14 ms·
Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla's carrying Bitcoin's dirty baggage
- jp555 6y agoMany solar panels are made by putting quartz and coal into an oven, and using coal to heat it to like 1800 degrees. This releases a bunch of C02 and other much nastier stuff like silicon tetrachloride and radioactive uranium into the environment, and out comes purified polysilicon for making "green" PV panels. :P In contrast Bitcoin can run on green hydro or nuclear power.
- mikece 6y agoCan the ovens you mention be powered by electricity from nuclear or hydro?
- ttflee 6y agoOr even better, powered by solar, which closes the loop.
- jp555 6y agoThe coal ingredient still vents off toxic and radioactive waste in the making of the polysilicon. And with the rapidly falling price of PV, it's unlikely we'll see expensive investments that do not reduce costs.
- jjk166 6y agoThe coal is there to remove oxygen from the silicon. That it also provides the heat required is just an added bonus. You could add carbon capture equipment and use nuclear or hyrdo electricity to break down the CO2 back into carbon, and this carbon could be reused instead of fresh coal which would also limit the emission of other pollutants. This is a substantial additional cost though, and the conversion of an existing plant to run this way is non-trivial.
- danpalmer 6y agoBitcoin produces as much CO2 as a 737 does in a 5 hour flight, about 450kg, on average, per transaction. Air travel is considered one of the biggest polluters, and reducing air travel is considered one of the highest impact ways that individuals can reduce their carbon footprint. It only stands to reason that Bitcoin should therefore be considered far worse for its impact. The only saving grace is that people don't actually use it to pay for much, else we'd likely be in a much worse place. Edit: source is here https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption - the 450kg was from 2018, it's currently 310kg (or 685,000 VISA transactions), 651kWh (or 22 days of household energy), and nearly 100g of electronic waste. Bitcoin is essentially destined to be electricity price arbitrage in the long run, and that's a dangerous proposition.
- jp555 6y agoWhich transactions? The Bitcoin transactions running on coal, natural gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, solar, or wind electricity? Figures don't lie, but liars will figure.
- danpalmer 6y agoThe emissions come mostly from the mining necessary to secure the transactions, so it's blended across where the mining is happening. Much of it is done in China on coal power.
- jp555 6y agoSo the problem is more a coal energy problem than a bitcoin problem?
- danpalmer 6y agoI feel like you're trying to justify using Bitcoin rather than engaging with the problem. The mining-power relationship essentially creates a price arbitrage opportunity between electricity prices and Bitcoin mining fees. This is a very bad thing for the global economy as it ties all other uses of electricity to the Bitcoin mining fees in a very direct way. I can't think of another relationship this direct to energy prices, it could be catastrophic for entire industries. Oh and also it's emitting as much emissions as Argentina at the moment. A friend of mine called Bitcoin a candidate for The Great Filter, and I'm inclined to agree.
- mint2 6y ago> and out comes purified polysilicon for making "green" PV panels Oh purified silicon like also used in making all the computers that people use to mine Bitcoin with a bunch of other resources. Since you say Bitcoin can run on nuclear, why do you think that generates less “radioactive uranium”, one of your concerns for pv mfg, and other radioactive pollution than pv manufacturing? Does the uranium not get mined, concentrating and releasing its decay products into the env? How much of the power for Bitcoin is generated by nuclear and hydro right now? How much will that increase in the next 20 years?
- mnw21cam 6y agoIt's a well-known fact that burning coal releases more radioactive materials into the atmosphere than mining, refining, reacting, and disposing of actual nuclear fuels. By several orders of magnitude.
- matthewdgreen 6y agoYou could also throw into this calculation: what is the lifespan of a PV panel as compared to a Bitcoin mining ASIC.
- sschueller 6y agoWhat about the environmental impact of Starship? If you have multiple international flights per day that will leave a very large impact.
- danpalmer 6y agoGreat video here about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4&list=PLWzKfs3icbT606L4GDeUxJD-pXynjhK2v&index=12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4&list=PLWzKfs3icb... The summary is that yes they pollute a lot for what they are, but compared to almost any other major polluting industry (travel, freight, construction, etc) it's barely anything and won't be much of a problem for a long time.
- yepthatsreality 6y ago“it's barely anything and won't be much of a problem for a long time.” Humanity’s famous last words. Just pass the buck down the road.
- danpalmer 6y agoYeah that's true. In this case I think it's the pragmatic approach to not stifle the space industry when there's so much we could be doing (and aren't) elsewhere, but we do definitely have to sort this problem before it becomes a big one. Maybe governments legislating a sliding scale of regulation or cap here would be a good idea? Like, nothing to do now, but as the industry or any one company grows in this way, regulation or emissions caps grow in that way.
- toss1 6y agoDefinitely true!. However, in this case, I doubt that he's interested in flying Starships around earth any more than is required to fund the Mars adventure. If there is other funding, I'd bet nobody ever gets that 90min(?) ride from Texas to Australia
- ben_w 6y agoIf it flew that often today it would have an impact, but it isn’t flying multiple times per day right now, and it will only be ready to fly its main mission when it can carry a fuel synthesiser in cargo — the explicit reason for its fuel choice is because it can be synthesised from atmospheric CO2 and water using solar energy.
- superbcarrot 6y agoTesla carrying Bitcoin has two main motivations: - to make money - for the memes Anyone trying to justify it with the merit of the technology is either delusional or trying to sell you something.
- danpalmer 6y agoExactly. This is a Musk obsession project sold to the finance team on the potential to make money. Feels very much like what happened with Overstock a few years ago with their CEO promoting it, deciding that they'd accept it, etc. Now he's gone full-nut, even more than Musk.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bob33212 6y agoTSLA has more cash than they can efficiently spend at this time. Putting it in diversified liquid asset classes hedges against the fed printing trillions of dollars of the next 3-5 years and destroying 50% of the value of that cash.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- slfnflctd 6y ago> destroying 50% of the value of that cash If this scenario were to actually play out, a huge number of people 'hodling' bitcoin will cash out. I guarantee it. I wonder what it will be worth after that sell-off surge?
- rawtxapp 6y agoI'm one of these holders who hold to avoid cash depreciation, I don't plan on ever selling a single satoshi. Now you might ask, what's the point then, are you not gonna spend it at all? With many new defi projects, I can unlock my Bitcoin's value and use it without ever selling it. Many holders have similar ideological beliefs, Michael Saylor also said he doesn't plan on selling any and that he would just borrow against it if he needed the cash.
- alfl 6y agoTesla's not trying to reduce the number of cars, it's trying to replace the existing fleet with electric. This will likely increase consumption of electricity. Wider adoption of bitcoin will likewise increase the consumption of electricity. Electricity production (not consumption) is what causes emissions. More consumption will increase the demand for production, which will increase investment in production. Given that we're in the middle of a green energy transition, increasing investment in production will likely accelerate that transition -- the stated goal of Tesla.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- betterunix2 6y agoA key difference: replacing gas-powered cars with electric takes a carbon-emitting engine off the road, opting instead to potentially emit carbon at a centralized power plant (which is typically more efficient and emits less carbon per joule). Bitcoin increases electricity consumption without offsetting any carbon emissions elsewhere.
- Taylor_OD 6y agoSure. But a centralized power plant could be surrounded by solar panels that offset the carbon costs.
- sn_master 6y agoThe best way to reduce carbon emissions is to keep using existing cars, whether gas or electric for as long as they're drivable. Electric (and ICE, to a lesser extent) cars have a very significant carbon footprint when they're newly produced. Abandoning cars after a few years is far worse to the environment.
- titzer 6y agoIt'd be best to just...not drive. Second best would be to actively pursue a mass-scale electric conversion so that we could reuse all those big metal chassis, tires, seats, etc in existing cars. It'd be far cheaper in terms of carbon footprint to replace a combustion engine with electric. Why aren't we doing that? Because retrofitting is hard and not very profitable. And yeah, we need a place to put the batteries too. Much better to just junk everything and build more stuff! (Yes I know, most of the materials of a car will be recycled. But it's just another expression of our throwaway/can't fix that culture).
- almost_usual 6y agoIt’s crazy how obsessed people are with making excess consumption ‘green’.
- spillguard 6y agoWhat's crazy about it?
- almost_usual 6y agoIt’s a contradiction, the world is already struggling with our current energy consumption rates as we improve our energy infrastructure. But we use the new infrastructure to justify using more. There is not dream utopia of this all going away with green technology. We’ll find a way to make things worse more efficiently. There should be forcing functions that make excess consumption more costly, taxes, etc.
- wetmore 6y agoIt's harm reduction.
- almost_usual 6y agoWhich is a good excuse for someone to justify why they can use more tomorrow than yesterday.
- spillguard 6y agoJust to clarify - it seems that your first comment says that "it's crazy to call excess consumption green, even if your excess consumption uses clean energy", and your second comment says that "it's crazy that we allow excess consumption in the first place"?
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoIt's a well documented deflection strategy: Instead of decreasing unnecessary consumption, whole industries have been steering the popular opinion into thinking that recycling and lowering emissions is good enough. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
- keiferski 6y agoIs everyone that uses USD complicit in the actions the US uses to ensure it’s the global default currency? I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin is functionally any different.
- tboyd47 6y agoExactly. How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? No one wants to talk about that, yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running. Give me a break.
- jcranmer 6y ago> How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD? Hmm, let me think. The number of countries that were invaded to prop up the USD was... uh... zero. The US has certainly waged imperialistic wars almost purely for the benefit of its corporations (see, e.g., the Banana Wars), but that has nothing to do with maintaining the power of US currency.
- leesalminen 6y agoThe “petro-dollar” concept begs to differ. It postulates that the USD is propped up by continuing the trade of oil for USD. The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil.
- jcranmer 6y ago> The US ha certainly invaded multiple countries ostensibly for control of their oil. No it has not. The "multiple countries" of which you likely refer to is in fact two: Iraq and Libya, and the declared reason in neither case involved oil. The US went to war against Iraq ostensibly because of Saddam's WMD programs (which were only later conclusively found not to exist), and the intervention in Libya was at the bequest of the United Nations following the popular revolt and civil war against Muammar Qaddafi, itself largely deriving from similar uprests started after a Tunisian set himself on fire and improbably drove the Tunisian dictator on the exile. In neither case was control of oil a declared reason. And in neither case has control of oil ever been clearly demonstrated to be an actual reason for going to war.
- m1117 6y agoBitcoin is not regulated by SEC, so you can do whatever you want. For example, to buy bitcoin, tweet about it, sell bitcoin. Genius!...?
- gher-shyu3i 6y agoThe SEC has proven useless, especially with the latest GME fiasco.
- FabHK 6y agoThe SEC's aim is to prevent people from being defrauded, not from voluntarily throwing away money. Wonderful quote here: > One of the core principles of market regulation in the U.S. is transparency—give investors information and let them decide. The GameStop drama was nothing if not transparent. > “You can sell garbage to the public as long as you say to the public, ‘This is garbage and you’d be an idiot to buy it, but would you like to buy it?’” said Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. > What appears to have happened in recent weeks is that a massive wave of retail investors answered, “Yes,” to that question, current and former policy makers say. https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-is-tough-call-for-regulators-focused-on-transparency-11612693802 https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-is-tough-call-f... EDIT: remove needless snark
- kerng 6y agoThis will actually be the strategy for Tesla on long term - supplying clean energy for mining! Interesting that the article totally misses out on that, it's a pretty big opportunity for Tesla and green energy (just have the banks print more money and use aluminum for coins isnt that clean either).
- christiansakai 6y agoExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article doesn't miss out on anything, until proven otherwise. Time will tell.
- Capira 6y agoUS military requires 20x more energy than bitcoin.
- ryder9 6y agoyes, both are bad, we agree
- solosoyokaze 6y agoAnd that doesn't even take into account the devastating environmental and humanitarian impact of war (which the US government is in a constant state of). The true cost of state backed dollars far exceeds that of Bitcoin.
- RIMR 6y agoAnd Elon Musk has been on the record saying "We can coup whoever we want" in regards to our military's bloated international influence, so let's just admit he doesn't care about "saving the planet".
- cies 6y ago> Musk wants clean power Sure... /s That's why the solar roofs are very slow to materialize and the rockets/cars/bitcoins get all the focus. Musk wants to make money. I seriously expect the whole solar-roof brand-bundling of Tesla was a clever PR trick, just like the Mars mission is for SpaceX.
- knuthsat 6y agoThis article is just bad. Bitcoin's dirty baggage is magnitudes less than anything else companies and countries do to this world through not just air pollution but environment destruction, water pollution etc. I'll keep arguing about this continuously. Bitcoin will never reach the severity that some other industries did. Bitcoin is a non-issue.
- titzer 6y agoYou can keep arguing until you are blue in the face, but Bitcoin will continue to be a boondoggle that should never have happened. For the life of me I cannot understand the attitude that because someone somewhere did something worse we should stop caring and stop working on solutions. We're on a sinking ship with leaks everywhere. Plug some leaks instead of arguing about it! But you'll come back with "oh we need to allocate resources in the most impactful way possible", which we argue about for decades and never do anything. Meanwhile, new leaks are springing up every second.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoYou have to expend resources to make progress. The alternative to Bitcoin is a bloody worldwide revolution. Most people aren't actually happy living in a world of extreme inequality where only the 0.01% have any say in how our society is run. Getting off state backed currency is a prerequisite to social progress. Bitcoin is doing this in a bloodless, warless manner.
- DennisP 6y agoActually the alternative is proof-of-stake, which accomplishes the same objectives as Bitcoin with very little energy consumption.
- robjan 6y agoLook at the distribution of Bitcoin. Do you think it's any different? A small number of people (I'm excluding the exchanges here) controll the majority of the bitcoins.
- jack_pp 6y agoMaybe SpaceX will soon launch bitcoin mining satellites which will make bitcoin clean
- DennisP 6y agoSolar power satellites without all that tedious beaming of microwaves back to Earth. It might actually work. The book The Case for Space Solar Power runs through detailed engineering costs for modern solar power sats, and came up with a cost of $15/kWh at scale. That was before SpaceX. I plugged in Starship costs and it came to 4 cents/kWh. Of that, the ground station was 0.7 cents/kWh, and of course another big chunk was the microwave emitter. Remove both and you're at least down to 3 cents/kWh for 24/7 power, which is pretty competitive with anything on Earth. However, if Bitcoin ASICs continue to improve, this wouldn't work, since you'd have to keep replacing the sats' mining equipment. Also, while it might be possible for SpaceX to make money this way, just being competitive wouldn't make Bitcoin clean; they'd have to decisively outcompete all the other miners, and if Bitcoin is all run by a single miner then we might as well replace it with a SQL database and be done with it.
- RIMR 6y agoWouldn't the mining hardware become obsolete in like a year or two max?
- vgchh 6y agoI think Tesla buying Bitcoin is simply reflecting the fact that Bitcoin is looking more and more entrenched - sort of it's here-to-stay realization. Gold probably had similar transition from being a shiny fad to a more entrenched store of value at some point in its history. Personally, my problem with Bitcoin has been that some of the early adopters cornered large portions of it early on and that governments would never accept that reality. However, cat seems to be out of the bag. It seems to be playing out more like gold rush - whoever cornered, great. At some point governments will catch up and start hoarding it. And then it becomes regularized. As for no intrinsic value, the high difficulty of mining and high difficulty of faking it, appears to make it a pretty reliable store of value.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> Bitcoin is looking more and more entrenched Is it? I get that from the perspective of people holding BTC it must be the network effect that gives it value. Otherwise what differentiates it from any of the multitudes of other cryptocurrencies that have been created? It still looks an awful lot like a big casino to me. A popular one, sure, but still a casino. Not a currency.
- vgchh 6y agoI think the differentiation is in the first mover advantage of Bitcoin. Combine that with, difficulty of mining, no central control and proven robustness.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago> I get that from the perspective of people holding BTC it must be the network effect that gives it value. Same as the Euro, USD, etc. then. > It still looks an awful lot like a big casino to me. Wall St. laughing in the background.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> Same as the Euro, USD, etc. then. LOL. The USD is backed by the IRS. No network effect required.
- eecks 6y agoHacker News is pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative a bit too hard recently. I am not sure I have seen anything like it on this site before. It feels completely unnatural. I normally see more nuanced discussions about things here.
- rawtxapp 6y agoThat's been the case for a very long time, example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20385116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20385116 is flagged. I might be wrong, but I think it comes down to a lot of tech people on here being aware of Bitcoin early on, yet they didn't research it more or invested in it, wrote it off and now it's value is constantly increasing. I suspect they resent others who have invested and are much better off because of it. This is just personal opinion and I'm sure there are other people who disagree with the electricity consumption or some other things as well.
- motoboi 6y agoNah, it's more like people bitcoin friendly have no interest in winning debates when the price is up. When the price is down, the opposite is very much true.
- eecks 6y agoSo it's like BTC fans are distracted by the price so and/or don't see the need to argue their position? Interesting theory
- motoboi 6y agoWhen the price is up, bitcoin adopters spend the year feeling vindicated for the 3 years of mockery. When the price is down, they spend three years reassuring the world this is fine. If you plot bitcoin price vs time in a log-log plot, you can connect the tops and the bottoms with a straight line. I shit you not and this is at the same time very reassuring and satisfactory when the price is up and very stressful when it is down, as you'll spend 24/7 asking yourself and the world if it will hold this time again.
- m1117 6y agoThey want to increase energy consumption so there's more need for electricity so they can sell batteries to bitcoin owners? [lol]
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI think most people are confused about Bitcoin's environmental impact, in particular when compared to gold. I wrote a blog post [0] about it, if you want to dive deeper. [0]: https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitive-answer-a010b0826f2a https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...
- rootusrootus 6y agoIn the end, though, gold still has more than belief propping up the value. If bitcoin value drops to zero then it was all for nothing.
- notjes 6y agoFinish the damn fusion reactors already...
- andred14 6y agoReuters has lied so much in 2020. They are in the back pocket of the global satan1c ped0phile cabal.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- antattack 6y agoFor context: pollution from bitcoin production is equivalent to 4 782 608 passenger cars.
- Kelamir 6y agoI don't find it credible, because your statement is likely assuming that no energy used to produce bitcoin is "clean", like solar. I might be misunderstanding though. Could you provide additional information?
- antattack 6y agoFrom the article: bitcoin production emits 20 million metric tons of CO2. Average car emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2. It matters little if some of the electricity came from green sources because the energy not consumed by bitcoin production could have been used elsewhere. I have yet to hear about bitcoin production that consumes electricity that would otherwise been gone to waste. For example, using one's nVidia GPUs to heat your house does not count because using electricity for resistive heating is wasteful.
- RivieraKid 6y agoI recently bought some Bitcoin with a bit of disgust but I'm not a fan. It has effectively no utility except "volatile store of value". Most people actually buy it because they expect more than a store of value, they see it as an "investment" which will gain value over time. But at some point an equilibrium will be reached where x % of world wealth will be allocated in Bitcoin and this x will remain stable over time and Bitcoin growth will slow down to global GDP growth (just thinking aloud, maybe this is wrong). At that point, people may start to think, why the hell should I have my wealth in something that is expected to have similar returns to long-term government bonds but is also much more volatile and can go down to zero because unlike gold, there's no floor, it has no intrinsic value, it's all based on what people believe.
- Mc_Big_G 6y agoWow, they're coming out of the woodwork to attach Bitcoin. Good luck with that.
- yellowapple 6y agoThe very premise of this article ignores the very point of moving toward 100% clean power. If all power is clean, then why does it matter how much power Bitcoin uses? That is: Bitcoin's "dirty baggage" ain't Bitcoin's. Rather, the dirty baggage is that of electricity production as a whole, and that baggage gets a heck of a lot cleaner once we've moved away from carbon-emitting electricity production. Bitcoin doesn't give the slightest iota of a rat's behind whether a miner's running entirely off solar power or entirely off the dirtiest coal money can buy. Kinda disappointed in Reuters for putting their name on an article that is outright antithetical to factual reasoning. This is the precise opposite of good journalism; it's a hit piece, and for asinine reasons.
- victor106 6y agoIf anyone thinks goverments would let an alternate asset class, which they don't have any control over or visibility into (however much I personally disagree that government should not be regulating this), grow into infinity then they are being delusional. Its just common sense but it's hard for people to think rational during a hype cycle. All it takes is one bad actor(s) to fund something nefarious using btc and the governments will make all this illegal in a few hours. I love the concept of crypto and I think it will be used for lot of use cases in the future, no doubt about that
- rawtxapp 6y agoThe beauty of decentralization is that they can't stop it. Sure, a country can ban it and the price might drop temporarily, but a) that would just create a black market for it, b) they would be left behind while other countries that embrace it innovate and prosper.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago> While other countries that embrace it innovate and prosper. No evidence at all of any useful innovation happening here. Just churn, waste and grift. it's wishful thinking
- rawtxapp 6y agoYou seem dead set on thinking Bitcoin is trash, can you say more about why you think no useful innovation is happening here? I'm legit curious as to how much have you researched bitcoin? How familiar are you with things like defi?
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago> why you think no useful innovation is happening here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Shifting_the_burden_of_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#S...