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It uses more energies than entire countries, just like every industry that uses orders of magnitude more than bitcoin. Energy =/= pollute Focus on the bad act

It uses more energies than entire countries, just like every industry that uses orders of magnitude more than bitcoin. Energy =/= pollute Focus on the bad actors that are polluting, occasionally you’ll find a miner

endisneigh 4y ago
Some industries use more energy but do more useful things. The question is what’s the minimum to do something. Bitcoin uses more energy than the alternatives. A wood burning stove is wasteful, a heat pump, not so much. Why? Because what’s important is the difference in energy between the action taken and the most efficient action to complete a task.
- vmception 4y ago
  Energy != pollute Typically this desire for any other use of energy to occur relies on not understanding why that wasnt occurring beforehand
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Energy does not come from nothing. A large amount of it comes from polluting sources. In those cases there is a very direct relationship between the creation of energy and pollution. Clean energy is obviously better, but suffers from a fundamental problem: energy is fungible. If mining takes up 10 MWh of juice, anyone else who would have used that energy can’t. So they have to use other energy. Often fossil fuel based energy has to make up the difference. For all intents and purposes the mining used that fossil fuel energy. If mining only used excess electricity produced by clean power plants, there would be no problem. But it’s not incentivized to use extra energy, it’s incentivized to use cheap energy. If energy can be generated by fossil fuels cheaper than what you can earn from mining, miners will use that energy. Producing pollution that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Even if mining only used spare energy generated from clean sources, using that energy means it can’t be stored to be used later, like at night. Possibly necessitating polluting generation later. (I know storage isn’t common today.) If you can explain how mining either does or feasibly could given real incentives use only spare non-polluting energy I would love to know.
    - vmception 4y ago
      Sure, the flare gas sites that are (or arent) connected to the grid are exactly a case where bitcoin mining is taking from no other use, and actually reducing very quantifiable pollution There are likely several gigawatts of this kind of energy in north america and the amount of energy used this way and for mining in total will continue to increase without causing more pollution This is due completely to market forces as well, which is worth saying because more mining will migrate to this without it being some altruistic response to environmental outcry
    - datadata 4y ago
      Energy is most definitely not fungible. The availability of energy and demand for energy can vary by greatly location. For it to be fungible, energy would need to be free to transport, or demand for energy would need to be location insensitive. Bitcoin actually does a lot of good things here because it is location insensitive. For stranded energy, say methane flare gas, there is not an economical way to use the energy of this gas because transport is too expensive and demand is too far away. In this way, the bitcoin mining is consuming energy that wouldn't actually otherwise be marketable. It is also greatly reducing greenhouse emissions without demand for the energy, the methane would be burned, which has much worse emissions than when consumed in a generator.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    Before Bitcoin no one was wasting energy doing redundant calculations on an astronomical scale. Energy==pollute, actually. Energy is fungible and most of it comes from fossil fuels.
- solveit 4y ago
  This discussion will go nowhere. Clearly the pro-Bitcoin crowd thinks proof of work is the most efficient way to get a permissionless, trustless, decentralised currency. And the anti-Bitcoin crowd either thinks 1. It's not the most efficient way and there's an alternative (e.g. Proof of Stake) or 2. It may or may not be the most efficient way, but Bitcoin doesn't provide the value to justify the carbon emissions ('just tax carbon commensurate to its negative externalities and let people decide for themselves', he says helplessly)
  - vmception 4y ago
    I’m mostly avoiding the utility argument because the stranded energy reality is so much better As its not taking away from another use of energy and it’s reducing pollution, and is more likely to be the majority kind of bitcoin mining
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    This deserves to be the top posted comment, but will certainly never be. Controversial Take: There is effectively no ceiling on the value potential of Bitcoin. If you live in a hyperinflationary environment, of which there are tons of examples in the last 100 years, the value is known. To people living with the $dollar and expecting endless monetary superiority, it is hard to recognize. It's important to note, there is incentive for miners to use renewable energy. Vast amounts of capital have propped up renewables that languish for lack of a proper demand. Wind isn't on demand, nor is solar. But there's never any discussion of the waste and pollution that subsidized unproductive green energy solutions produce. Mining can utilize 100% of that supply. It acts as a reinforcing mechanism for investment in clean energy. How is this lost on people?
woodruffw 4y ago
Bitcoin's energy use is pollution in the strictest sense: it is quite literally wasted as part of the proof scheme. Some of that energy might come from renewable sources, but plenty of it is coming from coal and dinosaur juice. This is true of lots of industries, but even our most wasteful (raw aluminum processing?) or grossly extractive (gold mining?) industries produce actual materials of value.
- nr2x 4y ago
  Fast Fashion is pollution then as well, and that’s absolutely horrible environmentally and in regards to factory conditions. There aren’t any BTC sweat shops as far as I know.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I don't understand this response. Why would you think that I would be in favor of fast fashion or sweatshops? These are bad things. That being said, I wouldn't rest on your "Bitcoin is free of slave labor" laurels so quickly[1]. [1]: https://qz.com/1978807/bitcoin-has-a-xinjiang-problem/ https://qz.com/1978807/bitcoin-has-a-xinjiang-problem/
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    At least "fast fashion" also pollutes the world with clothing.
raggi 4y ago
even if all the sources were green, and they're not, the energy is being poured into the atmosphere as heat, which is still pollution.
- datadata 4y ago
  What is your definition of pollution which includes any heat? Is a hurricane pollution?
- vmception 4y ago
  where can I read about that, could potentially change my view, in some circumstances I think the pollution reduction is greater and I also think dissipation is different than hydrocarbon presence

endisneigh 4y ago

Some industries use more energy but do more useful things. The question is what’s the minimum to do something. Bitcoin uses more energy than the alternatives. A wood burning stove is wasteful, a heat pump, not so much. Why? Because what’s important is the difference in energy between the action taken and the most efficient action to complete a task.

vmception 4y ago
Energy != pollute Typically this desire for any other use of energy to occur relies on not understanding why that wasnt occurring beforehand
- MBCook 4y ago
  Energy does not come from nothing. A large amount of it comes from polluting sources. In those cases there is a very direct relationship between the creation of energy and pollution. Clean energy is obviously better, but suffers from a fundamental problem: energy is fungible. If mining takes up 10 MWh of juice, anyone else who would have used that energy can’t. So they have to use other energy. Often fossil fuel based energy has to make up the difference. For all intents and purposes the mining used that fossil fuel energy. If mining only used excess electricity produced by clean power plants, there would be no problem. But it’s not incentivized to use extra energy, it’s incentivized to use cheap energy. If energy can be generated by fossil fuels cheaper than what you can earn from mining, miners will use that energy. Producing pollution that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Even if mining only used spare energy generated from clean sources, using that energy means it can’t be stored to be used later, like at night. Possibly necessitating polluting generation later. (I know storage isn’t common today.) If you can explain how mining either does or feasibly could given real incentives use only spare non-polluting energy I would love to know.
  - vmception 4y ago
    Sure, the flare gas sites that are (or arent) connected to the grid are exactly a case where bitcoin mining is taking from no other use, and actually reducing very quantifiable pollution There are likely several gigawatts of this kind of energy in north america and the amount of energy used this way and for mining in total will continue to increase without causing more pollution This is due completely to market forces as well, which is worth saying because more mining will migrate to this without it being some altruistic response to environmental outcry
  - datadata 4y ago
    Energy is most definitely not fungible. The availability of energy and demand for energy can vary by greatly location. For it to be fungible, energy would need to be free to transport, or demand for energy would need to be location insensitive. Bitcoin actually does a lot of good things here because it is location insensitive. For stranded energy, say methane flare gas, there is not an economical way to use the energy of this gas because transport is too expensive and demand is too far away. In this way, the bitcoin mining is consuming energy that wouldn't actually otherwise be marketable. It is also greatly reducing greenhouse emissions without demand for the energy, the methane would be burned, which has much worse emissions than when consumed in a generator.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Before Bitcoin no one was wasting energy doing redundant calculations on an astronomical scale. Energy==pollute, actually. Energy is fungible and most of it comes from fossil fuels.
solveit 4y ago
This discussion will go nowhere. Clearly the pro-Bitcoin crowd thinks proof of work is the most efficient way to get a permissionless, trustless, decentralised currency. And the anti-Bitcoin crowd either thinks 1. It's not the most efficient way and there's an alternative (e.g. Proof of Stake) or 2. It may or may not be the most efficient way, but Bitcoin doesn't provide the value to justify the carbon emissions ('just tax carbon commensurate to its negative externalities and let people decide for themselves', he says helplessly)
- vmception 4y ago
  I’m mostly avoiding the utility argument because the stranded energy reality is so much better As its not taking away from another use of energy and it’s reducing pollution, and is more likely to be the majority kind of bitcoin mining
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  This deserves to be the top posted comment, but will certainly never be. Controversial Take: There is effectively no ceiling on the value potential of Bitcoin. If you live in a hyperinflationary environment, of which there are tons of examples in the last 100 years, the value is known. To people living with the $dollar and expecting endless monetary superiority, it is hard to recognize. It's important to note, there is incentive for miners to use renewable energy. Vast amounts of capital have propped up renewables that languish for lack of a proper demand. Wind isn't on demand, nor is solar. But there's never any discussion of the waste and pollution that subsidized unproductive green energy solutions produce. Mining can utilize 100% of that supply. It acts as a reinforcing mechanism for investment in clean energy. How is this lost on people?

woodruffw 4y ago

Bitcoin's energy use is pollution in the strictest sense: it is quite literally wasted as part of the proof scheme. Some of that energy might come from renewable sources, but plenty of it is coming from coal and dinosaur juice. This is true of lots of industries, but even our most wasteful (raw aluminum processing?) or grossly extractive (gold mining?) industries produce actual materials of value.

nr2x 4y ago
Fast Fashion is pollution then as well, and that’s absolutely horrible environmentally and in regards to factory conditions. There aren’t any BTC sweat shops as far as I know.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I don't understand this response. Why would you think that I would be in favor of fast fashion or sweatshops? These are bad things. That being said, I wouldn't rest on your "Bitcoin is free of slave labor" laurels so quickly[1]. [1]: https://qz.com/1978807/bitcoin-has-a-xinjiang-problem/ https://qz.com/1978807/bitcoin-has-a-xinjiang-problem/
- pessimizer 4y ago
  At least "fast fashion" also pollutes the world with clothing.

raggi 4y ago

even if all the sources were green, and they're not, the energy is being poured into the atmosphere as heat, which is still pollution.

datadata 4y ago
What is your definition of pollution which includes any heat? Is a hurricane pollution?
vmception 4y ago
where can I read about that, could potentially change my view, in some circumstances I think the pollution reduction is greater and I also think dissipation is different than hydrocarbon presence