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Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone
- mcfly1985 5y agoAnother NPC attacking bitcoin. Gotta keep the sheep believing the devaluing of their savings and wages is a good thing.
- vmception 5y ago> Does that mean cryptoassets are doomed technology? No, this spells the need for established institutions to adopt and support crypto. The demand is there. Meanwhile, we need to be more cautious of the actors we currently enable in crypto networks and the corners they’re willing to cut in the pursuit of profit. Exactly. Everyone that matters is putting their energy towards creating incentives and software that allows for similar security and confidence of crypto networks, while using less energy.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago> The demand is there. Let's talk when covid is over. It wouldn't be the first time it drops 80%
- gruez 5y agoAnd it wouldn't be the first time it rebounded.
- thathndude 5y agoThis response doesn’t make any sense. It’s not pulling back right now.
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- scientismer 5y agoWhy would Covid drive up the price of Bitcoin? Sure, the pandemic is being used for attempted government power grasps, but those won't go away with Covid.
- dehrmann 5y agoHalfway the same thing that's driving the prices of stocks and pokemon cards: people with extra cash from stimulus checks, spare time, and fomo. "Crypto being the future of finance" is a story people tell themselves to justify the price of bitcoin, and while some flavor of blockchain tech could someday back parts of finance, it won't be bitcoin. Buying bitcoin is a bet that more people will buy bitcoin.
- scientismer 5y agoOk I forgot about the money printing, which may or may not stop after Covid. But I think people buy BTC as an alternativ to gold, not because of some banking narrative. The question is still what would be actually good investments. Maybe everything will crash when the money printing stops, but then some things will crash harder than others. Gold will probably remain gold.
- dehrmann 5y ago> people buy BTC as an alternative to gold That's a reasonable premise, but the price of gold is flat YoY. Gold actually peaked in Aug. 2020. You'd think that at least some of the bitcoin interest would have gone to gold, but it hasn't. Maybe people are selling gold to buy bitcoin, but again, they don't act similarly. Bitcoin is a speculative asset that has so far gone to the moon. Gold has maintained its value for centuries. You buy them for different reasons. > The question is still what would be actually good investments Not bitcoin. It's a speculative asset. It might still 10x, but it has no fundamentals; it's entirely a bet on what other people will do with bitcoin. You could say buying AAPL is the same, but it makes $90B per year. If bitcoin goes to zero, you're out of luck. If AAPL goes to 0 for no apparent reason, you just found an asset that makes you $90B per year.
- alwillis 5y ago1. COVID-19 isn’t going to be “over” in any conventional sense any time soon. There are too many cases and too many variants. 2. With billions of institutional money and billions more waiting until ETFs in the US are approved, Bitcoin has something it didn’t have back in the day: a floor. The days of 80% drops are over.
- dehrmann 5y ago> The days of 80% drops are over. I suppose the NASDAQ only lost 75% from Feb 2000 to Sept 2002. Granted, it got back to its 2000 peak 15 years later. My point is that even normal companies traded publicly, held by institutional investors, with government oversight, see large drops after an asset bubble. I see no reason why bitcoin ETFs establish a floor price.
- incrudible 5y ago> The days of 80% drops are over. The days of 80% "over night" drops may be over, but a bear market to wipe 80% off the market cap is not out of the question.
- bingbong70 5y agoAlready a few billionaires with algos that autobuy on 10-15% drops, this number will increase. We aren't dealing with cs hobbyists, retail investors, and small nest eggs anymore, billionaire adoption is a game changer as Michael Saylor constantly points out... Welcome to BTC cantillonaires with access to ~unlimited leverage courtesy of central banks.
- incrudible 5y agoIf you have unlimited leverage to buy Bitcoin, you have unlimited leverage to buy any other asset. All the billionaires in the world are worth 11 trillion dollars. How much are they realistically going to allocate to Bitcoin, to support a >1 trillion market cap? Bitcoin is like gold in that it just "sits there", it doesn't do any work. If gold can drop 30% over a few months, despite all the pandemic fears, then Bitcoin can drop 80% for just not being that interesting anymore, compared to other assets.
- christopherwxyz 5y agoOnly if you buy one at a time. Trying buying in bulk.
- TJSomething 5y agoI personally don't have the cash to buy more than one and I feel like a lot of the point of cryptocurrency is that individuals don't have to trust a financial institution.
- nceqs3 5y agoAnd unlike Bitcoin you use your iPhone everyday...
- tyingq 5y ago"the decision to buy one Bitcoin versus about 29 iPhone 12 Pros emits 195 times as much CO₂" The headline made it sound like 195x a single iPhone...
- maxerickson 5y agoThe Bitcoin CO₂ is some made up measure anyway, mining interest for a year isn't really attributable to the market cap of Bitcoin (they feed back on each other and so on, but there's no direct relationship).
- yanneves 5y agoyou're right, I reworded that incorrectly - now updated, thanks for spotting it!
- lights0123 5y agoNo you... didn't? The headline is "Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO₂ as buying an iPhone" on both HN and Medium.
- Rexxar 5y agoIf I read only this sentence I understand that a bitcoin emits 195*29 more CO2 than an iPhone. But he got 195 by multiplying 29 by 6.7. And 6.7 is the ratio between bitcoin and Apple CO2 emissions. I'm not convinced that any of this computation is meaningful. We don't need this to prove that bitcoin is a waste of energy.
- social_quotient 5y agoBut one lasts forever and the other is wasted in 2-3 years?
- dhdc 5y agoForever sitting in your wallet, because its an "investment" and cannot be spent normally?
- social_quotient 5y agoIt’s an asset. So I suppose I wouldnt really compare it to cash or ATM card. I’d compare it to a bar of gold or real-estate. But unlike either of those it can be easily spent.
- I_am_tiberius 5y agoHow can this be calculated? I mean, it's possible to use solar energy for running mining equipment.
- yuliyp 5y agoUse the overall distribution of generation sources for the electric grid?
- scientismer 5y agoIt's probably all bullshit. There are papers by professors of music studies claiming listening to streaming services wastes a gigazillion of CO2. It's all just back of the napkin estimates.
- throwawayboise 5y agoHa. Reminds me of the old warning message that used to come up in rn when you posted something to USENET: This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
- celticninja 5y agohttps://cbeci.org/ https://cbeci.org/
- kenniskrag 5y agoUsing solar energy "pollutes" also the environment. 1. Less energy is available for other demands. They have to be filled up with other energy sources. (Assuming, that they do not use their own panels for mining.) 2. Producing solar panels produces CO2
- 1976gian 5y agoNice
- wqsz7xn 5y agoI feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in comparison to bitcoin?
- Nursie 5y agoThought experiment - Bitcoin supports fewer transactions than are needed for a mid-sized town, yet uses more power than most small countries. The upper limit of the amount of power a country’s financial system could use is the power footprint of that country. Likely the real usage is a small percentage of that, but that’s the upper limit. Now, given Bitcoin uses more power than countries of millions, but supports the transaction load of a few hundred thousand, do you think it is the slightest bit possible your comparison would come out favourable to Bitcoin?
- ajkdhcb2 5y agoBitcoins are produced and secured through the mining process. It doesnt just process a transaction. Dollars are backed and secured by the USA. How much energy does the USA military use?
- Nursie 5y agoThat's not just to secure the value of dollars, your comparison is meaningless. Also, reapply the thought experiment above - BTC is used by a handful of people, yet consumes more than countries of millions.
- ajkdhcb2 5y agoThe total market value of BTC is higher than the Russian Ruble. It is securing a lot of value. https://coinmarketcap.com/fiat-currencies/ https://coinmarketcap.com/fiat-currencies/ >That's not just to secure the value of dollars, your comparison is meaningless. Yes the calculation is not complete, but it demonstrates that the other calculations are completely invalid too because it doesn't consider those factors either
- Kreotiko 5y agoThe title should be 195x as much CO2 as producing an iPhone. In regards of buying and if you are drawing a comparison with fiat currencies you should take into consideration the environmental impact for producing, circulating and securing the money that is used for the transaction. Nobody ever talks about what is around fiat, ATMs, money counting machines, heavy armoured vehicles moving them around, etc.
- scientismer 5y agoActually the costs to mine a block on the blockchain are the same, no matter if somebody buys a Bitcoin or not. At most you could argue that driving up the price gives miners an incentive to mine more.
- ypeterholmes 5y ago"...with regards to NFTs we will see PoW take precedence since it reduces fraud." This is a massive assumption, and likely wrong. From Ethereum to Cardano and beyond, NFT's are almost exclusively being created on smart contract platforms that either already utilize PoS or are transitioning to it quickly. So the idea that PoW will take precedent in the NFT space.. how? Regarding fraud, is that to suggest PoS is not secure? Also a massive assumption and likely wrong.
- m3kw9 5y agoThe higher the price BTC go, the more miners will mine to get it near break even. Imagine 600k price where some pumpers are targeting, you are looking at potentially 10x the energy used to mine blocks. Is that a correct characterization of the problem at hand?
- rawtxapp 5y agoIf Bitcoin reaches those prices, it would have twice the market cap of all gold and significant % of global wealth, so that energy would be well spent to secure all that wealth.
- barbegal 5y agoThis articles makes absolutely no sense. It uses market capitalisation of Apple and bitcoin to compare the CO2 emissions of an iPhone and a bitcoin transaction which is clearly nonsense. You could calculate the rough CO2 emissions of a 1 BTC transaction by dividing annual estimated CO2 emissions by bitcoin miners (35 million tonnes) by the number of annual transactions (100 million) which equates to about 350kg of CO2. An iPhone on the other hand produces around 100kg of CO2 to manufacture according to https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-an-iphone https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-wh... So in summary it's actually only 3 to 4 times.
- laurent92 5y agoAlso, 1 BTC is about 30 iPhones in money. It’s as interesting as saying a holiday consumes more than a bus trip: only CO2 / dollar is interesting. Or equivalent-CO2 “per service provided”. Because, with all the remaining dollars, you’re not going to destroy them, you’re going to consume other services/products, and if they are heavier in CO2 emissions per dollars in average, we’re not in a better position.
- ralfd 5y agoAn iPhone is a physical thing. All kinds of different metals were mined/recycled and manufactured and shipped around the world. A bitcoin transaction is virtual. Some bits have to be flipped. That it is such an energy intensive and environmentally bad clusterfuck is a tragedy.
- rawtxapp 5y agoA bit has to be flipped in a system where no one trusts (or has to trust) each other, that's why it uses energy.
- laurent92 5y agoYou don’t know, it may provide a service which is so intense that it’s worth it. The only way to know is to sell it. (If flipping bits weren’t so important, no-one would pay for datacenters).
- victorbstan 5y agoI’m trying to understand this. The value of the “emission” would fluctuate with the value of the coin? But the wording is weird. How is “buying a Bitcoin” generating 195x co2 compared to x? The mining of Bitcoin has already happened. That emission is over for that Bitcoin after it has been mined. And tying either Bitcoin emission values to capital values. Or iphone emission values to Apples capital value also doesn’t seem very intuitive. What’s the point?
- roenxi 5y agoApple operates at pretty comfortable profit margins. At one time it was the most profitable company in the world. I'm not sure this comparison is fair - Apple is famous for creating highly valuable outputs with relatively minimal inputs. This comparison is just for fun, but there seems to be some buzz about Bitcoin not being environmentally friendly I don't know why people are all grumpy about Bitcoin, there are a lot of things that we waste energy on. Maybe if the world governments were a bit more responsible with their currencies then there wouldn't be a need for Bitcoin. It was a direct response to the outrageous actions taken after the '07 crisis.
- FFRefresh 5y agoI was a bit disappointed in the article given the headline. The analytical methodology used here is a bit odd to me, and there was no explanation as to why this methodology was used. I still don’t know how much incremental CO2 is emitted from buying a Bitcoin or an iPhone after reading it. All I see is a weird CO2 divided by market cap calculation... Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions from either of these?
- maxerickson 5y agoFor bitcoin you'd probably not be able to really determine it. One component would be reasonably straightforward, take the fee paid for the transaction and divide it by the block reward it appears in, it's arguably directly responsible for that percentage of the emissions related to that block. The other potential component would be any impact on the value of bitcoin due to the transaction. It's likely close enough to zero most of the time, but when it isn't zero it's gonna be a doozy.
- incrudible 5y ago> Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions from either of these? Virtually none. Bitcoins get mined with or without transactions, as long as the expected block reward exceeds operating costs, work will be performed. The amount of transactions is fixed (or rather capped), transaction fees are a fraction of block rewards. By performing a transaction, you are bidding up the price for a transaction. Therefore, in aggregate, you are helping keep those miners in the game that are just about to become unprofitable.
- bouncycastle 5y agoIt's not only about emitting CO2, it's also about wasting the earth's surface to produce electricity, such as damming rivers or plastering it with solar panels, or mining for resources to fabricate the bitcoin-mining hardware (which needs to be replaced every few years). The problem will be increasing as the price of BTC goes up. It's a tragedy of the commons.
- alwillis 5y agoBitcoin doesn’t waste energy—https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-waste-energy/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-waste-en...
- inter_netuser 5y agoWhen Hackernews becomes full on irresponsibly bullish on all things crypto - this is when you sell ALL your crypto. That's the only thing I have learned from this forum, by far the best counter-indicator.
- cableshaft 5y agoJudging by all the comments I've seen on here I'm pretty sure that's never going to happen, so I guess Bitcoin is now in a permanent bull market.
- Wassimo 5y agoIt seems like everyone talks about Climate Change but when it comes down to it. Money Rules.