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Cryptocurrency mining does not cause global warming. Burning fossil fuel does. Why not ban fossil fuel burning, if the concern is pollution? How are all other
by danuker 4y ago
Cryptocurrency mining does not cause global warming.
Burning fossil fuel does. Why not ban fossil fuel burning, if the concern is pollution? How are all other industries exempt?
- Closi 4y agoOne argument would be that the energy isn’t really creating anything extra for the world as mining crypto is a zero sum game - ie adding compute to the network doesn’t create additional coins it just increases difficulty (thus it’s burning fuel for no gain in output in aggregate). Ideally we want to use/focus our resources to create things which then create net value.
- danuker 4y agoThe "zero-sum" game is sponsored through buying/holding and transaction fees of cryptocurrency. People see value in it, in spite of its costs.
- Closi 4y agoI don’t mean in terms of the value of the coin - I mean that if mining activity increases, power consumption goes up but coins produced remains static. More mining does not provide more coins, only increased fuel burnt per coin. So in total for society, we are burning fuel for nothing in return in aggregate. And let’s be honest - a majority of these coins aren’t going to “citizen crypto miners”, they are typically going to huge scale crypto farms so it’s hardly spreading the wealth.
- danuker 4y agoI got what you meant. But apparently people agree with the >$600k/hour costs [1] it takes to process Bitcoin transactions. This cost is taken from the Bitcoin price (via miners selling) and from transaction fees. Therefore, they must think they are getting at least that much value out of the system. [1] - https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/
- Closi 4y agoI’m going to produce a new currency which will be backed by blasting CFCs into the atmosphere. 1 ozone coin is awarded per hour, based on a lottery where you get tickets depending on how much CFC you managed to blast. If people are willing to trade this, it must be valuable and also thus must be worth more than the environmental damage being caused.
- danuker 4y agoAh well, here I argue that CFCs, same as carbon emissions, should be regulated. But it should be fair across all industries. My hypothesis is: special laws betray special interest - here, Big Oil still wants most of the world to pollute, but Big Banks want Bitcoin out of the picture.
- Closi 4y ago> But it should be fair across all industries I think this is at the heart of the difference in opinion - if the free market efficiently determines the best use of resources. My personal view is that it often doesn’t, and that where it doesn’t that the government should sometimes intervene.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoYou very conveniently ignore the cost to society that is caused by the extra pollution. That is an externality that is paid by society and not Bitcoin miners, and thus society has a say about whether miners are allowed to run on fossil fuel in a particular state or not. As it turns out, a lot of things are profitable if you ignore societal costs.
- danuker 4y agoA fair solution would be to tax pollution, without exceptions. The specificity of this law exposes the corrupt interests that have captured the politicians (i.e. Big Oil).
- polygamous_bat 4y agoGamblers have always liked to gamble, however from time to time we have banned certain venues of gambling when we have deemed the "value" it provides those certain gamblers do not exceed the social cost of that particular venue of gambling.
- danuker 4y agoWell then ban it under a gambling argument, not an environmental one.
- woodruffw 4y agoThe gambling and environmental arguments are both variants of the same social externalities argument. It just happens to be the case that PoW schemes produce both negative externalities, rather than just one.
- roland35 4y agoOther industries use energy to produce useful things.
- dmarcos 4y agoProblem is that usefulness is not universal past essential things. I’m sure we can find many things you find wasteful that I consider useful and vice-versa.
- roland35 4y agoHaving a bunch of computers that don't trust each other all performing random calculations to find a specific hash and then add a small block of data to a globally duplicated append only data structure that processes about 7 transactions per second is pretty useless.
- danuker 4y agoI agree with you here. Which is why I use Bitcoin Cash instead. But I believe people should be free to waste/risk their money in general.
- roland35 4y agoThat's all fine, except in this case there are some extreme externalities unfortunately. We are all going to pay the price in the long term for this environmental waste. Sometimes regulations are required to protect a shared resource.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoI don't think I should be allowed to buy all the used tires and burn them on my backyard in an open flame next to the local middle school, even if it is my money and my backyard. What do you think?
- dmarcos 4y agoWhy do you think is designed this way? Some think that proof of work is essential in order to have a monetary system that it’s really hard to corrupt hence essential for them. Search for thermodynamically sound money. I’m sure proponents would be open to alternative designs if desired properties are retained.
- toolslive 4y agoIndeed. It can be seen as a battery: Superfluous solar power ? Mine! Not enough electricity ? Sell mined coin to buy electricity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _uhtu 4y agoBecause most fossil fuel burning is powering homes and factories. You know, useful stuff. Spending 3% of the world's power on sustaining a gambling addiction for a fringe group of gullible people who can't recognize when a technology, despite being interesting, has presented no social utility whatsoever (besides helping make scams easier) is bad policy.
- texasbigdata 4y agoWhat’s the fossil fuel burn of Bank of America’a entire IT and anti-fraud department? I don’t care about the merits of bitcoin, but these simplistic crude and inaccurate legislation attempts are fundamentally market distorting and inefficient and restrict our rights.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoWhatever it is, I'm sure it's orders of magnitude more sustainable per transaction than the mighty 7 transaction per seconds of Bitcoin.
- taolegal 4y agoOk looks like you're going to judge bitcoin on its transaction capacity. There's nearly an infinite number of transactions that can occur nearly instantaneously on L2 with the lightning network for example.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoOk, since you are such a big fan of lightning network, can you help me with some quick maths? Imagine we get everyone on the world to adopt Bitcoin + lightning. That means we need to open at least one payment channel for each person. How long would it take to create just that one payment channel per person, if we ignore all other transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain? [Spoiler: it's more than 30 years just for onboarding, for those who are curious. For the unaffiliated bystanders, next time you hear "Lightning network solves all issues, layer 2!" chant from the cult, remember that Bitcoin is still a tired old database at the bottom of it that is still looking for a problem to solve.]
- geysersam 4y agoBecause some uses of fossile fuels are more important than others.
- xiphias2 4y agoOther industries are not competing with the central banking system. It's not the first time new currencies were made illegal, actually it is expected.
- danuker 4y agoWell then, is the Governor acting on behalf of the Federal Reserve? Why is this reason not mentioned, and instead, environmental issues are raised?
- eloff 4y agoCryptocurrency isn't very useful as a currency, so it doesn't compete with fiat currencies. You can't use it to buy things, apart from illegal things. The exceptions are fringe uses only.
- xiphias2 4y agoThis is a plain lie. I'm buying most of my things with Bitcoin (using the lightning network). I'm offended by people saying that I use it for illegal things, just how I don't suppose a person is a drug dealer just because there's trace cocaine on the money he or she uses.
- eloff 4y agoDo tell how you pay in a store or restaurant with Bitcoin. Are you just a weirdo who doesn't leave your mom's basement?
- xiphias2 4y agoAs a digital nomad most of my travels (the expensive part of life) are with travala.com and cheapair.com (lightning works well with travala, but at least cheapair generally accepts 0-conf, although I wish they would accept lightning payments as well). Also I use Binance debit card for payments, they autoconvert to the currency that the country needs. Of course I use fiat currency accounts as well, I didn't say that, what I wrote is by Bitcoin payments are not illegal.
- davedx 4y agoI guess one argument is bitcoin mining could run when there's excess renewables capacity, and we should save baseload power generation from e.g. coal and nat gas for consumers that need it 24/7 like residential, hospitals, airports and the like. This is quite a heavy handed approach indeed, but yeah it is at state level. Maybe a more nuanced Federal level action is necessary.
- zdragnar 4y agoThe problem isn't the perfect regulation, the problem is enforcement. Without a grid so smart that the meter knows that a plugged in device is mining specific types of cryptocurrency, the regulation is worthless. A blanket ban is much easier to enforce, even if "easy" in this context is basically impossible.
- marcinzm 4y agoDid you read the linked letter? It says the ban is specifically on crypto-mining that uses fossil fuel power plants but allows it using other power plants.
- danuker 4y agoI did. It does not answer my question. Why not ban or penalize the cause of the pollution, rather than a customer of the power company?
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoBecause then someone would have to hold China to account, and too many US politicians are in China's pocket.
- marcinzm 4y agoThis is about crypto-mining operations that are running power plants that would otherwise not run. So to your point they are in fact banning the source of the pollution which is fossil fuel power plants. You're still free to pay market rates from the grid for your crypto-mining operations.
- danuker 4y ago> that are running power plants that would otherwise not run No, it says "that are operated through electric generating facilities that use a carbon-based fuel". How is using the grid not banned? Does grid energy not use carbon-based fuel?
- marcinzm 4y agoNo, a letter summarizing a law says that, the law itself says: >Section 2 places a moratorium on air permit issuance and renewal for an electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel and that provides, in whole or in part, behind-the-meter electric energy consumed or utilized by cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions.
- scld 4y agoBecause pollution is an easy way to jam through otherwise onerous regulation.
- datadata 4y agoTo be fair, the ban is for crypto mining that uses fossil fuels only. But I completely agree with your point that it should just be a ban on fossil fuels. More generally it is troubling that the ban implicitly is an attack against general purpose computing. There is a policy that only certain programs get to use energy sources. Even those who want to kill crypto currencies should think about the downstream consequences of this policy, and what else it could be applied to next.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago> More generally it is troubling that the ban implicitly is an attack against general purpose computing. ASICs that mine Bitcoin are _anything but_ a general purpose computer. It's like saying "banning coal rollers is an affornt against general transportation". I personally would be pretty okay if the ban was against Bitcoin mining ASICs instead, knowing that it does nothing to restrict any other computing freedom.
- datadata 4y agoThe ban is not specifically for bitcoin with asic mining, but for all "proof of work" operations. You are right that most bitcoin hardware is not general purpose computing hardware, but I would still defend the liberty of a business to optimize their hardware for whatever their compute objective is.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoWhat about rolling coal [0]? Do you support vehicle owner's right to modify and optimize their vehicle for whatever their objective is? Or do you think computation is somehow magical and thus different? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoNo, but it's a contributing factor, using up all the power consumption of a small country. Turn off crypto mining, they can turn off a few dozen fossil fuel plants. But it's a variant of Parkinson's Law in action; new energy production is gobbled up by whatever industry. We're building huge offshore windmill farms, but their capacity is bought up by datacenters. We don't need more green energy per sé; we need to reduce consumption wholesale.
- mavhc 4y agoNo need to ban fossil fuel burning, just tax all pollution at the level required to clean up said pollution, then use that money to clean up the pollution.