6 ms·

Supporting Bitcoin == Supporting Global Warming

34 points by owenfar 5y ago

dcolkitt 5y ago
All the more reason to switch to Ethereum, which transitions to a low-energy proof of stake model in the next six months.
- patrickthebold 5y ago
  That's been true for a while.
- wmf 5y ago
  Or you could even switch to something that has working PoS now.
- xormapmap 5y ago
  Tezos is proof of stake already and supports dApps/NFTs etc. with a tiny fraction of the fees of Ethereum. Cardano will be similar. I'm sure there are others. While it's better than bitcoin, people should be moving away from eth, not towards it.
chris123 5y ago
Same old recycled FUD, mainstream narrative.
- wobblyasp 5y ago
  You can say it as many times as you'd like, but the fact remains that Bitcoin takes an inordinate amount of energy out of the grid that needs to be replaced. Homes, business, etc need to be powered. If miners start buying out old generation stations, then the carbon footprint is only going to grow further
seibelj 5y ago
By this logic any technology “supports global warming” if it uses energy. Or you must accept that 100% renewable energy bitcoin does not emit carbon. I think the argument is more a moral judgement against bitcoin which many view as a “waste”, even though that’s just someone’s opinion.
- spinchange 5y ago
  Proof-of-work is necessarily a resource-wasteful scheme. I think it's okay to make a moral judgment about that with regard to it becoming the world's most expensive game of guess the number, principally for speculative purposes. We live in a resource constrained real world and this is something exclusively for the world inside of computers but with negative externalities on the real, outside world.
ViVr 5y ago
Hey NY Times, now do an article on clothes dryers which use 4x more energy than the BTC network[1][2] while air-drying can do it without any electricity. [1] https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1392639419920785411 https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1392639419920785411 [2] Same tweets but on threadreader https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1392639419920785411.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1392639419920785411.html
- Loveaway 5y ago
  Or try to estimate how much power the current financial industry takes, hint: it's not exactly a small scale operation. But while the motive for attacking BTCs might not always be honest (see this article also has no shame in casually calling out the early adopters of Bitcoins as "anarchists"), the point about energy consumption isn't entirely invalid. Right now it's probably on the line of being fine, but it a puts a real hard cap on how much further BTC will be able to scale. We definitely can't have another 10x increase in power consumption or something like this. So maybe protocol changes are needed, or things will slowly shift somewhere else, just something to keep in mind.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  PC gaming alone as much as bitcoin and its useless as bitcoin in my eyes.
Tenoke 5y ago
This might be one of the worse cases of an editorialized headline I've seen on HN recently.
isitdopamine 5y ago
Supporting heating in the winter == supporting global warming Supporting agriculture == supporting global warming Supporting any kind of traveling and international trade == supporting global warming Reading the NY Times == supporting global warming
- wobblyasp 5y ago
  Heating in the winter prevents people from freezing to death. Agriculture feeds the world. Travel, fair argument. The power demand for a website is a drop in the ocean compared to the power consumption from a rack of GPUs or dedicated mining cards
  - isitdopamine 5y ago
    …and Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology, providing a censorship-resistant money-exchange system. We can discuss if this is worth more or less than <insert some other activity that contributes to global warming> and also discuss the merit of the new technology, but simple dismissing it as “contributing to global warming” is an inane argument.
    - UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
      It’s not even an argument. It’s pure propaganda spouted by oligarchs who have something to lose when humanity wins.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        BTC opened the door and CBDCs will close it. Climate apocalypse is just a convenient rationale. They've often suggested using carbon credits as a supporting 'asset' for a CBDC system.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
coralreef 5y ago
Supporting Bitcoin == Supporting a decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant network. Supporting coal subsidies + lack of carbon tax == Supporting global warming. If Bitcoin ran on solar panels nobody would give a shit. But because miners are able to arbitrage energy prices thanks to government subsidies and lack of carbon tax, Bitcoin can run on fossil fuels as well. If you want to fix global warming, the appropriate policy action is very simple, and very clear. "Globally, subsidies remained large at $4.7 trillion (6.3 percent of global GDP) in 2015 and are projected at $5.2 trillion (6.5 percent of GDP) in 2017. The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion)." https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo... "As of 2019, G20 governments, representing the world’s major economies, supported coal, oil, and gas production and consumption by, on average, $548 billion per year." https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/07/qa-fossil-fuel-subsidies https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/07/qa-fossil-fuel-subsidies
- postalrat 5y ago
  "If Bitcoin ran on solar panels nobody would give a shit." If you told someone that bitcoin mining uses more power than all the solar energy harvested throughout the world I think most people would say its a waste.
  - coralreef 5y ago
    Those people would say its a waste because they're imagining energy as a medium for the delivery of physical things. When energy fails to deliver something physical, they view it as a waste. Money and value are social abstractions, not physical things. As an example: without trust in a government, fiat money would not function, and would become valueless. Energy is the link between the physical world and the social-abstract human world.
    - trinovantes 5y ago
      I think it's a waste because that energy could've went to more productive on-demand energy-intensive uses like electrolysis, desalination, or carbon capture
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lwansbrough 5y ago
Nothing turns HN comments more bitter and unthinking faster than the topic of Bitcoin, especially its insane energy use. Pitching Bitcoin: "Imagine a currency... that doesn't materially change the status quo (and taken to the end game more-greatly enriches fewer people), is somewhere between 100,000x and 1,000,000x less energy efficient, slower to transact, more volatile, 100% traceable, easier to scam, harder to teach to laymen, causes supply shortages to other markets, whose production is owned in majority by our greatest geopolitical adversary, is treated as an asset and incentivizes saving over spending, and will continue to waste more and more energy for at least the next 100 years." Absolutely insane invention, and the fact that people think this is worth money only tells you that they've bought in. Bitcoin proponents like to pretend it circumvents government interference, as if Bitcoin exists in a vacuum. In reality, the moment the government does a double take of Bitcoin, the market blinks. Everybody knows the pitch of decentralization is just a gimmick, even if they aren't willing to admit it.
- UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
  Blockchain presents, for the first time in history, the ability to coordinate humans at scale without a central authority.
  - wmf 5y ago
    Blockchain gives that ability, but Bitcoin isn't a good blockchain.
    - UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
      Says who? The Sulzberger-owned NYT? The market says otherwise.
  - lwansbrough 5y ago
    There is no central authority of humanity, just deeply embedded factions with long histories. If you don't think the same is happening to Bitcoin just look who the biggest players are in crypto (hint: it isn't decentralized individuals.) Bitcoin offers nothing new from the perspective of game theory, and only seeks to offload consensus to software which fails against hard power anyway.
sebow 5y ago
Of course it's an MSM article

34 points by owenfar 5y ago

All the more reason to switch to Ethereum, which transitions to a low-energy proof of stake model in the next six months.

patrickthebold 5y ago
That's been true for a while.
wmf 5y ago
Or you could even switch to something that has working PoS now.
xormapmap 5y ago
Tezos is proof of stake already and supports dApps/NFTs etc. with a tiny fraction of the fees of Ethereum. Cardano will be similar. I'm sure there are others. While it's better than bitcoin, people should be moving away from eth, not towards it.

chris123 5y ago

Same old recycled FUD, mainstream narrative.

wobblyasp 5y ago
You can say it as many times as you'd like, but the fact remains that Bitcoin takes an inordinate amount of energy out of the grid that needs to be replaced. Homes, business, etc need to be powered. If miners start buying out old generation stations, then the carbon footprint is only going to grow further

seibelj 5y ago

By this logic any technology “supports global warming” if it uses energy. Or you must accept that 100% renewable energy bitcoin does not emit carbon. I think the argument is more a moral judgement against bitcoin which many view as a “waste”, even though that’s just someone’s opinion.

spinchange 5y ago
Proof-of-work is necessarily a resource-wasteful scheme. I think it's okay to make a moral judgment about that with regard to it becoming the world's most expensive game of guess the number, principally for speculative purposes. We live in a resource constrained real world and this is something exclusively for the world inside of computers but with negative externalities on the real, outside world.

ViVr 5y ago

Hey NY Times, now do an article on clothes dryers which use 4x more energy than the BTC network[1][2] while air-drying can do it without any electricity. [1] https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1392639419920785411 https://twitter.com/csuwildcat/status/1392639419920785411 [2] Same tweets but on threadreader https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1392639419920785411.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1392639419920785411.html

Loveaway 5y ago
Or try to estimate how much power the current financial industry takes, hint: it's not exactly a small scale operation. But while the motive for attacking BTCs might not always be honest (see this article also has no shame in casually calling out the early adopters of Bitcoins as "anarchists"), the point about energy consumption isn't entirely invalid. Right now it's probably on the line of being fine, but it a puts a real hard cap on how much further BTC will be able to scale. We definitely can't have another 10x increase in power consumption or something like this. So maybe protocol changes are needed, or things will slowly shift somewhere else, just something to keep in mind.
Dma54rhs 5y ago
PC gaming alone as much as bitcoin and its useless as bitcoin in my eyes.

Tenoke 5y ago

This might be one of the worse cases of an editorialized headline I've seen on HN recently.

isitdopamine 5y ago

Supporting heating in the winter == supporting global warming Supporting agriculture == supporting global warming Supporting any kind of traveling and international trade == supporting global warming Reading the NY Times == supporting global warming

wobblyasp 5y ago
Heating in the winter prevents people from freezing to death. Agriculture feeds the world. Travel, fair argument. The power demand for a website is a drop in the ocean compared to the power consumption from a rack of GPUs or dedicated mining cards
- isitdopamine 5y ago
  …and Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology, providing a censorship-resistant money-exchange system. We can discuss if this is worth more or less than <insert some other activity that contributes to global warming> and also discuss the merit of the new technology, but simple dismissing it as “contributing to global warming” is an inane argument.
  - UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
    It’s not even an argument. It’s pure propaganda spouted by oligarchs who have something to lose when humanity wins.
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      BTC opened the door and CBDCs will close it. Climate apocalypse is just a convenient rationale. They've often suggested using carbon credits as a supporting 'asset' for a CBDC system.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

coralreef 5y ago

Supporting Bitcoin == Supporting a decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant network. Supporting coal subsidies + lack of carbon tax == Supporting global warming. If Bitcoin ran on solar panels nobody would give a shit. But because miners are able to arbitrage energy prices thanks to government subsidies and lack of carbon tax, Bitcoin can run on fossil fuels as well. If you want to fix global warming, the appropriate policy action is very simple, and very clear. "Globally, subsidies remained large at $4.7 trillion (6.3 percent of global GDP) in 2015 and are projected at $5.2 trillion (6.5 percent of GDP) in 2017. The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion)." https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo... "As of 2019, G20 governments, representing the world’s major economies, supported coal, oil, and gas production and consumption by, on average, $548 billion per year." https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/07/qa-fossil-fuel-subsidies https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/07/qa-fossil-fuel-subsidies

postalrat 5y ago
"If Bitcoin ran on solar panels nobody would give a shit." If you told someone that bitcoin mining uses more power than all the solar energy harvested throughout the world I think most people would say its a waste.
- coralreef 5y ago
  Those people would say its a waste because they're imagining energy as a medium for the delivery of physical things. When energy fails to deliver something physical, they view it as a waste. Money and value are social abstractions, not physical things. As an example: without trust in a government, fiat money would not function, and would become valueless. Energy is the link between the physical world and the social-abstract human world.
  - trinovantes 5y ago
    I think it's a waste because that energy could've went to more productive on-demand energy-intensive uses like electrolysis, desalination, or carbon capture

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lwansbrough 5y ago

Nothing turns HN comments more bitter and unthinking faster than the topic of Bitcoin, especially its insane energy use. Pitching Bitcoin: "Imagine a currency... that doesn't materially change the status quo (and taken to the end game more-greatly enriches fewer people), is somewhere between 100,000x and 1,000,000x less energy efficient, slower to transact, more volatile, 100% traceable, easier to scam, harder to teach to laymen, causes supply shortages to other markets, whose production is owned in majority by our greatest geopolitical adversary, is treated as an asset and incentivizes saving over spending, and will continue to waste more and more energy for at least the next 100 years." Absolutely insane invention, and the fact that people think this is worth money only tells you that they've bought in. Bitcoin proponents like to pretend it circumvents government interference, as if Bitcoin exists in a vacuum. In reality, the moment the government does a double take of Bitcoin, the market blinks. Everybody knows the pitch of decentralization is just a gimmick, even if they aren't willing to admit it.

UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
Blockchain presents, for the first time in history, the ability to coordinate humans at scale without a central authority.
- wmf 5y ago
  Blockchain gives that ability, but Bitcoin isn't a good blockchain.
  - UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
    Says who? The Sulzberger-owned NYT? The market says otherwise.
- lwansbrough 5y ago
  There is no central authority of humanity, just deeply embedded factions with long histories. If you don't think the same is happening to Bitcoin just look who the biggest players are in crypto (hint: it isn't decentralized individuals.) Bitcoin offers nothing new from the perspective of game theory, and only seeks to offload consensus to software which fails against hard power anyway.

sebow 5y ago

Of course it's an MSM article