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Maybe we need a heavy Carbon Tax on Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. Using the energy consumption of Argentina to verify financial transactions does not fit with

Maybe we need a heavy Carbon Tax on Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. Using the energy consumption of Argentina to verify financial transactions does not fit with moving to a Net Zero economy.

lifty 6y ago
We definitely need a heavy carbon tax on any energy production that has negative externalities. I don't care if its cryptocurrency, video gaming, datacenters or dryers, if it consumes a lot of electricity we need to incentivise people to use less of it or use energy from sources that have smaller carbon footprints. Same should be done for cars.
moralsupply 6y ago
Gaming uses more energy than Bitcoin. Shall we place carbon taxes on gaming too? How about a carbon tax on Gold and Silver, and on the whole of the banking system, which also consume more energy than Bitcoin? In any case, feel free to contact the Bitcoin CEO and discuss your ideas on how to implement those taxes.
- bronzeage 6y ago
  Except you're wrong and all those things consume far less power than bitcoin. That's the entire point.
  - moralsupply 6y ago
    No they don't. Gaming is the sole demand for all consoles and GPUs produced in the world. Those devices alone consume a lot more energy than Bitcoin miners (by about an order of magnitude). Gold and Silver are extremely expensive to mine energy-wise. The banking system is amazingly expensive to run. Not only it requires lots of buildings and transportation for millions of workers, it also requires a lot of computing resources to be run -- without even guaranteeing you can withdraw your money from banks, and with your money there being corroded due to inflation. Bitcoin, in comparison, is actually pretty "green" once you consider the value it provides: a distributed ledger with 10+ years of operation and no flaws/attacks detected, meaning it's the safest store of value known to mankind, while not being under any control of any organization or government. In any case, even if your point that Bitcoin is "evil" as it requires "too much energy to run" is true, what are you going to do about it? Feel free to short Bitcoin in a futures market, and leave all your wealth allocated in assets associated to fiat currencies.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Gaming is the sole demand for all consoles and GPUs Well, no, mining cryptocurrency is a significant source of GPU demand; GPUs also have non-gaming, non-cryptocurrency utility.
      - moralsupply 6y ago
        cryptocurrency mining is mostly done using ASICs
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > cryptocurrency mining is mostly done using ASICs Bitcoin mining is mostly only effective with ASICs, but cryptocurrency is more than just Bitcoin.
        moralsupply 6y ago
        Cryptocurrency mining is mostly about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has maintained at least 60% market dominance year-over-year since its inception (averaging 75% all time dominance). Ethereum (which can be profitably mined using GPUs) has currently 15% dominance, with most of the other top 15 coins not being PoW (except for Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin, from which only Bitcoin Cash can be mined either with ASICs or GPUs). Also, Ethereum is in the process of moving to PoS.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Cryptocurrency mining is mostly about Bitcoin. What cryptocurrency mining is mostly about is entirely irrelevant to either the claim that GPUs, and the power thet consume, are used exclusively for gaming or the counterclaim that, on the contrary, significant sources of GPU use outside of gaming exist, including cryptocurrency mining. It doesn't matter if the coins for which GPU mining is viable are a much smaller share, by whatever measure you care to use, of the cryptocurrency space than Bitcoin, what matters is whether or not mining them (among other non-gaming uses) is significant in the demand for and use of GPUs. Which it is, which is why Nvidia has recently taken steps to actively cripple mining on some gaming cards so that thet can actually reach the gaming market. (GPGPU is also a thing, and non-gaming display acceleration; the idea that GPUs are only used for gaming is ridiculous even beyond the cryptocurrency applications.)
- imtringued 6y ago
  Yes, carbon taxes everywhere so we can solve this stupid problem and focus on other things.
  - temptemptemp111 6y ago
    I bet you wear 3 masks and got the vax from every manufacturer!
- teslaberry 6y ago
  carbon taxes are the solution for everything. in fact, we should tax the carbon that is consumed in the process of effectuating and collecting carbon taxes themselves. and to get even more meta, carbon tax the effort spent in taxing that effort to collect the tax. it keeps going. infinite carbon taxes!
rawtxapp 6y ago
Carbon tax everything, why limit yourself to cryptocurrencies?
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  Exactly. To be precise, carbon tax energy, so that everything that uses energy needs to factor carbon emissions in their costs. The whole point of carbon taxes is to internalise the cost of carbon emissions into everything, to put the market to work on better alternatives. Limiting carbon taxes to any particular service or product would be a market distortion and would defeat the purpose. If carbon taxes hurt cryptocurrency mining and their value collapses in favour of less-energy-intensive digital payment platforms, that would be great. If on the other hand cryptocurrencies innovate towards less-energy-intensive methods of mining and their value continues to soar, that would also be great.
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    Carbon tax carbon emitting energy. Don't tax solar panels, that would be short sighted and regressive.
    - Mordisquitos 6y ago
      Of course, I meant applying a carbon (i.e. "carbon-dependent") tax at the point of energy production, not on energy production itself in abstract. I can see how it could give that impression by how I phrased my second paragraph in terms of energy-intensiveness rather than carbon-intensiveness, but my intention was to abstract away which specific source of energy each industry made use of, assuming a unified and homogeneous electrical grid. Ironically, much that I am critical of criptocurrencies' energy expenditure, they may be more adaptable to carbon taxation than conventional digital transaction networks (SEPA, Visa, etc.) because they are in fact more centralised in their energy consumption. A cryptocurrency mining outfit could somewhat easily become self-sufficient in terms of energy relying on wind power or solar power, becoming immune to carbon taxation (and innocent in terms of carbon emissions). The energy consumption from conventional payment networks, even though it is not as inherently energy-expensive as cryptocurrencies, is so massively distributed across countries and businesses at multiple levels that they could not simply go non-carbon overnight.
uncletammy 6y ago
It would be really tough to enforce for the bigger ones. You can mine a block without revealing your location. You only need a connection to the internet through a vpn. It would be a game of whack-a-mole for enforcers. It's a good idea though.

Maybe we need a heavy Carbon Tax on Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. Using the energy consumption of Argentina to verify financial transactions does not fit with moving to a Net Zero economy.

lifty 6y ago

We definitely need a heavy carbon tax on any energy production that has negative externalities. I don't care if its cryptocurrency, video gaming, datacenters or dryers, if it consumes a lot of electricity we need to incentivise people to use less of it or use energy from sources that have smaller carbon footprints. Same should be done for cars.

moralsupply 6y ago

Gaming uses more energy than Bitcoin. Shall we place carbon taxes on gaming too? How about a carbon tax on Gold and Silver, and on the whole of the banking system, which also consume more energy than Bitcoin? In any case, feel free to contact the Bitcoin CEO and discuss your ideas on how to implement those taxes.

bronzeage 6y ago
Except you're wrong and all those things consume far less power than bitcoin. That's the entire point.
- moralsupply 6y ago
  No they don't. Gaming is the sole demand for all consoles and GPUs produced in the world. Those devices alone consume a lot more energy than Bitcoin miners (by about an order of magnitude). Gold and Silver are extremely expensive to mine energy-wise. The banking system is amazingly expensive to run. Not only it requires lots of buildings and transportation for millions of workers, it also requires a lot of computing resources to be run -- without even guaranteeing you can withdraw your money from banks, and with your money there being corroded due to inflation. Bitcoin, in comparison, is actually pretty "green" once you consider the value it provides: a distributed ledger with 10+ years of operation and no flaws/attacks detected, meaning it's the safest store of value known to mankind, while not being under any control of any organization or government. In any case, even if your point that Bitcoin is "evil" as it requires "too much energy to run" is true, what are you going to do about it? Feel free to short Bitcoin in a futures market, and leave all your wealth allocated in assets associated to fiat currencies.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Gaming is the sole demand for all consoles and GPUs Well, no, mining cryptocurrency is a significant source of GPU demand; GPUs also have non-gaming, non-cryptocurrency utility.
    - moralsupply 6y ago
      cryptocurrency mining is mostly done using ASICs
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > cryptocurrency mining is mostly done using ASICs Bitcoin mining is mostly only effective with ASICs, but cryptocurrency is more than just Bitcoin.
        moralsupply 6y ago
        Cryptocurrency mining is mostly about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has maintained at least 60% market dominance year-over-year since its inception (averaging 75% all time dominance). Ethereum (which can be profitably mined using GPUs) has currently 15% dominance, with most of the other top 15 coins not being PoW (except for Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin, from which only Bitcoin Cash can be mined either with ASICs or GPUs). Also, Ethereum is in the process of moving to PoS.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Cryptocurrency mining is mostly about Bitcoin. What cryptocurrency mining is mostly about is entirely irrelevant to either the claim that GPUs, and the power thet consume, are used exclusively for gaming or the counterclaim that, on the contrary, significant sources of GPU use outside of gaming exist, including cryptocurrency mining. It doesn't matter if the coins for which GPU mining is viable are a much smaller share, by whatever measure you care to use, of the cryptocurrency space than Bitcoin, what matters is whether or not mining them (among other non-gaming uses) is significant in the demand for and use of GPUs. Which it is, which is why Nvidia has recently taken steps to actively cripple mining on some gaming cards so that thet can actually reach the gaming market. (GPGPU is also a thing, and non-gaming display acceleration; the idea that GPUs are only used for gaming is ridiculous even beyond the cryptocurrency applications.)
imtringued 6y ago
Yes, carbon taxes everywhere so we can solve this stupid problem and focus on other things.
- temptemptemp111 6y ago
  I bet you wear 3 masks and got the vax from every manufacturer!
teslaberry 6y ago
carbon taxes are the solution for everything. in fact, we should tax the carbon that is consumed in the process of effectuating and collecting carbon taxes themselves. and to get even more meta, carbon tax the effort spent in taxing that effort to collect the tax. it keeps going. infinite carbon taxes!

rawtxapp 6y ago

Carbon tax everything, why limit yourself to cryptocurrencies?

Mordisquitos 6y ago
Exactly. To be precise, carbon tax energy, so that everything that uses energy needs to factor carbon emissions in their costs. The whole point of carbon taxes is to internalise the cost of carbon emissions into everything, to put the market to work on better alternatives. Limiting carbon taxes to any particular service or product would be a market distortion and would defeat the purpose. If carbon taxes hurt cryptocurrency mining and their value collapses in favour of less-energy-intensive digital payment platforms, that would be great. If on the other hand cryptocurrencies innovate towards less-energy-intensive methods of mining and their value continues to soar, that would also be great.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Carbon tax carbon emitting energy. Don't tax solar panels, that would be short sighted and regressive.
  - Mordisquitos 6y ago
    Of course, I meant applying a carbon (i.e. "carbon-dependent") tax at the point of energy production, not on energy production itself in abstract. I can see how it could give that impression by how I phrased my second paragraph in terms of energy-intensiveness rather than carbon-intensiveness, but my intention was to abstract away which specific source of energy each industry made use of, assuming a unified and homogeneous electrical grid. Ironically, much that I am critical of criptocurrencies' energy expenditure, they may be more adaptable to carbon taxation than conventional digital transaction networks (SEPA, Visa, etc.) because they are in fact more centralised in their energy consumption. A cryptocurrency mining outfit could somewhat easily become self-sufficient in terms of energy relying on wind power or solar power, becoming immune to carbon taxation (and innocent in terms of carbon emissions). The energy consumption from conventional payment networks, even though it is not as inherently energy-expensive as cryptocurrencies, is so massively distributed across countries and businesses at multiple levels that they could not simply go non-carbon overnight.

uncletammy 6y ago

It would be really tough to enforce for the bigger ones. You can mine a block without revealing your location. You only need a connection to the internet through a vpn. It would be a game of whack-a-mole for enforcers. It's a good idea though.