3 ms·

> Bitcoin increases electricity consumption without offsetting any carbon emissions elsewhere. Does printing/minting physical money not have a carbon footprint

> Bitcoin increases electricity consumption without offsetting any carbon emissions elsewhere. Does printing/minting physical money not have a carbon footprint? What about transporting it everywhere?

MauranKilom 6y ago
According to [0], a single bitcoin transaction has a CO2 footprint of 300 kg. Printing a $100 bill costs 20 cents according to [1]. I don't think there is a meaningful way to produce 300 kg of CO2 by spending 20 cents, even if that was all you were trying to do. And then consider that a bill sees on the order of 100 reuses (and coins live significantly longer). Transportation is far harder to estimate, but unless you're driving hundreds of miles for each (average) transaction, you're not going to get anywhere near 300 kg, as road vehicles are in the ballpark of 20 kg CO2 per 100 km. So no, CO2 impact of physical money is orders of magnitude below bitcoin. Bitcoin is not remotely offsetting anything there. [0]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm
betterunix2 6y ago
It does, but it is almost certainly less than Bitcoin on a per-transaction basis. If the energy cost of physical money were comparable to the average energy spent per Bitcoin transactions we would already have a cashless society; in fact, if the energy cost was so high, we may never have used cash/coins in the first place. To put this in perspective, Bitcoin consumes about as much energy as Argentina (a country with tens of millions of residents), about 121 TWh/year, but for all that energy the network only processes 4-7 transactions per second. Visa processes an average of 1700 transactions per second on its own, and is just one of many large payment processors in the mainstream financial system. Visa's 2018 report (first thing I found on Google) stated a consumption of about 720000GJ, which is 0.1TWh. That is a massive difference, so if cash was anything as energy-intensive as Bitcoin the banks would have figured it out by now and ditched it to save a ton of money (keeping in mind that banks account for the bulk of the overhead spent on cash and coins).

> Bitcoin increases electricity consumption without offsetting any carbon emissions elsewhere. Does printing/minting physical money not have a carbon footprint? What about transporting it everywhere?

MauranKilom 6y ago

According to [0], a single bitcoin transaction has a CO2 footprint of 300 kg. Printing a $100 bill costs 20 cents according to [1]. I don't think there is a meaningful way to produce 300 kg of CO2 by spending 20 cents, even if that was all you were trying to do. And then consider that a bill sees on the order of 100 reuses (and coins live significantly longer). Transportation is far harder to estimate, but unless you're driving hundreds of miles for each (average) transaction, you're not going to get anywhere near 300 kg, as road vehicles are in the ballpark of 20 kg CO2 per 100 km. So no, CO2 impact of physical money is orders of magnitude below bitcoin. Bitcoin is not remotely offsetting anything there. [0]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm

betterunix2 6y ago

It does, but it is almost certainly less than Bitcoin on a per-transaction basis. If the energy cost of physical money were comparable to the average energy spent per Bitcoin transactions we would already have a cashless society; in fact, if the energy cost was so high, we may never have used cash/coins in the first place. To put this in perspective, Bitcoin consumes about as much energy as Argentina (a country with tens of millions of residents), about 121 TWh/year, but for all that energy the network only processes 4-7 transactions per second. Visa processes an average of 1700 transactions per second on its own, and is just one of many large payment processors in the mainstream financial system. Visa's 2018 report (first thing I found on Google) stated a consumption of about 720000GJ, which is 0.1TWh. That is a massive difference, so if cash was anything as energy-intensive as Bitcoin the banks would have figured it out by now and ditched it to save a ton of money (keeping in mind that banks account for the bulk of the overhead spent on cash and coins).