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Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy. Also replacing gold would be a ne

Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy. Also replacing gold would be a net win for the environment. So really there is no need to fake virtue signal.

endisneigh 6y ago
I'm curious - how do you know most BTC mining comes from renewable energy? I'm also curious to see some research that shows the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy.
- trident5000 6y ago
  Quick google search will help you out. Ill do one for you: https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mini...
  - sodality2 6y ago
    >Cryptocurrency investment products and research firm CoinShares estimates Forgive my skepticism, but this seems biased. Would they not benefit from a positive outlook on BTC?
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    The report is pretty weak (https://coinshares.co.uk/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-2019-fidelity-foreword.pdf https://coinshares.co.uk/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-m...) Basically they say mining is reported in areas that have certain levels of renewable energy therefore the bitcoin was mined using the renewable energy. Finally, the report says they made no attempt to verify any of the numbers they claim so the entire thing is worthless IMHO. I won't even bother pointing out the conflict of interest of the entire report to begin with... > It is necessary at this point to caveat that while we do our utmost to accurately pinpoint the location of global mining centres, the Bitcoin mining industry remains a highly private and secretive industry. As a result, our estimates may be subject to significant potential uncertainty. While we have made no attempt to formally quantify these uncertainly levels, we intuitively guesstimate that, e.g. our renewables penetration figures should be taken to include a tentative uncertainty of around ±10%. Even if that's true, it's still a waste of energy
    - trident5000 6y ago
      Ok, make your own report if you're going to reject whats presented to you. Ill wait. Otherwise dont make the counter argument if you have nothing other than your opinion with no merit behind it.
- omegaworks 6y ago
  It takes several orders of magnitude less energy to clear a transaction on the VISA network. It's a totally bogus claim. https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/#:~:text=Average%20energy%20consumption%20per%20transaction%20for%20Bitcoin%20and%20VISA%202020&text=The%20average%20energy%20consumption%20for,consumption%20of%20149%20kilowatt%2Dhours https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co....
izacus 6y ago
> Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy Can you substantiate this claim somehow? And perhaps also normalize per volume?
tomdell 6y ago
“Replacing” gold? Do you expect that gold will disappear or become worthless?
- trident5000 6y ago
  I do think btc will suck the oxygen out of golds value (and arguably is right now). If the value is less, mining is less. If mining is less, land destruction and fossil fuel energy usage goes down.
  - 1ris 6y ago
    >I do think btc will suck the oxygen out of golds value (and arguably is right now). There is no other way to put it, your are delusional. And no, you are not a unrecognised visionary. This is so wrong you can't even disprove it. Like you can't argue against the hobo next door who arguing sincerely he has been to Jupiter. As above: Disclosure, very early bitcoin adopter, made money, so i have a skin in the game.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      You seem very emotional about this topic. Dont strain your neanderthal back hoarding rocks under your bed. JMP predicts btc will replace gold so my opinion is in better company that your nonpoint with zero explanation but a lot of temper tantrum.
      - flyingcircus3 6y ago
        Does this tactic actually ever work for you?
        trident5000 6y ago
        Whats the tactic?
        6y ago
omegaworks 6y ago
If we take your claim at face value: the renewable energy consumed by Bitcoin is renewable energy not available to the wider market for doing work with actual value.
- trident5000 6y ago
  The future requires more energy. That will never change with or without bitcoin. The answer is to switch all or most energy to renewable instead of pointing fingers at what is using it. Do we need all this video rendering? That uses a lot of energy.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    Most pieces of technology tend to become more energy-efficient as time goes on. See electric cars or even gradual improvements to the internal combustion engine like VTEC. Same with computer CPUs. Bitcoin is pretty unique in that it gets more wasteful over time. Disclaimer: I have some Bitcoin so “you’re just jealous” isn’t a valid retort.
  - omegaworks 6y ago
    We get videos out of video rendering. What do we get out of the wasted heat of a Bitcoin transaction?
    - drdeca 6y ago
      I could be wrong, but I don’t think it is the transactions that substantially contribute to the energy use of Bitcoin.
      - omegaworks 6y ago
        Of course it depends on your understanding of what a "transaction" is. I'm referring specifically to the generally accepted understanding, which considers a transaction cleared once six miners mine the block containing that transaction. 500 transactions are bundled together in a block. Mining a block is a brute force mathematical operation. The rate of mining is kept at a constant rate by the protocol, to do that the protocol must increase the complexity of mining blocks to meet the arms race of miners competing for the block reward. This means the energy required to mine those blocks is not bounded.
Jasper_ 6y ago
> Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy Any sources? Any time I've tried to investigate this, I've found this to very much not be the case. A majority of mining pools are in places where energy is cheap, but not necessarily renewable. > and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy. And you expect that's just going to... disappear once Bitcoin wins? JP Morgan & Chase are going to go "oh, guess we've been beat" and pack their bags? The existing financial infrastructure costs a lot, but Bitcoin isn't too far behind, and Bitcoin can only do a ~3 transactions per second [0]. Visa's data center they built back in 2012 is completely renewable, and can do 2,500 transactions per second. [1] [0] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second [1] https://www.cnbc.com/id/46867832 https://www.cnbc.com/id/46867832
- trident5000 6y ago
  I posted a link below. 3tps is just flat out incorrect through simple math dividing the transactions per day by seconds in a day so you're just lying. Also the chain is a settlement layer not meant for paying for coffee. If it was faster it would bloat ahead of memory advancement and become centralized. If gold value collapses yes the mining would significantly go down.
rspeele 6y ago
How much of that existing financial infrastructure will Bitcoin replace if universally adopted?
tunesmith 6y ago
I've seen this point so many times. First, the word "most" is doing a lot of work here. And the point about existing financial infrastructure is completely irrelevant, because bitcoin doesn't replace that infrastructure. The energy use of bitcoin is on top of that other energy use.
arghwhat 6y ago
Even if it 75% is renewable, it's not enough - the numbers to run the Bitcoin block chain vary from "a few big nuclear power plants" to "a small to medium-sized country", but regardless, the hit is massive. If we have to burn our resources and cause the resulting pollution, at least let it be as a result of something productive.
- trident5000 6y ago
  Ill never stop laughing at the virtue signaling. Stop rendering videos if you want to save the planet.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    Many of us are already taking steps to reduce our energy use like driving as little as possible, eating less meat, consuming less. It’s not a joke.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      Sounds pretty dumb. The answer is make a lot more energy through sustainable methods rather than band aid solutions. The global population is declining aside from a few undeveloped countries. You can calm down.
      - arghwhat 6y ago
        Your attitude, specifically, is a huge reason of why we're as screwed as we are. You can waste energy after we have renewable energy. That we will have renewable energy later doesn't change that we don't have it now. There's a difference between putting on a bandaid and actively pouring acid in the wound. This is the latter.
- rektide 6y ago
  Also, building & maintaining power generation is not free. Building solar panels, dams, wind has environmental impact, sizable material & energy inputs. And these generation systems only have a finite lifetime. Renewables are not free power. Further, building a bunch of mining/blockchain machines has environmental impact. Things aren't quite as bad as they were - I hope - but Silicon Valley's contaminated groundwater, Google being built atop a superfund site - strong, close-to-home for many evidence that the processes are materially & energy intensive[1] and quite toxic. Building data-centers of mining machines has impact. And like the energy use question, we must ask: what else could we being doing with this capacity? The 'it's mostly renewables' thing keeps getting raised & it's really frustrating/exhausting. It feels like a dismissal or denial. Ultimately that is potential that could be allocated elsewhere, and even with renewables, there is an impact to this planet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045573
lukifer 6y ago
Do you have any data on the renewable energy claim? Considering that mining goes on 24/7, I would find that highly dubious (even if true, "most" could mean 51%, or 90%; 10% of the annual usage of Argentina is still a non-trivial carbon footprint). It would matter far less if the externality of carbon were taxed properly [0], but I think it's appropriate to be horrified at PoW when other low-energy mechanisms exist (PoS, memory/storage-based). The fact that existing financial infrastructure is also inefficient and untaxed is no excuse to double-down on passing ecological debt to our grandchildren (at a usurious interest rate). [0] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
1ris 6y ago
Bullshit. Energy wasted is energy wasted. It could have done something usefull, but instead it got sunk into a pow. Given miners run 24/7 and have no load following makes things worse. The existing financial infrastructure is also usable, at scale, in sharp contrast to bitcoin. See, I like the idea of a "amazon for drugs", but bitcoins cost is just not worth it. Disclosure: Adopted bitcoin 0.2, make money with it.
- trident5000 6y ago
  We should make you the energy czar that decides whats an important use of energy and give you a little hat and jacket. Ill take my transactional and monetary freedom.
  - 1ris 6y ago
    Moving goalpost.
Nomentatus 6y ago
But one paper suggests almost half of the world’s Bitcoin mining capacity is situated in southwest China, where power is cheap, less taxed and supplied by coal-fired plants as well as hydroelectricity. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates coal accounts for 38% of miner power. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/is-bitcoin-mining-worth-the-environmental-cost https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/is-bit...

endisneigh 6y ago

I'm curious - how do you know most BTC mining comes from renewable energy? I'm also curious to see some research that shows the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy.

trident5000 6y ago
Quick google search will help you out. Ill do one for you: https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mini...
- sodality2 6y ago
  >Cryptocurrency investment products and research firm CoinShares estimates Forgive my skepticism, but this seems biased. Would they not benefit from a positive outlook on BTC?
- endisneigh 6y ago
  The report is pretty weak (https://coinshares.co.uk/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-2019-fidelity-foreword.pdf https://coinshares.co.uk/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-m...) Basically they say mining is reported in areas that have certain levels of renewable energy therefore the bitcoin was mined using the renewable energy. Finally, the report says they made no attempt to verify any of the numbers they claim so the entire thing is worthless IMHO. I won't even bother pointing out the conflict of interest of the entire report to begin with... > It is necessary at this point to caveat that while we do our utmost to accurately pinpoint the location of global mining centres, the Bitcoin mining industry remains a highly private and secretive industry. As a result, our estimates may be subject to significant potential uncertainty. While we have made no attempt to formally quantify these uncertainly levels, we intuitively guesstimate that, e.g. our renewables penetration figures should be taken to include a tentative uncertainty of around ±10%. Even if that's true, it's still a waste of energy
  - trident5000 6y ago
    Ok, make your own report if you're going to reject whats presented to you. Ill wait. Otherwise dont make the counter argument if you have nothing other than your opinion with no merit behind it.
omegaworks 6y ago
It takes several orders of magnitude less energy to clear a transaction on the VISA network. It's a totally bogus claim. https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/#:~:text=Average%20energy%20consumption%20per%20transaction%20for%20Bitcoin%20and%20VISA%202020&text=The%20average%20energy%20consumption%20for,consumption%20of%20149%20kilowatt%2Dhours https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co....

izacus 6y ago

> Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy Can you substantiate this claim somehow? And perhaps also normalize per volume?

tomdell 6y ago

“Replacing” gold? Do you expect that gold will disappear or become worthless?

trident5000 6y ago
I do think btc will suck the oxygen out of golds value (and arguably is right now). If the value is less, mining is less. If mining is less, land destruction and fossil fuel energy usage goes down.
- 1ris 6y ago
  >I do think btc will suck the oxygen out of golds value (and arguably is right now). There is no other way to put it, your are delusional. And no, you are not a unrecognised visionary. This is so wrong you can't even disprove it. Like you can't argue against the hobo next door who arguing sincerely he has been to Jupiter. As above: Disclosure, very early bitcoin adopter, made money, so i have a skin in the game.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    You seem very emotional about this topic. Dont strain your neanderthal back hoarding rocks under your bed. JMP predicts btc will replace gold so my opinion is in better company that your nonpoint with zero explanation but a lot of temper tantrum.
    - flyingcircus3 6y ago
      Does this tactic actually ever work for you?
      - trident5000 6y ago
        Whats the tactic?
        6y ago

omegaworks 6y ago

If we take your claim at face value: the renewable energy consumed by Bitcoin is renewable energy not available to the wider market for doing work with actual value.

trident5000 6y ago
The future requires more energy. That will never change with or without bitcoin. The answer is to switch all or most energy to renewable instead of pointing fingers at what is using it. Do we need all this video rendering? That uses a lot of energy.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  Most pieces of technology tend to become more energy-efficient as time goes on. See electric cars or even gradual improvements to the internal combustion engine like VTEC. Same with computer CPUs. Bitcoin is pretty unique in that it gets more wasteful over time. Disclaimer: I have some Bitcoin so “you’re just jealous” isn’t a valid retort.
- omegaworks 6y ago
  We get videos out of video rendering. What do we get out of the wasted heat of a Bitcoin transaction?
  - drdeca 6y ago
    I could be wrong, but I don’t think it is the transactions that substantially contribute to the energy use of Bitcoin.
    - omegaworks 6y ago
      Of course it depends on your understanding of what a "transaction" is. I'm referring specifically to the generally accepted understanding, which considers a transaction cleared once six miners mine the block containing that transaction. 500 transactions are bundled together in a block. Mining a block is a brute force mathematical operation. The rate of mining is kept at a constant rate by the protocol, to do that the protocol must increase the complexity of mining blocks to meet the arms race of miners competing for the block reward. This means the energy required to mine those blocks is not bounded.

Jasper_ 6y ago

> Youll be glad to know most btc mining comes from renewable energy Any sources? Any time I've tried to investigate this, I've found this to very much not be the case. A majority of mining pools are in places where energy is cheap, but not necessarily renewable. > and the existing financial infrastructure uses more energy. And you expect that's just going to... disappear once Bitcoin wins? JP Morgan & Chase are going to go "oh, guess we've been beat" and pack their bags? The existing financial infrastructure costs a lot, but Bitcoin isn't too far behind, and Bitcoin can only do a ~3 transactions per second [0]. Visa's data center they built back in 2012 is completely renewable, and can do 2,500 transactions per second. [1] [0] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second [1] https://www.cnbc.com/id/46867832 https://www.cnbc.com/id/46867832

trident5000 6y ago
I posted a link below. 3tps is just flat out incorrect through simple math dividing the transactions per day by seconds in a day so you're just lying. Also the chain is a settlement layer not meant for paying for coffee. If it was faster it would bloat ahead of memory advancement and become centralized. If gold value collapses yes the mining would significantly go down.

rspeele 6y ago

How much of that existing financial infrastructure will Bitcoin replace if universally adopted?

tunesmith 6y ago

I've seen this point so many times. First, the word "most" is doing a lot of work here. And the point about existing financial infrastructure is completely irrelevant, because bitcoin doesn't replace that infrastructure. The energy use of bitcoin is on top of that other energy use.

arghwhat 6y ago

Even if it 75% is renewable, it's not enough - the numbers to run the Bitcoin block chain vary from "a few big nuclear power plants" to "a small to medium-sized country", but regardless, the hit is massive. If we have to burn our resources and cause the resulting pollution, at least let it be as a result of something productive.

trident5000 6y ago
Ill never stop laughing at the virtue signaling. Stop rendering videos if you want to save the planet.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  Many of us are already taking steps to reduce our energy use like driving as little as possible, eating less meat, consuming less. It’s not a joke.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    Sounds pretty dumb. The answer is make a lot more energy through sustainable methods rather than band aid solutions. The global population is declining aside from a few undeveloped countries. You can calm down.
    - arghwhat 6y ago
      Your attitude, specifically, is a huge reason of why we're as screwed as we are. You can waste energy after we have renewable energy. That we will have renewable energy later doesn't change that we don't have it now. There's a difference between putting on a bandaid and actively pouring acid in the wound. This is the latter.
rektide 6y ago
Also, building & maintaining power generation is not free. Building solar panels, dams, wind has environmental impact, sizable material & energy inputs. And these generation systems only have a finite lifetime. Renewables are not free power. Further, building a bunch of mining/blockchain machines has environmental impact. Things aren't quite as bad as they were - I hope - but Silicon Valley's contaminated groundwater, Google being built atop a superfund site - strong, close-to-home for many evidence that the processes are materially & energy intensive[1] and quite toxic. Building data-centers of mining machines has impact. And like the energy use question, we must ask: what else could we being doing with this capacity? The 'it's mostly renewables' thing keeps getting raised & it's really frustrating/exhausting. It feels like a dismissal or denial. Ultimately that is potential that could be allocated elsewhere, and even with renewables, there is an impact to this planet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21045573

lukifer 6y ago

Do you have any data on the renewable energy claim? Considering that mining goes on 24/7, I would find that highly dubious (even if true, "most" could mean 51%, or 90%; 10% of the annual usage of Argentina is still a non-trivial carbon footprint). It would matter far less if the externality of carbon were taxed properly [0], but I think it's appropriate to be horrified at PoW when other low-energy mechanisms exist (PoS, memory/storage-based). The fact that existing financial infrastructure is also inefficient and untaxed is no excuse to double-down on passing ecological debt to our grandchildren (at a usurious interest rate). [0] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

1ris 6y ago

Bullshit. Energy wasted is energy wasted. It could have done something usefull, but instead it got sunk into a pow. Given miners run 24/7 and have no load following makes things worse. The existing financial infrastructure is also usable, at scale, in sharp contrast to bitcoin. See, I like the idea of a "amazon for drugs", but bitcoins cost is just not worth it. Disclosure: Adopted bitcoin 0.2, make money with it.

trident5000 6y ago
We should make you the energy czar that decides whats an important use of energy and give you a little hat and jacket. Ill take my transactional and monetary freedom.
- 1ris 6y ago
  Moving goalpost.

Nomentatus 6y ago

But one paper suggests almost half of the world’s Bitcoin mining capacity is situated in southwest China, where power is cheap, less taxed and supplied by coal-fired plants as well as hydroelectricity. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates coal accounts for 38% of miner power. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/is-bitcoin-mining-worth-the-environmental-cost https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/is-bit...