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I did glace at those, actually read most of it. It all depends also on how much energy consumption you'd deem adequate. And further, how you even tell or know w

I did glace at those, actually read most of it. It all depends also on how much energy consumption you'd deem adequate. And further, how you even tell or know what would be adequate. The reason is I don't think the costs for our broken monetary system are fully appreciated, or even appreciated at all, at this point. I can't back it up adequately right now, but I do believe most of the environmental damage today, most of inequality, most war, and most political corruption is caused by fiat money and its skewed incentives. Crypto at least has a real shot at fixing those. Interesting question would be, how much of _all_ energy does bitcoin cost? Now I've looked up the numbers. Total consumption of the bitcoin process seem to be 78-87 TWh depending on which source you look at (I found one higher than what one of your source said and will use that, for 2019). Total annual energy consumption is 584 EJ, or 162,222 TWh (statista numbers, 2019). That would put bitcoin at 0.05% of total global annual. I feel that is not too high.

burkaman 6y ago
Given your premise, I agree that is an acceptable cost. I also agree that your premise sounds difficult to back up in the space of a comment. I've found that most people, myself included, have some kind of pet political issue that they believe to be the real cause of all the problems in the world. I'm not dismissing it out of hand, but I think you'll agree that it's an eyebrow-raising claim if you've never heard it before. Bitcoin's share of carbon emissions is about 0.1% by my rough calculations (based on https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption and https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions). My position is that stopping the worst effects of climate change is going to require lots of relatively small changes across all sectors of life. Bitcoin is nothing compared to, say, heating and cooling homes, but we can't just get rid of heating and cooling. We can distribute more efficient appliances, build more insulated homes, influence behavior to lower usage somewhat. Each of these might give us a .1% improvement. Find a hundred things like this, and we've cut 10% of global emissions, that's pretty good. I know bitcoin is here to stay, and I'm not suggesting government should try to ban it or something because it's bad for the planet. But until I'm convinced that it's the savior you say it is, it's not something I personally want to be involved in, and not something I can celebrate. Even ignoring mining, the cost per transaction is an enormous hurdle for me that I will need a lot of incentive to get over.
- febeling 6y ago
  I can see where you're coming from and it's consistent reasoning. I also agree my scenario isn't substantiated (at all) yet, even though I believe it to be not uncommon in the crypto community. I will put my thoughts on this together, and if you're interested ever hearing about it put some contact in your profile. In that case I'll ping you. This exchange turned out productive. Thanks for that.

burkaman 6y ago

Given your premise, I agree that is an acceptable cost. I also agree that your premise sounds difficult to back up in the space of a comment. I've found that most people, myself included, have some kind of pet political issue that they believe to be the real cause of all the problems in the world. I'm not dismissing it out of hand, but I think you'll agree that it's an eyebrow-raising claim if you've never heard it before. Bitcoin's share of carbon emissions is about 0.1% by my rough calculations (based on https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption and https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions). My position is that stopping the worst effects of climate change is going to require lots of relatively small changes across all sectors of life. Bitcoin is nothing compared to, say, heating and cooling homes, but we can't just get rid of heating and cooling. We can distribute more efficient appliances, build more insulated homes, influence behavior to lower usage somewhat. Each of these might give us a .1% improvement. Find a hundred things like this, and we've cut 10% of global emissions, that's pretty good. I know bitcoin is here to stay, and I'm not suggesting government should try to ban it or something because it's bad for the planet. But until I'm convinced that it's the savior you say it is, it's not something I personally want to be involved in, and not something I can celebrate. Even ignoring mining, the cost per transaction is an enormous hurdle for me that I will need a lot of incentive to get over.

febeling 6y ago
I can see where you're coming from and it's consistent reasoning. I also agree my scenario isn't substantiated (at all) yet, even though I believe it to be not uncommon in the crypto community. I will put my thoughts on this together, and if you're interested ever hearing about it put some contact in your profile. In that case I'll ping you. This exchange turned out productive. Thanks for that.