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I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities tha

by Fede_V 5y ago

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be significantly worse than the one we inherited to our children, and, it's not like the carbon emissions that crypto is creating are used in the service of creating valuable technology - it's literally useless proof of work. I've worked in tech for a long time now, and I believe the stereotype about amoral techies is completely untrue - yet seeing the adoption of crypto among my peers is really depressing. I'm not sure how so many of my peers who would never ever work for a defense contractor or a vaping company are willing to work in crypto at this point. My objections are not ideological - if someone invented a cryptocurrency that was completely green and it would take over the market, I'd be totally in favor of it. I would genuinely like someone to explain it to me, because, the kinds of essays I've read that try to argue that crypto is actually good for global warming are so shoddy that I can't believe people would take them seriously absent a huge dose of motivated reasoning.

spicyramen 5y ago
I would be worried more about living in a country with high inflation and been able to use cryptos. Can you share your specific concerns about environmental impact?
unreal37 5y ago
What do you think about computers that are always on 24/7? Or TVs that never turn off (even if the screen is off)? (ETA: 23% of household energy use is by always-on devices. The scale of this waste is MASSIVE.) Devices in our life consume energy 24/7 when we're not even using them or needing them to be on. Energy conservation has a LONG way to go. In fact, one could argue that the current stock market system is a huge waste of energy compared to the benefit it actually brings to "raising money for companies".
- Fede_V 5y ago
  We should do a much better job of building energy efficient devices, but, the amount of energy that's "wasted" by things like TVs that never turned off is really tiny compared to the energy footprint of the crypto ecosystem. Further, I worry that crypto will grow massively. If that happens, all bets are off. In its current state, crypto consumes more energy than several large countries - imagine a world where that's 10x or 100x and we've still not moved off of proof of work. What's global warming going to look like?
  - unreal37 5y ago
    "A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the energy use from Always On devices across the US accounts for 23% of power consumption in the average household, or a quarter of any given electricity bill. Our own research confirms this." 23% of energy used by households is by always on devices. Not "tiny".
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, unnecessary energy waste of other devices is bad and should be reduced. Fortunately, we're making strides to reduce electronics inefficiency all of the time. Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are uniquely bad because they become less efficient with each additional miner. The maximum number of Bitcoin transactions was the same a decade ago as it is now, but the energy consumption is many orders of magnitude higher and continues to increase. When someone adds an additional server to a server rack or buys a new laptop, we also get a net increase in value. The new technology is likely to be more efficient, so we get a net increase in efficiency. Proof-of-work is the only technology that gets worse and worse over time, and literally pays people to continue making it worse.
- mmanfrin 5y ago
  Idle CPU !== full-blast GPU.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Proof of stake is here in Ethereum 2.0 and it works great. Invest in that because this is the last hurrah for Bitcoin. The next cycle will be the “Ethereum is the new better Bitcoin” cycle. I say that as someone with almost all my net worth in Bitcoin but it has miserable transaction speed and energy usage. History has shown us that not innovating has never worked out for any company I can think of.
- Fede_V 5y ago
  I've been reading a few of the white papers about this, but I'd absolutely love to go deeper in this. Do you have any suggestions? I am especially interested in assessment about CO2 emissions from credible sources (please, no VCs with zero training in physical sciences posting thought leadership pieces, I beg you).
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Maybe I'm a huge cynic, it certainly wouldn't surpris me, but I think the people pumping up crypto this cycle aren't necessarily the kind that care about the difference. If anything they'll stay away from ETH because it lacks a long term cap.
  - yokem55 5y ago
    One of the changes going into the July update is a transaction fee change that burns (throws away) part of the transaction fees. That will put some deflationary pressure on total issuance, while at the same time, when they switch to the staking chain total new issuance will be drastically cut since running a validator is far more efficient then mining. What the long term inflation rate will be then is really set by the demand for transactions and how much congestion there will be on their network, driving up transaction prices and fees burned (or not).
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  So you are saying your money is not where your mouth is?
- qertoip 5y ago
bko 5y ago
Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources. Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. If you want to price energy or put a tax, by all means. But you shouldn't discriminate against particular usages of energy. You're angry at the wrong thing
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  "Excess energy" is a myth. It's 2021, and transmitting energy across the power grid is easier and more efficient than ever before. No one is building hydroelectric dams in the middle of nowhere without a way to transmit that energy to somewhere else. It's still better to send the energy somewhere where they can replace coal-fired power plants than it is to burn it up mining cryptocurrency. > Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. It's exceedingly rare for energy to "go to waste". Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Across most of the world there are at least brief moments when the price of electricity goes negative. It happens because some energy sources cannot quickly be shut down (eg. Nuclear), so it makes financial sense to pay to get rid of electricity for brief periods. These negative prices don't coincide worldwide, indicating that there is not sufficient electrical transmission capacity.
  - bko 5y ago
    > Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running. Exactly my point. That's why they choose the global lowest cost of energy provider. And if you allow the price system to work, this would be the least valuable undesirable energy. Anything else would be uneconomical.
Tenoke 5y ago
>I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It's not really remaining mainstream. Bitcoin is soon going to be the only big project (in terms of electricity used) with it. The industry as a whole is moving away from it quite fast at this rate, with ETH (second biggest) moving to PoS within a year, and almost every new project being a or on a non-PoW chain.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  The problem is that Bitcoin miners and investors have a huge incentive to keep the status quo. Bitcoin is no longer the scrappy renegade alternative currency. It's big business now, with big institutional money behind it. The investors in these Bitcoin businesses do not want to see Bitcoin fall out of favor, and they're going to do everything in their power to keep it popular and profitable to mine.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Sure, but that's a Bitcoin problem not a crypto as a whole problem. And let's face it - all the projects being built on crypto which can cause it to grow much further cannot be built on Bitcoin in the first place.
    - randomopining 5y ago
      STX - Stacks is built on top of Bitcoin and allows smart contracts through proof of transfer.
- bko 5y ago
  Bitcoin and Ethereum are two entirely different value propositions. Ethereum is a lot more controlled by a central body, moves a lot faster and is optimized for entirely different things (flexibility, scale, building apps, etc). You can't substitute one for the other. Both will likely continue to exist indefinitely.
- randomguy5421 5y ago
New_California 5y ago
You may like this: https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-consuming-bitcoin-energy-debate https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-consuming...
kolinko 5y ago
PoW is on it’s way out - Ethereum is moving away from it and there is no reason for other cryptos to not follow. The major player in PoW will remain Bitcoin, which won’t change. But as soon as solar/wind become cheaper than coal, it will switch to green without a blink of an eye. A random thought - I’m genuinely surprised Bitcoin folks didn’t yet crowdfund building a nuclear reactor for mining purposes ;) They crowdfunded first ASIC production lines which are 1000x cheaper, but at the time when Bitcoin was 1000x cheaper as well :)
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Ethereum is quite centralised - people will follow the main developers. Bitcoin probably wouldn't switch - there is no single person or group who could get majority support to force such a change.
  - yokem55 5y ago
    Ethereum's development structure is only "centralized" in the same way that linux kernel development is "centralized". There is a big process that generates consensus across the community from a lot of different parties. By the time a change get into a pending hard fork, it's been through multiple rounds of establishing buy-in. Were the developers to push a major change in that didn't enjoy the support of the broader community, it would be abundantly apparent.
- delaaxe 5y ago
  BTC is already mostly powered by green
  - paulgb 5y ago
    The study I think you’re referring to came from a crypto company. It’s the equivalent of when cigarette companies released studies saying smoking was good for your health.
  - randomguy5421 5y ago
    lol no. Just no.
the_local_host 5y ago
Bitcoin can only be demonstrably free of government controls by continuing to operate after being made illegal. I wonder if its creators actually intended to make it a target for legal sanction by building in conspicuous environmental costs. Could there be an equilibrium where energy efficiency is achieved because miners have avoid using a noticeable amount of electricity to avoid legal trouble?
delaaxe 5y ago
2 links: - In today’s news: https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threat-environment-theyre-wrong https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threa... - From earlier: https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-environment https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-e...
- kbos87 5y ago
  These are two great examples of just how thin and self-serving the counter-arguments to crypto being an energy hog are. I'll save you some time... The premise of the first article is that the carbon footprint of fiat currency needs to include the impact of an endless cycle of debt, inflation, recessions, and wars that fiat currency enables. Regardless of whether or not that cycle is true and driven by fiat currency is one thing... assuming that cycle would end if we could flip over to crypto is solidly ridiculous. The second article talks about the fact that 75% of miners use renewable energy. Dig a level deeper into the source they cite and you see that it's 75% of miners who use renewable energy as a part of their "energy mix" (LOL) - and that it's more like 39% of the energy used in mining is renewable. They go on to talk about Great American Mining's efforts to mine using captured methane emissions from oil & gas production. It's an intriguing concept but it's literally in its infancy, and the source they are focused on looks like it accounts for less than 1/3 of methane emissions - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#methane https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#m... The fact that the reasoning is so very thin in both of these examples tells me everything I need to know. People just want a headline to point to.
  - svachalek 5y ago
    You are right but you need to substitute "proof of work" for "crypto" when you talk about energy hogs. Proof of Stake is also crypto and does not need to guzzle power.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Interesting the mental gymnastics people are going through to defend their interests. The cryptofolks are trying for gaslighting and Firehose of Falsehoods to cover up for their energy wastage projects.
tim333 5y ago
I was thinking of trying to make a coin/token that would fight global warming to help counter that stuff. Basically if you buy it the money goes into a fund some of which goes to carbon capture / anti warming causes, some is retained for buying back coins for liquidity. Anyone think that's a good idea?
themariner21 5y ago
Well, I’ll tell ya, and this is just me. But last night, I re-watched Waterworld. It was the first time in quite a while. And I found myself thinking, “Man, that life would be pretty cool. Global warming would be pretty cool. Why haven’t the ice caps melted yet?” Honestly, I remember they were supposed to be totally melted by 2007. And then it got pushed up to 2014. And then 2018. And now here we are in 2021 with the same thick, boring ice caps, and Dryland is still not a myth. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of our boring pre-apocalyptic world. If Bitcoin is now what will bring about the Waterworld, then I’ll tell you what: I’m all for it. Just call me “The Mariner.” ‘Cause I’ll be marinatin’ in BTC awaiting the end of this world, and the dawning of a far more watery one.
fumblebee 5y ago
Couldn't agree more. I struggle to comprehend how an energy obliterating and (relatively speaking) primitive technology like Bitcoin is the top dog in this space. Sure, first mover advantage counts for something, but come on - how has superior tech not yet left it in the rearview. In a space that moves at such rapid pace with heavy investment and buckets of innovation, at some point the crowd surely will migrate en masse to a PoS based blockchain like (most likely but won't be fully operational until ~2022) Eth2, or (less likely but still in with a shout) Algorand, Tezos, etc.
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  PoS is yet to be proven, I'm really hoping eth2 shows that it actually works, because the other ones with PoS aren't that heavily used or tested in adversarial ways. When it comes to money and value, the utmost important thing is security, that's the tradeoff that Bitcoin makes and that's what people are buying into. Everything else is secondary.
  - toolz 5y ago
    cardano is completely distributed PoS 46 billion market cap (5th largest crypto) - I'm not sure what you mean by "yet to be proven" it also theoretically supports 1MM tx/second - to put that into perspective VISA does somewhere in the ballpark of 2k tx/second (but theoretically can do much more than that I'm sure)
    - New_California 5y ago
      No, Cardano is still centrally coordinated, with an intention to go actual PoS some day.
      - toolz 5y ago
        no it's not, where would you even come up with the idea that it was?
      - delaaxe 5y ago
rawtxapp 5y ago
Just put a carbon tax on everything that has environmental externalities, it's as simple as that, it doesn't make sense to target a specific industry, especially one that uses stranded/renewable energy.
- aeternum 5y ago
  This is the simple answer. In the unlikely event Bitcoin moves to PoS, miners will just redirect their hardware to other coins The simple solve: price the externality.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  broad-based consumption taxes are the best theoretical response, but politically no one is going to impose them at the levels needed to discourage consumption, and they almost always get perverted in their application with carve-outs and exemptions. Plus where does that money go? At best it's an inefficient recycling paradigm when what we really need is an at-source reduction in consumption in the first place.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    The goal should not be to discourage consumption, the goal should be carbon neutrality. Any industry such as fossil fuel power plants must buy carbon offset credits/tokens from industries or companies that sequester carbon. Then let the market solve the problem. The credits/tokens may turn out to be very cheap.
    - tovej 5y ago
      No credible way to decouple production/consumption from emissions has been found. So no, we do need to start curbing consumption, especially among people in the top wealth quantiles (because they consume the most).
      - dd36 5y ago
        Cap-n-trade was a very successful program for reducing nox and sox emissions. If you create the right incentives, markets tend to find a way.
yumraj 5y ago
My biggest worry with Coinbase IPO is that it will become too big to ban, as now it will impact the stock market and not just the minority few who own it.
- asenna 5y ago
  Are you also worried Facebook and Google have become too big to ban? I don't get this logic.
qwertox 5y ago
I wouldn't be too worried. The industrial revolution brought us many things which were just as disastrous, for example certain chemicals, but these things can get regulated. DDT is no longer used like it was used in the 70s. Let Bitcoin be Bitcoin, let the G7 (or whoever finds himself responsible) quickly regulate the power consumption issue, then PoW will likely disappear for mainstream applications. Luckily there are alternatives.
cslarson 5y ago
As someone quite involved in the Ethereum ecosystem - I totally agree. I also believe the Ethereum network will switch entirely to Proof of Stake this year.
frongpik 5y ago
A dissenting opinion. If those in power really cared about global warming, the WH would have codified work from home into law. Right now the big corps are pulling workers back to offices, so millions of office workers are going to drive back and forth again. Obviously, the media prefers to talk about the bad bitcoin instead.
hundreddaysoff 5y ago
Naive related question from a crypto n00b that a lazygoogle failed to answer: I just plotted some Chia. I left my laptop open to do this. Usually I would just put the laptop in power save mode all night. My understanding is that to actually make any Chia, I would need to wait ~1 year with my one 100GB plot with full-power mode enabled. Vs mostly with the case closed, as it is now, while I do other things. And this doesn't even account for the rare elements etc needed to fabricate my hard disk. So, general naive questions: 1. Vs Proof of Work, just how much better are Proof of Space/Proof of Stake/$HDOS_SUPER_AWESOME_PROOF in terms of energy consumption but also other standard measures of environmental impact? 2. How much worse, if at all, are they vs the null hypothesis of "modern" pre-crypto finance? Has anyone run credible numbers on these things?
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Proof of stake has no mining, no datacenters. If proof of stake ends up working it would probably be almost as effective as Visa currently is. Visa is always going to be more efficient due to it's centralized nature. Currently one bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of energy as driving a tesla 2000 miles, so POS is quite an improvement.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Proof of stake still requires cryptographic validation of each block by each node, so it uses much less energy than PoW, but not none. I think "no miners, still (distributed) datacenters" would be more accurate.
  - ardme 5y ago
    Proof of stake is not secure, there is no way to recover from a 51% attack. Proof of work and proof of space are much better.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Proof of space/time is a bad idea and you're right, it will put incentives on manufacture and hoarding of storage space. Proof of stake involves using staking of cryptocurrency to secure the currency. In theory it avoids the resource usage of the other types of proof. In theory.
bob33212 5y ago
Like a lot of bubbles, there is FOMO and lack of understanding of the technology. It is easy to compare crypto to the internet. When the internet first started out a lot of people didn't invest in GOOG because it was not obvious where the revenue would come from. People are afraid of making the same mistake here as well. "I don't know how BTC will generate cashflow outside of being a Ponzi scheme, but I assume the technology will advance and revolutionize finance" so they buy.
- api 5y ago
  GOOG was a good investment because nobody invested in it. If everyone had invested in GOOG, it would not have been as good an investment since its success would already be priced in. If the number has already gone up, you are too late. If everyone is talking about it, you are too late.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    That's what everyone thought about Bitcoin back when it hit the crazy high of $800.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    I don't know what BTC will do, but this is a banality and mostly wrong in any way that's important. "The number has gone up" for Google almost since it has gone public. If you bought BTC at $1 and it went to $10 - is $10 too late? The number went up. The hard part is it's hard to know the underlying value of things and a lot of value is socially determined by how others value something. Why is gold traded as an expensive commodity? It has some tiny practical uses, but is that why the price fluctuates? People trade it because they think other people will trade it and use it as a store of value when other stuff is volatile. Some people think BTC's scarcity guarantees provide a similar digital version of that. It's volatile now because it's still early and uncertain, but if that's true then BTC's price could be very high and it's hard to know if you're too late. For other Non-BTC coins unlikely to get the same level of social buy-in their value is a lot more questionable imo. ETH has some real underlying applications (uniswap decentralized exchange, powering contracts, other tokens etc.). The privacy coins maybe can leverage that for a reason for people to use them. The others seem like even more fringe bets and more likely to be FOMO bubbles.
fossuser 5y ago
I'm skeptical of proof-of-stake, proof-of-work seems like the main innovation of cryptocurrencies that differentiates them from the standard financial industry? If you swap out POW for POS (or worse clearing house type trust orgs like Stellar) then aren't you just putting trust into some incentive based system no different than existing financial systems? Just instead a government you're trusting some other entity. You get faster throughput and less energy waste, but you lose the mathematical guarantee that was kind of the entire point? I think climate change is a serious issue that would lead to change (likely bad), but I'm not sure it's a true e-risk or that cryptocurrency POW changes the tide that much. Feels like an irrelevant (somewhat identity-ish/political) side debate to me? (see Matt Yglesias' comments in this: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/episode-251-the-case-for-one-billion-americans-more-matt-ygl.html http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/episode-251-the-ca...) Happy to think about arguments that would change my mind.
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  For the uninformed, what mathematical guarantees does POW have that POS doesn’t?
  - jude- 5y ago
    PoW is open-membership, because the means of coin production are not tied to owning coins already. All you need to contribute is computing power, and you can start earning coins at a profit. PoS is closed-membership with a veneer of open-membership, because the means of coin production are tied to owning a coin already. What this means in practice is that no rational coin-owner is going to sell you coins at a fast enough rate that you'll be able to increase your means of coin production. Put another way, the price you'd pay for the increased means of coin production will meet or exceed the total expected revenue created by staking those coins over their lifetime. So unless you know something the seller doesn't, you won't be able to profit by buying your way into staking. Overall, this makes PoS less resilient and less egalitarian than PoW. While both require an up-front capital expenditure, the expenditure for PoS coin-production will meet or exceed the total expected revenue of those coins at the point of sale. So, the system is only as resilient as the nodes run by the people who bought in initially, and the only way to join later is to buy coins from people who want to exit (which would only be viable if these folks believed the coins are worth less than what you're buying them for, which doesn't bode well for you as the buyer).
loceng 5y ago
And I still have yet to understand why should the rest of society who hasn't bought into Bitcoin shoulder higher energy costs because Bitcoin are driving up demand?
- sleepygardener 5y ago
  This could be said about any commodity. Like because of gold hoarding banks/individuals driving up the demand rest of the society has to pay high price of gold for jewelry.
  - loceng 5y ago
    You're right, that's a moot point: it all boils down to unnecessarily, unreasonably transferring wealth from later adopters to earlier supporters (left holding the bag) in what amounts to very unsophisticated "investing" - whereby buying a stock of a company or say gold is buying for something very specific, contextualized, with annual reports and laws in place to attempt to lead to integrity within those organizations; not an apple to apple comparison that people consistently try to make.
knuthsat 5y ago
Complaining about externalities of PoW cryptocurrencies is like complaining about the fastest function that exists in your code and is magnitudes more efficient than anything else. Externalities that pollute the ocean, air, rivers and cities are not present in crypto at all in the amounts that other industries and human activities produce. There will be more people jumping on carnivorous and meat heavy diets than there will be people using electricity powered cryptocurrencies. Keto is trending more than cryptocurrencies. The amount of destruction that factory farming will inflict on this world and is inflicting will never be reached by cryptocurrencies. There will be no deforestation, no waste mismanagement, no fertilizer drain, nothing.
praveenperera 5y ago
People always complain about Bitcoin's environmental effects. What about Gold's, the current financial system's? https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threat-environment-theyre-wrong https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threa...
- losteric 5y ago
  1. whataboutism 2. Most currencies are fiat, not gold-backed
  - praveenperera 5y ago
    1. No it isn't, not if bitcoin can be a replacement for gold. 2. You didn't read my link
- amznthrwaway 5y ago
  BTC wastes more power as it becomes more valuable. This is the opposite of other major currencies. BTC is an environmental travesty.
- dd36 5y ago
  Bitcoin is already terrible and it’s structured to get ever more terrible.
russdpale 5y ago
The problem is that you are solving the issue from the wrong direction. Like getting people to stop littering, the answer is to regulate the producers of the waste, not the end users doing the wasting. The answer is to lobby governments for green energy, not rail against people doing PoW. People who fold at home are using a lot of energy also.
- amznthrwaway 5y ago
  It’s utter and complete horseshit to compare people doing folding @ home with their spare cycles to BTC power usage.
- mempko 5y ago
  Yet the Producer of Waste here is coinbase no?
  - burlesona 5y ago
    Not Coinbase, the miners. The arms race dynamic makes electricity cost the only real limit on mining, and unfortunately the more a single BTC is worth the more kWh you can profitably burn to mine one.
    - px43 5y ago
      It's not the miners, it's the power companies. Power companies have been burning shitty fuel to save money forever, and it's astounding that they've managed to shift the blame to consumers.
throwastrike 5y ago
A green crypto will not work unless it’s tied to BTC. BTC is basically a ponzi scheme built on top of ponzi schemes on top of ponzi schemes. I too was optimistic about cryptocurrencies back in 2013-14. I thought we’d eventually have a global currency that’s beneficial for all parties involved. But no. There’s simply no interest in doing that. Everyone is just in it for the money.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Your dream and Mr Robots dream died along the way. When all debt was erased everyone filled with panic flocked to the evilcorp coin. The system exists today for a reason. Discover and elimate each reason to change the system.
- RazTeve 5y ago
  Money has always been a tool for trading time
splithalf 5y ago
Agree and I can’t support companies that are putting their weight behind it (Tsla, sq). It incentivizes global warming, as a feature not a bug. Insane.
RazTeve 5y ago
Worse externalities than the fiat standard which brought us genocides, nuclear war, and mass murder? Bitcoin could eradicate democide.
CFA178B 5y ago
I feel the similar. There are innovations out there and things that change the world and improve the way we think and, work and develop together, and there is this world of essentially greed, where we all just want to get out of where we are - because, why? We have to sell someone else the ticket out, to get richer ourselves. Thankfully, this is a bonafied bubble and in a few months, it'll all tank again.
RazTeve 5y ago
did you dismiss this one already? https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/could-bitcoin-solve-oil-flaring-180000185.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/could-bitcoin-solve-oil-...
cbhl 5y ago
If Coinbase gets sufficiently mainstream, I suspect it will mitigate a lot of this. A transfer of BTC between two Coinbase users can happen off-chain, which means skipping the work necessary to mine a block including the given transaction.
- lysecret 5y ago
  So..... a bank?
- Hallucinaut 5y ago
  Which then negates the espoused benefits of Bitcoin, no?
- hctaw 5y ago
  Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of cryptocurrency
supernova87a 5y ago
Does a Bitcoin (for the $ value it represents) cost more to manufacture than an equivalent US $1? After all, a $1 of US currency represents some creation of work too, doesn't it? Capital/currency represents someone doing work, something being dug out of the ground, something being created -- because these things cannot be created out of thin air. When the Fed creates money, it is doing so in tandem with some physical output of the economy (unless they are purely inflating unbacked by actual goods/services activity). A US $ is not without cost as well, isn't that right? Currency is based on scarcity of something. Is it possible to have scarcity limited currency without some kind of work involved?
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  This is a fascinating topic to me and something I've been casually studying for over a decade so bear with me if I come across as blunt or whatever... I just mean to answer your questions directly and expound a little. >Does a Bitcoin (for the $ value it represents) cost more to manufacture than an equivalent US $1? Yes, because it costs quote a lot of electricity. And... >After all, a $1 of US currency represents some creation of work too, doesn't it? Nope. Costs effectively nothing. Not at all tied to anything tangible - even electricity - whatsoever. Via fractional reserve banking - for some reason we just...let banks do this - they create it with a keystroke and it costs nothing whatsoever. It's why we have inflation every year. Banks are constantly creating USD and then charging interest for the privilege they were given to do so. >A US $ is not without cost as well, isn't that right? Nope. Gets made up out of thin air every day. A bank creates a loan. How do you think we got to $14 trillion USD? The treasury has never printed that much money. Only ~10% of USD physically exists (according to the Fed itself), and that's counting $100 bills minted decades ago. And banks only have to have 10% of the money to cover their loans. The number being the same right now is just a coincidence. >Currency is based on scarcity of something. Currency is based on whether or not people will accept it in trade. There are countless examples that prove that that is the sole criterion. Even stupid, shitty, hard to use currencies get used if they're what's accepted. Getting initial buy in for USD was based on gold. Then silver, and then in 1971, literal faith in the US government and nothing else whatsoever: "and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock) >Is it possible to have scarcity limited currency without some kind of work involved? Not in my opinion. Gold requires mining. BTC requires computing. But USD isn't a scarcity limited currency.
gdubs 5y ago
There’s an article in the NYTimes today on the environmental impact of NFTs and I personally find the whole thing deeply upsetting. I care a lot about the climate. It’s maybe my number one concern long-term, especially as my kids are concerned. I saw the buzz around NFTs, and thought - “hey, cool! A new way for artists to make some money directly from their fans.” Sounds great. Minted a few NFTs to learn how it all works. And then I read incredibly distressing figures - some comparing the cost to a years’ worth of family carbon emissions. From clicking a button and waiting a few minutes! I haven’t been able to get a straight answer on how true these stats are. But the possibility that minting a few tokens caused that much damage frankly makes me want to cry. You might say, well, that’s stupid — but honestly, when you care about something deeply like the climate and you take pains to reduce emissions and do things to try and help — well, it’s incredibly upsetting.
- iso1210 5y ago
  The problem is those emissions aren't being properly accounted for. Those causing them aren't paying the true cost.
- thamer 5y ago
  The article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/climate/nft-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/climate/nft-climate-chang...
christkv 5y ago
I’m more worried about a hostile state actor like China using its dominance in Bitcoin and other crypto coins weaponizing it against our economies. Say crash the coins wiping out big actors causing domino effects in the markets.
deleted 5y ago
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paulpauper 5y ago
the problem will fix itself after the bubble bursts. Bitcoin doesn't provide anything of much value. It is just a speculative instrument.
- base698 5y ago
  If you haven't seen the DeFi space you are missing out. 10-20% interest on crypto holdings. If you know where to get interest rates like that...
eloff 5y ago
I think we've given this proof-of-work experiment plenty of room to run, and it's time to end it as a failure through governments making it illegal. The algorithm sort of worked, but the costs are too high. In the end those high costs led to efficiencies of scale leading to a few large miners controlling the whole blockchain. So it never lived up to the decentralized dream anyway. Now it mostly serves to fuel rampant speculation and crime. It enabled a whole new category of crime through cyberlocker attacks (well not new, but made it so, so much more successful.) The harm well outweighs the good. If it continues unabated proof-of-work crypto could double the energy requirements of the planet in just a few decades. It's not worth that. Kill it now before the consequences get worse.
px43 5y ago
Why are you so worried about cryptocurrencies, and seemingly not worried about energy companies who actually are the ones who are creating the carbon emissions? Using electricity and emitting CO2 are only loosely correlated, and in the case of cryptocurrencies are even less correlated because cryptocurrencies are dis-proportionally mined with energy from hydroelectric dams. All of these articles about the ecological impact of cryptocurrencies only exist to divert public and regulatory attention away from the energy companies that are actually doing all the damage. Oil companies did the same thing in the 70s when there was public outcry about plastic pollution, so they funded the "reduce reuse recycle" campaigns, and the crying Indian commercial etc, all to divert responsibility from the companies manufacturing the plastics to the consumers who use them. There is a documentary called "The Story of Plastic" which covers this strategy, and how successful it has been for them in the past.
gt565k 5y ago
Cardano is PoS and has been live for a while now. It's slowly chipping away at Ethereum's use case and with smart contracts coming soon that are backwards compatible with Ethereum solidity code, it will overtake Ethereum over time. There's other PoS blockchains that work and solve the concerns you have outlined.
regimeld 5y ago
It's a false equivalence (energy consumption, therefore bad). What if Bitcoin is solving a true market need (that is, preserving wealth in a truly decentralized way)? Would that make it worth the energy consumption? You only need to look at what the current monetary system is based on -- the petro-dollar. Backed by the might of the US military, consuming crazy amounts of energy. What if Bitcoin eliminates the need for this?
DCKing 5y ago
Having mined cryptocurrency a long long time ago when it was still a novelty, it's really good to appreciate just how bad the externalities are for cryptocurrencies. The incentives are created for people to buy the cheapest energy possible and just burn it up for a made up financial instrument [0], even when that comes with a significant carbon footprint. Even if mining is only a tenth as bad as the University of Cambridge thinks [1]. On a much more minor note, it takes up energy generation (renewable and otherwise) and chip production resources that could be spent on actual production instead of yet another financial instrument. I'd be in favor of banning the trade of all PoW cryptocurrencies for this reason alone. There is no proper way of banning mining in general, and neither should anyone desire to ban specific types of computation. Banning its trade to strongly disincentivize the sheer senseless resource consumption is more important and much more clear cut than any financial arguments to do it. I realize this would utterly devastate the current cryptocurrency market, but that's the point (at least for anything that isn't proof of stake). We should get this over with before our dependency on it further increases and the environmental damage gets worse. The zeitgeist around this has changed substantially. PoW cryptocurrencies really aren't credibly grassroots and have been captured by whales. And there really isn't any application of PoW ledger designs outside of cryptocurrencies with significant mindshare either. For all of this - proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies should be an alternative. Not a direct replacement, but able to cover most use cases. Coinbase was founded under a different zeitgeist and I don't blame them for jumping into this market. But I think that banning PoW cryptocurrencies should be strongly advocated, and once this realization catches up at the right level, they have a significant liability on their hands. [0]: For the record, all financial instruments are "made up". PoW cryptocurrencies are the only one that come with blatant resource consumption however. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/the-debate-about-cryptocurrency-and-energy-consumption/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/the-debate-about-cryptocur... (For the record, if a ban on PoW cryptocurrencies would come into effect today I'd lose money over it.)
yrral 5y ago
You never explicitly stated, but is your argument that the energy consumption of bitcoin is the negative externality? First of all energy is not fungible, not in time and not in space. There are times where consuming electricity is actually beneficial for renewables and the environment. I think the main mental block people have is that are trained to "save electricity" and that "all energy usage is negative." I would argue that using electricity during periods of wind or solar oversupply is actually positive for the environment. Because of this non-fungibility of energy, proof of work mining can be a positive sum game for the environment. Let me explain: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or even negative (eg, during periods of higher winds and lower demand) I predict that in the future as bitcoin mining becomes more and more of an efficiency game that you will see bitcoin mining be kind of a load balancer for the grid, effectively turning off during peak demand (or low supply) times and contributing to the base load during regular times. Of course this would be distributed across the globe, and you would see more plants running midday (with solar oversupply) and overnight (with wind oversupply) than you would during early morning and evening peak hours. For example, it may even help the economics of building new wind plants. Eg, currently it may not be profitable to build a new wind plant because base load is too low that the excess power generated would need to be sold off at 0 or even negative prices. However if bitcoin mining could be turned on during these times and off during periods of high demand, there will need to be fewer peaker plants in operation and it would positively affect the economics of opening a new wind plant. Bitcoin mining only cares about the cost of electricity at a given time, it is not like most other electricity demands that are very time based. With the large variance of electricity generation by renewables, I think bitcoin can in the future help smooth demand according to the real supply/demand curve. It's kind of like a different implementation of the Tesla utility grid batteries. Instead of deploying power, you force the grid to build more renewable capacity (that the miners are paying for) that you use except in peak periods, where you turn off and effectively provide the grid with more power. Here are 2 articles of a bitcoin mining company doing just this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-miner-is-scoring-700-profits-selling-energy-to-grid https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-m... https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/how-this-billionaire-backed-crypto-startup-gets-paid-to-not-mine-bitcoin/?sh=1a6f86e97596 https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/ho...
baby 5y ago
> if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming I stopped reading here.
thesausageking 5y ago
Bitcoin mining uses less energy than video gaming. And because mining can happen anywhere, it tends to use clean energy or energy trapped at power plants that would otherwise go to waste, so it's CO2 footprint is much, much less than video gaming. Other things that contribute more to global warming than Bitcoin include: the meat industry, Christmas lights, and the mining and supply chain around gold.

by Fede_V 5y ago

spicyramen 5y ago

I would be worried more about living in a country with high inflation and been able to use cryptos. Can you share your specific concerns about environmental impact?

unreal37 5y ago

What do you think about computers that are always on 24/7? Or TVs that never turn off (even if the screen is off)? (ETA: 23% of household energy use is by always-on devices. The scale of this waste is MASSIVE.) Devices in our life consume energy 24/7 when we're not even using them or needing them to be on. Energy conservation has a LONG way to go. In fact, one could argue that the current stock market system is a huge waste of energy compared to the benefit it actually brings to "raising money for companies".

Fede_V 5y ago
We should do a much better job of building energy efficient devices, but, the amount of energy that's "wasted" by things like TVs that never turned off is really tiny compared to the energy footprint of the crypto ecosystem. Further, I worry that crypto will grow massively. If that happens, all bets are off. In its current state, crypto consumes more energy than several large countries - imagine a world where that's 10x or 100x and we've still not moved off of proof of work. What's global warming going to look like?
- unreal37 5y ago
  "A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the energy use from Always On devices across the US accounts for 23% of power consumption in the average household, or a quarter of any given electricity bill. Our own research confirms this." 23% of energy used by households is by always on devices. Not "tiny".
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, unnecessary energy waste of other devices is bad and should be reduced. Fortunately, we're making strides to reduce electronics inefficiency all of the time. Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are uniquely bad because they become less efficient with each additional miner. The maximum number of Bitcoin transactions was the same a decade ago as it is now, but the energy consumption is many orders of magnitude higher and continues to increase. When someone adds an additional server to a server rack or buys a new laptop, we also get a net increase in value. The new technology is likely to be more efficient, so we get a net increase in efficiency. Proof-of-work is the only technology that gets worse and worse over time, and literally pays people to continue making it worse.
mmanfrin 5y ago
Idle CPU !== full-blast GPU.
deleted 5y ago
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JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Proof of stake is here in Ethereum 2.0 and it works great. Invest in that because this is the last hurrah for Bitcoin. The next cycle will be the “Ethereum is the new better Bitcoin” cycle. I say that as someone with almost all my net worth in Bitcoin but it has miserable transaction speed and energy usage. History has shown us that not innovating has never worked out for any company I can think of.

Fede_V 5y ago
I've been reading a few of the white papers about this, but I'd absolutely love to go deeper in this. Do you have any suggestions? I am especially interested in assessment about CO2 emissions from credible sources (please, no VCs with zero training in physical sciences posting thought leadership pieces, I beg you).
BobbyJo 5y ago
Maybe I'm a huge cynic, it certainly wouldn't surpris me, but I think the people pumping up crypto this cycle aren't necessarily the kind that care about the difference. If anything they'll stay away from ETH because it lacks a long term cap.
- yokem55 5y ago
  One of the changes going into the July update is a transaction fee change that burns (throws away) part of the transaction fees. That will put some deflationary pressure on total issuance, while at the same time, when they switch to the staking chain total new issuance will be drastically cut since running a validator is far more efficient then mining. What the long term inflation rate will be then is really set by the demand for transactions and how much congestion there will be on their network, driving up transaction prices and fees burned (or not).
WanderPanda 5y ago
So you are saying your money is not where your mouth is?
qertoip 5y ago

bko 5y ago

Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources. Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. If you want to price energy or put a tax, by all means. But you shouldn't discriminate against particular usages of energy. You're angry at the wrong thing

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
"Excess energy" is a myth. It's 2021, and transmitting energy across the power grid is easier and more efficient than ever before. No one is building hydroelectric dams in the middle of nowhere without a way to transmit that energy to somewhere else. It's still better to send the energy somewhere where they can replace coal-fired power plants than it is to burn it up mining cryptocurrency. > Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste. It's exceedingly rare for energy to "go to waste". Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Across most of the world there are at least brief moments when the price of electricity goes negative. It happens because some energy sources cannot quickly be shut down (eg. Nuclear), so it makes financial sense to pay to get rid of electricity for brief periods. These negative prices don't coincide worldwide, indicating that there is not sufficient electrical transmission capacity.
- bko 5y ago
  > Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running. Exactly my point. That's why they choose the global lowest cost of energy provider. And if you allow the price system to work, this would be the least valuable undesirable energy. Anything else would be uneconomical.

Tenoke 5y ago

>I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It's not really remaining mainstream. Bitcoin is soon going to be the only big project (in terms of electricity used) with it. The industry as a whole is moving away from it quite fast at this rate, with ETH (second biggest) moving to PoS within a year, and almost every new project being a or on a non-PoW chain.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The problem is that Bitcoin miners and investors have a huge incentive to keep the status quo. Bitcoin is no longer the scrappy renegade alternative currency. It's big business now, with big institutional money behind it. The investors in these Bitcoin businesses do not want to see Bitcoin fall out of favor, and they're going to do everything in their power to keep it popular and profitable to mine.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Sure, but that's a Bitcoin problem not a crypto as a whole problem. And let's face it - all the projects being built on crypto which can cause it to grow much further cannot be built on Bitcoin in the first place.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    STX - Stacks is built on top of Bitcoin and allows smart contracts through proof of transfer.
bko 5y ago
Bitcoin and Ethereum are two entirely different value propositions. Ethereum is a lot more controlled by a central body, moves a lot faster and is optimized for entirely different things (flexibility, scale, building apps, etc). You can't substitute one for the other. Both will likely continue to exist indefinitely.
randomguy5421 5y ago

New_California 5y ago

You may like this: https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-consuming-bitcoin-energy-debate https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-consuming...

kolinko 5y ago

PoW is on it’s way out - Ethereum is moving away from it and there is no reason for other cryptos to not follow. The major player in PoW will remain Bitcoin, which won’t change. But as soon as solar/wind become cheaper than coal, it will switch to green without a blink of an eye. A random thought - I’m genuinely surprised Bitcoin folks didn’t yet crowdfund building a nuclear reactor for mining purposes ;) They crowdfunded first ASIC production lines which are 1000x cheaper, but at the time when Bitcoin was 1000x cheaper as well :)

londons_explore 5y ago
Ethereum is quite centralised - people will follow the main developers. Bitcoin probably wouldn't switch - there is no single person or group who could get majority support to force such a change.
- yokem55 5y ago
  Ethereum's development structure is only "centralized" in the same way that linux kernel development is "centralized". There is a big process that generates consensus across the community from a lot of different parties. By the time a change get into a pending hard fork, it's been through multiple rounds of establishing buy-in. Were the developers to push a major change in that didn't enjoy the support of the broader community, it would be abundantly apparent.
delaaxe 5y ago
BTC is already mostly powered by green
- paulgb 5y ago
  The study I think you’re referring to came from a crypto company. It’s the equivalent of when cigarette companies released studies saying smoking was good for your health.
- randomguy5421 5y ago
  lol no. Just no.

the_local_host 5y ago

Bitcoin can only be demonstrably free of government controls by continuing to operate after being made illegal. I wonder if its creators actually intended to make it a target for legal sanction by building in conspicuous environmental costs. Could there be an equilibrium where energy efficiency is achieved because miners have avoid using a noticeable amount of electricity to avoid legal trouble?

delaaxe 5y ago

2 links: - In today’s news: https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threat-environment-theyre-wrong https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threa... - From earlier: https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-environment https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-e...

kbos87 5y ago
These are two great examples of just how thin and self-serving the counter-arguments to crypto being an energy hog are. I'll save you some time... The premise of the first article is that the carbon footprint of fiat currency needs to include the impact of an endless cycle of debt, inflation, recessions, and wars that fiat currency enables. Regardless of whether or not that cycle is true and driven by fiat currency is one thing... assuming that cycle would end if we could flip over to crypto is solidly ridiculous. The second article talks about the fact that 75% of miners use renewable energy. Dig a level deeper into the source they cite and you see that it's 75% of miners who use renewable energy as a part of their "energy mix" (LOL) - and that it's more like 39% of the energy used in mining is renewable. They go on to talk about Great American Mining's efforts to mine using captured methane emissions from oil & gas production. It's an intriguing concept but it's literally in its infancy, and the source they are focused on looks like it accounts for less than 1/3 of methane emissions - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#methane https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#m... The fact that the reasoning is so very thin in both of these examples tells me everything I need to know. People just want a headline to point to.
- svachalek 5y ago
  You are right but you need to substitute "proof of work" for "crypto" when you talk about energy hogs. Proof of Stake is also crypto and does not need to guzzle power.
raverbashing 5y ago
Interesting the mental gymnastics people are going through to defend their interests. The cryptofolks are trying for gaslighting and Firehose of Falsehoods to cover up for their energy wastage projects.

tim333 5y ago

I was thinking of trying to make a coin/token that would fight global warming to help counter that stuff. Basically if you buy it the money goes into a fund some of which goes to carbon capture / anti warming causes, some is retained for buying back coins for liquidity. Anyone think that's a good idea?

themariner21 5y ago

Well, I’ll tell ya, and this is just me. But last night, I re-watched Waterworld. It was the first time in quite a while. And I found myself thinking, “Man, that life would be pretty cool. Global warming would be pretty cool. Why haven’t the ice caps melted yet?” Honestly, I remember they were supposed to be totally melted by 2007. And then it got pushed up to 2014. And then 2018. And now here we are in 2021 with the same thick, boring ice caps, and Dryland is still not a myth. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of our boring pre-apocalyptic world. If Bitcoin is now what will bring about the Waterworld, then I’ll tell you what: I’m all for it. Just call me “The Mariner.” ‘Cause I’ll be marinatin’ in BTC awaiting the end of this world, and the dawning of a far more watery one.

fumblebee 5y ago

Couldn't agree more. I struggle to comprehend how an energy obliterating and (relatively speaking) primitive technology like Bitcoin is the top dog in this space. Sure, first mover advantage counts for something, but come on - how has superior tech not yet left it in the rearview. In a space that moves at such rapid pace with heavy investment and buckets of innovation, at some point the crowd surely will migrate en masse to a PoS based blockchain like (most likely but won't be fully operational until ~2022) Eth2, or (less likely but still in with a shout) Algorand, Tezos, etc.

rawtxapp 5y ago
PoS is yet to be proven, I'm really hoping eth2 shows that it actually works, because the other ones with PoS aren't that heavily used or tested in adversarial ways. When it comes to money and value, the utmost important thing is security, that's the tradeoff that Bitcoin makes and that's what people are buying into. Everything else is secondary.
- toolz 5y ago
  cardano is completely distributed PoS 46 billion market cap (5th largest crypto) - I'm not sure what you mean by "yet to be proven" it also theoretically supports 1MM tx/second - to put that into perspective VISA does somewhere in the ballpark of 2k tx/second (but theoretically can do much more than that I'm sure)
  - New_California 5y ago
    No, Cardano is still centrally coordinated, with an intention to go actual PoS some day.
    - toolz 5y ago
      no it's not, where would you even come up with the idea that it was?
    - delaaxe 5y ago

rawtxapp 5y ago

Just put a carbon tax on everything that has environmental externalities, it's as simple as that, it doesn't make sense to target a specific industry, especially one that uses stranded/renewable energy.

aeternum 5y ago
This is the simple answer. In the unlikely event Bitcoin moves to PoS, miners will just redirect their hardware to other coins The simple solve: price the externality.
skeeter2020 5y ago
broad-based consumption taxes are the best theoretical response, but politically no one is going to impose them at the levels needed to discourage consumption, and they almost always get perverted in their application with carve-outs and exemptions. Plus where does that money go? At best it's an inefficient recycling paradigm when what we really need is an at-source reduction in consumption in the first place.
- aeternum 5y ago
  The goal should not be to discourage consumption, the goal should be carbon neutrality. Any industry such as fossil fuel power plants must buy carbon offset credits/tokens from industries or companies that sequester carbon. Then let the market solve the problem. The credits/tokens may turn out to be very cheap.
  - tovej 5y ago
    No credible way to decouple production/consumption from emissions has been found. So no, we do need to start curbing consumption, especially among people in the top wealth quantiles (because they consume the most).
    - dd36 5y ago
      Cap-n-trade was a very successful program for reducing nox and sox emissions. If you create the right incentives, markets tend to find a way.

yumraj 5y ago

My biggest worry with Coinbase IPO is that it will become too big to ban, as now it will impact the stock market and not just the minority few who own it.

asenna 5y ago
Are you also worried Facebook and Google have become too big to ban? I don't get this logic.

qwertox 5y ago

I wouldn't be too worried. The industrial revolution brought us many things which were just as disastrous, for example certain chemicals, but these things can get regulated. DDT is no longer used like it was used in the 70s. Let Bitcoin be Bitcoin, let the G7 (or whoever finds himself responsible) quickly regulate the power consumption issue, then PoW will likely disappear for mainstream applications. Luckily there are alternatives.

cslarson 5y ago

As someone quite involved in the Ethereum ecosystem - I totally agree. I also believe the Ethereum network will switch entirely to Proof of Stake this year.

frongpik 5y ago

A dissenting opinion. If those in power really cared about global warming, the WH would have codified work from home into law. Right now the big corps are pulling workers back to offices, so millions of office workers are going to drive back and forth again. Obviously, the media prefers to talk about the bad bitcoin instead.

hundreddaysoff 5y ago

Naive related question from a crypto n00b that a lazygoogle failed to answer: I just plotted some Chia. I left my laptop open to do this. Usually I would just put the laptop in power save mode all night. My understanding is that to actually make any Chia, I would need to wait ~1 year with my one 100GB plot with full-power mode enabled. Vs mostly with the case closed, as it is now, while I do other things. And this doesn't even account for the rare elements etc needed to fabricate my hard disk. So, general naive questions: 1. Vs Proof of Work, just how much better are Proof of Space/Proof of Stake/$HDOS_SUPER_AWESOME_PROOF in terms of energy consumption but also other standard measures of environmental impact? 2. How much worse, if at all, are they vs the null hypothesis of "modern" pre-crypto finance? Has anyone run credible numbers on these things?

colinmhayes 5y ago
Proof of stake has no mining, no datacenters. If proof of stake ends up working it would probably be almost as effective as Visa currently is. Visa is always going to be more efficient due to it's centralized nature. Currently one bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of energy as driving a tesla 2000 miles, so POS is quite an improvement.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Proof of stake still requires cryptographic validation of each block by each node, so it uses much less energy than PoW, but not none. I think "no miners, still (distributed) datacenters" would be more accurate.
- ardme 5y ago
  Proof of stake is not secure, there is no way to recover from a 51% attack. Proof of work and proof of space are much better.
Nursie 5y ago
Proof of space/time is a bad idea and you're right, it will put incentives on manufacture and hoarding of storage space. Proof of stake involves using staking of cryptocurrency to secure the currency. In theory it avoids the resource usage of the other types of proof. In theory.

bob33212 5y ago

Like a lot of bubbles, there is FOMO and lack of understanding of the technology. It is easy to compare crypto to the internet. When the internet first started out a lot of people didn't invest in GOOG because it was not obvious where the revenue would come from. People are afraid of making the same mistake here as well. "I don't know how BTC will generate cashflow outside of being a Ponzi scheme, but I assume the technology will advance and revolutionize finance" so they buy.

api 5y ago
GOOG was a good investment because nobody invested in it. If everyone had invested in GOOG, it would not have been as good an investment since its success would already be priced in. If the number has already gone up, you are too late. If everyone is talking about it, you are too late.
- tolbish 5y ago
  That's what everyone thought about Bitcoin back when it hit the crazy high of $800.
- fossuser 5y ago
  I don't know what BTC will do, but this is a banality and mostly wrong in any way that's important. "The number has gone up" for Google almost since it has gone public. If you bought BTC at $1 and it went to $10 - is $10 too late? The number went up. The hard part is it's hard to know the underlying value of things and a lot of value is socially determined by how others value something. Why is gold traded as an expensive commodity? It has some tiny practical uses, but is that why the price fluctuates? People trade it because they think other people will trade it and use it as a store of value when other stuff is volatile. Some people think BTC's scarcity guarantees provide a similar digital version of that. It's volatile now because it's still early and uncertain, but if that's true then BTC's price could be very high and it's hard to know if you're too late. For other Non-BTC coins unlikely to get the same level of social buy-in their value is a lot more questionable imo. ETH has some real underlying applications (uniswap decentralized exchange, powering contracts, other tokens etc.). The privacy coins maybe can leverage that for a reason for people to use them. The others seem like even more fringe bets and more likely to be FOMO bubbles.

fossuser 5y ago

I'm skeptical of proof-of-stake, proof-of-work seems like the main innovation of cryptocurrencies that differentiates them from the standard financial industry? If you swap out POW for POS (or worse clearing house type trust orgs like Stellar) then aren't you just putting trust into some incentive based system no different than existing financial systems? Just instead a government you're trusting some other entity. You get faster throughput and less energy waste, but you lose the mathematical guarantee that was kind of the entire point? I think climate change is a serious issue that would lead to change (likely bad), but I'm not sure it's a true e-risk or that cryptocurrency POW changes the tide that much. Feels like an irrelevant (somewhat identity-ish/political) side debate to me? (see Matt Yglesias' comments in this: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/episode-251-the-case-for-one-billion-americans-more-matt-ygl.html http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/episode-251-the-ca...) Happy to think about arguments that would change my mind.

jtsiskin 5y ago
For the uninformed, what mathematical guarantees does POW have that POS doesn’t?
- jude- 5y ago
  PoW is open-membership, because the means of coin production are not tied to owning coins already. All you need to contribute is computing power, and you can start earning coins at a profit. PoS is closed-membership with a veneer of open-membership, because the means of coin production are tied to owning a coin already. What this means in practice is that no rational coin-owner is going to sell you coins at a fast enough rate that you'll be able to increase your means of coin production. Put another way, the price you'd pay for the increased means of coin production will meet or exceed the total expected revenue created by staking those coins over their lifetime. So unless you know something the seller doesn't, you won't be able to profit by buying your way into staking. Overall, this makes PoS less resilient and less egalitarian than PoW. While both require an up-front capital expenditure, the expenditure for PoS coin-production will meet or exceed the total expected revenue of those coins at the point of sale. So, the system is only as resilient as the nodes run by the people who bought in initially, and the only way to join later is to buy coins from people who want to exit (which would only be viable if these folks believed the coins are worth less than what you're buying them for, which doesn't bode well for you as the buyer).

loceng 5y ago

And I still have yet to understand why should the rest of society who hasn't bought into Bitcoin shoulder higher energy costs because Bitcoin are driving up demand?

sleepygardener 5y ago
This could be said about any commodity. Like because of gold hoarding banks/individuals driving up the demand rest of the society has to pay high price of gold for jewelry.
- loceng 5y ago
  You're right, that's a moot point: it all boils down to unnecessarily, unreasonably transferring wealth from later adopters to earlier supporters (left holding the bag) in what amounts to very unsophisticated "investing" - whereby buying a stock of a company or say gold is buying for something very specific, contextualized, with annual reports and laws in place to attempt to lead to integrity within those organizations; not an apple to apple comparison that people consistently try to make.

knuthsat 5y ago

Complaining about externalities of PoW cryptocurrencies is like complaining about the fastest function that exists in your code and is magnitudes more efficient than anything else. Externalities that pollute the ocean, air, rivers and cities are not present in crypto at all in the amounts that other industries and human activities produce. There will be more people jumping on carnivorous and meat heavy diets than there will be people using electricity powered cryptocurrencies. Keto is trending more than cryptocurrencies. The amount of destruction that factory farming will inflict on this world and is inflicting will never be reached by cryptocurrencies. There will be no deforestation, no waste mismanagement, no fertilizer drain, nothing.

praveenperera 5y ago

People always complain about Bitcoin's environmental effects. What about Gold's, the current financial system's? https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threat-environment-theyre-wrong https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/critics-claim-bitcoin-threa...

losteric 5y ago
1. whataboutism 2. Most currencies are fiat, not gold-backed
- praveenperera 5y ago
  1. No it isn't, not if bitcoin can be a replacement for gold. 2. You didn't read my link
amznthrwaway 5y ago
BTC wastes more power as it becomes more valuable. This is the opposite of other major currencies. BTC is an environmental travesty.
dd36 5y ago
Bitcoin is already terrible and it’s structured to get ever more terrible.

russdpale 5y ago

The problem is that you are solving the issue from the wrong direction. Like getting people to stop littering, the answer is to regulate the producers of the waste, not the end users doing the wasting. The answer is to lobby governments for green energy, not rail against people doing PoW. People who fold at home are using a lot of energy also.

amznthrwaway 5y ago
It’s utter and complete horseshit to compare people doing folding @ home with their spare cycles to BTC power usage.
mempko 5y ago
Yet the Producer of Waste here is coinbase no?
- burlesona 5y ago
  Not Coinbase, the miners. The arms race dynamic makes electricity cost the only real limit on mining, and unfortunately the more a single BTC is worth the more kWh you can profitably burn to mine one.
  - px43 5y ago
    It's not the miners, it's the power companies. Power companies have been burning shitty fuel to save money forever, and it's astounding that they've managed to shift the blame to consumers.

throwastrike 5y ago

A green crypto will not work unless it’s tied to BTC. BTC is basically a ponzi scheme built on top of ponzi schemes on top of ponzi schemes. I too was optimistic about cryptocurrencies back in 2013-14. I thought we’d eventually have a global currency that’s beneficial for all parties involved. But no. There’s simply no interest in doing that. Everyone is just in it for the money.

ipaddr 5y ago
Your dream and Mr Robots dream died along the way. When all debt was erased everyone filled with panic flocked to the evilcorp coin. The system exists today for a reason. Discover and elimate each reason to change the system.
RazTeve 5y ago
Money has always been a tool for trading time

splithalf 5y ago

Agree and I can’t support companies that are putting their weight behind it (Tsla, sq). It incentivizes global warming, as a feature not a bug. Insane.

RazTeve 5y ago

Worse externalities than the fiat standard which brought us genocides, nuclear war, and mass murder? Bitcoin could eradicate democide.

CFA178B 5y ago

I feel the similar. There are innovations out there and things that change the world and improve the way we think and, work and develop together, and there is this world of essentially greed, where we all just want to get out of where we are - because, why? We have to sell someone else the ticket out, to get richer ourselves. Thankfully, this is a bonafied bubble and in a few months, it'll all tank again.

RazTeve 5y ago

did you dismiss this one already? https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/could-bitcoin-solve-oil-flaring-180000185.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/could-bitcoin-solve-oil-...

cbhl 5y ago

If Coinbase gets sufficiently mainstream, I suspect it will mitigate a lot of this. A transfer of BTC between two Coinbase users can happen off-chain, which means skipping the work necessary to mine a block including the given transaction.

lysecret 5y ago
So..... a bank?
Hallucinaut 5y ago
Which then negates the espoused benefits of Bitcoin, no?
hctaw 5y ago
Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of cryptocurrency

supernova87a 5y ago

Does a Bitcoin (for the $ value it represents) cost more to manufacture than an equivalent US $1? After all, a $1 of US currency represents some creation of work too, doesn't it? Capital/currency represents someone doing work, something being dug out of the ground, something being created -- because these things cannot be created out of thin air. When the Fed creates money, it is doing so in tandem with some physical output of the economy (unless they are purely inflating unbacked by actual goods/services activity). A US $ is not without cost as well, isn't that right? Currency is based on scarcity of something. Is it possible to have scarcity limited currency without some kind of work involved?

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
This is a fascinating topic to me and something I've been casually studying for over a decade so bear with me if I come across as blunt or whatever... I just mean to answer your questions directly and expound a little. >Does a Bitcoin (for the $ value it represents) cost more to manufacture than an equivalent US $1? Yes, because it costs quote a lot of electricity. And... >After all, a $1 of US currency represents some creation of work too, doesn't it? Nope. Costs effectively nothing. Not at all tied to anything tangible - even electricity - whatsoever. Via fractional reserve banking - for some reason we just...let banks do this - they create it with a keystroke and it costs nothing whatsoever. It's why we have inflation every year. Banks are constantly creating USD and then charging interest for the privilege they were given to do so. >A US $ is not without cost as well, isn't that right? Nope. Gets made up out of thin air every day. A bank creates a loan. How do you think we got to $14 trillion USD? The treasury has never printed that much money. Only ~10% of USD physically exists (according to the Fed itself), and that's counting $100 bills minted decades ago. And banks only have to have 10% of the money to cover their loans. The number being the same right now is just a coincidence. >Currency is based on scarcity of something. Currency is based on whether or not people will accept it in trade. There are countless examples that prove that that is the sole criterion. Even stupid, shitty, hard to use currencies get used if they're what's accepted. Getting initial buy in for USD was based on gold. Then silver, and then in 1971, literal faith in the US government and nothing else whatsoever: "and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock) >Is it possible to have scarcity limited currency without some kind of work involved? Not in my opinion. Gold requires mining. BTC requires computing. But USD isn't a scarcity limited currency.

gdubs 5y ago

There’s an article in the NYTimes today on the environmental impact of NFTs and I personally find the whole thing deeply upsetting. I care a lot about the climate. It’s maybe my number one concern long-term, especially as my kids are concerned. I saw the buzz around NFTs, and thought - “hey, cool! A new way for artists to make some money directly from their fans.” Sounds great. Minted a few NFTs to learn how it all works. And then I read incredibly distressing figures - some comparing the cost to a years’ worth of family carbon emissions. From clicking a button and waiting a few minutes! I haven’t been able to get a straight answer on how true these stats are. But the possibility that minting a few tokens caused that much damage frankly makes me want to cry. You might say, well, that’s stupid — but honestly, when you care about something deeply like the climate and you take pains to reduce emissions and do things to try and help — well, it’s incredibly upsetting.

iso1210 5y ago
The problem is those emissions aren't being properly accounted for. Those causing them aren't paying the true cost.
thamer 5y ago
The article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/climate/nft-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/climate/nft-climate-chang...

christkv 5y ago

I’m more worried about a hostile state actor like China using its dominance in Bitcoin and other crypto coins weaponizing it against our economies. Say crash the coins wiping out big actors causing domino effects in the markets.

deleted 5y ago

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paulpauper 5y ago

the problem will fix itself after the bubble bursts. Bitcoin doesn't provide anything of much value. It is just a speculative instrument.

base698 5y ago
If you haven't seen the DeFi space you are missing out. 10-20% interest on crypto holdings. If you know where to get interest rates like that...

eloff 5y ago

I think we've given this proof-of-work experiment plenty of room to run, and it's time to end it as a failure through governments making it illegal. The algorithm sort of worked, but the costs are too high. In the end those high costs led to efficiencies of scale leading to a few large miners controlling the whole blockchain. So it never lived up to the decentralized dream anyway. Now it mostly serves to fuel rampant speculation and crime. It enabled a whole new category of crime through cyberlocker attacks (well not new, but made it so, so much more successful.) The harm well outweighs the good. If it continues unabated proof-of-work crypto could double the energy requirements of the planet in just a few decades. It's not worth that. Kill it now before the consequences get worse.

px43 5y ago

Why are you so worried about cryptocurrencies, and seemingly not worried about energy companies who actually are the ones who are creating the carbon emissions? Using electricity and emitting CO2 are only loosely correlated, and in the case of cryptocurrencies are even less correlated because cryptocurrencies are dis-proportionally mined with energy from hydroelectric dams. All of these articles about the ecological impact of cryptocurrencies only exist to divert public and regulatory attention away from the energy companies that are actually doing all the damage. Oil companies did the same thing in the 70s when there was public outcry about plastic pollution, so they funded the "reduce reuse recycle" campaigns, and the crying Indian commercial etc, all to divert responsibility from the companies manufacturing the plastics to the consumers who use them. There is a documentary called "The Story of Plastic" which covers this strategy, and how successful it has been for them in the past.

gt565k 5y ago

Cardano is PoS and has been live for a while now. It's slowly chipping away at Ethereum's use case and with smart contracts coming soon that are backwards compatible with Ethereum solidity code, it will overtake Ethereum over time. There's other PoS blockchains that work and solve the concerns you have outlined.

regimeld 5y ago

It's a false equivalence (energy consumption, therefore bad). What if Bitcoin is solving a true market need (that is, preserving wealth in a truly decentralized way)? Would that make it worth the energy consumption? You only need to look at what the current monetary system is based on -- the petro-dollar. Backed by the might of the US military, consuming crazy amounts of energy. What if Bitcoin eliminates the need for this?

DCKing 5y ago

Having mined cryptocurrency a long long time ago when it was still a novelty, it's really good to appreciate just how bad the externalities are for cryptocurrencies. The incentives are created for people to buy the cheapest energy possible and just burn it up for a made up financial instrument [0], even when that comes with a significant carbon footprint. Even if mining is only a tenth as bad as the University of Cambridge thinks [1]. On a much more minor note, it takes up energy generation (renewable and otherwise) and chip production resources that could be spent on actual production instead of yet another financial instrument. I'd be in favor of banning the trade of all PoW cryptocurrencies for this reason alone. There is no proper way of banning mining in general, and neither should anyone desire to ban specific types of computation. Banning its trade to strongly disincentivize the sheer senseless resource consumption is more important and much more clear cut than any financial arguments to do it. I realize this would utterly devastate the current cryptocurrency market, but that's the point (at least for anything that isn't proof of stake). We should get this over with before our dependency on it further increases and the environmental damage gets worse. The zeitgeist around this has changed substantially. PoW cryptocurrencies really aren't credibly grassroots and have been captured by whales. And there really isn't any application of PoW ledger designs outside of cryptocurrencies with significant mindshare either. For all of this - proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies should be an alternative. Not a direct replacement, but able to cover most use cases. Coinbase was founded under a different zeitgeist and I don't blame them for jumping into this market. But I think that banning PoW cryptocurrencies should be strongly advocated, and once this realization catches up at the right level, they have a significant liability on their hands. [0]: For the record, all financial instruments are "made up". PoW cryptocurrencies are the only one that come with blatant resource consumption however. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/the-debate-about-cryptocurrency-and-energy-consumption/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/the-debate-about-cryptocur... (For the record, if a ban on PoW cryptocurrencies would come into effect today I'd lose money over it.)

yrral 5y ago

You never explicitly stated, but is your argument that the energy consumption of bitcoin is the negative externality? First of all energy is not fungible, not in time and not in space. There are times where consuming electricity is actually beneficial for renewables and the environment. I think the main mental block people have is that are trained to "save electricity" and that "all energy usage is negative." I would argue that using electricity during periods of wind or solar oversupply is actually positive for the environment. Because of this non-fungibility of energy, proof of work mining can be a positive sum game for the environment. Let me explain: Back in the days where all our electricity came from fossil fuels, I completely agree that marginal electricity usage was bad for the environment. However I think that thought has persisted with us even though it is no longer true 100% of the time. With renewables sometimes the marginal cost of electricity to our environment is near 0 or even negative (eg, during periods of higher winds and lower demand) I predict that in the future as bitcoin mining becomes more and more of an efficiency game that you will see bitcoin mining be kind of a load balancer for the grid, effectively turning off during peak demand (or low supply) times and contributing to the base load during regular times. Of course this would be distributed across the globe, and you would see more plants running midday (with solar oversupply) and overnight (with wind oversupply) than you would during early morning and evening peak hours. For example, it may even help the economics of building new wind plants. Eg, currently it may not be profitable to build a new wind plant because base load is too low that the excess power generated would need to be sold off at 0 or even negative prices. However if bitcoin mining could be turned on during these times and off during periods of high demand, there will need to be fewer peaker plants in operation and it would positively affect the economics of opening a new wind plant. Bitcoin mining only cares about the cost of electricity at a given time, it is not like most other electricity demands that are very time based. With the large variance of electricity generation by renewables, I think bitcoin can in the future help smooth demand according to the real supply/demand curve. It's kind of like a different implementation of the Tesla utility grid batteries. Instead of deploying power, you force the grid to build more renewable capacity (that the miners are paying for) that you use except in peak periods, where you turn off and effectively provide the grid with more power. Here are 2 articles of a bitcoin mining company doing just this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-miner-is-scoring-700-profits-selling-energy-to-grid https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bitcoin-m... https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/how-this-billionaire-backed-crypto-startup-gets-paid-to-not-mine-bitcoin/?sh=1a6f86e97596 https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/05/21/ho...

baby 5y ago

> if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming I stopped reading here.

thesausageking 5y ago

Bitcoin mining uses less energy than video gaming. And because mining can happen anywhere, it tends to use clean energy or energy trapped at power plants that would otherwise go to waste, so it's CO2 footprint is much, much less than video gaming. Other things that contribute more to global warming than Bitcoin include: the meat industry, Christmas lights, and the mining and supply chain around gold.