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This cannot be repeated enough. Bitcoin is consuming as much energy as a small-medium sized country and all so a tiny minority can speculate on it.

louwrentius 6y ago
I can't respond to cecidia because of the downvotes but I fully agree with their statement. I also agree with the insanity that is the energy consumption associated with bitcoin mining.
gjs278 6y ago
you just wasted a good amount of electrons responding to copypasta
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It is a totally specious argument that has zero merit. It reminds me of the disgusting and flagrantly ridiculous thread from Stephen Diehl that was on HN recently, more comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25815162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25815162
- AWildC182 6y ago
  https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption The amount of energy used by bitcoin is many zeros larger than any of the examples listed and is used by a group of people many zeros smaller than any of the demographics mentioned. This is a pretty easy case to argue objectively, particularly because there are alternatives to proof of work, but they aren't as sexy as running a server farm full of FPGAs, GPUs, and ASICs.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    If you think that the absolute magnitude of energy use of any particular application (bitcoin, Pixar movies, cosmetic surgery, whatever) has any bearing on the discussion, then you have completely misunderstood all of it.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
If you want to take a Puritanical attitude, any luxury item can be argued to be wasteful. Doesn't mean it should be banned. It's up to others to decide how to spend their resources. If CO2 emission, and its negative externality, is specifically the problem, then you can advocate that all production of non-essential/luxury items use non-CO2 emitting energy. Unless the measure is agnostic to what category of non-essential activity it targets, you'd just be singling out cryptocurrency, because it's not a non-essential that you personally enjoy spending your resources on.

louwrentius 6y ago

I can't respond to cecidia because of the downvotes but I fully agree with their statement. I also agree with the insanity that is the energy consumption associated with bitcoin mining.

gjs278 6y ago

you just wasted a good amount of electrons responding to copypasta

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It is a totally specious argument that has zero merit. It reminds me of the disgusting and flagrantly ridiculous thread from Stephen Diehl that was on HN recently, more comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25815162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25815162

AWildC182 6y ago
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption The amount of energy used by bitcoin is many zeros larger than any of the examples listed and is used by a group of people many zeros smaller than any of the demographics mentioned. This is a pretty easy case to argue objectively, particularly because there are alternatives to proof of work, but they aren't as sexy as running a server farm full of FPGAs, GPUs, and ASICs.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  If you think that the absolute magnitude of energy use of any particular application (bitcoin, Pixar movies, cosmetic surgery, whatever) has any bearing on the discussion, then you have completely misunderstood all of it.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

If you want to take a Puritanical attitude, any luxury item can be argued to be wasteful. Doesn't mean it should be banned. It's up to others to decide how to spend their resources. If CO2 emission, and its negative externality, is specifically the problem, then you can advocate that all production of non-essential/luxury items use non-CO2 emitting energy. Unless the measure is agnostic to what category of non-essential activity it targets, you'd just be singling out cryptocurrency, because it's not a non-essential that you personally enjoy spending your resources on.