FMCG where you need to sell them before they go out of date, else you lose all of the money on your purchase. Sales are almost always the constraint under normal operation. Suppliers are attempting to create new demand by creating new markets. They usually offer freebies or discounts for new products in order to gain penetration, but it is then up to the market to decide whether that demand warrants them to continue producing the good. Without demand, they cannot continue to produce, because it would be a loss making endeavour. Electricity can be seen under the same lens. Like FMCG, it loses value with time rapidly, because it gets lost as heat through storage, and it also costs to store. An electricity producer is never going to create more than they expect that they can sell. They might produce a bit more than actual demand as the means to try and capture new markets for greater long-term profits. Mining is part of this - if they can capture a new market for bitcoin mining, they will generate profit in the long term by continuing to supply that demand.

fabianfabian 8y ago

The reports of bitcoin environmental damage are garbage. (https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...) Bitcoin mining will accelerate environmental friendly energy production because excess energy can be converted into Bitcoin instead of going to waste. Miners who don't use excess energy will be priced out and there is plenty of excess energy around the world.

SkyMarshal 8y ago

Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon, it’s an open secret in the industry.

cjbprime 8y ago
I don't have a citation either, but you can empirically determine this to be likely by just comparing the reward per kW spent and noticing that it has become less than the cost per kW of non-renewable energy.
yqx 8y ago
Independent of whether this is true (and I'm sceptical), Bitcoin mining requires computation (and lots of it). Computation requires power. Even if that power is renewable and would be difficult to use for things other than computation, there is still a huge demand for computation. Hence it's still a choice to spend that power on Bitcoin mining rather than other computation tasks such as simulations for scientific research.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  You're asserting that there's a huge demand for remote offline computation by scientists, but no such market exists as far as I can tell. Cryptocurrencies might end up creating such a market eventually, since they're researching solutions to the problems of verifiable and secure decentralized computation (e.g. Golem) and incentive for file storage (e.g. Filecoin).
- SkyMarshal 8y ago
  Yes that’s a thing. The problem for cryptocurrency is there’s no free lunch, and to gain significant security of a public ledger you have to spend some resources to do so. Bitcoin spends electricity, Chia.Network is working to spend unused disk space instead which is an interesting approach. Others like Algorand, Dfinity, Ethereum 2.0 etc are working to hopefully prove that rule can be overcome with less resource-hungry sources of cryptographic randomness. Hopefully they’ll succeed, but overcoming that rule would be a significant technical accomplishment, and not a given.

cjbprime 8y ago

I'm not sure whether this is true, but I expect that electricity-from-coal for Bitcoins isn't a massive problem because doing so is simply unprofitable: the electricity costs more than the value of the Bitcoins, so it would be irrational to do. I would expect that mining has become an arbitrage market that narrows in on the cheapest possible electricity anywhere in the world, and as such is dominated by excess "free" electricity from e.g. hydroelectric power that is generating more electricity than can be used (or transported).

rspeer 8y ago
Well, it's not true. Bitcoin has increased the demand for coal power in China. Bitcoin miners flocked to New York State for cheap natural gas power. Green energy is not necessarily the cheapest form of energy. If it were, it wouldn't even be _hard_ to stop burning fossil fuels and prevent climate change.
- keymone 8y ago
  What’s your source? From what I’ve heard bitcoin mining farms in China are located in regions taking pretty much all energy from hydro.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  Here's a NYT article about Bitcoin miners moving to New York State last year, but not for natural gas -- instead to a depressed ex-industrial town that has overprovisioned hydroelectric, as you'd expect: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyregion/bitcoin-mining-new-york-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyregion/bitcoin-mining-n... When did miners go to NYS for natural gas power? Are they still there, or did they get undercut by hydro from somewhere else in the world?
- cjbprime 8y ago
  Green energy isn't the cheapest source everywhere in the world, but Bitcoin mining has no geographic restriction. Instead of picking a location and then choosing an energy source once there, as most of us do, they can first pick a green energy source and then choose a location anywhere in the world that provides it. Thus, there's no analogy to the challenge the rest of the world faces in moving away from fossil fuels.

yarrel 8y ago

It's weird how many people only want to talk about the environment when it's Bitcoin. Anyway - https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c900b7d5 https://medium.com/coinshares/beware-of-lazy-research-c828c9...

good-idea 8y ago
I feel that people aren't talking about the environment enough when it comes to bitcoin (and many other topics). More in-depth research and knowledge on the matter (like this article, thank you for sharing) might be better known among those who spend more time reading about crypto, but most of the time environmental concerns are left out of the conversation. Problematic topics are usually omitted from discussions when they are complex or not obvious and in the forefront. The conversation goes elsewhere, and we turn our heads to follow it. From this article: > As with many dubious claims, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that much of it is underpinned by a single, leisurely researched source: Digiconomist. > In fact you’d be hard pressed to find many articles in the press pushing the environmentalist, anti-PoW narrative that do not link back to that one source. But hey, can you really blame them in today’s sound bite media environment? Research is hard and time consuming. The author's POV is a little different in that he is addressing anti-bitcoin alarmists - but, underlying this is the argument that research and shared knowledge on the topic is scarce. This is the kind of content I want to see more of. I'm happy this comment sparked some discussion here.
mr_spothawk 8y ago
it'd be great if more people would read this link... but, since that's not where we're at on this forum here's the synopsis: """ The Takeaways * Contrary to what you’ve heard in the media, bitcoin mining is not an environmental disaster. In fact, it is one of the cleanest billion-dollar industries on the planet. * The combined total bitcoin mining network draws less power than global gaming consoles running 4 hours per day. * Bitcoin mining is mainly powered on renewable energy, at levels more than four times higher than the global average (>77.6% vs ~18.2%). * Every year, enough hydro power is wasted in Yunnan and Sichuan alone to power the Bitcoin mining network many times over. * Bitcoin miners are highly mobile and can therefore serve as cornerstone demand for low-cost stranded renewables. * By increasing profitability and lowering reliance on subsidies, bitcoin mining can positively contribute to the development and scaling of renewable energy projects wherever conditions are the most favourable. """

ttoinou 8y ago

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when comparing crypto and our current banking system. We all want a faster, more efficient, cheaper cryptocurrency, and those features are linked to its ecological efficiency.

root_axis 8y ago
There is simply no comparison. The banking system is many many, many orders of magnitude more efficient and to suggest otherwise is frustratingly disingenuous.
- keymone 8y ago
  No it isn’t, banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy but also is open for corruption, is run by greedy bankers that governments have to bail out all the time for taxpayers money, etc, etc. current financial system is many orders of magnitude more expensive and dangerous. Suggesting otherwise is not just disingenuous - it is malicious.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    > banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy It uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet. Bitcoin dubiously services the needs of a handful. This is so obvious that I suspect you're not arguing in good faith.
    - keymone 8y ago
      Yeah, way to miss the point. Bitcoin is money where security is expressed in terms of energy. Banking system uses energy and military to achieve the same job. Do i really need to elaborate further?
      - root_axis 8y ago
        I am not missing the point, you're moving the goalposts You: "the banking system is idiotically expensive using much more raw energy" Me: "it uses much more raw energy because it services the financial needs of most of the planet".

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> In that sense, the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute (there are plenty of these already), and there's no way to regulate that kind of decentralized network. (That's the whole point) And that's also the solution. The reason people are interested in decentralized trust is that the existing system of centralized trust is a dumpster fire. Politicians want to use the banking system to attack their enemies, but not all politicians are good and not all of their enemies are bad, and there is a vast amount of collateral damage. You can't get your payments processed if you're a terrorist, but also if you're suspected of terrorism without any real evidence, or suspected of political heresy without any real evidence, or suspected of supporting someone else who is suspected of political heresy without any real evidence or due process etc. People who are afraid to reveal their identities because they have powerful adversaries are impeded from raising money for their cause, or even just making a living, and it's really not obvious that this results in less radicalization. Things that make people angry and scared generally don't. But it's all caused by AML/KYC laws. The promise of Bitcoin is that you can't have your accounts locked out and your funds stolen because a lazy or corrupt politician in a foreign country leaned on a bank that leaned on a corporation that decided your business was worth less to them than the effort required to resist, regardless of your guilt or innocence. So now we have a choice. Either we stop using the banking system as a tool for surveillance and political pressure, which cuts the legs off the demand for cryptocurrency, or we keep trying to do that and then all the innocent and guilty people who it was impacting get together to build a workaround, and the rules are ineffective regardless but now people burn an extra billion tons of coal.

Mirioron 8y ago
I find it baffling how much power Visa and MasterCard have over people's lives. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be banned from using or benefiting from one of them.
Mengkudulangsat 8y ago
This is my primary motivator for supporting Bitcoin. No one supports criminal activities, but we underestimate how much AML/KYC laws have produced a chilling effect on an open society. The relative ease with which your assets can be frozen, compared with how difficult and opaque it is to get them unfrozen; is something I have witnessed many times and I feel is absolutely unfair. This leads to self-censorship and dissuades the public free exchange of ideas. If Bitcoin can eventually fund for example; a pro-democracy movement in China or a pro-secular movement in the Middle-East, then it is definitely worth all its flaws.

darawk 8y ago

> I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) You know that one of the major motivations for Proof of Stake is environmental, right? Proof of stake eliminates the energy waste problem. That is one of its major motivating factors.

good-idea 8y ago
yes, definitely, and that's why I'm excited about it. What I was writing about when I posted that comment was more about how the environmental impact is often just left out of the conversation - and I was surprised that the original article didn't even give it a mention.
- darawk 8y ago
  Ah, I guess I just assumed it was implied at this point. People in the space consider it pretty important, I think, and it's well understood as one of the principal motivations for the switch to proof of stake.
keymone 8y ago
Proof of stake may not involve energy costs directly but it has far worse consequences - costs are just shifted into political plane. Which is essentially what bitcoin was designed to avoid. You do know that idea of pos is older than PoW, yet nobody cared for it exactly because you end up with financial system run by politicians - exactly where you started.
- darawk 8y ago
  I see people say this sometimes, and then provide no real evidence that it is at all true. PoS systems exist now, they don't have political problems to speak of any moreso than PoW coins. I see no reason to think that PoS would induce any sort of great political struggle that PoW wouldn't.

celticninja 8y ago

I dont think we have any real evidence that cryptocurrencies are predominantly using polluting methods of power generation. The entire argument falls over if it is all renewable energy.

Scarblac 8y ago
Then it's still using up renewable energy that could have been used on something else. Electricity is mostly fungible.
- keymone 8y ago
  Energy is a product on the market. Whoever wants to pay for it is free to do it, what’s your problem? Besides you seem to be missing one important fact about energy - it is very expensive to store much of it, which is why many bitcoin farms use up available excessive energy because that way it makes them more profitable and the grid more stable.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    > Energy is a product on the market. Whoever wants to pay for it is free to do it, what’s your problem? Carbon output, on a global scale, which is already hard enough to keep under control. We don't need yet another massive source of energy use, particularly one that gives us virtually nothing in return.
- saint_fiasco 8y ago
  How is electricity fungible? Conductors waste power proportional to the distance. Bitcoin, like aluminum before it, can be used to "export" electricity from places where it's cheap and hopefully renewable, like a hydro power plant.
- mightybyte 8y ago
  This is decidedly not true. Electricity transmission has substantial losses over long distances. Check out this article for more information about how the crypto mining industry uses electricity. https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

beiller 8y ago

Since many people including me compare bitcoin to gold in terms of it as an investment that is not based on any real-world usage, how does the environmental impact of mining bitcoin compare to the environmental impact of the total amount of gold mined from the earth that is only used for investment purposes?

rplnt 8y ago
Is that a real question? If so, I don't know the answer (I can guess that gold is better per value, worse in total). But phrasing it like this makes it sound like that would be a good excuse to pursue crypto anyway.
- beiller 8y ago
  It is a good reason to pursue it anyways. Its environmental impacts compared to actual mining of the earth is little. And we can't just say that energy usage by humanity in Kilowatt hour is inherently evil. Why not power the mining equipment using nuclear power? Humanity in my opinion won't use energy at some status quo into the future. I predict we will use more and more as we venture into the solar system, and we may see energy as following some sort of Moore's law into the future in terms of cost and local environmental impact. Wouldn't that change the situation?

coinward 8y ago

you've got it wrong mate. Bitcoin just reinforces the existing incentive to capture and utilize energy as efficiently as possible. The reality is closer to Bitcoin leading the push toward renewable energy than it is to Bitcoin destroying the environment. Your thinking is regressive

pcstl 8y ago

As far as I know, large bitcoin-mining setups usually include their own solar farms (or other energy production facilities), as it is cheaper to generate your own electricity than buying it from the grid.

SilasX 8y ago

No, we don't. Bitcoin is one way to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways. When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment". That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided, the use of (harmful) energy to run bitcoin miners doesn't justify its environmental cost. Which is great, but I could say the same thing of Ferraris for show-off producers in LA, or Hello Kitty backpacks. What justifies focusing our attention on Bitcoin per se, and not those? Do you plan to publish a universal, agreed-upon list of things whose social value doesn't justify its environmental cost? The real problem is energy users not bearing the full environmental costs of what they do. The thing is, we have a well known solution to that: cap the total carbon emissions, or tax them in a way that reflects the harm. Yes, Bitcoin creates an incentive to use energy. And it will be spent by miners who weigh the costs of the energy against the value of the Bitcoins produced. Like every other good on the market, it will respond to incentives created by laws. If the damage of energy isn't priced in, then there will be too many resources spent on mining relative to the environmental cost. But this is true of every other good as well. All Bitcoin does is amplify the problems of the existing failure to appropriately price energy. But this is true of literally every other energy-using good in existence! There is no reason to single out Bitcoin. To blame it for environmental problems is special pleading or privileging a hypothesis. "I don't want wiggins at my university. They cheat!" 'Well, a certain percentage of any demographic is going to ch--' "Irrelevant! We're talking about wiggins!" EDIT: Should probably add the disclaimer that I'm long Bitcoin.

aidanlister 8y ago
Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people. Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresses [2], most of which contain less than $100 [3]. So what are we actually getting for all this energy usage, and couldn't we get that same result for a fraction of the energy usage? [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.... [3] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-activeaddresses...

keymone 8y ago

Your understanding of why bitcoin uses energy is completely skewed. Bitcoin doesn’t use energy to process transactions or ensure a functioning p2p network, bitcoin is the first time in history of money, that money can be expressed as energy units. Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy, or more specifically bitcoin is as much energy as people value the function and security of money. Trying to reduce it is absolutely misguided - if you figure out a thousand times more efficient way to generate sha hashes (mine bitcoin), it won’t matter in the slightest - bitcoin mining difficulty will rise thousandfold and exactly the same amount of energy will be spent going forward.

adrianratnapala 8y ago
> Bitcoin doesn’t use energy, bitcoin is energy Or a little more precisely a bitcoin is a provable record that a significant quantity of free energy was once turned into heat. So it does use energy, in the creation and once it is created, that energy is wasted unless the created also needed to heat something.
- keymone 8y ago
  energy would be wasted if it wasn't possible to prove the thing you said bitcoin proves. proof is the product of spent energy, therefore it's not wasted.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    ...which is a trivial result, and could be reproduced by simple trust (which is essentially free)
    - keymone 8y ago
      that’s the whole point - bitcoin manages to do that without trust. Trust is dangerous, we’ve been dealing with trust based financial system failures for hundreds of not thousands of years.

vb6lives 8y ago

What is the environmental cost of building and running physical banks?

netsa 8y ago

Anyone still believe this shit after the bitcoin pyramid?

konschubert 8y ago

The energy bill is being paid by the users and holders of the currency. It’s an expense that will make bitcoin lose against its more energy-efficient competition. Personal plug: https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake-will-kill-proof-of-work.html https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake...

dpacmittal 8y ago

How much energy does our collective banking infrastructure use? I'm pretty sure the number would be far bigger.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago
I'd like to see comparison with energy VS monetary volumes VS risk...

porpoisely 8y ago

In the greater scheme of things, how much energy use is mining bitcoin responsible for? 0.000000000001% of the world's energy use? I used to be very skeptical of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I'm even more skeptical of the recent anti-crypto propaganda all over social media. 3 years ago, crypto was going to save the world. Now, we are talking about environment? What gives? What's with the relentless anti-crypto propaganda?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Way off. 32TWh last year in the US. As much energy as Denmark. Its huge and growing alarmingly. That's what this whole conversation is about.
iainmerrick 8y ago
Around 0.02% according to Wikipedia. It’s not nothing.
borntyping 8y ago
Bitcoin is currently estimated to be responsible for ~0.21%, more than either Hong Kong or Iraq use [1]. Criticisms of Bitcoin have been around as long as the hype - cryptocurrencies were never going to save the world. [1]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Lerc 8y ago

Bitcoin does use a lot of electricity, exactly how much is hard to judge, most of the shock headlines seem to trace their way back to Alex De Vries who uses some questionable assumptions. He seems to calculate the energy use by taking the price of BitCoin and guessing how much profit is being made by miners and how much they pay for electricity. Nevertheless it is safe to assume that the energy use is significant, even at half or a tenth of Digiconomist estimates it is still quite large. It is broadly true that the energy use of Bitcoin is related to the value of Bitcoin, via the mining reward. The arguments against the energy use that are based upon the merits of Bitcoin are not valid. If Bitcoin is useless and doomed it stands to reason that the energy consumed is a waste, but that is true of anything. To argue specifically against the energy consumption you have to make the case that it is not worth the cost even if Bitcoin is a success. If you assume that the costs and profit for mining are more-or-less static then the mining network will use roughly the same amount of energy if Bitcoin doubles in value every reward halving. That flattens out to about a 20% increase in value every year. To accept that the energy use will continue at this rate you would have to also accept that Bitcoin will increase in value at that rate. To date Bitcoin _has_ increased in value quicker than that, which is why the energy use has grown so high. Hardly anyone would argue that the increase in value will be sustained perpetually. If just holds its value the mining reward and power consumption will reduce accordingly. If Bitcoin ends up worth pennies, the consumption will be minima. Furthermore, Bitcoin mining adds options to _how_ electricity is generated and consumed. Being able to convert electricity into money not only acts as a stimulus for cheaper energy generation but as a motivator for building new capacity. We are already at a point where Solar and Wind are becoming the choice not only for Environmental but also Economic reasons. Any new power plant needs customers, those customers take time to appear. If a power plant sold excess generation at cost to mining facilities the investment required to build a new plant is greatly reduced. This presents the possibility of developing nations introducing power generation to areas that currently have little or none. If Bitcoin did end up stimulating the increase of carbon neutral capacity and efficiency, then people in the future might end up making the argument that Bitcoin ended up carbon negative.

doctorpangloss 8y ago

The best way to make a service provider care about the environment is if trees can somehow be the customer. A big part of a decentralized database's design is its protection against DDoSing. Proof of stake is very low environmental cost but you'll discover that the proof of stake networks with low fees can be DDoSed extremely cheaply. Other networks use the networking architecture to protect against DDoSing. > amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem Yes, it is. Although I'd like to say that if bitcoin energy use has a crowding-out effect, like an electric car does, then I'd favor mining bitcoin resulting in more hydropower dams being built than people doing business that can't be centralized like mining can and requiring liquid (dirty) fuels. Datacenters as a whole can be made really efficient and are, in my opinion, a decent investment that can be repurposed better than e.g. an office building full of people doing traditional banking. So it's not super straightforward even if on net we don't need cryptocurrency miners and I of course agree that it's bad for the environment.

bearmcbearsly 8y ago

You mention proof of work vs proof of stake, and then two sentences later you claim that nobody is paying to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. The whole point of proof of stake is to avoid the energy waste that proof of work requires to secure a blockchain. It's not just a technical challenge -- it's one potential solution to very problem you're describing. Is proof of stake actually going to work at scale? I don't know for sure, and I don't think anybody else really does -- but the point is that not only are people talking about the environment, they're actively working on solutions.

craigc 8y ago

I am not going to make the argument that Bitcoin is energy efficient cause I know that it isn’t, but it is designed to be inefficient on purpose in order to provide trust in a decentralized way. Does that make it a good use of energy? That is debatable, but energy is used for all sorts of things. How much energy is spent producing weapons, bombs, tanks, etc.? How much is spent producing addictive drugs? Cigarettes? Non-recyclable plastics? How much is spent on illegal surveillance of individuals? Why is it that no one ever talks about these examples? It is very likely that Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, etc. each use orders of magnitude more energy than Bitcoin does yet no one ever talks about that either. Bitcoin gets trashed because people believe that the energy used to run the Bitcoin network is wasteful, but the energy used for other things is not. I am sure that opinion is shared by the majority of folks here as well, but that is what it is. It is an opinion. Does Facebook really improve our lives in a way that can totally justify the energy needed to run it?

DigiMortal 8y ago

Dude, who cares about the energy used. Just make MORE energy

altern8 8y ago

Banks do a LOT more damage than computers running.If cryptocurrencies get them out of the picture, it's well worth it.

h1d 8y ago

Since the point of PoW is to consume your limited resource exclusively for it to avoid anyone from cheating the race, you can try to come up with a way to waste money in a fair way without environmental impacts.

DigiMortal 8y ago

The only reality for the human race is space expansion. Make more energy.

johnisgood 8y ago
Or... ITER.

johnisgood 8y ago

> My favorite summary of crypto is something along the lines of: leaving your car running while it solves sudoku puzzles in exchange for drugs. The drugs part isn't as relevant anymore, but the rest is. Seriously? By the way, the negative environmental impacts will be significantly reduced after ITER is ready.

foxrob92 8y ago
You're saying that we just need to make fusion a reality in order for bitcoin to be environmentally friendly?
- johnisgood 8y ago
  I am saying it will not be an issue in terms of environmental impact after fusion becomes a reality, as far as electricity goes.
  - foxrob92 8y ago
    I mean that's a bit of a tautology isn't it? Once we have clean energy production for everything, bitcoin will have minimal environmental impact? That's ignoring the fact that fusion is still a very long way from commercial availability.
    - johnisgood 8y ago
      Why is it a tautology, and why would it be ignoring the fact? I am not. I am only stating that it will be less of an issue, because well, it will be... that is, if everything turns out to be working as ITER "predicted". Isn't this correct? We are aiming for "cheaper" and "greener" electricity, some even call it "infinite electricity".
      - foxrob92 8y ago
        Maybe tautology is the wrong word. I just feel like it's a bit ridiculous to downplay the environmental impacts of bitcoin mining by saying "it'll be fine when we have fusion!" because we don't have fusion today, and it's likely to be a very long time before fusion is commercially available. Also, your initial comment said: >By the way, the negative environmental impacts will be significantly reduced after ITER is ready. ITER is not a commercial reactor. Even after it's construction is completed (expected to be, what, 2025?), we still have a long way to go before you can use fusion power to mine bitcoin. Meanwhile, climate change is happening now. We need to be reducing emissions now.

resters 8y ago

Isn't the environmental concern temporary? Once all the bitcoin has been mined, the computational requirements for maintenance of the network will certainly decrease significantly. One could argue that Bitcoin should reach the limit sooner, so that mining difficulty would not increase so much, but the mining incentive is mainly a bootstrapping strategy for a currency. Now that everyone is familiar with how the ecosystem works, another coin could launch that was identical in every way except a shorter period of time before all coins were mined.

AgentME 8y ago
The energy cost isn't exactly in creating bitcoins. The energy cost is in securing the network against people doing 51%-attacks, and bitcoins are set to be minted out of thin air and transaction fees are paid out in order to incentivize people to protect the network. Mining will still be necessary after all bitcoins are minted, or else anyone could 51%-attack the network and double-spend bitcoins.
- resters 8y ago
  What percentage of CPU power do you think will be mining bitcoin 5 days before vs 5 days after all of the coins have been mined? If you think the amount will be roughly equal, then you are predicting that transactions that end up in blocks will need to voluntarily contribute an amount equivalent to the block reward in order for the system to continue functioning. This seems unlikely to me.
  - AgentME 8y ago
    Transactions already include fees today. The minting rate of new bitcoins goes down over time, so when minting finally ends, it won't be a sudden change to the mining rewards. It's expected that the mining reward will be mostly transaction fees by the end, so the mining reward will only be a little affected by the minting being stopped.
    - resters 8y ago

cdestroyer 8y ago

nothing triggers me more than the superficial environmental concerns people bring up while talking about bitcoin. Very hypocritical.

scarejunba 8y ago

All we have to do is price externalities into power generation and we’ll be fine.

AgentME 8y ago
Every country would need to, or else all the cryptocurrency mining will just happen where the externalities aren't priced in.

mightybyte 8y ago

The "blockchain is bad for the environment" argument has been shown to be grossly uninformed and overstated. It is pretty much all based on one source that has been thoroughly discredited. See this article for more information: https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

naasking 8y ago

> But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being. How much energy was used to establish and perpetuate the existing fiat currency infrastructure? Has any such comparative analysis been done? Without such an analysis, it seems a little premature to unilaterally declare that bitcoin is a real problem by comparison.

Nursie 8y ago
This canard is tiresome. The exiting infrastructure does far, far more than cryptocurrencies do, including credit, investment, protection of funds and all sorts of stuff.
- naasking 8y ago
  And you think the existing infrastructure for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies cannot support such services? The smart contract languages were designed for such things as far as I understand.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    Currently? No I don't believe that this infrastructure comes close to providing the functions of the financial industry, and as such the energy comparison are completely spurious. The smart contracts languages can have whatever intent they like, the fact is that comparing the power use of a full financial system to something which is effectively operating as a bad payment processor is so wrong it's funny.
    - naasking 8y ago
      You seem to be missing the fact that the infrastructure in place is sufficient to not only specify but also enforce the properties needed for all the functions you describe. So while you call the comparison spurious, the fact is that no additional energy would be required to achieve the functions you think are missing. So the comparison is not as spurious as you imply.

really3452 8y ago

On the other hand I am shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing the cost of maintaining the US dollar as a currency. Specifically, it takes a huge amount of energy to maintain the military and police power that backs the US dollar.

chemmail 8y ago

You want to help the environment? Then stop consuming totally. Do you eat things? It is wasteful, just drink ocean water. Do you use any form of entertainment at all? Movies, games, songs? TOTALLY WASTEFUL for the environment. DOES NOT HELP HUMANITY AT ALL. Time to go live in a hole and die, because living is about consuming and waste.

nonbel 8y ago

>"But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is something that literally affects every human being ... But we need to talk about the environment." Great, put it in context then: A. What is the total energy content of the resources consumed each year? B. What percent of A is lost to "waste" such as powerplant and grid inefficiencies? C. What percent of the remaining is spent on crypto? D. What other things are consuming the same order of magnitude or higher than crypto? E. Which energy use described in D is easiest to make more efficient without harming the purpose/quality? Then improve #1 discovered in E until it is below #2, then start work on #2, etc. I think you will find stuff like getting everyone to use i.reddit.com instead of reddit.com and netflix to stop their annoying auto-playing previews should come before anything to do with crypto.

antidesitter 8y ago

Actually, cryptocurrency mining serves an environmentally-friendly function in energy markets because it absorbs excess capacity in the geographic regions where mining is done (i.e. where electricity is cheap) and allows it to be “exported” rather than go to waste. Interesting stuff.

Gpetrium 8y ago
Did you know that some governments subsidize energy prices to make it easier for their populace to pay the bills and to encourage businesses to come to their country? If cryptocurrency mining goes to countries with subsidized energy and they become part of maxing out that country's energy output, the country may be forced to create new energy sources to provide to the population (aka, higher environmental impact + cost). This push may be partially blamed by the cryptocurrency servers. In other words, not all cryptocurrency mining servers as utilizing just the extra capacity casually created by a city/state.
- dorgo 8y ago
  > and to encourage businesses to come to their country? Bitcoin mining is a business and it comes to the country. Goal achieved.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > the country may be forced to create new energy sources to provide to the population Do you have any evidence that this is happening and, if so, that its costs outweigh the utility of energy exported to the rest of the world?

dorgo 8y ago

Environmental costs are( to some minor degree ) included in the energy costs and payed by Bitcoin users. Markets tend to favor efficiency and bitcoins compets with less energy intensive crypto currencies. In the end, the most cost-efficient project should win - which will also reduce environmental costs. This process is slowed down by the fact that only a tiny part of the environmental costs is represented in the energy costs.

Natanael_L 8y ago

Coal is to expensive to use as a power source for mining, don't worry about that one

5partan 8y ago

If you care about the environment the best you can do is to stop using bitcoin and become vegan. And don’t use the Internet. Every single human wastes energy. Make something more efficient and it will gain currency, thus harming the environment even more. Technology and environment just don’t mix. You can talk as much as you want, but unless you become a full fledged Amish, that talk will always be hypocritical.