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It's not a straw man. Yes, if the energy mix was only reliant of renewables, energy usage wouldn't be as much as a problem. But it is not, and won't be in years
by gjulianm 5y ago
It's not a straw man. Yes, if the energy mix was only reliant of renewables, energy usage wouldn't be as much as a problem. But it is not, and won't be in years, decades, so we can't just brush off the energy usage of crypto as "well it's the energy mix fault". You cannot evaluate a technology in isolation of its real world, practical context.
Not to mention that even with renewables, energy usage would be still a concern. Renewables will still have issues around distribution, power peaks, energy storage, price, and crypto wouldn't be helping any of them. A discussion of how would crypto affect the rest of the people compared to the benefit it brings would still be relevant.
- throwaway554 5y ago56% of energy used for Bitcoin mining is coming from renewable sources of energy.
- gjulianm 5y agoIs there a source for that? Last time I checked there weren't reliable reports even on total energy usage, much less energy sources.
- throwaway554 5y agohttps://www.hope.com/content/dam/hope-assets/collateral/Mining-Council-Press-Release-Q2_07-01-2021.pdf https://www.hope.com/content/dam/hope-assets/collateral/Mini...
- gjulianm 5y agoThat's a self-reported survey by members of a Bitcoin mining council, which represent an unknown portion of the total mining capacity, and if I'm correct the term "sustainable energy" includes "carbon-based energy with net emission credits". It doesn't seem the most reliable source to me.
- Applejinx 5y agoThat is one heck of a waste, at a time when managing the thermal runaway of our planet is a matter of great and immediate urgency.
- throwaway554 5y agoSeparating money from the state is worth the cost.
- malermeister 5y agoI think this is what every crypto argument secretly comes down to, this ideological disagreement. I don't want money to be separated from the state, and especially not at a cost. One man's crypto-anarchocapitalist utopia is another man's dystopian capitalist nightmare that we sacrificed our environment for.
- throwaway554 5y agoImagine telling a guy who lives in a state with over 15% inflation rate that he's destined to stay poor because some people in first-world countries think that hard money is an utopia.
- malermeister 5y agoI never said money in any form is an utopia. The utopia would be post-money imo and moving money away from the state would make that harder to achieve.
- malermeister 5y agoIn other words, 44% comes from non-renewables. It's not like those 56 are free either, we could use that energy to run more important things instead that crypto is taking away from.
- throwaway554 5y agoIn many cases, you can't use the energy that is used for Bitcoin mining for anything else, since there are simply no consumers next to the renewable energy source.
- onethought 5y agoHow come you see this argument pedaled on crypto but not every other technology? Cobalt mining for batteries? Energy consumption for processed metals? Oil refining from rocketry (largely used by military in practice scenarios) This list goes on. It seems crypto is the only technology evaluated in relation to the whole environment. For all the others we shrug and ignore externalities.