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I used to worry about this question too. But how much energy has mining gold cost? Was it worth it? Will bitcoin have a similar impact? I imagine the answer is
by jonstaab 6y ago
I used to worry about this question too. But how much energy has mining gold cost? Was it worth it? Will bitcoin have a similar impact? I imagine the answer is more, yes, and yes.
- phtrivier 6y agoAt least Gold has industrial usage, beyond the "store of value" and jewelry part ? The premise of the OP is that bitcoin is not worth the cost. I tend to agree, though I can understand the appeal of decentralized currency.
- Quenty 6y agoTurns out, about 10x less than Bitcoin, (this article seems to imply 25 million GJ per a year of energy mining/processing gold, and the Twitter thread implies 280 million GJ per a year in Bitcoin. https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-true-costs-gold-production https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-true-costs-gold-producti... Except Bitcoin also creates electronic waste, including gold, and, I would argue, is not at the scale that gold is at, as an influencing factor on the economy.
- jonstaab 6y agoWell, over the same time period, but gold has been mined for thousands of years, and for a long time much less efficiently. And bitcoin mining will decelerate as halving occurs, until the last coin is mined in a bit over 100 years' time.
- tromp 6y agoIncreasing fees are expected to make up for the repeated halving of block subsidy, as is necessary to maintain network security (and one of the major reasons why Bitcoin constrains block size). Within another 4 halvings, fees should start to dominate.