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Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin
- kneel 6y agohttps://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bitcoins-climate-footprint https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit...
- falcolas 6y agoI'm sorry, I had to stop reading at "Second, metrics like the “per-transaction energy cost” are misleading because transactions themselves do not cost energy". Yes, this is technically 100% accurate. However it's also 100% missing the point, since for the transaction to be globally accepted, a hash needs to be mined. To paraphrase a few memes, "they're technically right, but they're being an asshole about it."
- nickgrosvenor 6y agoI always wondered what will happen when the environmentalists find out about the energy consumption requirements of Bitcoin.
- loceng 6y agoThe counterargument is always that at some point in future the energy consumption problem will be solved, but isn't the rate of computation a or the main factor against 50%+ attacks? Else the solutions proposed seemed to relay on centralized services that don't actually play on the blockchain to reduce the actual amount of transactions and load, also then avoiding the delays - but then re-adding the supposed main issue of having a "trustless" blockchain.
- ece 6y agoOr PoS Ethereum or other PoS crypto currencies can take the place of exponentially energy-hungry PoW. They explicitly deal with the 50%+ attacks in their governance too.
- loceng 6y agoHow so - by central authority changes?
- ece 6y agoFor certain cases of attacks, yes with minority forks, and by destroying the attackers stake in other cases, see the section titled "Attacks are much easier to recover from in proof of stake" here: https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
- loceng 6y agoSo why not just have a trusted centralized authority(ies), arguably democratically elected who control the system(s), and where there isn't a transfer of wealth weighted from late adopters towards earlier adopters?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ece 6y agoThat's another alternative, which doesn't exist yet. Ethereum PoS could be here sooner and doesn't use energy like PoW does, along with other helpful features.
- ForHackernews 6y agoYou can't "solve" the energy consumption of Bitcoin - deliberate waste is built into the Proof-of-work protocol by design.
- Apocryphon 6y agoMakes me wonder if someone can create a cryptocurrency where the mining is for distributed computing research for achieving nuclear fusion power. Crypto-mining that does SETI@home/BOINC work.
- tal8d 6y agoThis has been wondered for years, usually by people who don't know the purpose of hashing functions. If nuclear fusion models + protein folding were easily verifiable, then there would be no point in leveraging distributed computing for them - we'd have the same level of understanding for them as we do for contrived hashing functions. If they somehow also ended up with the difficulty directionality intentionally designed for in cryptography, then that would be fine. But that is pretty unlikely, and in that event your currency is totally hacked and useless.
- Apocryphon 6y agoIt's still nice to dream of all this distributed computing activity going towards tangible real world benefits.
- tal8d 6y agoLike a global realtime financial network that grants participants complete freedom to do as they please with their own money? Yeah.
- Apocryphon 6y agoEvery single word of that description is intangible.
- tal8d 6y agoThe counterargument has been the same for years: the present financial system consumes for more energy, to the point where people complaining about it look like they're either trying to deceive others, or they've just put so little thought into it that they should be ignored.
- freerobby 6y agoThey'll complain and then we'll show them the energy consumption of the finance industry.
- p1necone 6y agoControlling for transaction volume the energy consumption of bitcoin is orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the finance industry.
- blhack 6y agoHow much energy does the rest of the finance industry use?
- api 6y agoI'm on the fence about whether this is correct or not. The question in my mind is: do you include military spending in the cost of maintaining a fiat currency and if so to what extent? Fiat currencies are backed in part by the power of the governments that issue them, so is defense spending a form of "proof of work" for them? If the US government disbanded its military would the USD hold any value for very long? Same goes for any other fiat... e.g. if the PRC disbanded the Chinese military would the Yuan retain much value? If fiat currencies require a constant demonstration of credible military (and police) capability, that's a rather enormous cost and brings with it quite a bit of resource use and pollution. (I would guesstimate that Bitcoin would still be less efficient than USD but that the margin would be smaller.)
- z77dj3kl 6y agoDo you honestly think that the value of Bitcoin would not tank if the value of the US Dollar tanked?
- api 6y agoWe're talking about the relative efficiency of Bitcoin vs. conventional finance in an energy or other cost per transaction sense. I'm asking whether some amount of military spending should be counted in the cost of maintaining a fiat monetary system. If people were using Bitcoin as currency directly its value would remain equal to whatever people were willing to trade for it. Obviously if all people were willing to trade it for was USD it would become worthless, but that's not the point in this thread. Bitcoin has other problems as a currency but that's not the topic of discussion here. Some other cryptocurrencies try to solve these, such as it being too deflationary or lacking functionality.
- 1996 6y agoThey will be super angry and look at all the details, including the past profits, then calmly decide to look the other way because they need a retirement account after all :)
- floor2 6y agoBit of an aside, but it's so wild that we label people as "environmentalists" and that anyone would place themselves NOT in that group. It seems like 100% of people should want air which is non-toxic, water which is non-toxic and food which is non-toxic. But of course, being an "abolitionist" was a political group in the 1800s but now it's just assumed that 100% of people are anti-slavery, so maybe the optimistic take is that "environmentalist" will undergo the same transformation as "abolitionist".
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThis black-and-white thinking ignores the spectrum of what constitutes non-toxic. There are those that accept nothing short of perfect purity in air, water and food, a condition which has never existed in a million years of human history. Others are less concerned about humans and more about ecology. Still others value the morals of human-animal relations above issues of nature. So no, we are not all 'ecologists', not in the same sense anyway. And not to the same degree.
- Craighead 6y agoI'm curious why you would post such a blatant lie about the air quality post industrial revolution by framing the scenario as "million years of human history" Why are you posting in bad faith?
- pasabagi 6y agoThere's as wide a gulf between our enviroment[1] and 'complete purity' as there is between slavery and 'complete freedom'. [1](complete ecosystem collapse, widespread poisoning of populations worldwide, etc)
- Apocryphon 6y agoOne assumes that air and water purity was fairly better pre-Industrial Revolution.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
- bpodgursky 6y agoHopefully everyone with move to Ethereum and other Proof of Stake coins. (Both for the environment, and my wallet since I'm already deep in Eth)
- centimeter 6y agoProof of stake is not secure in the same way as proof of work. Miner collusion attacks are free in PoS, expensive in PoW.
- bpodgursky 6y agoIt's only "free" if you get a substantial fraction of the coin's total wealth backing your attack. And it's not really "free", because you'd instantly devalue the currency itself (and thus your own stake).
- tanseydavid 6y agohttps://ark-invest.com/analyst-research/bitcoin-myths/ https://ark-invest.com/analyst-research/bitcoin-myths/ <TL;DR> Claim: Bitcoin wastes too much energy. Counter-Claim: Bitcoin’s energy consumption is more efficient than that of gold and traditional banks.
- dhnajsjdnd 6y agoCounter-counter-claim: The existence of Bitcoin doesn’t reduce the energy use of traditional banks - in fact, it increases it. Bitcoin is not just responsible for the energy used in mining, but also the energy used in its voluminous interactions with traditional finance.
- jlawer 6y agoThere is no effort to bring these to the same base. The global banking system is massive. The article is factoring retail banking, stock & bonds, finance, derivatives, payment processing and a lot more in to "Global Banking". Even if bitcoin was to replace the dollar and gold all at once, much of that infrastructure would still be needed. Add to this bitcoin does an infinitesimally small number of transactions compared to the global financial system and I am doubtful that on a per value or per transaction basis that it would be within an order of magnitude. A lot of this is inherent to the design, and while it may be able to be evolved or an alternative crypto may not have the caveats, Bitcoin as it stands now is VERY power inefficient.
- lambdaba 6y agoDo you really think a startup running on Bitcoin can't be do a better job than the legacy banking system? And by startup I mean a group of people that write software in a competitive environment. Those already exist (Lightning Labs) and there's so much more to do with a secure programmable distributed database.
- jlawer 6y agoAt retail banking... No I don't think they can more effectively manage my grandmothers retirement account. This requires people, and locations. Software isn't going to solve this problem. The only way I think this will be solved is by becoming very similar to what already exists.
- anm89 6y agoYeah this narrative is played out. Yes bitcoin uses a lot of energy. Almost certainly less than the things it is competing against. And over time it has the potential to decrease that consumption drastically with other protocols, an option traditional banking doesn't possess. Bitcoin is already the greenest form of finance and will get much cleaner in the future.
- kd913 6y agoBitcoin is the greenest form of finance that gets greener over time? What nonsense is this? Already ONE transaction consumes as much power as an entire American household uses for a week.That is 215 kwh of energy for one transaction. It's using the equivalent of 2.26 million American homes worth of energy for just 330k transactions. A significant chunk of that is wash trading, ie people buying and selling to themselves to manipulate the price. Is that worth it? A simple visa or mastercard transaction produces several orders of magnitude less CO2. For 330k transact
- anm89 6y agoHow many skycrcapers are there in the world constructed for financial institutions. Want to go down the rabbit hole of calculating that CO2? Also, cite your sources
- rspeele 6y agoDo you think financial institutions, and skyscrapers they inhabit, would not exist in a BTC-powered world? People won't want to use their BTC to invest in companies on the stock market, trade commodities futures, or issue loans?
- lambdaba 6y agoThat's a bad example but one thing that wouldn't happen is a government manipulating its currency to finance wars.
- ghego1 6y agoGenuine question: what's the end game here for Musk? He's been tweeting about dogecoin, and then Tesla invests a non insignificant amount of money in BTC. I smell something fishy.
- ForHackernews 6y agoI have no idea. Maybe it's just a pump-and-dump scheme but he's doing crypto to steer clear of the SEC this time? Maybe he's trolling? Maybe he really is going off the rails?
- XorNot 6y agoHe's been going off the rails for a while it seems. I've come to feel the human brain isn't really well optimised for handling the type of social integration a few hundred thousand Twitter followers provide.
- conception 6y agoWhen you're the richest person in the world, doing it for the lolz is probably not far from the truth of it.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoMusk has mentioned a few times that he is in the Wallstreet bets discord. It looks like some of his recent posts like the dogecoin one are at the request of that group. It’s just normal internet shitposting except you have real power.
- TrainedMonkey 6y agoI think Tesla want's to start accepting bitcoin as payment. This is my speculation, but this kind of acquisition makes sense if they also want to render payment in bitcoin. Alternatively this is just a value storage. Musk went on record saying he thinks stock is overvalued at the beginning of 2020 and then it went on 700% rampage. This could be just that Tesla has more cash than they need and they wanted to store it in an asset sheltered from inflation.
- marcinjachymiak 6y agoCounterpoint: https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-co...
- ForHackernews 6y ago"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- polote 6y agoThis article is a joke written by the co-founder of Coin Metrics, a blockchain analytics startup. How he is not biased? Explaining that we are lucky to have bitcoin because China is wasting unused electricity...
- gargara 6y agoWhen Starlink is going to be fully deployed the internet would be impossible to censor and the bitcoin will be way more valuable.
- api 6y agoThe Internet is already damn hard to censor if you're tech-savvy, and Bitcoin isn't really censored very many places.
- jude- 6y agoPoint of clarity: Bitcoin transactions take negligible energy to produce and validate. It's block production that's energy-intensive, and it's the same regardless of how big or full blocks are. Like any energy-intensive industry that could operate profitably via fossil fuel consumption, mining should be regulated to only use green energy. No different than power production and consumption today.
- ForHackernews 6y agoWhat would it mean for a bitcoin transaction to exist without ever being included in a block?
- pmontra 6y agoMaybe its fee is too low now but some miner will add it to a block later when the fee becomes reasonable again, win the mining lottery and add it to the blockchain. Maybe next year or never.
- z77dj3kl 6y agoYou can't regulate Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin is not controllable in the same way as say, rare earth metal mining, where you can exert pressure on whoever is mining them (or whichever nation is exporting them). There's very little any government can do to pressure a mining farm in Far East Russia or Northern China to use green power for their operations. You can do Bitcoin mining almost completely offline. Once that magical hash that satisfies the proof-of-work requirement appears, there's no tracing to where it was produced.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoThat’s why a generic carbon tax should be used. There is no point punishing Bitcoin mining because bitcoin mining isn’t inherently bad, it’s the burning of fuels that is bad. Countries should then tax imports from other countries that do not have a carbon tax.
- jude- 6y ago
- solarman5000 6y agoT.I.L. ransomware wouldn't exist without BTC... ::eyeroll::
- FlownScepter 6y agoSure it could exist without it, but it makes the riskiest actual step of the grift substantially less risky.
- senectus1 6y agoit was around before BTC existed... by a long shot.
- centimeter 6y agoI pay 3% on every visa transaction, which goes to pay humans who then use energy and pollute. Paying a few bucks for a Bitcoin blockchain transaction or a few milli-cents for a lightning transaction seems efficient in comparison.
- blhack 6y agoWhat a ridiculous headline. How do you spend clean car credits, exactly? Tesla has a market cap of almost a trillion dollars.
- conception 6y agoYou sell them to other companies for money and then spend that money? You cannot, however, spend market cap.
- blhack 6y agoIs there a cryptocurrency exchange that accepts clean car credits in exchange for bitcoin?
- zenexer 6y agoTo reiterate what the parent said: 1. Sell to other companies for USD 2. Trade USD for cryptocurrency
- r3drock 6y agoIn a way, you can even spend market cap, just issue new shares and raise money for the company. This way you can generate a lot of cash, especially if your market cap is inflated.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoDid Antonio J. Gracias on the board sign off on this ???.
- danhak 6y agoHere's my wild speculation on why Musk did this (and why it's brilliant) He knows there is a large and growing community of Bitcoin speculators and enthusiasts out there. By "endorsing" Bitcoin in this way, he not only moved the market--further enriching these folks--but also signaled that he is an ally to them, significantly boosting positive sentiment toward him and increasing the likelihood that they will purchase a Tesla as their next vehicle. In one fell swoop, he not only drove demand for his product, but also made it more affordable to his target market without lowering its cost.
- synaesthesisx 6y agoI don't think it's just a simple stunt. Apparently, the onboard computer on the latest Teslas is capable of mining BTC profitably at the current prices (allegedly). It would be amusing to have cars mine when idle/plugged in, or better yet have any unsold inventory mining 24/7 (since electricity can be written off as operational expenses). I wouldn't put it past Elon.
- villasv 6y agoIf by amusing you mean reducing battery life / beefing my electricity bill while giving the impression of “generating” money. Miss me with this new kind of planned obsolescence.
- garaetjjte 6y agoMining BTC is not profitable without dedicated ASICs. Other coins might be possible, but I doubt car hardware would have significant hashrate.
- 867-5309 6y agoit is profitable 1. at scale and 2. when you are not paying for the electricity. Tesla covers both of these
- desertrider12 6y ago> the onboard computer on the latest Teslas is capable of mining BTC profitably I would be interested to learn more about that. I thought the bulk of the Autopilot compute power is in dense neural network inference which wouldn't be any good for SHA hashing.
- Capira 6y agoBitcoin subsidizes renewable energies because it offers a base price for excess energy at any time at any place.
- z77dj3kl 6y agoThe price of energy used to mine Bitcoin is very low. It does nothing to provide a real base price for excess energy in countries and areas that have robust environmental protections. There are some niche cases that the Bitcoin crowd love to showcase where energy is truly very cheap (they tend to be saturated sources), but mostly Bitcoin is mined on illicit energy contracts in developing areas where that energy can be had for dirt cheap. Bottom line is that it absolutely does not advance renewable energy production anywhere where that is taken seriously.
- technotony 6y agoEnergy is the largest cost in bitcoin mining. Mining moves to the cheapest electricity locations. Renewables are already the cheapest energy source globally, and getting better. So in the mid-term bitcoin mining will move to renewable energy sources, problem solved.
- exclipy 6y agoIf all the world's clean energy is consumed by bitcoin mining, then what energy does the rest of us use?
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoMore clean energy. There is almost infinite energy raining down on us.
- sofixa 6y agoTheoretically, but not in the real actual world we live in. Few countries are on 100% renewables/nuclear.
- rspeele 6y agoExplain to me this. How can proof-of-work NOT result in massively expensive energy consumption, regardless of where the energy is obtained? Suppose I wanted to conduct a 51% attack against Bitcoin. If I succeed, I stand to benefit monetarily, for example by shorting BTC on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange -- since a successful 51% would massively damage trust in bitcoin. Alternatively I could double-spend, though reaping the rewards without getting caught might be harder. Let's put the details aside and just agree that if you had the power to 51% bitcoin, you could make a lot of money off it. What stops me from doing this is that the energy required for 51% of the mining power would be ludicrously expensive, even for just the half-hour[1] or so it would take to execute a damaging attack. At least, it must be more expensive than the amount of money I could gain via my short position and/or double-spends. Otherwise it would be worth doing, right? But for that to be the true, it must mean that the whole rest of the network is currently expending at least that much energy, every half hour or so, to constantly stop somebody from doing this. So doesn't that put a dollar-amount floor on Bitcoin energy consumption, equal to [maximum amount one could stand to gain from crashing Bitcoin] repeated every [minimum duration of 51% attack to destroy confidence in bitcoin]? Whether the mining is occurring with cheap energy in Iceland or expensive energy in California doesn't change that enough of that energy must be used to make it too expensive for an adversary (who could also be operating in Iceland or wherever) to attack. [1]I say half-hour because 3 confirmations are considered sufficient for Coinbase to accept a BTC deposit, so I think it would make big waves if 3 blocks got reversed by a 51% attack.
- 01100011 6y agoWhat this tells me is that Tesla has too much cash and doesn't think investing that cash in its main business would produce gains comparable to BTC. Tesla believes in the profitability of BTC more than its own profitability or the profitability of one of Musk's other ventures. Sure, maybe they want to diversify but that's a hell of a lot of money to throw at such a volatile commodity.
- danhak 6y agoAll large enterprises keep cash reserves. Whether you agree or not, the prevailing thesis behind keeping cash reserves in BTC is not that it will turn a profit, but that it will avoid devaluation like USD.
- nexthash 6y agoThat's a ridiculous assumption to make. Bitcoin's value comes from speculation, not from anything of value in the real world. The price could tank to $500 tomorrow, because there is no government, no trust, and nothing in the real world backing it up other than hype. In light of this USD devaluation seems like a way less risky alternative.
- danhak 6y agoIt is nonetheless the prevailing thesis behind BTC, and many highly-regarded fund managers are starting to allocate serious portions of their reserves to cryptocurrency.
- sperma 6y agoHN is the only place I know where users are this stubborn to keep their head in the sand about Bitcoin. It's been 12 years man. Bitcoin could not tank to $500 tomorrow. It never will. Sorry
- oleganza 6y agoThe important thing is how probability of BTC tanking to $500 compares to probability of USD tanking in BTC terms in the next few years. Historical data hints that we are not close to the peak of the current bubble and when BTC drops it probably won't be lower than today, or at least, not for a long time. Of course there is also probability that the 12-year trend will crash into zero, but that probability dwindles with every year Bitcoin isn't broken and every popped bubble that lands on an even higher low.
- nikolay 6y agoElon is an evil character. Since he bought his McLaren to show off and totaled it - to this day. He doesn't care about humanity and science - all he cares about is ego and money. And that's nothing new here, but let's stop idolizing him and give him more credit than he deserves. From tax credits to this abuse - all his money is thanks to the US taxpayer who doesn't drive a Tesla because they can't afford one!
- mfgs 6y agoHow would a company like Tesla "store" such a large amount of cryptocurrency? Who would hold the private key(s)? Surely not one person, and if not, how would they be distributed in a safe way that both prevented insider theft and provided redundancy to prevent lock out?
- mmastrac 6y agoCrypto custody service, probably. At least until they can build their own management system. https://www.gemini.com/custody https://www.gemini.com/custody
- Gatsky 6y agoThe argument about CO2 emissions and bitcoin seems reflexive and ill-informed. The reality is, it’s very small. Bitcoin is estimated to emit 22 million tonnes of CO2, and that is based on country level energy generation mix [1]. In reality it is probably lower due to cost benefits of renewables like hydro. Global emissions are 50 billion [2]. Pornography causes 10x as much CO2 as bitcoin [3]. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/bitcoin-use-causing-huge-co2-emissions-study/articleshow/69821838.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/bitcoin-us... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector [3] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209569-streaming-online-pornography-produces-as-much-co2-as-belgium/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209569-streaming-onlin...
- rektide 6y ago46 TWh/y mentioned in this link comes to ~5.25 GW continuous usage. With an actual transaction rate of ~4 tps in 2021, each transaction takes ~364.6 kWh. Enough to send a top efficiency Tesla down the entire West coast. To give some idea of the magnitude of this draw, some reference figures: the 95 nuclear power plants in the US have a net capacity of ~98 GW of power. Two reactors under construction will add ~1.25GW capacity. Even by these fairly low estimates linked, about 4-5 nuclear power plants. The numbers on porn's power consumption are just horseshit. The methodology was to take all power consumption of data centers combined, and say that whatever % of internet traffic/throughput is porn is what % of data-center power consumption porn is responsible for. This is just abjectly insulting bad math, presented as insightful: just absolute junk worthless numbers. Porn & video in general has radically higher bandwidth-to-cpu usage ratios than many applications, sendfile() is stupid efficient, caches run hot for popular videos, and sending the bits around is just not that costly. Running cpus and gpus is what constitutes the bulk of the energy expenditure in data centers, not switches, yet porn is getting dinged as though it's traffic is the only thing that matters. Pieces like this should be rescinded & apologies should be issued. Bitcoin is a monster & energy wastage of this class is an abomination. It should not be tolerated in a society that has it's head screwed on straight.
- Gatsky 6y ago
- elango 6y agoi have to be on the news and talked about by everybody. i say this !