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Bitcoin is an ongoing environmental disaster, profiting off of subsidized coal power in China and elsewhere in the world. Millions of people die every year fro
by labster 7y ago
Bitcoin is an ongoing environmental disaster, profiting off of subsidized coal power in China and elsewhere in the world. Millions of people die every year from air pollution.
But on the other side, hey blockchains are so cool they can do the same work as banks but six orders of magnitude less efficiently.
- ISL 7y agoBy that measure, the problem is the pricing of energy, not Bitcoin.
- spookthesunset 7y agoDoesn’t work that way. Bitcoin’s block reward system is designed so that the systems energy consumption costs are basically some percentage of the price of bitcoin. The higher the price, the more energy used. Drop the price of energy, and all rational miners will just buy more hardware. Why? If they don’t, their competitors will and the odds of them getting block rewards will go down.
- ISL 7y agoI'm arguing the opposite -- if energy cost more, less energy would be consumed by Bitcoin.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoThat's not Bitcoin's fault though. Otherwise, we could also argue that iPhones are a humanitarian disaster.
- newguy1234 7y agoCryptocurrencies provide benefits that banks do not provide. That's why people use them in the first place.