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This is about the furthest thing from “science”. Just sensationalist propaganda. It’s so far from being even remotely plausible. Maybe 1 BTC is responsible for
by eigenvalue 6y ago
This is about the furthest thing from “science”. Just sensationalist propaganda. It’s so far from being even remotely plausible. Maybe 1 BTC is responsible for $0.49 of “damage” if you could ever actually quantify it. Most of this electricity comes from the cheapest source of power, which is hydro.
- ath92 6y agoEnergy is not an infinite resource. The energy used to mine bitcoin could have been used for something else instead.
- 627467 6y agoEnergy is not an infinite resource. If you use up that energy to <insert activity>, it could have been used for something else instead.
- Tenoke 6y agoNot fully necessarily given how local energy is. There's only so many things you can do in cheap-energy places, especially without much bigger and less potentially temporary investments.
- eigenvalue 6y agoThat’s not true at all. There is a huge amount of stranded power. Electricity is not fungible across large distances. Otherwise people in Texas wouldn’t be paying $9,000 per mwh during the storm— power certainly didn’t cost that much in other states then.
- ben_w 6y agoWRT Texas, that was a deliberate political choice rather than physics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmi...
- efficax 6y agolol yes it is, texas is huge btw, but also has no interconnects with the rest of the grid, hence the price rise at a time of zero supply and high demand
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoThat’s a function of the rather peculiar decision of Texas not to connect to the rest of the grid. Every neighboring state is connected to the eastern power grid, which can transfer power from the Mexican border to Vermont.
- delecti 6y agoTexas is a pretty disingenuous and cherry picked example considering they deliberately siloed themselves off from the other two major power grids of the country. Energy within a power grid is fairly fungible.
- miahi 6y agoThat was a political decision. Having your own grid means that you also have your own power frequency regulation, and importing power from a different network is not as simple as connecting wires - you need to connect them using DC instead of AC. These transfer points (interchanges) are sized just for temporary power import or export, you cannot use them to power the whole Texas grid. You can see more details about the interconnects here: https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status https://www.eia.gov/realtime_grid/#/status
- raisedbyninjas 6y agoMy initial reaction was skepticism. So the numbers I found were 121 TWhs consumed by Bitcoin annually. Hydro power produces 4200 TWhs annually of a total electricity production of 25,000 TWhs. Assuming all Bitcoin mining is powered by hydro, a 97% untilization for hydro doesn't seem far-fetched.
- sigmaprimus 6y agoFirst Law of Thermodynamics anyone? Yes there is a lot of power being used to mine crypto, I mine but it is done on a system that I would normally have running 24/7 regardless of mining. Yes large mining specific "server" or "ASIC" farms use alot of energy but so does every other serverfarm. Maybe we should be talking about the energy cost of watching Pr0n, or TikTok videos both of whic IMHO provide far less benifit to society.
- CapmCrackaWaka 6y agoUgh this is such a tired argument. Energy used to watch TV could be used for something else instead. What is this mystical “something else” which couldn’t be powered because Bitcoin was using up all the electricity, and what good fortune would it have brought us?
- nostrebored 6y agoWell this something else is usually just nothing. Demand drives electricity production.
- CapmCrackaWaka 6y agoYes this discussion has happened hundreds of times on HN at this point. > "Bitcoin uses too much energy[1]" > "It's only using surplus energy which would go to waste anyway[2][3]" > "But it still has an environmental impact [4]" I guess I'm just tired of seeing the same things repeated on every single thread about Bitcoin. When I saw a lazy comment like OPs, I overreacted, sorry. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952#:~:text=Cambridge%20researchers%20say%20it%20consumes,Bitcoin%20undermines%20its%20environmental%20image https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952#:~:text=Cambrid.... [2] https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-co... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-in-the-wilderness-11553860802 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-in-the-wilderness-11553... [4] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-worries-about-its-massive-carbon-footprint.html#:~:text=Bitcoin%20has%20a%20carbon%20footprint,Netherlands%2C%20Cambridge%20University%20researchers%20say https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-wor....
- nostrebored 6y agoYour articles don't support your stance. I work with people who handle surplus electricity with mobile mining operations -- they're few and far between. The use of bitcoin, a speculative good, as a sink for electricity creates less pressure for grids to manage electricity production (especially as the acceptable spot price trends towards the commercial price of electricity). It also ignores the innovative ideas that are geographically bound like storing potential energy by pumping water into dams. The idea that bitcoin only uses surplus energy is disprovable just by looking at the regularity of block completion. If it were dependent on an irregular source like surplus electricity, you wouldn't see that.
- Cypher 6y agoSounds like a naïve view. There's a limit of how far you can transport electricity, the majority of methane gas burnt and wasted. Mining gold could be used on other things, energy going into dropping bombs could be used for other things... sadly it's just idealism.
- malikNF 6y agoSo what do you propose we do? Do we create the energy police and tell people what you can and cannot do with energy? Do we stop people from mindlessly browsing the internet? This argument really annoys me because, bitcoin has a purpose, I can buy things with bitcoin, just take a walk in Huaqiangbei and see how many shops accept bitcoin, talk to the people who's governments failed their national currency and they will agree the energy we spend on bitcoin helps them. Until btc is replaced with a POS crypto currency like cardano[1] the energy we spend on btc is worth it for the people using it. [1]https://ucarecdn.com/8673f817-d83b-441a-8281-45e8ae68bbec/-/inline/yes/ https://ucarecdn.com/8673f817-d83b-441a-8281-45e8ae68bbec/-/...
- douglaswlance 6y agoAll of humanity uses the energy equivalent of ~50 lbs of matter each day. There's way more energy available to us than biological humans will ever use.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoHow much damage is the current financial system responsible for?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pc86 6y agoWhataboutism has no place in any intelligent discourse.
- random5634 6y agoIf you think this “scientific” study qualifies as a contributor to intelligent discourse think again.
- gitrog 6y agoPray tell, which part is it that you find fault with?
- random5634 6y agoIt assumes the value of Bitcoin is in the mining of new coins. The network also has value as a ledger to record transfers of Bitcoin (billions per day) which contributes to the value of the network The analysis can be generalized to say anything that uses 0.05 electricity creates these large harms. Perhaps true, but it’s not going to be unique to Bitcoin
- effie 6y agoThis. This bad argument about value of cryptocurrencies being mining, lack of perspective and policy proposals in the paper are the most obvious signs of bias.
- jf22 6y agoI love how most of the criticisms of this study amount to saying putting the word scientific in quotes and calling it a day.
- h4kor 6y agoWithout BTC miners using this cheap power, it could be used to replace coal and gas plants.
- capableweb 6y agoNo, without those miners, the energy supply wouldn't have increased in the first place. In the energy market, demand drives supply, not the other way around. It's very uncommon to spend money on converting energy supply from coal/gas to other sources, as it doesn't make sense in terms of money for the companies. Instead they focus on creating new supply with renewables.
- h4kor 6y agoSo we built hydro plants and disrupted the local ecosystems to run bitcoin miners?
- capableweb 6y agoNo, organizations built hydro plants for whatever reason in places where supply ended up higher than demand, driving down the prices. With that move, Bitcoin miners saw the opportunity and placed themselves within that ecosystem. Bitcoin miners don't put their operations in the middle of nowhere and then ask someone to build hydro plants...
- crumbshot 6y ago> Most of this electricity comes from the cheapest source of power, which is hydro. This has become almost a religious belief amongst cryptocurrency acolytes, but it's simply not true. -- Edit: please see my comment¹ and piplikoc's comment² below for more detail on this. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342411 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342366
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIf you're going to question the validity of an assertion please provide more than just a counterassertion.
- gitrog 6y agoYou could say that to GP who just dismissed a published study without actually taking on any of the claims made therein.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoThey questioned the methodology specifically. So it's not just an assertion.
- tekknik 6y ago...of a published study. The only reason people are defending GP now is because the subject is BTC.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoJust because it's a published study does not mean it's infallible. Please see my reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342411
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- chapium 6y agoLets not forget opportunity cost. That may be hydro power but it's offsetting green power consumption.
- k2enemy 6y agoDid you read the article, or just the abstract? Do you have any specific points to refute or insights to add? Or is your comment not constructive and just sensationalist propaganda? And I ask this as someone who would benefit from BTC going up relative to USD.
- GavinMcG 6y agoThey clearly didn't, since the study acknowledged that issue:
- DennisP 6y agoI see that claim about hydro all the time but I've never seen a quantitative study, can you link one? According to the BBC, a recent survey found that Bitcoin is powered by two-thirds fossil: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56215787 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56215787 Inner Mongolia just announced it will shut down Bitcoin miners, apparently on climate grounds: https://news.bitcoin.com/chinas-inner-mongolia-plans-to-shut-down-bitcoin-mining-operations-by-april-this-year/ https://news.bitcoin.com/chinas-inner-mongolia-plans-to-shut...
- user-the-name 6y ago> Most of this electricity comes from the cheapest source of power, which is hydro. This is not actually true. And even if it were, it is irrelevant. If crypto uses green energy, it displaces other users to use more dirty energy. The environmental cost of crypto is not that of the energy it uses, it is that of the dirtiest energy it displaces other users onto. (Crypto also uses massive amounts of dirty energy directly. The idea that crypto uses green energy is basically a lie.)
- effie 6y ago> If crypto uses green energy, it displaces other users to use more dirty energy. "I bought a solar panel and AC converter to consume less from the grid. Oops, because of that now I am displacing my neighbours to use more dirty energy. How silly of me." Seriously your argument makes no sense. How does one minor consumer of green energy displace you from doing the same?
- user-the-name 6y agoBitcoin mining facilities do not install their own solar panels. They use energy from the grid, that would otherwise go to other users if bitcoin miners did not destroy it.
- newsclues 6y agoHydro may be clean, but it still has environmental costs. Concrete and destruction of ecosystems and changes in water systems can all have negative impacts on the planet. And that is the best case scenario
- effie 6y agoWhy is such as a man-made change necessarily net negative impact on the planet? It may have both negative and positive impacts. Maybe the new dam allows other species to migrate in and increase diversity. It is complicated, depends on circumstances etc.
- boffinism 6y ago"The survey findings estimate that on average 39 per cent of proof-of-work mining is powered by renewable energy" according to https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternati...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cbzbc 6y agoEven if this were true, hydro also has an environmental cost, doubly so if the demand from crypto is causing hydro to be constructed in places where it cannot be used for other purposes (which is often a linked claim).