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Imagine the day we have to explain to the next generation that they live in a climate hellscape because the world decided to burn fossil fuels to collect digita
by quelsolaar 6y ago
Imagine the day we have to explain to the next generation that they live in a climate hellscape because the world decided to burn fossil fuels to collect digital beanie babies, instead of saving the world.
I say ban mining, the sooner the better.
- tifadg1 6y agoInvest in your responses more, or are you truthfully thinking that cryptocurrencies are responsible for climate change?
- dgellow 6y agoProof of Work does and will contribute in non-significant way. That’s exactly what the incentives are. It’s by design.
- ric2b 6y agoThe incentive is to produce proof of work, not energy wasted. That's why miners use highly specialized and efficient machines and not just any random computer that draws a lot of power.
- xbar 6y agoYou cannot have ever been in a room doing mining. Your phone is highly specialized and efficient. Coin mining is a noise parade and heat monstrosity that grows up to the limit of how much power it can draw at affordable rates. I have run billion dollar datacenters. They are dwarfed by small mining operations in their heat production and power consumption.
- ric2b 6y agoI don't understand how what you said is in disagreement with my claims. Yes, miners try to use their machines as much as possible, like any other business, but they still try to it as efficiently as they can. Undervolting chips to increase efficiency is quite common, for example. And my phone is not very specialized at all, when compared to a mining ASIC.
- dgellow 6y agoThat’s because you stop at the first level instead of exploring the effects of 2nd, 3rd, nth order. Or you do not understand the business side of miners. Miners make money by generating hashes. The more computing power the more hashing power you have. The value of expected rewards determines how much you will be willing to spend on the mining operation. Let’s say you have a gain of 10% efficiency, meaning you spend 10% less on your expenses while winning the same number of rewards. So what is your incentive? Is it to stay like this and be happy that you saved some energy? Of course not, you will spend these extra 10% to gain more rewards. And now your competition also has to up their game. By design, the higher Bitcoin price is, the more energy is worth spending on Proof of Work. More efficient hardware doesn’t change that fact. It’s by design not sustainable.
- ric2b 6y agoNone of what you said is special about mining. If a factory increases efficiency by 10% it will simply produce more of whatever it makes as long as there's demand for it. And then other factories have to up their game. Also the higher the price of the product the factory produces, the more it is worth spending extra resources producing it. And of course this isn't limited to factories, it's true for businesses in general. What is special about mining is that energy is just about the only resource it uses, so it's more obvious, while a factory might be bottle-necked by other resources like floor space and a software company might be bottle-necked by how many programmers it can hire/manage. Miners are similarly limited by how much mining hardware they have or are capable of managing.
- user-the-name 6y agoThey use over 0.1% of the world's energy at the moment, and growing rapidly. All the climate savings that Tesla advertises themselves as having achieved over the lifetime of the company, Bitcoin cancels out in a month. Bitcoin is currently closing in on having the carbon emissions of the Gulf War oil fires at their peak.
- lupire 6y agoTesla isn't saving much energy, apparently. Manufacturing and then repairing a luxury car uses a lot of energy.
- user-the-name 6y agoThis is an often-repeated bit of anti-environmental propaganda, which is not particularly true.
- xbar 6y agoWithout any doubt.
- qertoip 6y agoI say ban everything, the sooner the better.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoHow much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs. Some are essential, some could be considered trivial. But they are all important for their consumers. Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons. Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude.
- DasIch 6y agoDo they pay an appropriate price for the energy the use? Do they pay a price that takes into consideration CO2 and environmental costs?
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoThis is a very important question. But shouldn't we be asking this of every company and every consumer of all electricity everywhere? What does it have to do with mining. This has to do with electricity production, its regulation and proper taxing.
- Hamuko 6y agoI have a hard time believing that they pay an appropriate price on any scale. Mining is highly portable and miners will locate their stuff to wherever they get the lowest rate. I would not be surprised if the electricity that miners are running on is government subsidized.
- drmacak 6y agoI think the point that the energy needed for mining is artificialy by design hihg/inefficient. As I understand some other coins are much more efficient.
- rawtxapp 6y agoBetter yet, imagine explaining to them how a couple politicians used to control money supply based on their whims and how the gov kept bailing out endless speculation losses on wall st.
- user-the-name 6y agoI think they would much rather hear than than that we literally destroyed the planet so fraudsters and gamblers could try to get rich.
- lupire 6y agoYour car, meat, house, and toys are destroying the planet far more than bitcoin: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-51906530 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-51906530
- user-the-name 6y agoThose things are actually useful, unlike bitcoin.
- ric2b 6y agoOk, go argue that to the environment, see if it cares.
- user-the-name 6y agoI'm not saying it's good. I'm saying that it's hard to get rid of those things, because they provide things people actually need to live. Bitcoin doesn't. We can ban bitcoin tomorrow, and not a single person will be seriously inconvenienced, other than speculators.
- ric2b 6y ago> Bitcoin doesn't. We can ban bitcoin tomorrow, and not a single person will be seriously inconvenienced, other than speculators. Sure, let's also ban all motor racing, tourism, recreational shopping, etc. It's a big waste of resources and it'll only inconvenience the people that care about those things, but they can still live their lives so it's fine.
- dgellow 6y agoThe worst thing is that it’s not even “the world deciding”, so far the Bitcoin community has been quite small. Just a small group of hyper enthusiasts seem to be enough to create disastrous effects. You can have a very small (in relative numbers) community deciding for the rest of the world that dedicating all our energy to making them rich is the future and so far we don’t seem to be able to say “no”. Proof of Work has been a horrible poisoned gift to the world.
- lxgr 6y agoThe problem is that intentional carbon emissions (as opposed to incidental ones) have not even been a thing in the past. Current policies and regulations seem to have a hard time addressing this problem.
- ric2b 6y ago> The problem is that intentional carbon emissions (as opposed to incidental ones) have not even been a thing in the past. What about Bitcoin makes it more intentional than any other industry? The product is proof of work, not energy wasted. That's why miners keep making their machines more efficient at producing proof of work instead of simply building larger power supplies and electric heaters. There's also nothing in Bitcoin that makes it favor fossil fuels over green energy.
- qertoip 6y ago> Just a small group of hyper enthusiasts You are mistaken, Sir. We are legion.
- dgellow 6y agoYou’re a legion of a few millions, good for you, but the world is 8bn+ people.
- gnrlst 6y ago> I say ban mining, the sooner the better Absolutely. But I just want to remind the group that not all crypto relies on mining! And not all crypto is about chasing fads like NFTs. I believe the world (some parts more than others) will need a decentralized means of exchange in the future. I personally am betting on Nano, but others are also promising.
- vimy 6y agoClimate change is an engineering problem not a behavioral one. Shaming people for how they use electricity helps no one.
- agumonkey 6y agoThat's two people very angry at crypto energy consumption I see in the same week. I find the emotion quite surprising.. I don't see the same amount toward other forms of pollution. Consumerism is also a bit absurd these days and global trade is a large producer of CO2 too. Now I find the crypto world a bit absurd and surely if they could kill the energy requirements then good.. but climate change is certainly not a consequence of btc miners.
- lxgr 6y agoThe difference is that proof-of-work is intentional waste of energy, rather than incidental. Take your favorite evil mega-corporation: If you can offer them a way to perform the same task using half the energy, they'd immediately jump at the opportunity. Bitcoin miners, on the other hand, would just... mine twice as fast, consuming exactly the same energy as before.
- chii 6y ago> intentional waste of energy, rather than incidental. is it a waste if the result was useful? Why do you get to decide, rather tha whoever was paying for the electricity?
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- lxgr 6y ago> Why do you get to decide, Because this waste has externalities and I'd argue that in a democracy, people should have a say in that.
- ric2b 6y agoPretty much any energy use has externalities though. I agree that in a democracy we all have a say in what we allow or not, but let's stop with this constant narrative that killing cryptocurrencies would significantly help with stopping climate change, it would barely make a difference, there are much more important things to focus on if that's really your goal.
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- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoHow can you force someone else to not spend their money on electricity?
- seaman1921 6y agoagreed, the utility does not justify this huge mining cost. And it is only going to get worse if kept unchecked.
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