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Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet

• controlweather 6y ago
  I really hate this man, he’s literally a hypocrite!
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• mcfly1985 6y ago
  Rich old man wants you to continue using fiat money to keep you enslaved.
  • pwthornton 6y ago
    From Bill: "Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind." And he's right. Bitcoin is terrible for the planet and our future.
    • zests 6y ago
      Electricity per transaction is an extremely poor way to communicate anything useful. It says nothing about the actual harm of Bitcoin and only leaves readers (and bloggers) drawing their own conclusions.
      • endisneigh 6y ago
        why is it a poor way to communicate anything useful? if sending someone a dollar through venmo costs $0.0000001 worth of electricity and sending someone a dollar through the bitcoin network costs $1 doesn't that communicate everything you need to know?
        • frankenst1 6y ago
          Probably because twice the amount of transactions do require as much energy as half of the amount of transactions or as much energy as no transactions at all, i.e. Bitcoin's energy usage depends on the difficulty of mining a block which is not affected by the number of transactions in a block.
          • UncleMeat 6y ago
            But we can't have twice the amount of transactions because there are also block size limits.
          • cesarb 6y ago
            > i.e. Bitcoin's energy usage depends on the difficulty of mining a block which is not affected by the number of transactions in a block. Only if the transactions do not have any fee. If they have a transaction fee, this indirectly increases the difficulty of mining future blocks (since the miners get more Bitcoin per block, they can use more energy per block before their expected net return is negative, and they are incentivized to do so through competition with other miners; the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment then notices the increase in hash rate and increases the difficulty).
        • zests 6y ago
          In your example, you are giving concrete numbers. Concrete numbers are extremely useful. If you make a comparison without concrete numbers, it can often be misleading. It goes without saying that concrete numbers can be misleading on their own. It can be quite difficult to nail down rules for honest communication.
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      • lizknope 6y ago
        Why? If something uses more energy for the transaction than the value of the item I am buying or selling I call that ridiculous.
    • piokoch 6y ago
      There are a lot of terrible things that we use or were using. I don't want to sound mean, but Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 were not that great. Not to mention Windows Millennium Edition. Think of all that electricity wasted because people could not get their work done, they had to stay longer in the office wasting water, electricity, getting frustrated, etc. And that's all because Bill's mom was working in IBM management.
    • LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
      But, how to estimate the waste of traditional currency? US dollar is based on Capitalism and the weapons. Should we count the price to maintain these two factors? Capitalism is almost built on the balance of wasting resource and incoming. Should we count the waste in market? Developed countries keep QE to spread the debt into global market. Should we count the side effect of QE? As citizen of developed countries, we take the benefits of traditional money and we control it. It is good for us as government or corporation, but may not be good for individual.
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  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Bitcoin is not a replacement for fiat, and bitcoin's ONLY validity is in the context of fiat (usually USD). it's like when USD was backed by the price of gold. Now BTC is backed by the price of USD. Ironic?
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  • uniqueid 6y ago
    "In short, human traffickers do use bitcoin as their primary asset." https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/87371/how-often-bitcoin-used-human-trafficking https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/87371/how-often-bitco...
  • ngokevin 6y ago
    Holders angry at climate change point because they want to triple their investments.
• ohgodplsno 6y ago
  Still no valid usecase found for Bitcoin, aside from being a number-is-green-and-goes-up currency. Lightning is unused. TX fees are stupidly high. We're dedicating ASICs powered by entire coal plants to mining bitcoin. And before you, commenter to this post, say anything, no, your Eth/Doge/Xrp/Monero/Tether/scam-ipo-of-the-day is not more valuable. NFTs are worthless. No, being distributed does not make your favorite token useful. No, mining contributing to the chain's security is not useful, because there is nothing useful on said blockchain. No, you're not more free with your coin when nobody wants it. No, you're not free of central banks when you all decide to dump it all in Coinbase and Kraken anyways. Just ban these worthless wastes of energy and time.
  • danlugo92 6y ago
    It enables people cut off (in one way or another) from traditional banking to actually have an account. You want to kill bitcoin provide a real alternative else it is most definitely not "worthless" as you say?
    • diego_moita 6y ago
      > It enables people cut off (in one way or another) from traditional banking to actually have an account. You mean like M-Pesa[1] but much slower, much more expensive, much more wasteful and much more hyped? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
      • danlugo92 6y ago
        M-Pesa seems to only be available in like 4 countries, not a valid contender.
    • ohgodplsno 6y ago
      No it does not. Especially not with bitcoin. Nobody is paying anything with bitcoin. Are you going to pay for your groceries in your store that doesn't take bitcoin, by adding 30 dollars of fees and having it clear in three days ?
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• adflux 6y ago
  I feel like it's a matter of time until the central banks release a coin (gold backed?) and kick Bitcoin and all other crypto's out. Keeps them in power, uses the advantages of crypto.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Fiat currency has been gold backed for a long time, until it no longer was - why go backwards? If you want something gold-backed, just buy gold.
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  • dgellow 6y ago
    Digital currencies for central banks (CBDC) do not require a blockchain to exist. They are two different things, I don't think they will compete with each others.
    • mumblemumble 6y ago
      You might even argue that they require a blockchain not to exist. A coin that's designed to be centralized needs blockchain (as opposed to something simpler like a hash chain) like a fish needs a snorkel.
  • pb77 6y ago
    I think countries are going to get their own digital currency and ban crypto. I saw some news on India that they are looking to ban all crypto and just looking to push indian digital currency. China is developing digital yuan so i am not sure what will happen to bitcoin that you own if the country deems it illegal.
  • gnrlst 6y ago
    I disagree. While it would do a lot of damage, the advantage of a properly scalable and functioning decentralized cryptocurrency (not implying BTC is the right one) is that it cannot be controlled by any central bank, or anyone else. That is the inherent elegance of such a solution. While in the Western world there is little need for a parallel monetary system except for the black market, other countries are not as fortunate and do not trust their central banks with anything (classic example is Venezuela). You could argue Gold is still a good alternative, but owning, transferring gold is problematic unless you actually store it yourself. Any "title" to gold somewhere else can inevitably be seized by a government (or your house raided). Encryption keys are much harder to seize if taken care of properly.
• jetpackjoe 6y ago
  There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.
  • hacknat 6y ago
    I do think Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin eventually in usage. In some ways it already has. Ethereum's transaction fees are set to drop like a rock over the next few years, and so many useful things are built on it already.
    • burkaman 6y ago
      Doesn't Ethereum have the same environmental issues?
      • HideousKojima 6y ago
        Ethereum is supposedly changing over to proof of stake, but it's been a years long process
        • DennisP 6y ago
          Right now it has >$5 billion staked and >100,000 validators on the PoS network. What remains is to transition the rest of the network and eliminate miners, which is a relatively simple process.
          • neither_color 6y ago
            >eliminate miners Yes please. Ive been trying for weeks to buy a gpu.
        • BTCOG 6y ago
• endisneigh 6y ago
  according to my bitcoin friends, Mr. Gates is just jealous of the bitcoin billionaires. in all seriousness - i'm actually very bullish on crypto - but I don't see any reason bitcoin will be the winner for all of entirety. to me I think all major countries will eventually invent their own digital currencies and a new coin will arrive which is simply a fixed price tied to the prices of all digital currencies.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Currency in most countries already is, effectively, digital. The vast majority of financial transactions are done digitally.
    • endisneigh 6y ago
      what? no they're not. just because transactions are done digitally doesn't mean the currency is digital. the dollar, for example is not a digital currency, but we in the USA are exploring it. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/the-digitization-of-money-and-payments https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/the-digitization-of-...
• kitcar 6y ago
  Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness). It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans.
  • yunvme 6y ago
    You don't understand Bitcoin. It is a system to remove human greed from the equation. However, currently we are in the monetization stage. People will get rich. Greed will prevail and it jump starts the system. The beauty of Bitcoin is that no human can increase supply to address short-term interests, like central banks can. The energy is not wasted. To the contrary, it is used to ensure that the supply is distributed in the prescribed manner and that it is capped. There is no other way of creating a decentralized system that has this feature.
    • jf22 6y ago
      This sounds like to remove human greed we must embrace human greed and expend a lot of energy. In what future world are we not trying to create more Bitcoin?
    • unchar1 6y ago
      If you want a resource that's limited and can't be created by central banks, why not use something like Gold/Silver like we used to? While not going trying to debate on whether we should or should not use a limited resource as currency, but if we did Bitcoin seems like a wasteful thing to use.
  • brighton36 6y ago
    Everyone needs a thneed.
    • tonetheman 6y ago
      OMG .... I wish there were rewards ... something. Exactly this comment! Good job.
• gnrlst 6y ago
  Bitcoin is a beautiful concept that has been bastardized by economies of scale. The mining concentration is decreasing its security over time. The centralized block structure and exorbitant fees will afflict it more and more as it grows. Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. I truly believe in a decentralized means of exchange, but Bitcoin is the Encarta equivalent. There already is a Wikipedia equivalent, all it takes is a little research. Once you find it, you will know. I won't shill here, as I don't want that to dilute the points of Bitcoin's increasingly problematic issues due to its growing scale. That being said, the cryptoverse is drowning in sh*tcoins, and I completely understand anyone even remotely mentioning an alternative to Bitcoin being inevitably categorized as a shiller and therefore not worth listening to.
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    I see some ideas maybe having real usefulness. Large scale inventory/tracking/monitoring (part production, transport, etc) could lubricate a big portion of the world. A big secure unified store of tracking in a way. Am I the only one thinking this ?
    • gnrlst 6y ago
      There's definitely a lot of use-cases for decentralized blockchains, I agree. If implemented correctly they could fight corruption, improve accountability and traceability and whole lot of other good things. The thing is, blockchain =/= cryptocurrency and therefore blockchain =/= bitcoin. Btc is a cryptocurrency that happens to use blockchain as a decentralized way of signing and keeping track of transactions.
  • bingbong70 6y ago
    >Even arguments about renewable energy being used to mine BTC are moot, because they don't consider the opportunity cost of what could be done with all that energy instead. If I launch a BTC miner into space and use a star to power it, will you worry about what else could have been done with that energy? The more remote the energy source, the higher the cost to deliver it to a centralized grid, meaning it will probably be wasted anyway if it can't easily be converted into an easier to transmit form, BTC. Rather beam internet through space than attempt to beam energy.
• swinglock 6y ago
  Why do I get the feeling a competing centralized system will soon be announced by one of Bill Gates companies or partners, if it has not already?...
  • diego_moita 6y ago
    > Why do I get the feeling a competing centralized system will soon announced by one of Bill Gates companies or partners, if it has not already?... You probably got it from conspiration theories, the same people that believe that Gates put a microchip inside Covid vaccines.
    • solosoyokaze 6y ago
      Bill Gates' decades long history of shady business practices and embrace, extend, extinguish are not a "conspiracy". There's no reason to listen to Gates on this topic (he's not an expert), and it's very likely that he has financial reasons for saying what he's saying.
• nelsontodd 6y ago
  Why is 'rich billionaire has uninformed or possibly self interested opinions' newsworthy
  • pluc 6y ago
    Because this rich tech billionaire brought about humanity-changing innovations so maybe what he says deserves some attention? Why does _your_ opinion matter?
    • nelsontodd 6y ago
      His status as rich tech billionaire doesn't make a difference unless he is making arguments that are new or interesting. And he isn't. We've all been hearing the environment argument for years now. Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world & therefore shouldn't be trusted.
      • pluc 6y ago
        What is your argument for Bill Gates having a negative overall influence on the world?
        • nelsontodd 6y ago
          I don't want to hash them out, plenty of arguments from the leftists or linux people for example. Free software, exploitation of workers. Whatever. The argument itself is arbitrary, I'm just saying that he's a controversial figure
      • lostgame 6y ago
        >> Plus, there is obviously an argument to be made that he has had a negative overall influence on the world That is not only not obvious, but - even with his philanthropy efforts alone, the opposite would be obvious.
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• shrubble 6y ago
  Microsoft's success has objectively been a step backwards for computing. Anyone who has used a NeXTstation with 32Mbytes of RAM and an 68040 CPU, which did not even have accelerated video, can certainly understand how bloated and wasteful of resources all the various Windows applications and operating systems have been over the years. How many resources does Xbox use? It's not essential either...
  • SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    I really wish NeXT took off back in the day. The hardware and software were ridiculously elegant. Though I guess NeXT got a new lease on life via Apple later on.
  • w0m 6y ago
    If Next had survived to modern day, it's have similar modern bloat. Software grows with the hardware to run it on; which in turn encourages faster hardware which leads to more bloat.
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• zozin 6y ago
  Weird website. It seems almost GPT-3 generated, or translated using Google Translate. Who uses the term "Planet Energy"? Why is it capitalized? If OP wasn't an old account I would assume this post is spam.
• draklor40 6y ago
  So is Bill Gates' mega-mansion.
  • rawtxapp 6y ago
    And his private jets, etc.
• matthewbauer 6y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't have to use so much energy. The difficulty level is what causes the high levels of energy consumption. If we could get all the major mining groups to dismantle some % of their machines, we could reduce energy consumption with a very small cost to the group. This could reduce energy consumption, while also preserving the value of Bitcoin. Maybe Bill Gates can start signing checks to the miners? You get 10K for every machine you video destroying.
  • elliekelly 6y ago
    The Cobra Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  • MrYellowP 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure destroying perfectly fine hardware is not the way to go.
  • pornel 6y ago
    That requires trusting that none of the miners will deflect (e.g. have a hidden stash of hardware waiting offline until it can perform 51% attack). If you need to trust that miners are not cheating, it kinda defeats the whole point of a trust-no-one cryptocurrency. So sadly, in a proof-of-work scheme the secure steady state is only when miners are fiercely competing, and that means maxing out their hardware and electricity usage.
  • UncleMeat 6y ago
    > If we could get all the major mining groups to dismantle some % of their machines, we could reduce energy consumption with a very small cost to the group. The whole point of BTC is that you cannot trust each actor. If we could coordinate a population of trusted ledger managers, there wouldn't be a use for a blockchain in the first place.
• nahimn 6y ago
  How has he not acknowledged how expensive physical settlement between banks is? A brinks truck carrying funds between banks, the bankers managing this process, all the and all of the human capital required to support the entire process?
  • HideousKojima 6y ago
    People have done the math, and the carbon cost for a credit card transaction is several orders of magnitude lower than that of a single bitcoin transaction
    • rawtxapp 6y ago
      Except credit card transaction isn't settlement, it's a temporary transfer until it settles, more akin to lightning network. Lightning network barely uses any energy fwiw.
      • nahimn 6y ago
        Agree -- settlement still occurs every day. And credit cards charge %, versus network fees in crypto are amount agnostic (ie: 1 million transfer vs 1 dollar transfer cost the same)
• gzu 6y ago
  What about 0 percent interest rates? How much environmentally damaging malinvestment across the globe has been caused by risk free money? Think of how carbon intensive the concrete, steel, manufacturing, power generation industry are. Not to mention the population boom beyond our earths carrying capacity needed to perpetuate our ever increasing monetary scheme requiring never ending growth where deflation can never exist.
  • standardUser 6y ago
    Sometimes "whataboutism" is subtle. Other times, people simply say "What about...".
    • gzu 6y ago
      Bitcoin is "bad for the planet". 0 percent interest rates are worse. It's the lesser of evils.
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  • dgs_sgd 6y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out. The misallocation of capital caused by artificially low interest rates caused by central banks printing money (and the "bust" and massive unemployment that follows when lenders realize that the investments are unprofitable at the true market interest rate) is not commonly discussed.
• jtdev 6y ago
  I find it hard to believe that Bill Gates has actually quantified the environmental cost of U.S. dollar transactions... Why do we continue to bend the mindshare knee to the guy behind the Windows Registry?
  • jtdev 6y ago
    He's this guy --> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
• oceanghost 6y ago
  Ah, so the guy who has 133 billion dollars, doesn't want the current economic system to change? Shocking
  • UncleMeat 6y ago
    Why would BTC adoption crash the value of Microsoft?
    • oceanghost 6y ago
      Not sure where you got that idea? I'm saying Gates is absolutely entrenched in the current economic system. He's won it. Why would he want any change?
      • UncleMeat 6y ago
        Why wouldn't he? The idea here seems to be that Gates cannot be trusted on BTC because BTC would somehow harm him and he has a large interest in the failure of BTC. But this seems to make no sense to me. BTC won't change the structure of wealth, even if it is wildly successful.
• rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
  I say Bill Gates is bad for the Planet. The reality is PoW is the only consensus mechanism that is secure today. PoS is not secure. It will never be secure. It takes energy to secure money, it is that simple. We will spend as much energy as is needed to secure the bitcoin monetary supply - the economic prosperity of the planet is at risk! For all those folks out there begging for PoS bitcoin, it will never happen. Your misinformed opinions of environment/energy and your demand that I choose to spend energy in a way you approve of is oppression by the ignorant. PoS coins are worthless rubbish. There is only bitcoin.
  • whitepaint 6y ago
    > PoS is not secure. That is quite a huge claim. You need to give some arguments for this.
    • rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
      Argument: PoW is a security model that depends on energy usage and mathematics. PoS is a security model that depends on human behavior. I trust physics over human behavior any day. Human psychology is the weak link in any system. In the next year, we will see a further consolidation of funds towards traditional finance (they have the capital to acquire the floating btc). We do not want tradfi in charge of coin emission. Proof of Stake is reinventing existing power structures. Bitcoin as PoW prevents this hostile takeover by legacy forces. If tradfi and governments want a say in how coins are transacted/emitted, they better get mining!
      • DennisP 6y ago
        Actually it doesn't depend on behavior. It depends on destroying an attacker's ability to keep attacking.
      • whitepaint 6y ago
        I will myself be a validator as well. Anyone can be one (even if you don't have 32 ethers, you can join a pool). You are either purposefully or ignorantly telling lies.
• meddlepal 6y ago
  What is up with the comments in this thread? Feels like tons of them are bot written. Weird attacks on Bill Gates and Microsoft all over the place.
  • solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Why is it weird to be critical of MS or Gates? They've definitely earned the suspicion with their own actions. Gates has nothing to do with Bitcoin, his opinion here is worthless.
  • A12-B 6y ago
    The type of person hackernews respects the most - a billionaire - told them that their favourite toy is bad.
    • rawtxapp 6y ago
      Bitcoin is anything but HN's favorite toy.
      • forgetfulness 6y ago
        Majority opinions seem to lean towards Bitcoin being a net detriment to society but HN will attract a really loud minority of Bitcoin diehards, for tech or profit. Or so I thought, the amount of people taking offense at Bill Gates saying the uncontroversial is impressive.
        • rawtxapp 6y ago
          Maybe there's some overlap between HN anti-crypto crowd and those who remember Bill Gates track record at MSFT (ex: IE antitrust, anti-Linux).
        • mattwilsonn888 6y ago
          Arguing from the conclusion, are we?
• abvdasker 6y ago
  This will undoubtedly feed the flames of the conspiracy theories surrounding Gates. There seems to be significant overlap between crypto enthusiasts and online conspiracy theorist cranks. I wonder if he knew this before he made the statement or just has no idea how he is viewed by some segments of the public.
• shiado 6y ago
  The irony is that the exact society destabilizing grand visions of the future billionaires advocate for are some of the main drivers behind people embracing Bitcoin. If you push a "you own nothing" WEF approved dystopian tech oligarch reality don't be surprised when people adopt an asset that cannot be confiscated by the government.
  • lambda_obrien 6y ago
    Your government can force you to do or give them anything, don't think math will stop them from trying. If they fail, they'll just lock you up.
  • throwaway20875 6y ago
    Exactly this. Bitcoin is the result of the gross power imbalances present in society. It's ironic that those on the heavier end of the scale, like Gates, are attacking Bitcoin with the cudgel of environmental policy. Rather than fix the power imbalances that are the root cause of his supposed gripe, Gates is advocating for the status quo enjoyed by him and his contemporaries.
    • awb 6y ago
      Sure, but Bitcoin's wealth and access is also very concentrated. If you replace USD with BTC, you still have a power imbalance, just a slightly different one.
      • silentsea90 6y ago
        The real power imbalance is the Central Bank's power to confiscate wealth by inflating it away aka money printing, and not to forget the confiscation of physical gold by the US in 1933 (thanks FDR). There is a reason why countries decoupled from the gold standard to fund WW1. They got near infinite access to the nation's wealth. The loser of WW1 ie Germany eventually suffered hyperinflation, as have countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela recently. Should Governments have the power over your money to the extent of making it go down to zero? That's what happened in all of these cases. So no, BTC != USD
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• cies 6y ago
  Billionaire says XYZ bad for environment. I cannot help thinking: what a hypocrite. Poor people are much better for the environment than rich. Not even considering private-jet flying super rich. I think BG has no business telling others what's good/bad for the planet.
  • akudha 6y ago
    poop people :)
    • cies 6y ago
      oops fixed.
  • Avalaxy 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a way way bigger net positive impact on the environment than you, or almost any of us here. Just because he is rich doesn't mean he has a net negative impact. Rich people like him have the money and power to make a significant change and do more good than a 1000 of us combined possibly could.
    • cies 6y ago
      We hold different beliefs then :) You dont know me, but we know he has a private jet. The amount of cabon a single trip with a private jet is insane. No matter how much car you drive your whole life, you wont offset that.
    • solosoyokaze 6y ago
      Billionaires have a far worse impact on the environment than normal people. * https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/how-bad-are-billionaires-for-the-environment/ar-BB1dQ4dI https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/how-bad-are-billionair... * https://www.gq.com/story/billionaires-climate-change https://www.gq.com/story/billionaires-climate-change
    • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      >I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a way way bigger net positive impact on the environment than you Does his impact offset the pollution caused by the GPUs running full throttle in every one of the millions of Xboxes? Or is GPU use only a bad thing when it makes people easy money and it suddenly becomes fine when the same processor is used to render RDR2 so someone can pretend to be a cowboy.
• boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The article has a one sentence quote from Gates in it, in which he shows a level of expertise anyone could reach from reading one of the hundreds of recent articles about bitcoin. Why is this noteworthy? I don't really disagree with his assessment, but his words are being given undue importance here.
  • rektide 6y ago
    Yes. I'm so sick of Gates being the feature of endless articles. What an incredible sign that we lack respected, informed figures in this world, that we keep having to go to Mr Gates to get an opinion worth putting in print. I'm not sure whether to think it's just lack of options, or whether this a programme by the rich to build & establish one of their own as someone to listen to. Nicely in the category of "owns a world-spanning super-empire" but generally pretty benign & non-aggressive for over a decade. Has taken some licks & no longer feels like a juggernaut.
• jtdev 6y ago
  This is Bill Gates: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-... Stop giving so much credence to every utterance that comes out of this guys mouth.
• whoisninja 6y ago
  Steve Balmer and Bill also used to call Linux a cancer but look now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-07/hackers-breach-thousands-of-microsoft-customers-around-the-world https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-07/hackers-b... their OS filled with malicious stuff and who knows what kind of backdoors is when exploited by hackers, they blame it on China rather than taking responsibility of putting users at risk with vulnerable OS
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  • whoisninja 6y ago
    these people had fiduciary duties to make money for their investors. they've only lived in that world their entire life. It doesn't matter what they say about things. Read, learn and make your own conclusions if you will. and as Linus Torvalds simply put it decades ago: that these people are out there to make money and not make world a better place even if they pretend .
    • tester756 6y ago
      >and not make world a better place even if they pretend . I think MS made computer adaptation over the world significantly faster, but I'm not sure about it.
  • rustybelt 6y ago
    Are you refusing to consider the negative externalities of Bitcoin because Microsoft executives bad-mouthed Linux twenty years ago?
    • whoisninja 6y ago
      i never said that, i just said it doesn't matter what these people say. think for yourself. If you believe Bitcoin pollutes the environment, fine by me - i have no issue.
• zests 6y ago
  In the past few hundred years, technological progress has been anti-correlated with environmental health. We live in an age with the most prosperity and luxury but also the most pollution. Bitcoin is no different. As bitcoin has descended into a new culture war, I'll mention that I believe decentralized payment systems are a huge step in the right direction, but I'll also mention that I do not think this comment should be used as part of the bitcoin crusades. Take it on my word that my opinion is nuanced and that I don't own any cryptocurrencies. This article is a culture war article itself that does not say anything appreciably new. My opinion is that once everyone knows what side of the culture war they are on, discussion about the topic becomes meaningless.
• remirus 6y ago
  Bill Gates and other stupid goverment lobists are bad for the planet.
• pcdoodle 6y ago
  Bill has said a lot of things over the years. Watch him at all things digital next to jobs, the only reason for his success was his cut-throat practices. Not a visionary.
• remirus 6y ago
  Bill Gates and other government lobbyists are bad for the planet. You are con, Bill, and we all know it.
• jariel 6y ago
  Populism here is unbearable. The energy consumption of BTC is 'very bad' , full stop. It has nothing to do with Gates or the fact that he said it.
• Graffur 6y ago
  Is there a reason we should appeal to Bill Gates on this discussion?
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  If you want to bash Crypto please offer an alternative to the issues around fiat. If the USD were tied to gold again I would sell all my Bitcoin and I'd say most other would too. Bitcoin is just an escape hatch from mismanaged monetary policy.
• dnprock 6y ago
  Bitcoin is bad for the environment, for now. There is no way to value Bitcoin. It has no intrinsic value. Its valuation is a narrative. The higher the price goes, the more energy we'd spend on mining it. I call this the Bitcoin Price Paradox [1]. But it's not all hopeless. We can find a way to ground Bitcoin to reality by develop non-speculative use-cases. Then we can develop a valuation model. I believe the key to solving this paradox is to have an inflationary crypto. It can drive payment adoption. I'm involved with Bitflate, a crypto with 7% inflation [2]. Once we have payment adoption, we can create valuation models and control energy spend on mining. [1] https://bitflate.org/post/2021/02/05/the-bitcoin-price-paradox.html https://bitflate.org/post/2021/02/05/the-bitcoin-price-parad... [2] https://bitflate.org/bitflate.pdf https://bitflate.org/bitflate.pdf
• Communitivity 6y ago
  Bitcoin itself is not bad for the Planet. The current implementation differs somewhat from the Satoshi vision and has not scaled well in terms of fossil-fuel based electricity consumption. Solar or wind powered Bitcoin would have little impact, and in the right areas be cheaper for the miners. This is a trend I expect to see take off. Also, I suspect Bitcoin at some point will migrate to Proof of Stake once aspects of that set of algorithms are addressed: * Problems with bonding and checkpoints * Problems with being fuzzily forgiving about slashing * More rigor needed by doing rigorous proofs somewhere, in some way * Some systems introduce a central party that rubberstamps the latest block (e.g. Peercoin) * Existence of such a coordinating party costs the system its censorship resistance * Since stakers have to hold funds in the system to author blocks, it's difficulty to have a fair launch of a PoS system. Many PoS systems get either started as airdrops, ICOs, or a proof of burn auction * Staking requires some representation of the private key to be online at all times, which may mean that it is easier to redirect some of the staking power (in early PoS systems it had to be the actual private key, so not only staking power but actual funds could get stolen) * Some systems require coins to have a certain amount of confirmations before being allowed to be used for staking, so spending funds interrupts your staking revenue * Some people expect that staking revenue will be taxed differently than mining revenue * Some PoS systems can be gamed for profit by trying a vast number of block candidates to cause the staker to get blocks more often than their stake should qualify them for. Such an incentive may turn such PoS systems just into PoW schemes under the hood * Some researchers argue that "by depending only on resources within the system, proof of stake cannot be used to form a distributed consensus, since it depends on the very history it is trying to form to enforce loss of value". These are not problems I came up with, they are from various sources, such as Bram Cohen. For full disclosure: I have Bitcoin, Cardano, and Ethereum, in that order of holdings.
  • rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
    Nah, bitcoin will never be PoS coin. Bitcoin is defined as a PoW cryptocurrency. A PoS fork is not Bitcoin. Thank goodness!
  • Communitivity 6y ago
    Wow, this got a negative reaction. As far as I know nothing I said is inaccurate. The solar/wind bitcoin not being bad is conjecture. I hope someone will help me out by pointing out why my comment was low quality, so I know what not to do next time.
• natch 6y ago
  The writing in this article feels like an algorithmic rewrite of content from elsewhere, hosted on an ad farming site. While the topic is interesting, I wouldn't feel bad if this sort of site was not ranked this high on HN.
• parenthesis 6y ago
  Is bitcoin mining environmentally worse than gold mining?
• matthewmorgan 6y ago
  Bitcoin will see considerably less use once we end our insane 'war on drugs'.
  • rawtxapp 6y ago
    Why, can you elaborate?
  • top_sigrid 6y ago
    While bitcoin is definitely used for selling drugs or other illegal stuff (not saying I think drugs should be illegal, quite the opposite is the case), I think its use and - more than that - its value increase over the years goes way beyond that. People see it as asset, don't trust their currencies, buy it because of the hype, ... . Even when its use for selling/buying drugs vanishes (which will definitely not be the case everywhere in the world) bitcoin would't lose to much value because of that, in my opinion.
• bikamonki 6y ago
  If I understand correctly, by design PoW gets harder with time, so it becomes ever more expensive to mine BTC. At some point, it should be economically unfeasible. Now, BTC is rewarded for transaction validation. Does this mean, that at some point in the future, it will be impossibly expensive to validate a new block, hence making it imposible to conduct a BTC transaction between two addresses?
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    If there is less mining, the difficulty goes down. In a bad case scenario, the block reward doesn't keep a large fraction of available hardware online.
  • tromp 6y ago
    > If I understand correctly, by design PoW gets harder with time, so it becomes ever more expensive to mine BTC. You misunderstood (or possibly were confused with the ethash "ice age"). PoW difficulty follows daily dollar emission, which is proportional to the product of price and block reward. In Bitcoin there is a large lag (up to 2 weeks) though between changes in the latter, and changes in difficulty. Miners who can't turn a profit will stop mining Bitcoin, causing difficulty to drop. It will always be profitable for the most efficient miners.
• adolph 6y ago
  “Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing" The article doesn't compare electricity usage of other transaction methods and their relative qualities on balance to energy consumption. This makes it difficult to evaluate Gate's claim. Maybe he said more in Clubhouse but as it stands its an assertion without evidence. For example, my assumption is that paper checks would have relatively high overall energy consumption and that society has thought the costs worth it. In the larger picture, the article and Gates apparently see electrical utilization as waste, which seems short-sighted. For example, computations performed with geothermal energy available in Iceland can support people around the world. Or similar to a co-generation plant bitcoin mining could be performed to soak up base load that must be used during off hours.
• pmarreck 6y ago
  He's not wrong, but so is any power utilization that doesn't come from green (or geothermal, or nuclear, etc.) sources which don't produce tons of carbon as a byproduct
• janvdberg 6y ago
  Who can point me to a comparison site where the different crypto transactions are displayed in kWh? Everyone keeps saying it’s bad but surely this differs between coins/tokens?
• talkingtab 6y ago
  Those of us who are aware of the antitrust case against Microsoft, as led at that time by Gates, will have a hard time with this. Not to invalidate what he says, but OMG the chutzpah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
• 1ark 6y ago
  And? Most things we do are probably bad for the planet.
• imachine1980 6y ago
  i agree i live in a 40 million country whit less energy consumption(argentina), to solve a volatility and dependency problem whit an asset which is more volatile and ASS controlled (china's bans bitcon and the buy, the jpm is bad then buy it, regulation from eu and other), and isn't anonymous, we have billion dollars companies focus on tracks bitcoin transactions, and regular stock wallets tracks u.
• darepublic 6y ago
  Article uses "accessive" instead of excessive near the beginning
• mlcrypto 6y ago
  If you're reading this 10 years from now look how clueless everyone in this thread is. Everyone here still thinks BTC is not even the best crypto let alone the best asset in the world. If 50k isn't enough to convince them, nothing will. Hope you're enjoying $1M+ BTC prices in 2031.
  • rawtxapp 6y ago
    They will probably look at it like we look at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852
  • justapassenger 6y ago
    I’m still waiting for my tulips investment to pay off.
  • DennisP 6y ago
    So let's see, at $1M/BTC, three halvings, 6 blocks per hour, that's 9.3BTC/hr in rewards, call it at least $10M/hr because transaction fees. Electricity at 5 cents/kWh means that buys 200GW, but say miner cost is half hardware. So we'd be consuming about 100GW of energy to send seven transactions per second.
    • mlcrypto 6y ago
      It will be securing $20T in terms of market cap. Energy consumption metrics aren't useful without considering the source of energy. BTC gives us the potential to harness natural sources of untapped energy far from cities, convert it into money, and instantly transport it anywhere. The transaction limit is a non issue for me because final settlement is still faster than traditional methods.
  • rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
    This. You dear reader, you ignored BTC when it was first raised on HN in 2009. "Silly internet people, you cant make money without governments!". * Then it hit $10. "That's not worth my time". * Then it hit $100. "Just games for internet people." * Then it hit $1000. "Silly worthless digital tulips." * Then it hit $10000. "Its obviously a bubble". * Then it hit $50000. 'Its using too much energy! This is unethical". It will hit 100k, 500k, 1M. You will run out of excuses eventually.
• nunobrito 6y ago
  Signal to buy.
• cwhiz 6y ago
  A single Bitcoin represents 100,000,000 satoshi. Bitcoin is not scarce. We could stop mining today, and do a X:1 split every few years to keep inflation in check. Mining is all about greed.
• kyleblarson 6y ago
  I generally ignore environmental opinions from anyone who owns multiple Gulfstream jets.
• ricardobayes 6y ago
  I said this and everyone hated me - he said it and it's suddenly a big awe moment, lol.
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  I might agree, but had anyone asked him about environmental impact of ms-windows?
• savaka 6y ago
  In 2019, the US economy consumed 100 quadrillion BTUs[0], which works out to about 29,000 TWh. Bitcoin currently uses ~78 TWh[1]. Bitcoin isn't the problem. [0]https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/flow-graphs/total-energy.php https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/flow-graphs/total-energ... [1]https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
• snshn 6y ago
  So are humans. And MS Windows.
• jraedisch 6y ago
  “Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing,” is all Bill Gates seemingly said. Even I think, less energy consumption would probably be better, and I am pro Bitcoin at this point in time.
• mekoka 6y ago
  “Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing” That's the sole actual quote attributed to Bill Gates in that article (which doesn't even link to any source). The rest is the author conflating their thoughts with Bill Gates's.
  • tyrust 6y ago
    It's truly a pointless article, but that hasn't stopped tens of people from spitting out the same arguments about bitcoin that you see in every HN thread.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • abriosi 6y ago
      STEMlord's and mad they missed the train once more
  • brauhaus 6y ago
    This is the only comment that matters. This article is merely an opinion piece with a factually fake click bate-y headline, aimed to rile people up instead of inspiring thoughtful conversation. It's one of those article we point to when we complain about the media's lack of credibility.
  • fredfoobar 6y ago
    The "electricity per transaction" idea they have in mind is so flawed, I don't even know where to begin. I just don't understand this burning hatred towards something like bitcoin. People attribute "greed" to the rise of bitcoin's usage, is that supposed to be a moral high road they're taking by avoiding "greed"? People love woke-shaming people into not doing something. Isn't this problem of "greed" going to be present in every system that needs to be bootstrapped from the scratch?
  • xtracto 6y ago
    I wish people would differentiate between Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies: Yeah, Bitcoin is crappy and way inefficient in different aspects. Anyone who knows a bit about Cryptocurrencies knows about it. At this stage, it is like in the late 90s when people said that "The internet was very unsafe" because Internet Explorer 4/5 were crappy insecure. Yeah, everybody with the least amount of computer knowledge knew how crappy Explorer was.
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  Bitcoin maintains international order with electricity. Countries maintain it with enormous armies. Debateable which one is worse for the planet
  • supermatt 6y ago
    Pretty sure Bitcoin hasn't gotten rid of (or even reduced) the latter..
• cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
  Billionaire Bourgeoisieshevik who made his billions making other people have to use bad software because it was "the standard" suddenly wants to tell us about how something else being bad for society and the planet etc. What's really bad for the planet is the rest of us have to put up with his bull.
• cirowrc 6y ago
  > "oh, none of these cryptocurrencies are actual money" get a tor browser and discover monero being used in the wild.
• luigeus 6y ago
  Bitcoin's value is an illusion. Mostly because it seems like a good way to avoid the government's control of wealth, but taxes on bitcoin transactions would destroy this illusion and consequently the value of the currency. The collapse is inevitable. The only question is how much damage it will do in the meantime; the more power it gobbles up, the more it hurts the planet. We have to stop burning massive amounts of energy to store and transfer value.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Whats worse for the planet are governments, like those in Venezuela, that are causing so much human suffering that their population needs the existence of BTC to survive.
  • mtinkerhess 6y ago
    "What about..." There are better solutions.
    • rawtxapp 6y ago
      Such as?
    • pvarangot 6y ago
      Are you suggesting they stop using Bitcoin to bypass the economic war being fought over the US dollar by their government? That would substantially lower their quality of life and access to food, land, knowledge markets... As long as Bitcoin is there and works it will have a price that seems inflated to someone that can buy and sell anything form their chair on a first world country.
• whiteboardr 6y ago
  Only conclusion to be made about bitcoin: Must be a Banksy. And to really rub it in at some point the master key to all transactions will be released.
  • throwawayffffas 6y ago
    My pet theory is, It's North Korea.
• Florence9899 6y ago
  Я здесь Голая https://vk.cc/bZoVGs https://vk.cc/bZoVGs
• mrcwinn 6y ago
  There are always tradeoffs. Does this point to an inherit flaw in the decentralized nature of bitcoin? That is, if I agree that mining is wasteful and bad for the planet, who do I call about that?
• naruvimama 6y ago
  Bitcoin has all the disadvantages of gold and none of it's benefits. Gold became a valuable barter item because of it's convenience. Store-of-value is the worst trait of gold, the incentive of sitting on a pot of gold is better than in investing it in a productive endeavour. Gold simply cannot fuel the rapidly growing modern economies, neither can bitcoin.
  • oleganza 6y ago
    Funny that you mention it. It's the opposite in my view. Depending on "to whom". If you you have savings, of course it's better for you to have it hold value. And if you hold debt, it's better for you for that to fall over time. But we are not discussing whether "everyone is in debt" is good/bad, we are talking whether money is good/bad for the money's purposes. Also, Bitcoin flows over wires and gold does not. Speaking of debt, if "it's good for society" for a lot of people to be in debt (because how else would ppl prefer assets to depreciate so they are stimulated to get rid of them?) then how do you avoid fewer people being creditors? In my view, more ppl with savings and fewer ppl in debt is key to a democratic/decentralized society w/o dangerous concentration of power.
• SonOfThePlower 6y ago
  He's right. Longest thriving tulip market in history. I wonder how much energy in total BTC has already consumed?
• deleted 6y ago
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• georg_fvb 6y ago
  Bitcoin Says that Bill Gates is bad for the Planet
• acruns 6y ago
  At what point did Bill become an expert on everything? It's cute that he takes his little bag of books and secluded himself in his she-shed and reads. But honestly, why do we now trust him to be an expert on so many subjects when he hasn't even gotten an undergraduate degree in anything, let alone spent decades studying a field. I can't tell you how many books I have read by experts that later turned out to completely off base or wrong to a certain degree. Just because he chats with experts and reads books on subjects doesn't make him an expert, it makes him well informed but not an expert. I am an expert in what I do and have spent over a decade on it, and I am wrong or have to look things up all the time, am I missing something? Did he go back and get a doctorate that I missed? He seems to be an expert on too many subjects.
  • naringas 6y ago
    > At what point did Bill become an expert on everything? When he made billions in a society which values making billions above (almost) everything else
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  • asdff 6y ago
    Where is this rage coming from? It doesn't take an expert to see the damage bitcoin is causing for the planet, the exernalities are pretty clearly outlined (although conspicuously ignored by crypto-evangelicals). His quote in the article is true. I also don't understand the attacks on his academic credentials. He had been working in his field since he was 13, he's published in CS, and he was taking graduate level classes at Harvard as an undergrad before he dropped out to found Microsoft. So yes, he has spent decades studying a field. The man is unarguably a credentialed engineer, and anyone in this field should know that you don't need a B.S. in CS or a PhD in C.S. for that.
    • bagacrap 6y ago
      I think it's coming as a reaction to Bill Gates's status as media darling; his own fondness for the limelight; and the fact that someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to make a documentary deifying his brain.
• totaldude87 6y ago
  ok, I dont understand. for using bitcoin, I either need to mine or to buy. now lets say I choose to buy, here comes the problem. Over the last 36 months , the lowest value of a bitcoin is $3k and highest $57k. If i had bought 1 bitcon at 57k i would have lost 7k by today, again, to buy bitcoin you need to use existing currency. Not everyone can mine and this is my first problem. Next, how do I use this to buy anything? a $100 bill is worth $100 regardless of what, doesn't matter what I buy or where I keep or when I use, it will still be $100, can you say same about bitcoin? this is all speculative and the exponential factor is scaring me out of bitcoin.
• naringas 6y ago
  And I say that Microsoft's fundamental innovation (I'm referring to the practice of licensing software) is bad for society.
• standardUser 6y ago
  As something of an outsider (I own some crypto but know/care very little about it) I cannot fathom how anyone could defend the energy consumption associated with Bitcoin. Maybe someone can change my mind, but based on my current understanding, I would fully support outlawing that specific kind of energy waste.
  • louloulou 6y ago
    This is why I support getting rid of humans entirely. Without humans there would be no waste at all. There is no need for us to exist.
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  Mr. Bill Gates has a great ego, and money to make almost anything happen. Hope he takes up flying! into the ground at high speeds. Why would I trust this sweater wearing phoney opinions on how to fix the world, given how terrible windows is. When his vaccine truck pulls up to a school, little black kids in Africa run. They know...
• gt565k 6y ago
  Heh, Microsoft's cloud and data centers are also bad for the planet, but here we are.
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  • w0m 6y ago
    everything is bad for the planet. Doesn't mean you can't call out things that are egregiously wasteful with no practical value gained.
• silentsea90 6y ago
  What's bad for the planet is how decades of individual work output in money can be confiscated (by printing and inflation, not taxation) by the Government under the pretense of doing good. What's bizarre is that the Government is not affected by market forces while the rest of us plebs are forced to be efficient lest we lose to competition. Note: when I say confiscation, I mean money printing and not taxes (which will exist in a crypto world). Money printing disproportionately hurts the poor who hold currency whereas the rich stay rich as their wealth is held in assets. Separate money and state and you get closer to a state where the Government has to streamline its operations. We will see behavior truly good for the planet then, because the Government won't be able to spend trillions on military interventionism and research, and will have to focus inwards on streamlining its own self. Increasing taxes will cause a mass exodus leaving the Governments in a bad shape. Bitcoin can't be confiscated. Holders will just migrate to a country that is good with BTC being used as a store of value to guard against money printing. This is a revolution against nation states. BTC Energy consumption is negligible compared to the incumbents but nobody talks of those so here we are. Edit: I am surprised at the number of downvotes and would encourage you to comment so I can address your thoughts on the matter. Meta comment - also surprised that the HN crowd is so divided on the matter.
  • gvv 6y ago
    Oh no we can't milk taxes of your (un)realized gains so it's bad for the planet. I like it when they load the other FUD which is: BTC is used by criminals (implying fiat isn't).
    • silentsea90 6y ago
      The interesting part is how the FUDers like Nouriel Roubini fire away all the negatives in the same sentence, making it sound like they have an agenda against BTC and not so much a well researched deep concern regarding one of the FUD points.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    You could argue that conventional warfare was the traditional mechanism by which governments competed against one another to "consume" failed states and re-allocate resources to governments that were better capable of putting them to use. In modern times, the global financial markets seem to be somewhat playing that same role since nuclear wars isn't a palatable option, with only a few "outcast" nations not participating in that system (Iran,Russia,NK,Myanmar,etc...). Taxation systems, being the mechanism by which governments are able to build power bases, themselves compete against one another as individuals and companies avoid taxation by moving resources to low/no tax states within that same system. This human system is a constantly evolving chaotic system that's changing more rapidly than most of us perceive, and crypto is just one aspect of that.
• monadic8 6y ago
  Bill Gates is also quite bad for the planet. I could never emit the CO2 he does if I tried.
• mayankkaizen 6y ago
  It is not bitcoin, it is the human race which is cancer to this planet. This race will consume everything, destroy every other race, gobble up all resources, drink up all the water and burn down every forest. And then it will destroy itself just like cancer cells. I know I am being hyper-cynical but this is how I feel very often. When I read about human endeavor of settling at Mars, I do commend the engineering skill but I also see the irony that the same human race couldn't protect the most suitable and hospitable planet.
  • paulolc 6y ago
    Yep, that's how evolution works. It's natural selection working. We'll keep forking the planet until it becomes too costly to do it. Anyway, the will to survive while profiting from it, will become a pretty good incentive to come up with some good alternatives either here on Earth or somewhere else. Otherwise we'll hit the Big Filter. OTOH, it's true, it's not looking good for us in the long run. It may well be that the water already started to boil and we are the frog.
• natenthe 6y ago
  If you want to make valid comparisons, compare the energy usage of Bitcoin (and other blockchain-based solutions) to the energy usage of the current fiat system (with all its banks and other financial services companies). Plus, it is a fact that the majority of energy used to mine Bitcoin is renewable. Let's be honest. It is obvious that the majority of HN users are anti-Bitcoin for a few reasons: 1) They see early adopters profiting mightily and have a zero-sum, envious mindset. 2) Silicon Valley promotes centralization. People have invested their careers in organizations that promote the centralization of the internet and technology, and Bitcoin is a threat to that. 3) Silicon Valley, once teeming with innovation because of diversity of though, is now completely monolithic in thought. The powers-that-be (i.e. Bill Gates, among others) are anti-Bitcoin, as it threatens their centralized power, and so Bitcoin has become out of fashion in Silicon Valley. 4) Politics. Bitcoin is decentralized and empowers those that privately and independently own it and transact with it. This is generally a libertarian concept. Silicon Valley, being very politically on the left, realizes that the independence that Bitcoin brings goes against their ethos of governmental and bureaucratic control. You cannot "cancel" or prevent someone you don't like from using the Bitcoin network - even if you disagree with them. HN used to be great, in my opinion, and I hope things improve. My comments are sincere. Now, prepare for my comment to get censored by a flood of downvotes in 1, 2, 3...
• ajmurmann 6y ago
  We should talk about the general problem that carbon emissions are a huge cost that end up with the Commons and price that in instead of nit picking individual use cases and if we condone them or not.
• uberdru 6y ago
  Powerpoint is worse.
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• asenna 6y ago
  At a larger scale of things given what Bitcoin just made possible and what it's trying to disrupt (decentralized, uncensored), Bitcoin is literally just 12 years old and I feel these judgements are too harsh and too soon for something which is still yet to be adopted or even understood by 95% of the population. The benefits of Bitcoin can truly be appreciated or judged once the tech has been adopted in a relatively larger segment. Even so, let's say Bitcoin is extremely inefficient and should just be abandoned as a failure (I'm of the opposite view though obviously), what's happening with Ethereum is far more interesting. I've been in the space for a while and the kinds of innovation that's happening on one layer on top of another - ALL on a soon-to-be efficient Proof-of-stake system is absolutely amazing. I'm actually very surprised I don't see enough discussion and threads on HN regarding the various things happening at such a fast pace (DeFi, Dexes, NFTs, Layer-2 and Sidechains, Eth2 Validation and sharding, other interesting Dapp use-cases). Given all of these developments, it would be fair to say at least on Ethereum that such "energy inefficient" narrative is soon going to be obsolete. I would love to hear Bill Gates' thoughts on the tech then. Bill is the one that persued Warren Buffet and tried to get him onboard with Tech companies. I'm surprised it's Bill Gates that now needs someone to get him on board with this massive new emerging field.
  • 01100011 6y ago
    > surprised I don't see enough discussion and threads on HN The fanboys ruined it. I think we all got sick of posts claiming blockchains will change everything. Blockchains and the things built on top of them are somewhat interesting, but unless there is something truly innovative in that space no one is going to want to repeat the same arguments we've been having here for like a decade.
  • johndevor 6y ago
    Curious to know if any work on PoS is being done for Bitcoin.
    • asenna 6y ago
      To be honest, I'm curious to know about this as well! Haven't read anything on this but I wonder at times how is the core Bitcoin team looking at what's happening with PoS and deciding "Nope. This tech is good for 200 more years". I guess time will tell. The inability to move / be more versatile is the reason why Ethereum came to be in the first place. I guess Bitcoin's main USP is "You can be sure Bitcoin will be Bitcoin as you know it for a long time". Also there's one section of the community that thinks Bitcoin mining will actually help move to greener tech faster since it incentivizes you do so.
• TurkishPoptart 6y ago
  Why does my mind jump to -> {$Important_Figure} says BTC is bad -> People will buy BTC -> The price will rise.
• jokoon 6y ago
  That's funny how so many criticized the existence of the federal reserve, but bitcoin being an answer to this criticism, made everybody realize that money is trust, and that institutions are required to guarantee this trust, cryptography cannot solve everything. Money is just a medium, it's an accounting tool. Civilization doesn't work without regulation or when things are too volatile. Society requires stability. The answer to the banking crisis is not more liberalism and anarchic technologies (that allows hackers to launder money), it's regulating the banks.
• kaoussi 6y ago
  You might wanna check Block lattice technology invented by Nano's Founder, Colin Lemahieu. Green tech.
• buttholesurfer 6y ago
  Why would I listen to that power hungry money driven billionaire? He probably flies on a private jet more often than everyone posting here flies in a year. Why doesn't her stop running computers and tell people to stop using computers xboxes and azure?
• mdoms 6y ago
  This article feels like it has gone 8 rounds with Google Translate.
• acd10j 6y ago
  Bitcoin seems like a huge Ponzi scheme, just with any other Ponzi scheme, its adopters fiercely fighting and trying to silence anyone who dares to utter anything opposing it. Bitcoin as it stands today has potential to destroy all the gains we have made in clean energy and bringing zero carbon offsets. Bill gates is right that it is massively inefficient in what is supposed to be doing. That is doing transactions. Just like previous bubble runs this Bitcoin bull run again will die down, with many of same people holding this worthless bag.
  • asenna 6y ago
    > Bitcoin seems like a huge Ponzi scheme Can you please point out which previous ponzi scheme / bubble / tulip mania has gone through so many cyclic wave pattern and held up it's value despite all the crashes? "Bitcoin is going to crash" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg
    • Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      The freely-printed, non-gold-backed flavor of USD?
    • acd10j 6y ago
      You yourself has stated elsewhere in this thread that Bitcoin is literally just 12 Years old. You might also have stake in bitcoins/cryptocurrency survival. It is necessary for any success of any Ponzi scheme that people become it's fierce backer. But until unless it does deliver any tangible benefit to overall financial system (less overall transaction cost etc.) It is a ponzi scheme. There are long list of soft ponzi scheme (e.g. Amway) that have been running for decades. That does not mean they do not have Ponzi style pump and dump behavior. Bitcoin as it stands (huge waste of energy, Very high transaction cost) is failing in all of it's intended use cases.
• G3rn0ti 6y ago
  I know, nobody really cares about facts in these Crypto flame wars, any more: It's libertarian economic liberation against greed and ecological destruction, right vs. left, democratic versus republican, the usual polarization these days. However, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If anybody's interested, here is a fair analysis of Bitcoin's carbon foot print (2019), I found recently: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435119302557 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... TL;DR: While there is this "energy consumption of Argentina" number in circulation implying Bitcoin's carbon emissions equates that of a whole developed country, in reality this number is closer to that of Kansas City.
• ribrars 6y ago
  This has everything to do with our societies being powered by fossil fuels and nothing to do with bitcoin. High energy usage may be deemed wasteful, but if it was coming from solar power, it wouldn't be bad for the planet.
• blunderkid 6y ago
  Well, cost of doing business. So it’s not perfect, nothing is. But is it still a better store of value than your bank and pension which you may not realize, but are getting robbed by the Robinhoods you voted to power to replace the manchild?
• theknocker 6y ago
  Wow Bill Gates is just an expert on everything these days.
• bilater 6y ago
  People hating on Bitcoin's proof of work don't understand layer 2 solutions are on the way. Ultimately Bitcoin will be used as a final settlement layer and not for recording your pizza transactions while faster, lighter blockchains work with it.
  • x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
    I've been hearing this for years now. All of them have thusfar become a complete failure in both usability and reliability.
    • bilater 6y ago
      Not sure where are you looking but there are advances being made with every upgrade. On Ethereum as well as Bitcoin. With Ethereum in particular right now you have solutions like ZK and Optimistic rollups. We are taking concrete steps towards an eventual network of blockchains each talking to one another. These will both alleviate traffic and privacy concerns such as bots front running transactions on Uniswap.
• afrcnc 6y ago
  Spoiler alert: IT IS!
• jidiculous 6y ago
  There's a bit of a reporting bias when it comes to BTC's (or even crypto itself) environmental impact. We're only able to say "it uses as much electricity as X country" because there's a well-defined ledger of every BTC transaction. The question is how much non-crypto "conventional" currencies cost the planet. That being said, BTC probably isn't the "best" cryptocurrency. I'm not sure about the details because I don't know much about this space now, but other commenters have pointed out that it's more efficient for ledgers to record proof of stake rather than proof of work.
  • bagacrap 6y ago
    The amount of electricity used for transactions is just a lower bound on the amount of resources used overall for btc. For example, Coinbase has servers which use electricity. And, this lower bound is /very/ high. So this comment comes off as pro-crypto FUD.
• w0m 6y ago
  well, duh?
• kulix425 6y ago
  ah yes, if gates says it he must be correct.
• madis 6y ago
  Government money printing, wasting, power-grab and destruction via dilution and s and the pain, destruction and suffering they cause
• drobert 6y ago
  Blockchain is a technology in search of a problem. Maybe as a storage of wealth it produces fewer emissions than mining gold but it's not the solution to the money problem. Why it's still no 1 cryptocurrency? First mover advantage, a few die hard believers, many speculators and lots of FOMO. Even I am reluctant to sell my 0.01 share of a bitcoin. What if... When a much better solution comes people will sell it but for now the fiat-alternative market is too crowded with not much differentiation - to my best knowledge.
• nix23 6y ago
  A OS that need's a Antivirus on every machine is bad for the planet too ;)
• yunvme 6y ago
  Bill Gates is either disingenuous or he doesn't understand Bitcoin. The electricity isn't expended to do transactions. That's part of the system. The electricity is expended to ensure there are no double spends. It would be arbitrarily easy to increase the number of transactions. That is not needed on the blockchain, at least right now. The electricity is well spent securing a truly decentralized digital store of value. The world needs Bitcoin.
• andred14 6y ago
  How is this guy not in prison? The deaths, infertility and other destruction of lives he has caused in Africa and India are horrendous
• cybert00th 6y ago
  >"So many countries are facing an energy crisis" Actually, to see a good reason why some countries are struggling to meet their energy needs, you need only look here: https://hindenburgresearch.com/ormat/ https://hindenburgresearch.com/ormat/ I'm more concerned that Mr Gates has inadvertently (accidently on purpose?) constructed a straw man that draws attention away from the rather more egregious effects of corruption on energy supply.
• andred14 6y ago
  How is this guy not in prison? The deaths, infertility and other destruction of lives he has caused in Africa and India are horrendous: https://www.bitchute.com/video/oS9FBzThQfJP/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/oS9FBzThQfJP/
• justAnIdea 6y ago
  The guy is pound for pound the worst polluter of all the billionaires, flies everywhere in a jet, has a completely ridiculous and wasteful $150M house, imports the sand on his beach from the Caribbean, hoards farm land (biggest farm land owner in the US... farm land which is generallly pretty bad for the environment)... and on top of that, he's not a climate scientist, he's not a medical doctor, he's a former computer engineer and a manager. He also likes burgers. THAT'S IT. Why on Earth would people listen to him on any topic other than how to manage an IT business is beyond me.
• thedogeye 6y ago
  How's his private jet for the planet?
• thedogeye 6y ago
  Bitcoin depends on a worldwide network of computers which are indeed bad for the planet. The USD depends on a worldwide network of military assets which is 10x worse for the planet.
• sigzero 6y ago
  I find it "interesting" that Facebook doesn't allow that URL to be posted.
• Daho0n 6y ago
  Gates is the biggest farmer in the US (I know it sounds crazy but he is!). I wonder if he'll do something good with all that land and not be part of the problem he normally seems to advocate against. That could be interesting. Edit: Downvoted in less than 30 seconds. That must be my new record!
• capableweb 6y ago
  Silly idea maybe, and will disappear in the ocean of other comments here, but hear out my silly idea: Since the complaint tends to be "A huge amount of energy is wasted for a single transaction", why don't we try to inflate the value of Bitcoin as much as possible, so one Bitcoin is worth $10 million or something like that, then we can fit more USD value in one transaction, and the energy impact is now lower of that transaction, I guess, when compared to the traditional financial system. Might be a stupid idea, but eager to hear what you all think.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • abreis 6y ago
    Bitcoin is divisible to 0.00000001, so if a bitcoin was worth $10 million, the smallest possible transaction would still be worth just 10 cents (+ transaction fees).
• trident5000 6y ago
  How much electricity does the Microsoft OS use globally?
• luxuryballs 6y ago
  Does this include factoring in the difference of how much it costs to maintain a centralized banking system? Because for all we know Bitcoin is actually better for the planet.
• riston 6y ago
  I agree with B. Gates and hopefully the crypto bubble will burst again with massive bank ran to sell their assets (it will happen but no-one knows when). Good luck
• backtoyoujim 6y ago
  Mining gold is also a very destructive and poisonous business that is incredibly bad for the planet. So is copper mining. So is manufacturing computers. Thank god computers and digital networks are so important that we recognize the importance to keep mining these limited resources to build and sell more computers and digital networks and places to store Office yearly subscription receipt pdfs. That said, something like 40% of all bitcoin are in just like 1000 wallets. If bitcoin were to suddenly fossilize into the world's currency the distribution of wealth would be even more inequitable and concentrated than now with national fiats.
• coinward 6y ago
  Readers, you are discussing Bitcoin before the 4th of 32 halvenings. Things aren't so clear to most and dust has not settled. One thing is certain, it is not too late to read the whitepaper and learn what the emergence of the first new base layer money in 5000 years truly means and get your head around the significance. Now, to the article. This is a write up response to a comment one of the world's richest men said on the app, Clubhouse. These are the articles worth discussing with this audience? Look at the final sentence of the article. Seriously? "This currency is not good for Green Planet." Yikes. We're all on our own journey an in time all roads lead to Bitcoin. This is not a technology story, or an energy story, but a human story. The story of Bitcoin tells about people working with machines to accomplish something that seems impossible to most of us. Bitcoin frees the slaves. Literally, not figuratively. If you have to sell your time, sweat, and blood to earn money, it is unacceptable to allow corruptible central planners to create that same money out of nothing. This is a power that no group of people should have over others, and certainly one that future generations will look back on find it laughable that a society would entrust people with control over the money supply after time and time again history has shown what happens. Bitcoin is ending the monetary enslavement that central banks have been desperately clinging to. Issues around central banking, inflation, and money supply manipulation are not new in the story of human history. The current chapter is unfolding to see Bitcoin demonstrating an incorruptible money and it is growing up rapidly. How much energy do you feel is appropriate to put toward abolishing central banking and freeing humanity? Personally, I feel blessed to have discovered Bitcoin while it still consumes less energy than small countries. What a time to be here!
  • moralsupply 6y ago
    Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is. They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion. HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption. Let them learn the hard way. If they get any clue on what Bitcoin is, there's the risk they may get rich and attain some power in the future, which will only make matters worse.
• moralsupply 6y ago
  I love how much the HN community is invested in demonizing Bitcoin for its energy consumption. I wish for you bashing Bitcoin to keep all your wealth allocated in assets associated with fiat currencies. I also wish that you spend lots of time running political narratives in order to stop a decentralized piece of technology from growing. Good luck trying to reach out the Bitcoin CEO in order to ask him to shut down his "environmentally damaging operations". In 5 years time, however, once the US dollar has lost 50% of its purchase power, you'll be begging your employer to pay you in Bitcoin. By that time you'll conveniently forget the narrative about energy consumption. You'll even claim that Bitcoin is one of the most important technologies ever invented, and that you always believed in it.
  • large 6y ago
    This is a bitcoin shill spam account.
    • moralsupply 6y ago
      Have you noticed that recently we get at least 2-3 bitcoin "energy consumption" stories reaching the homepage every week? You're not concerned with that, but you're concerned with my posts?
  • Bakary 6y ago
    If the dollar loses that much in 5 years, getting a salary will be the least of our worries
• fredfoobar 6y ago
  I consider myself as a bitcoin skeptic, but this is just gross overgeneralization.
• kajumix 6y ago
  Two google searches take as much energy as it'd take to boil one cup of water. Online porn consumes 6 million kWh [1] yearly. We ignore areas where energy cost is diffuse, which is not the case with bitcoin that is so objectively and transparently measurable. If others find value in online porn, TikTok, air travel for fun, production of processed food and subsequent health crises, long hot showers, and methane-producing cattle, regardless of how frivolous or wasteful I find them, it's not my place to question them. It's just free people choosing to pay for things they value, and all of it takes energy. Fiat currencies and their forced entrenchment has a giant carbon footprint with its wasteful banking system, militaries and layered machinery to ensure its value is never challenged. The FX market trades about $6 trillion DAILY, with an infrastructure that doesn't produce any real goods and services. It'd be fair to compare the energy cost of bitcoin with the legacy fiat system, but how do you even begin to measure the latter. We live in an artificially over financialized world, where a big chunk of knowledge workers is not engaged productively. Bitcoin may in fact become the great definancialization that would boil the system down to essentials [2]. Nic Carter does a great job addressing the energy concerns of bitcoin [3]. Consider specially the idea of the non-fungibility of energy and how BTC miners absorb energy that'd otherwise be curtailed. I know it will sound crazy and totally non-intuitive but there is an argument that bitcoin might end up being the biggest incentivizer of clean, cheap energy, and in the end be a net positive for the environment. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/the-environmental-cost-of-internet-porn/548210/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/the-e... [2]: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-definancialization/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-defi... [3]: https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-co...
• GoodJokes 6y ago
  Bill Gates is and has been much worse for the planet through his vulturous capitalistic behavior and hoarding of wealth and resources.
• LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
  Well, we are all bad for the planet, but planet does not care. What we care about is OUR PLANET. Someone in the industry or the people struggle for better life may think that is YOUR PLANET. Why bother me to care YOUR PLANET?
• dcchambers 6y ago
  It really saddens me that a "Science Coin" didn't catch on that actually did something useful with all of those compute cycles. My student job in college was helping to maintain a large-ish high-throughput computing cluster (https://chtc.cs.wisc.edu/ https://chtc.cs.wisc.edu/), and that 1000+ node server cluster...and even all of the servers around the world connected to the Open Science Grid (https://opensciencegrid.org/ https://opensciencegrid.org/), pale in comparison to the compute power that is wasting time and energy computing bitcoin hashes. What a shame.
• yolo1two3 6y ago
  Why people give a crap what Bill Gates thinks about anything recent is beyond me. Its like the Dave Chapelle Joke about the news station that interviewed Ja Rule after 9/11 to hear what I thought about 9/11. Ive never heard of Bill Gates knowing or contributing anything useful to bitcoin I really dont care what he thinks about that or Corona virus. Oh I actually do care about one single thing only and that is I wonder what he thinks about molesting children and Jefrrey Epstein.
• mikestaub 6y ago
  BTC incentivizes miners to find cheap power. As renewables become cheaper than non-renewables, this incentivizes innovation in green energy which will benefit the planet long term. The fact the most of the mining is done in China with coal is a geopolitical detail that will change in the coming years.