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Bitcoin is economically set up such that its energy consumption will follow its price. With the price at the level it is now, the energy consumption is that of

Bitcoin is economically set up such that its energy consumption will follow its price. With the price at the level it is now, the energy consumption is that of a medium-sized country. An entire country's worth of energy is getting burned to run a network capable of a whooping TWO transactions a second. Now that Tesla has bought these coins, they have so far driven the price up by another 10%. This will eventually be matched by an increase in carbon emissions of 10% of a medium-sized country. This will most likely completely obliterate all of the carbon reductions that Tesla has managed to achieve so far. Bitcoin, as it exists today, is a massive ongoing ecological disaster and probably a crime against humanity. And Tesla is now making it worse.

knuthsat 6y ago
The amount of environmental destruction and pollution done by the farming industry or similarly land invasive industries is incomparable to bitcoin. It has an effect on so much of the ecosystem that it's just silly to put Bitcoin in any kind of calculation with regards to environment. Water pollution, shit pollution, river pollution, ocean pollution, air pollution, probably only the last one somewhat related to bitcoin.
uncoder0 6y ago
You're not comparing bitcoin to the right thing. You're comparing bitcoin's energy usage to the usage of a country. Bitcoin is competing against much bigger players than small countries it's attempting to compete with Fiat currencies. The best comparison would be to compare it to the energy required to sustain the USD as the de facto fiat currency. It's hard to get exact numbers on the DoD's full energy usage but as some points of reference they use about 4.6 billion gallons of fuel a year, 10% of the US's aviation gas usage, etc. To put the DoD's usage into perspective, "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) consumes more energy than any other federal agency—77% of the entire federal government’s energy consumption."(https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45832.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45832.pdf)

knuthsat 6y ago

The amount of environmental destruction and pollution done by the farming industry or similarly land invasive industries is incomparable to bitcoin. It has an effect on so much of the ecosystem that it's just silly to put Bitcoin in any kind of calculation with regards to environment. Water pollution, shit pollution, river pollution, ocean pollution, air pollution, probably only the last one somewhat related to bitcoin.

uncoder0 6y ago

You're not comparing bitcoin to the right thing. You're comparing bitcoin's energy usage to the usage of a country. Bitcoin is competing against much bigger players than small countries it's attempting to compete with Fiat currencies. The best comparison would be to compare it to the energy required to sustain the USD as the de facto fiat currency. It's hard to get exact numbers on the DoD's full energy usage but as some points of reference they use about 4.6 billion gallons of fuel a year, 10% of the US's aviation gas usage, etc. To put the DoD's usage into perspective, "The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) consumes more energy than any other federal agency—77% of the entire federal government’s energy consumption."(https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45832.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45832.pdf)