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Isn’t it like half a percent of total electricity spending though? So even if you had a magic wand to get rid of people’s mining hardware, you wouldn’t solve th

Isn’t it like half a percent of total electricity spending though? So even if you had a magic wand to get rid of people’s mining hardware, you wouldn’t solve the problem. So why focus on Bitcoin so singularly? What’s the agenda here?

Analemma_ 5y ago
Half a percent is a staggering, colossal amount of energy, especially considering that the percentage of humans who use Bitcoin is less by orders of magnitude, and that it is-- let's be honest here-- pretty much useless. I am utterly baffled by the suggestion that "half a percent of all electricity use" is not something worth being alarmed about.
RobRivera 5y ago
you say that as if .5 % is trivial. you say that as if solutions can't be composed by aggregate
pavlov 5y ago
It consumes more power than Argentina and has increased 6500% since 2015 without providing any meaningful utility to mankind. Bitcoin deserves to be a first-tier target for reducing carbon emissions. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t target other energy consumption too.
- lowkey 5y ago
  > It consumes more power than Argentina and has increased 6500% since 2015 without providing any meaningful utility to mankind. - Every member of mankind who chose to invest in Bitcoin for any meaningful length of time would argue it provided immense utility to them. At 150-200 million Hodlers, that is bigger than Japan. - Every member of mankind who appreciates having an alternative to forced negative interest rates, or random haircuts to bank savings accounts (e.g. Gibraltor) appreciates having Bitcoin as an option - A store of value that is impervious to the ravages of inflation and operates outside the domain of politicians or central banks is incredibly useful for mankind, but not maybe so useful to those who wish to rule over mankind Bitcoin is: - the people’s money - peer-to-peer digital gold - rules without rulers - the hardest reserve currency ever invented (better than gold) All that and it consumes less energy per year than YouTube or even hairdryers. > Bitcoin deserves to be a first-tier target for reducing carbon emissions. No, no it doesn’t > That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t target other energy consumption too. Yes, I agree completely - and we should prioritize the biggest and dirtiest energy consumption first if our goal is to address the real problem instead of virtue signaling. There are a long list of polluting environmentally destructive activities much worse than Bitcoin such as Gold for example. 100% of Gold is strip-mined with non-renewable energy. Maybe we should convince the world’s central banks to dump their gold reserves for Bitcoin. Or maybe shut down the world’s hair dryer production because it uses more energy than Bitcoin. There’s an idea.
lucb1e 5y ago
More like 10%. Total energy use of a country in a year is something like 1PWh and electricity is 100TWh, those orders of magnitude. Edit: figured I might as well look it up and be precise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands 900 TWh primary energy, 115 TWh electricity.

Analemma_ 5y ago

Half a percent is a staggering, colossal amount of energy, especially considering that the percentage of humans who use Bitcoin is less by orders of magnitude, and that it is-- let's be honest here-- pretty much useless. I am utterly baffled by the suggestion that "half a percent of all electricity use" is not something worth being alarmed about.

RobRivera 5y ago

you say that as if .5 % is trivial. you say that as if solutions can't be composed by aggregate

pavlov 5y ago

It consumes more power than Argentina and has increased 6500% since 2015 without providing any meaningful utility to mankind. Bitcoin deserves to be a first-tier target for reducing carbon emissions. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t target other energy consumption too.

lowkey 5y ago
> It consumes more power than Argentina and has increased 6500% since 2015 without providing any meaningful utility to mankind. - Every member of mankind who chose to invest in Bitcoin for any meaningful length of time would argue it provided immense utility to them. At 150-200 million Hodlers, that is bigger than Japan. - Every member of mankind who appreciates having an alternative to forced negative interest rates, or random haircuts to bank savings accounts (e.g. Gibraltor) appreciates having Bitcoin as an option - A store of value that is impervious to the ravages of inflation and operates outside the domain of politicians or central banks is incredibly useful for mankind, but not maybe so useful to those who wish to rule over mankind Bitcoin is: - the people’s money - peer-to-peer digital gold - rules without rulers - the hardest reserve currency ever invented (better than gold) All that and it consumes less energy per year than YouTube or even hairdryers. > Bitcoin deserves to be a first-tier target for reducing carbon emissions. No, no it doesn’t > That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t target other energy consumption too. Yes, I agree completely - and we should prioritize the biggest and dirtiest energy consumption first if our goal is to address the real problem instead of virtue signaling. There are a long list of polluting environmentally destructive activities much worse than Bitcoin such as Gold for example. 100% of Gold is strip-mined with non-renewable energy. Maybe we should convince the world’s central banks to dump their gold reserves for Bitcoin. Or maybe shut down the world’s hair dryer production because it uses more energy than Bitcoin. There’s an idea.

lucb1e 5y ago

More like 10%. Total energy use of a country in a year is something like 1PWh and electricity is 100TWh, those orders of magnitude. Edit: figured I might as well look it up and be precise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands 900 TWh primary energy, 115 TWh electricity.