8 ms·

Bitcoin consumes 2nd highest electricity per capita

73 points by rnadtiuyn 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
0xFreebie 5y ago
The other amazing thing in that tweet is that Norway uses more energy per capita than the next three countries combined? Double the USA? What is the explanation there?
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  99% is renewable from hydro power. I would say they reached their goal.
- erehweb 5y ago
  Norway's cold and rich?
- MBCook 5y ago
  Could it be a lot if electric heating instead of fossil fuels? Pure guess.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  I was curious too. Quick Googling shows this breakdown of energy usage by sector and source: https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken-i-ulike-sektorer/ https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken... The Tweet is specifically about electricity (kWh). It appears Norway uses mostly electricity in applications where other countries might use more natural gas (heating). This is likely because Norway has plentiful clean hydroelectric electricity, so they export their natural gas instead of burning it. This inflates their electricity consumption numbers but given the mostly hydroelectric source and reduced fossil fuel burning it’s actually a net win.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    Is there a way to differentiate clean hydro and dirty hydro? In the US the most recent "green" standards exclude hydroelectricity as renewable energy.
    - eikenberry 5y ago
      Really? That seems dumb. Have any references for why they made this decision?
      - bujak300 5y ago
        Dumb or not, hydroelectric has its own ecological problems and as the dams near the and of life, the costs associated with that will be most likely "externalized"
      - j_walter 5y ago
        I don't have the details, but when my company went to purchase RECs for 2021 we were told that hydro is no longer considered to be in the level of REC we were targeting (extra green something or other). So the cost for this year was much higher than 2020.
      - verdverm 5y ago
        If you want to be nice to the environment, damming (damning?) rivers would intuitively seem like a bad thing for wildlife.
    - 1ris 5y ago
      The only truly green energy is the energy you don't use. All electric is dirty to some degree. Hyrdo is cleaner than almost anything else, but not a clean as not using it at all. On top of that "clean" is not a very well defined metric. Carbon emissions are not the only thing to consider. The exclusion of hydro from "green" is of tactical nature. It's mature technology and without spectacular learning curves.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Norway is high up but not the top of the per capita list that Wikipedia uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... Iceland is small but has some power-hungry industries (that's the point, to produce Aluminum with cheap power), influencing their total.
humaniania 5y ago
Based on screenshots posted to an unverified twitter account? Why would this get upvotes?
- mdoms 5y ago
  The source is in the very next tweet. https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12599-020-00656-x?sharing_token=CxrpbYyB6ZT0pG1hYwEFZ_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY5qG0fat8E1y54yFbuwTfnIjjclHTNuDpMMv-vICBVNPHyOVLwUxmfvEyQeTkB6xxOzTXW1xz_z16kOtrBvnFQmlg3y-uNllfNFTJ-k5YPhwjdFZE1_rQljVE2q8ecY_Ac%3D https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12599-020-00656-x?sh...
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    From the conclusion to that link: ...we found that they do not pose a large threat to the climate, mainly because the energy consumption of PoW blockchains does not increase substantially when they process more transactions.
hereme888 5y ago
I wonder what the energy consumption is from things like video games and brainless media (tiktok, mindless YT videos, etc).
- 1ris 5y ago
  Well, give an estimate. Sounds like a Fermi problem.
wyager 5y ago
Good. I want to incentivize the progression of humanity to a kardashev type 1 civilization and beyond.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Even if that's your goal, wasting electricity on Bitcoin might not be the optimal route to getting there...
  - wincy 5y ago
    Bitcoin really feels like a paperclip maximizer type situation.
    - wyager 5y ago
      Bitcoin resource consumption is bounded to demand for secure settlement - large, but not excessive. I would expect long-term Bitcoin resource consumption to correspond to less than 1% of human productive output (but probably more than 1% of power generation). How much of human productive capacity is spent on banking right now? Bitcoin will probably consume some fraction of that. It should be a net productivity win (assuming it sticks around).
  - wyager 5y ago
    It’s probably pretty close to optimal. Leaving aside the mischaracterizarion of “waste” (that’s been covered plenty of times), Bitcoin is economically unique in that it provides a guaranteed price floor on power consumption, allowing us to overcome the “bathtub curve”, distribution costs, and other problems associated with novel green energy sources.
  - javert 5y ago
    Are you really incapable of understanding that bitcoin might not be a waste? An unfathomable transfer of wealth from normal people to the rich is happening because of the Fed. How? The rich can borrow money from the Fed at near zero rates. They use that money to buy assets. Meanwhile, the government borrows money from the Fed at near zero rates. The government spends the money, inflating the circulating money supply. That causes the value of money to go down. The rich can repay their loans to the Fed using money that is worth less than when they borrowed it. I.e., borrow $100M in 2021 dollars and repay $100M in cheap 2050 dollars. This is turning America into a nation of renters, rather than a nation of homeowners. It's also turning us into a nation of debtors, via the Federal debt, which will become overburdensome soon. We will either default, or the debt will be erased through hyperinflation, making the rich even richer again (as they get the money first and buy assets at the old prices). Bitcoin fixes this. And only bitcoin, or something almost exactly like it, can fix this. The impoverishment of normal people via the banking system is exactly what the Jeffersons of the world were trying to prevent the Hamiltons of the world from doing.
nanidin 5y ago
The tweet makes an assumption that there are 10 million people holding bitcoin, and the tweet goes on to imply that this is actually an overestimate. The first google result for "how many people hold bitcoins" says that an estimated 46 million Americans own bitcoin. The huge inaccuracy shows the author's bias and kills the credibility of the rest of the thread.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Are you saying "has a Bitcoin wallet" = "own bitcoin"? Only ~60M households (50%) have an investment account. I'm skeptical that there's a huge portion of households with bitcoin but w/o a traditional investment account. I'm also skeptical that ~80% of people with investment accounts have Bitcoin. Almost everyone I work with and most of my friends and family have an investment account. I only know a couple of people who currently have any Bitcoin. I know a lot of people that at one point owned Bitcoin, though.
  - nanidin 5y ago
    I'm not saying either way (as this wasn't specified in the tweet either) - just pointing out the huge discrepancy between easily accessible statistics and the story the author of the tweet is trying to tell. There is a huge assumption being made (10 million people hold bitcoin) and zero justification for that assumption.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      It also seems like there is zero justification for you 46M Americans figure. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ There might be 46M wallets related to US accounts with Bitcoin in them, but 1 person could own 45M of them (I seriously doubt it, but you get the point).
      - nanidin 5y ago
        Yep - it seems we're getting deep into "73.6% of statistics are made up on the spot" territory no matter which source we choose :) Which then raises the question - why did the author of the tweet choose 10 million?
aresant 5y ago
If you want to get a read on the "Reduce your carbon footprint" camp's success, check out the top selling vehicle in America (1) Treating this as a "crypto problem" and not a general energy / fuels problem does almost nothing but sell clicks / views / newspapers. Trying to contribute here though on where we really are in crypto and angles of attack for discussion, vs an alarmist view: 1) BTC maximalists don't care and will argue to the teeth that the energy costs are baked into the economic value of the network. From a purely market argument they're not wrong here. BTCs energy use is "worth it" to a lot of people who truly believe BTC to be a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a vote for decentralization. 2) Short term companies like Crusoe Energy are working on solutions to onboard "trapped" energy stores to reduce the carbon footprint. The most likely outcome of these efforts is likely not an overall reduced carbon footprint given the continued growth and interest in the overall market. (2) 3) Proof of Stake is much more efficient than Proof of Work (3) but it is unlikely that BTC moves in that direction short term. Or perhaps ever. (1) https://www.torquenews.com/9539/ford-f-150-continues-its-sales-dominance https://www.torquenews.com/9539/ford-f-150-continues-its-sal... (2) https://www.crusoeenergy.com/ https://www.crusoeenergy.com/ (3) https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...
- aresant 5y ago
  I'm not sure what I'm writing above that isn't objective I would love to hear responses vs downvotes to the floor Do you think that we can regulate crypto into lower energy use? Change hearts and minds?
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Objectivity or its lack has very little to do with downvotes on bitcoin threads. These bring out all the would-be authoritarians to impose their will on HN posts in a way they can't impose it on crypto in the real world.
    - aresant 5y ago
      Thank you. I get the lightning rod component of these threads. But head-in-the-sand won't get us anywhere. I've been on HN looks at profile for 13 years now, not going to register a complaint now but makes me sad to have no discourse.
butmuh 5y ago
Yeh no it doesn't. "this work was supported by PayPal" - lol Anytime research is done by an incumbent under threat, probably not worth the paper it's printed on. Guess how much the current banking system uses when you calculate worldwide all the physical money and coin printing, the servers, the electricity and environmental impacts of buildings and ATM's, the staff commutes, the marketing collateral and advertisements, the pamphlets and the brochures etc. Oh that's right, we're not allowed to talk about that because narrative = bitcoin bad/energy use.
Uehreka 5y ago
Right now very few people are actually using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, and yet still the carbon footprint rivals many large countries. If this became the world’s primary currency (as many crypto fans seem to want) it would increase our total carbon footprint by multiple orders of magnitude. I do not see many people in the crypto community approaching this with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Most conversations seem to devolve into: - wishcasting about how energy is produced: “There are a whole bunch of miners in South America running on hydro!” This ignores that we are decades away at least from a solarpunk world where energy isn’t a zero-sum game, the hydro energy being used by miners just means the people in nearby cities have to resort to fossil fuels. - wishcasting about Proof-of-Stake: “We could just switch to this and the carbon problems go away!” I admit it would be great if this happened, but No large coins use it, and I’ll believe Ethereum when I see it. Proof-of-Stake also has downsides that some crypto people won’t accept, so by their own admission it’s not credibly considered an option (certainly not for Bitcoin). - wishcasting about carbon offsets: “We can buy our way out!” The recent California wildfires have burned through a lot of the trees planted as “carbon offsets”, releasing their carbon back into the atmosphere. Offsets were a neat idea, but they don’t seem to have panned out well, and I have yet to hear a credible case that carbon capture can ramp up fast enough to match crypto’s growing carbon footprint. - whataboutism: “You ride planes don’t you? Those have huge carbon footprints!” I have yet to hear a compelling argument that a Planes+Bitcoin world would have a smaller carbon footprint than the current Planes+Mastercard world. And no one is talking about Bitcoin making planes go away. I’d love to hear a clear and credulous case for how we get out of this problem, but I have yet to hear one from the crypto community. If the crypto community won’t take this seriously and propose real solutions, people from outside the crypto community will come up with solutions that will involve banning crypto.
- lhorie 5y ago
  Forgive me if this is a dumb comment, but my understanding is that bitcoin's footprint is largely due to mining, correct? But bitcoin itself is considered an asset (in the US, at least). So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right? IIRC Polkadot staking has a 28 day minimum unstaking cool-off period, yet one can stake/unstake instantaneously in Kraken, so I'm led to believe that off-chain transactions must already happen to at least some extent. Am I missing something?
ramesh31 5y ago
This whole thing is a racket. Bitcoin's actual market value is entirely a function of its' utility in facilitating cybercrime payments. There is precisely zero actual use for it beyond that. And now that all the biggest names on Wall Street are getting a piece of the pie, we can be guaranteed it's not going anywhere.
- nanidin 5y ago
  > There is precisely zero actual use for it beyond that I was staying in a hotel in Nepal around 10 years ago. I was sharing a room with someone I met. I paid the hotel, and my roommate paid me in bitcoin. It was pretty convenient considering my home currency is USD, his was EUR, and the local currency was rupees. Anyway, as far as I'm aware there wasn't any cybercrime taking place that day :)
exporectomy 5y ago
Stop ranking things with arbitrary categories! It's meaningless! I'll bet there's some aluminium smelter that has a far higher "per capita" electricity use than his bitcoin calculation if you only count the workers there as the population. Or how about the category "cooks" or "welders" who have high personal electricity usage?
kloch 5y ago
The only meaningful comparison is to the energy usage of the legacy banking system. Banks have a lot of data centers, office space, employees who drive to work etc.
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  The banking system finances all commercial activity, it’s essential to civilization. BTC is not. (DeFi is used to speculate on crypto prices with leverage, which is also not essential)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
randomhodler84 5y ago
The 10 million users is unknowable. But we have a upper bound of 74million UTXOs so it is at most 74M on chain. With custody like CB and RH, I suspect it’s 2 or 3x that on top. I hear “200M Bitcoin users in 2021” which may be closer to the truth. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/utxo-count https://www.blockchain.com/charts/utxo-count
chemmail 5y ago
I don't know what this post is suppose to prove. You can say the same to the top 10million richest people. How much resources do they actually use in the world? They have the ability to use almost all of it.
gnramires 5y ago
> It's not that other solutions are better either. We really gotta level up! Source: https://rdcu.be/cxtR7 https://rdcu.be/cxtR7 Well, showing a logarithmic graph is a deceptive way of comparing things.

73 points by rnadtiuyn 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

The other amazing thing in that tweet is that Norway uses more energy per capita than the next three countries combined? Double the USA? What is the explanation there?

NicoJuicy 5y ago
99% is renewable from hydro power. I would say they reached their goal.
erehweb 5y ago
Norway's cold and rich?
MBCook 5y ago
Could it be a lot if electric heating instead of fossil fuels? Pure guess.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I was curious too. Quick Googling shows this breakdown of energy usage by sector and source: https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken-i-ulike-sektorer/ https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken... The Tweet is specifically about electricity (kWh). It appears Norway uses mostly electricity in applications where other countries might use more natural gas (heating). This is likely because Norway has plentiful clean hydroelectric electricity, so they export their natural gas instead of burning it. This inflates their electricity consumption numbers but given the mostly hydroelectric source and reduced fossil fuel burning it’s actually a net win.
- j_walter 5y ago
  Is there a way to differentiate clean hydro and dirty hydro? In the US the most recent "green" standards exclude hydroelectricity as renewable energy.
  - eikenberry 5y ago
    Really? That seems dumb. Have any references for why they made this decision?
    - bujak300 5y ago
      Dumb or not, hydroelectric has its own ecological problems and as the dams near the and of life, the costs associated with that will be most likely "externalized"
    - j_walter 5y ago
      I don't have the details, but when my company went to purchase RECs for 2021 we were told that hydro is no longer considered to be in the level of REC we were targeting (extra green something or other). So the cost for this year was much higher than 2020.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      If you want to be nice to the environment, damming (damning?) rivers would intuitively seem like a bad thing for wildlife.
  - 1ris 5y ago
    The only truly green energy is the energy you don't use. All electric is dirty to some degree. Hyrdo is cleaner than almost anything else, but not a clean as not using it at all. On top of that "clean" is not a very well defined metric. Carbon emissions are not the only thing to consider. The exclusion of hydro from "green" is of tactical nature. It's mature technology and without spectacular learning curves.
kzrdude 5y ago
Norway is high up but not the top of the per capita list that Wikipedia uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... Iceland is small but has some power-hungry industries (that's the point, to produce Aluminum with cheap power), influencing their total.

humaniania 5y ago

Based on screenshots posted to an unverified twitter account? Why would this get upvotes?

mdoms 5y ago
The source is in the very next tweet. https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12599-020-00656-x?sharing_token=CxrpbYyB6ZT0pG1hYwEFZ_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY5qG0fat8E1y54yFbuwTfnIjjclHTNuDpMMv-vICBVNPHyOVLwUxmfvEyQeTkB6xxOzTXW1xz_z16kOtrBvnFQmlg3y-uNllfNFTJ-k5YPhwjdFZE1_rQljVE2q8ecY_Ac%3D https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12599-020-00656-x?sh...
- jessaustin 5y ago
  From the conclusion to that link: ...we found that they do not pose a large threat to the climate, mainly because the energy consumption of PoW blockchains does not increase substantially when they process more transactions.

hereme888 5y ago

I wonder what the energy consumption is from things like video games and brainless media (tiktok, mindless YT videos, etc).

1ris 5y ago
Well, give an estimate. Sounds like a Fermi problem.

wyager 5y ago

Good. I want to incentivize the progression of humanity to a kardashev type 1 civilization and beyond.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Even if that's your goal, wasting electricity on Bitcoin might not be the optimal route to getting there...
- wincy 5y ago
  Bitcoin really feels like a paperclip maximizer type situation.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Bitcoin resource consumption is bounded to demand for secure settlement - large, but not excessive. I would expect long-term Bitcoin resource consumption to correspond to less than 1% of human productive output (but probably more than 1% of power generation). How much of human productive capacity is spent on banking right now? Bitcoin will probably consume some fraction of that. It should be a net productivity win (assuming it sticks around).
- wyager 5y ago
  It’s probably pretty close to optimal. Leaving aside the mischaracterizarion of “waste” (that’s been covered plenty of times), Bitcoin is economically unique in that it provides a guaranteed price floor on power consumption, allowing us to overcome the “bathtub curve”, distribution costs, and other problems associated with novel green energy sources.
- javert 5y ago
  Are you really incapable of understanding that bitcoin might not be a waste? An unfathomable transfer of wealth from normal people to the rich is happening because of the Fed. How? The rich can borrow money from the Fed at near zero rates. They use that money to buy assets. Meanwhile, the government borrows money from the Fed at near zero rates. The government spends the money, inflating the circulating money supply. That causes the value of money to go down. The rich can repay their loans to the Fed using money that is worth less than when they borrowed it. I.e., borrow $100M in 2021 dollars and repay $100M in cheap 2050 dollars. This is turning America into a nation of renters, rather than a nation of homeowners. It's also turning us into a nation of debtors, via the Federal debt, which will become overburdensome soon. We will either default, or the debt will be erased through hyperinflation, making the rich even richer again (as they get the money first and buy assets at the old prices). Bitcoin fixes this. And only bitcoin, or something almost exactly like it, can fix this. The impoverishment of normal people via the banking system is exactly what the Jeffersons of the world were trying to prevent the Hamiltons of the world from doing.

nanidin 5y ago

The tweet makes an assumption that there are 10 million people holding bitcoin, and the tweet goes on to imply that this is actually an overestimate. The first google result for "how many people hold bitcoins" says that an estimated 46 million Americans own bitcoin. The huge inaccuracy shows the author's bias and kills the credibility of the rest of the thread.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Are you saying "has a Bitcoin wallet" = "own bitcoin"? Only ~60M households (50%) have an investment account. I'm skeptical that there's a huge portion of households with bitcoin but w/o a traditional investment account. I'm also skeptical that ~80% of people with investment accounts have Bitcoin. Almost everyone I work with and most of my friends and family have an investment account. I only know a couple of people who currently have any Bitcoin. I know a lot of people that at one point owned Bitcoin, though.
- nanidin 5y ago
  I'm not saying either way (as this wasn't specified in the tweet either) - just pointing out the huge discrepancy between easily accessible statistics and the story the author of the tweet is trying to tell. There is a huge assumption being made (10 million people hold bitcoin) and zero justification for that assumption.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    It also seems like there is zero justification for you 46M Americans figure. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/ There might be 46M wallets related to US accounts with Bitcoin in them, but 1 person could own 45M of them (I seriously doubt it, but you get the point).
    - nanidin 5y ago
      Yep - it seems we're getting deep into "73.6% of statistics are made up on the spot" territory no matter which source we choose :) Which then raises the question - why did the author of the tweet choose 10 million?

aresant 5y ago

If you want to get a read on the "Reduce your carbon footprint" camp's success, check out the top selling vehicle in America (1) Treating this as a "crypto problem" and not a general energy / fuels problem does almost nothing but sell clicks / views / newspapers. Trying to contribute here though on where we really are in crypto and angles of attack for discussion, vs an alarmist view: 1) BTC maximalists don't care and will argue to the teeth that the energy costs are baked into the economic value of the network. From a purely market argument they're not wrong here. BTCs energy use is "worth it" to a lot of people who truly believe BTC to be a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a vote for decentralization. 2) Short term companies like Crusoe Energy are working on solutions to onboard "trapped" energy stores to reduce the carbon footprint. The most likely outcome of these efforts is likely not an overall reduced carbon footprint given the continued growth and interest in the overall market. (2) 3) Proof of Stake is much more efficient than Proof of Work (3) but it is unlikely that BTC moves in that direction short term. Or perhaps ever. (1) https://www.torquenews.com/9539/ford-f-150-continues-its-sales-dominance https://www.torquenews.com/9539/ford-f-150-continues-its-sal... (2) https://www.crusoeenergy.com/ https://www.crusoeenergy.com/ (3) https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...

aresant 5y ago
I'm not sure what I'm writing above that isn't objective I would love to hear responses vs downvotes to the floor Do you think that we can regulate crypto into lower energy use? Change hearts and minds?
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Objectivity or its lack has very little to do with downvotes on bitcoin threads. These bring out all the would-be authoritarians to impose their will on HN posts in a way they can't impose it on crypto in the real world.
  - aresant 5y ago
    Thank you. I get the lightning rod component of these threads. But head-in-the-sand won't get us anywhere. I've been on HN looks at profile for 13 years now, not going to register a complaint now but makes me sad to have no discourse.

butmuh 5y ago

Yeh no it doesn't. "this work was supported by PayPal" - lol Anytime research is done by an incumbent under threat, probably not worth the paper it's printed on. Guess how much the current banking system uses when you calculate worldwide all the physical money and coin printing, the servers, the electricity and environmental impacts of buildings and ATM's, the staff commutes, the marketing collateral and advertisements, the pamphlets and the brochures etc. Oh that's right, we're not allowed to talk about that because narrative = bitcoin bad/energy use.

Uehreka 5y ago

Right now very few people are actually using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, and yet still the carbon footprint rivals many large countries. If this became the world’s primary currency (as many crypto fans seem to want) it would increase our total carbon footprint by multiple orders of magnitude. I do not see many people in the crypto community approaching this with the deadly seriousness it deserves. Most conversations seem to devolve into: - wishcasting about how energy is produced: “There are a whole bunch of miners in South America running on hydro!” This ignores that we are decades away at least from a solarpunk world where energy isn’t a zero-sum game, the hydro energy being used by miners just means the people in nearby cities have to resort to fossil fuels. - wishcasting about Proof-of-Stake: “We could just switch to this and the carbon problems go away!” I admit it would be great if this happened, but No large coins use it, and I’ll believe Ethereum when I see it. Proof-of-Stake also has downsides that some crypto people won’t accept, so by their own admission it’s not credibly considered an option (certainly not for Bitcoin). - wishcasting about carbon offsets: “We can buy our way out!” The recent California wildfires have burned through a lot of the trees planted as “carbon offsets”, releasing their carbon back into the atmosphere. Offsets were a neat idea, but they don’t seem to have panned out well, and I have yet to hear a credible case that carbon capture can ramp up fast enough to match crypto’s growing carbon footprint. - whataboutism: “You ride planes don’t you? Those have huge carbon footprints!” I have yet to hear a compelling argument that a Planes+Bitcoin world would have a smaller carbon footprint than the current Planes+Mastercard world. And no one is talking about Bitcoin making planes go away. I’d love to hear a clear and credulous case for how we get out of this problem, but I have yet to hear one from the crypto community. If the crypto community won’t take this seriously and propose real solutions, people from outside the crypto community will come up with solutions that will involve banning crypto.

lhorie 5y ago
Forgive me if this is a dumb comment, but my understanding is that bitcoin's footprint is largely due to mining, correct? But bitcoin itself is considered an asset (in the US, at least). So in theory, it's possible to just trade bitcoins off-chain (either on another blockchain or just using boring centralized tech) without necessarily incurring a corresponding increase in mining-related costs, right? IIRC Polkadot staking has a 28 day minimum unstaking cool-off period, yet one can stake/unstake instantaneously in Kraken, so I'm led to believe that off-chain transactions must already happen to at least some extent. Am I missing something?

ramesh31 5y ago

This whole thing is a racket. Bitcoin's actual market value is entirely a function of its' utility in facilitating cybercrime payments. There is precisely zero actual use for it beyond that. And now that all the biggest names on Wall Street are getting a piece of the pie, we can be guaranteed it's not going anywhere.

nanidin 5y ago
> There is precisely zero actual use for it beyond that I was staying in a hotel in Nepal around 10 years ago. I was sharing a room with someone I met. I paid the hotel, and my roommate paid me in bitcoin. It was pretty convenient considering my home currency is USD, his was EUR, and the local currency was rupees. Anyway, as far as I'm aware there wasn't any cybercrime taking place that day :)

exporectomy 5y ago

Stop ranking things with arbitrary categories! It's meaningless! I'll bet there's some aluminium smelter that has a far higher "per capita" electricity use than his bitcoin calculation if you only count the workers there as the population. Or how about the category "cooks" or "welders" who have high personal electricity usage?

kloch 5y ago

The only meaningful comparison is to the energy usage of the legacy banking system. Banks have a lot of data centers, office space, employees who drive to work etc.

quickthrowman 5y ago
The banking system finances all commercial activity, it’s essential to civilization. BTC is not. (DeFi is used to speculate on crypto prices with leverage, which is also not essential)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

randomhodler84 5y ago

The 10 million users is unknowable. But we have a upper bound of 74million UTXOs so it is at most 74M on chain. With custody like CB and RH, I suspect it’s 2 or 3x that on top. I hear “200M Bitcoin users in 2021” which may be closer to the truth. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/utxo-count https://www.blockchain.com/charts/utxo-count

chemmail 5y ago

I don't know what this post is suppose to prove. You can say the same to the top 10million richest people. How much resources do they actually use in the world? They have the ability to use almost all of it.

gnramires 5y ago

> It's not that other solutions are better either. We really gotta level up! Source: https://rdcu.be/cxtR7 https://rdcu.be/cxtR7 Well, showing a logarithmic graph is a deceptive way of comparing things.