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Visa is not physical currency, that’s not what I asked. Electricity can be generated from zero carbon means, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, etc. There’s an order

by imgabe 6y ago

Visa is not physical currency, that’s not what I asked. Electricity can be generated from zero carbon means, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, etc. There’s an order of magnitude more solar energy hitting the Earth every day than humans ever use. Instead of stopping progress and living in the past, we can find a better way to make use of it.

arcticbull 6y ago
Doesn't solve the e-waste generation, the arms race to increase hash rate creates 100g of e-waste per transaction. Devastating for the planet of course and utterly insufficient for anything bigger than a Costco. Just how much power do you think physical currency consumes? Data, citations, estimates please. Because I know handing a $10 bill to my buddy consumes 0kWh, and doing the same with Bitcoin costs $20 and consumes 30 days of power. If you want progress you'll have to do something that moves the world forward not warms it up.
- imgabe 6y ago
  e-waste can be recycled, useful metals can be reclaimed. It doesn’t matter how much power it uses if it’s switched to solar, and there are lower power options like proof-of-stake coming online anyway. The relevant metric is tons of CO2 released, not kWh used. Bitcoin could be run with zero CO2 released if we chose to, in which case shutting it down would do absolutely nothing in regard to climate change.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    [1, 2] does not suggest that recycling of e-waste actually happens. Solve that first, power supply second, then re-enable Bitcoin mining and you've got my vote. Basically, it can't really be economically recycled, and it isn't. It's just thrown in heaps where poor folks in developing nations scrabble through the toxic remains. "Useful metals" is a few grams of gold, tin and copper. The rest is plastics (non-recyclables) and FR4 (epoxy filled fiberglass). Fiberglass is also not recyclable. Your plan amounts to little more than greenwashing. > Recyclers can make money from selling scavenged metal from electronic equipment, says Puckett, but the process to retrieve usable metals is typically extremely toxic. Workers who remove the metals often have no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. And most of the countries where the processing takes place -- China, India, Ghana, Pakistan -- do not have regulations in place to protect workers or prevent the primitive recycling operations. Most of electronics is plastic (epoxy is a plastic), and by and large plastic simply isn't recyclable. That's one of "mother's little lies" the plastic industry has been telling you for years to feel better about consumption. Reducing waste is the only way. [1] https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-happens-to-electronic-waste https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-hap...
arcticbull 6y ago
[1, 2] does not suggest that recycling of e-waste actually happens. Solve that first, power supply second, then re-enable Bitcoin mining and you've got my vote. Basically, it can't really be economically recycled, and it isn't. It's just thrown in heaps where poor folks in developing nations scrabble through the toxic remains. "Useful metals" is a few grams of gold and copper. The rest is plastics (non-recyclables) and FR4 (epoxy filled fiberglass). Fiberglass is also not recyclable. Your plan amounts to little more than greenwashing. [1] https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-happens-to-electronic-waste https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-hap...
vesinisa 6y ago
What is with this Bitcoin & infinite renewables fantasy? You want to compare Bitcoin to resource use of paper money, and then claim Bitcoin's electricity use is anyway irrelevant since humanity could theoretically harvest almost infinite energy from sun (someone just needs to build and maintain the infrastructure.) Meanwhile in reality, Bitcoin's security and value is actually backed by the very scarcity of electricity (computing power) you want to deny, and almost all Bitcoin is mined with the dirtiest, cheapest and most climate unfriendly energy available: Chinese coal.

by imgabe 6y ago

arcticbull 6y ago

Doesn't solve the e-waste generation, the arms race to increase hash rate creates 100g of e-waste per transaction. Devastating for the planet of course and utterly insufficient for anything bigger than a Costco. Just how much power do you think physical currency consumes? Data, citations, estimates please. Because I know handing a $10 bill to my buddy consumes 0kWh, and doing the same with Bitcoin costs $20 and consumes 30 days of power. If you want progress you'll have to do something that moves the world forward not warms it up.

imgabe 6y ago
e-waste can be recycled, useful metals can be reclaimed. It doesn’t matter how much power it uses if it’s switched to solar, and there are lower power options like proof-of-stake coming online anyway. The relevant metric is tons of CO2 released, not kWh used. Bitcoin could be run with zero CO2 released if we chose to, in which case shutting it down would do absolutely nothing in regard to climate change.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  [1, 2] does not suggest that recycling of e-waste actually happens. Solve that first, power supply second, then re-enable Bitcoin mining and you've got my vote. Basically, it can't really be economically recycled, and it isn't. It's just thrown in heaps where poor folks in developing nations scrabble through the toxic remains. "Useful metals" is a few grams of gold, tin and copper. The rest is plastics (non-recyclables) and FR4 (epoxy filled fiberglass). Fiberglass is also not recyclable. Your plan amounts to little more than greenwashing. > Recyclers can make money from selling scavenged metal from electronic equipment, says Puckett, but the process to retrieve usable metals is typically extremely toxic. Workers who remove the metals often have no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. And most of the countries where the processing takes place -- China, India, Ghana, Pakistan -- do not have regulations in place to protect workers or prevent the primitive recycling operations. Most of electronics is plastic (epoxy is a plastic), and by and large plastic simply isn't recyclable. That's one of "mother's little lies" the plastic industry has been telling you for years to feel better about consumption. Reducing waste is the only way. [1] https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-happens-to-electronic-waste https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-hap...

arcticbull 6y ago

[1, 2] does not suggest that recycling of e-waste actually happens. Solve that first, power supply second, then re-enable Bitcoin mining and you've got my vote. Basically, it can't really be economically recycled, and it isn't. It's just thrown in heaps where poor folks in developing nations scrabble through the toxic remains. "Useful metals" is a few grams of gold and copper. The rest is plastics (non-recyclables) and FR4 (epoxy filled fiberglass). Fiberglass is also not recyclable. Your plan amounts to little more than greenwashing. [1] https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ https://recyclenation.com/2017/04/where-does-e-waste-end-up/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-happens-to-electronic-waste https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-hap...

vesinisa 6y ago

What is with this Bitcoin & infinite renewables fantasy? You want to compare Bitcoin to resource use of paper money, and then claim Bitcoin's electricity use is anyway irrelevant since humanity could theoretically harvest almost infinite energy from sun (someone just needs to build and maintain the infrastructure.) Meanwhile in reality, Bitcoin's security and value is actually backed by the very scarcity of electricity (computing power) you want to deny, and almost all Bitcoin is mined with the dirtiest, cheapest and most climate unfriendly energy available: Chinese coal.