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This is a mix of climate denialism and Bitcoin religion. 1) A system that turns energy usage into $ will always gravitate towards the cheapest energy source (f

This is a mix of climate denialism and Bitcoin religion. 1) A system that turns energy usage into $ will always gravitate towards the cheapest energy source (fossil fuels). Maybe we'll eventually figure out cold fusion, but for the next few decades it's pretty important to promote carbon neutral energy production even if it's more expensive while simultaneously cutting out gratuitous industrial scale waste like PoW mining. 2) "makes the protocol incorruptible and eternally open and permissionless for anyone to join as first class citizens, even late adopters". Ah yes, let me just fire up my warehouse full of ASICs connected to a dedicated power plant. Any old Joe could do it.

renewiltord 5y ago
No, you just misunderstood him. He's saying that energy generation and use should be carbon taxed. If you internalize the carbon externality, fossil fuels will not be cheap. There are arguments against these, but yours is a poor one.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Thank you. Everyone replying to this comment seems to be intentionally ignoring my point.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Since one of the inherent properties of PoW cryptocurrencies is it doesn't matter where the mining takes place, mining will always take place in whichever country doesn't impose a carbon tax. Ironically they're much more "censorship resistant" to carbon taxes than actual attempts by major economies to ban their use (which would only need to be partially effective to squash the price bubble and by extension reduce incentive to spend on mining)
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    That's already a problem. Developing nations are consuming an ever expanding amount of fossil fuels. And they're sure as hell not going to stop, because the advantage to their citizens of developing their infrastructure towards Western standards of living far outweighs projected threats of climate change. Developed countries are already making okish strides on decarbonizing, but how can we in the first world effectively decree that the developing world must halt or slow progress towards the lifestyles that we enjoy. That reeks of a new kind of colonialism, and simply won't go over well without the threat of global violence. The only way we'll actually make strides on decarbonization is with some kind of global carbon tax. I'm not going to pretend I know how we accomplish that, but if we can't, we're not going to mitigate climate change in any reasonable way.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Geopolitical energy cost arbitrage is a major climate change issue, but I feel like it's disingenuous to focus on crypto as the main problem. The majority of these harms are in heavy industry, manufacturing, logistics, etc. I'd estimate only 1% of this problem can be attributed to cryptocurrency. If crypto was somehow globally banned, the problem would not be significantly diminished. If bitcoin eventually becomes responsible for 10%+ of dirty energy, only then would this argument be compelling to me.
ChemSpider 5y ago
> cheapest energy source (fossil fuels). Renewables are often cheaper - it depends. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new-wind-solar-projects-cheaper-than-coal-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new...
javert 5y ago
This is a mix of Bitcoin denialism and climate religion. 1) Bitcoin mining is increasingly migrating to hydro and geothermal, because fossil fuels are too expensive in comparison. Presumably, nuclear will come eventually. 2) See what I did there in my first sentence? We should have an intellectually hygenic discussion; there is no valid place for the kind of rhetoric you're employing.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Well, I thought it was clever
joeldg 5y ago
meh, just saying something doesn't make it true ... as a miner, I use the cheapest electric this part is true, but for those of us in the USA, 100% of the time that is hydro-electric power and you can look up maps of electric kWh costs and the lowest are all in Eastern Washington state and in Oregon around hydro-electric dams on the Columbia river (I pay residential rate of ~0.06/kWh). Saying you can't store all that energy, simply using it isn't really "polluting" anything and in absolutely no uncertain terms is it contributing to climate change. Outside the USA - There are huge mines in Iceland that use geo-thermal power. China entirely banned mining operations, even though they are ramping up clean-energy far faster the USA—but they are not there yet—mining in China is no longer contributing. This is really just a simple Google search for "largest bitcoin mine in the world" which of the top, only Russia is still using coal for rural power, for the larger areas it is Hydro (RusHydro) and Nuclear so it is not 100% clear if the big mines in Moscow are on coal. Assuming they are, that is still only perhaps a few percentage of the total.

renewiltord 5y ago

No, you just misunderstood him. He's saying that energy generation and use should be carbon taxed. If you internalize the carbon externality, fossil fuels will not be cheap. There are arguments against these, but yours is a poor one.

anonporridge 5y ago
Thank you. Everyone replying to this comment seems to be intentionally ignoring my point.
notahacker 5y ago
Since one of the inherent properties of PoW cryptocurrencies is it doesn't matter where the mining takes place, mining will always take place in whichever country doesn't impose a carbon tax. Ironically they're much more "censorship resistant" to carbon taxes than actual attempts by major economies to ban their use (which would only need to be partially effective to squash the price bubble and by extension reduce incentive to spend on mining)
- anonporridge 5y ago
  That's already a problem. Developing nations are consuming an ever expanding amount of fossil fuels. And they're sure as hell not going to stop, because the advantage to their citizens of developing their infrastructure towards Western standards of living far outweighs projected threats of climate change. Developed countries are already making okish strides on decarbonizing, but how can we in the first world effectively decree that the developing world must halt or slow progress towards the lifestyles that we enjoy. That reeks of a new kind of colonialism, and simply won't go over well without the threat of global violence. The only way we'll actually make strides on decarbonization is with some kind of global carbon tax. I'm not going to pretend I know how we accomplish that, but if we can't, we're not going to mitigate climate change in any reasonable way.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Geopolitical energy cost arbitrage is a major climate change issue, but I feel like it's disingenuous to focus on crypto as the main problem. The majority of these harms are in heavy industry, manufacturing, logistics, etc. I'd estimate only 1% of this problem can be attributed to cryptocurrency. If crypto was somehow globally banned, the problem would not be significantly diminished. If bitcoin eventually becomes responsible for 10%+ of dirty energy, only then would this argument be compelling to me.

ChemSpider 5y ago

> cheapest energy source (fossil fuels). Renewables are often cheaper - it depends. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new-wind-solar-projects-cheaper-than-coal-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new...

javert 5y ago

This is a mix of Bitcoin denialism and climate religion. 1) Bitcoin mining is increasingly migrating to hydro and geothermal, because fossil fuels are too expensive in comparison. Presumably, nuclear will come eventually. 2) See what I did there in my first sentence? We should have an intellectually hygenic discussion; there is no valid place for the kind of rhetoric you're employing.

jkhdigital 5y ago
Well, I thought it was clever

joeldg 5y ago

meh, just saying something doesn't make it true ... as a miner, I use the cheapest electric this part is true, but for those of us in the USA, 100% of the time that is hydro-electric power and you can look up maps of electric kWh costs and the lowest are all in Eastern Washington state and in Oregon around hydro-electric dams on the Columbia river (I pay residential rate of ~0.06/kWh). Saying you can't store all that energy, simply using it isn't really "polluting" anything and in absolutely no uncertain terms is it contributing to climate change. Outside the USA - There are huge mines in Iceland that use geo-thermal power. China entirely banned mining operations, even though they are ramping up clean-energy far faster the USA—but they are not there yet—mining in China is no longer contributing. This is really just a simple Google search for "largest bitcoin mine in the world" which of the top, only Russia is still using coal for rural power, for the larger areas it is Hydro (RusHydro) and Nuclear so it is not 100% clear if the big mines in Moscow are on coal. Assuming they are, that is still only perhaps a few percentage of the total.