3 ms·
It feels like we spend a disproportionate amount of energy running the bitcoin network for its benefits. That's the reason it comes up a lot in those debates.
by Slartie 6y ago
It feels like we spend a disproportionate amount of energy running the bitcoin network for its benefits.
That's the reason it comes up a lot in those debates. Sure, cars use more energy emitting more CO2 right now, but the benefit of all the cars worldwide is in an entirely different dimension compared to Bitcoin. Most people intuitively grasp that stuff having a huge benefit for a huge lot of people must be allowed to use up more energy in absolute terms than stuff that has a very minor benefit for a very small group of people.
- saalweachter 6y agoThe last time I looked into this it seemed like US junk mail might be roughly the same CO2-scale as Bitcoin. Which isn't an argument against killing Bitcoin for its contributions to CO2 emissions, mind you, but it seems another similar low-hanging fruit of generating a huge amount of waste to benefit a small number of people economically, while being extraordinarily simple to "just stop doing it". (As opposed to, say, fixing all building insulation in the US, which is a larger problem, and should be done, but is non-trivial to fix.) With the added benefit that a hundred million people actively hate the existence of junk mail, so I think "we need to ban junk mail because global warming" has legs.