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Any interest I might have in this is tempered by the fact that Bitcoin mining accounts for about 0.2% of global carbon emissions - roughly the same as the count

Any interest I might have in this is tempered by the fact that Bitcoin mining accounts for about 0.2% of global carbon emissions - roughly the same as the country of Greece. As long as Bitcoin is based on a proof-of-work process, I think the world would be better off without it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_bitco...

Heliodex 3y ago
I do believe there are many better proof systems available at the moment, and I thought its emissions would be higher than 0.2%. Though if fossil fuels account for the majority of global carbon emissions, and banks providing the majority of fossil fuel investments, banks should surely account for a much larger portion of global emissions. There is an argument to be made that Bitcoin could end up producing more carbon emissions if it already produces this much with a much lower transaction capacity than most banking systems. However, systems like the Lightning Network <https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network> build on top of Bitcoin by settling transactions before they ever reach the blockchain, slashing fees and bundling possibly hundreds or thousands of transactions into one, so the number of payments that actually occur could be much greater than it seems.
- lowkey 3y ago
  Ignoring banks for a moment, consider the US military which some claim protects the value of the dollar. According to The Atlantic, the US military alone counts for 5.5% of global carbon emissions. https://archive.is/DVWZs https://archive.is/DVWZs
  - cdchn 3y ago
    Whats the total market cap of the economic value protected by the US military?
- kinakomochidayo 3y ago
  Lightning Network design is horrible, and it's literally impossible to onboard millions of users without increasing the L1 blocksize to an absurd amount. The world will likely move onto using rollups on other chains like Ethereum instead, which scale better, and pays gas to validators to get included into the blocks. Seems like the Bitcoin community is looking into rollups on Bitcoin, but it'll be impossible to get trustless Bitcoin on them, even with BitVM, without a hardfork.
- miohat 3y ago
  You are wrong! Okay, the banks might cause more carbon emission than blockchains. But, the banking system serves the whole world, providing services for 8 billion people. But Blockchain is still a niche thing. You might say, no, Bitcoin is not niche, Blockchain is used by a lot of people! Then, you are wrong again. The media is talking about Blockchain all the time, but it is indeed a niche thing. No one is using, say Bitcoin, to buy real physical stuff, cryptocurrency is not taking part in the people's real life. So, my point is, if Blockchain is adopted by the world and replace the banking systems, it will definitely emit much much much more carbon, I am saying orders of magnitudes more.
emporas 3y ago
Computer chips do not need to use energy useful to humans, BTC and also deep learning algos just to name a few. Sam Altman should go to Saudis and plug GPUs directly as petroleum gets out of the ground, and then transfer the trained bits to any country he likes. Blockchain mining was a favorite for Icelanders who have in excess geothermal energy. Energy is expensive or not cheap, only on places in the world in which it is not abundant. Factories of robots (see Jeff Bezos), or computers mining numbers, or computers training statistics can be located anywhere we like. Also BTC is a blockchain, which support less than 1.000.000 tps, so not very useful. As soon as we want to put identities on a blockchain, thousands of identities per person or even millions, legal agreements hundreds and thousands per person every day, property transactions in the magnitude of a grain of sand, millions of property transactions per person every day, then 2 transactions per second on the whole blockchain does not cut it.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  but but but layer 2s!
- yownie 3y ago
  >Blockchain mining was a favorite for Icelanders who have in excess geothermal energy. Icelander here, our main power generation is from hydroelectric not geothermal, it's a common misconception. Also most of the mining here has moved on to easier places like Sweden and Norway. And for cooling / humidity reasons not solely electrical prices. It was also just foreign owned companies most Icelandic folk don't like it here (I think it makes good use of our remoteness and shit latency however)
  - emporas 3y ago
    Interesting, one question i had, was hydroelectric due to mountains/hills glaciation or in the sea like the UK. I googled it, it seems like the former. Geothermal always seemed to me, it's a pretty difficult source of energy to extract for factories n stuff. Like, a factory can melt steel, but no one wants the ground he stands on to melt as well. Hydroelectric is a much easier source to work with. Humans have used rivers as a source of energy for thousands of years.
halfcat 3y ago
Always strikes me as a weird take. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. As long as someone somewhere in the world keeps mining it will continue to exist. It would take the equivalent of a world war effort to, maybe, get enough people to stop mining, that a 51% attack could be successfully carried out. At which point the community would just fork and continue on. The only realistic option is to outcompete it. Build something better, where even the most greedy bad actors want in on the new thing, not because it’s better for the environment, but because it’s better for them (and happens to also be better for the environment). What people can do though, is try to get gas-powered leaf blowers banned in your neighborhood, and expand from there.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  Would you be surprised to learn that a lot of people live in a neighborhood where there is not a central broker with a power to ban anything?
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    Yes. And I think anywhere that leaf blowers are noticeable is almost certain to have a central authority with that power.
    - dgfitz 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - lazyasciiart 3y ago
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        dgfitz 3y ago
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    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
treyd 3y ago
This event does reduce the incentive to expend that compute power, which is generally good thing.
yownie 3y ago
And what percentages do videogames or movies add? Or gold mining?
- vitus 3y ago
  > Abraham broadly estimates the gaming industry produced between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 to create video games. That includes energy bought from local grids and used to keep the lights on and computers powered as developers make games. https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/features/video-games-are-finally-waking-up-to-climate-change/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/features/video-games-are-fi... Compare this to the linked wiki article: > A 2022 non-peer-reviewed commentary published in Joule estimated that bitcoin mining resulted in annual carbon emission of 65 Mt CO2, representing 0.2% of global emissions, which is comparable to the level of emissions of Greece. So, bitcoin mining results in CO2 emissions comparable to twice that of the entire video game and movie industries combined.
  - mistercheph 3y ago
    That's just the energy that goes into making them, what about the energy that goes into playing them? Has to be at least an order of magnitude greater
    - vitus 3y ago
      That's a good point, but I'm not sure it's quite as drastic as you think. There are about 400 million current and last-gen consoles that have been sold, all-time. I'd wager most of them spend 95% or more of their time unused. Steam shows about 20-30 million players online at any given point. Let's pretend this represents 50% of the PC gaming population (a vast underestimate of Steam's market share in the US and EU, not sure about other markets like China). What fraction of those are gaming PCs? Gaming laptops? Laptops with integrated graphics that really aren't meant for gaming? Let's say that your typical PC gamer uses 300W when playing video games. That's probably on the low end for a gaming PC, but an overestimate for any laptop. 300W * 24 * 365 * 60 million is about 160 billion kWh. That translates to, um, 33000 tons of CO2? So like 3 orders of magnitude smaller? I'm not even going to bother with the mobile game population because the power draw on those is like single-digit watts so even if there are 100x more players, the numbers are around the same order of magnitude. Even if my estimates of number of PC gamers at any moment and the wattage of the typical device are both off by 10x, that's still way smaller than the estimate of how carbon-intensive it is to make games.
lowkey 3y ago
I think you would be shocked to know how that compares to the emissions of the US military which some argue forms the security backing the US dollar. [1] “There are no solutions, only trade offs - Thomas Sowell” [1] https://archive.is/DVWZs https://archive.is/DVWZs
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Sure, the US$ is backed by a large military-industrial complex (as well as the power to tax and the productivity of the people and companies of the US), but if we switched from the US$ to BTC as the national currency we'd still need a US military - it's not like the only utility a military has is to keep the currency afloat.
  - lowkey 3y ago
    Can’t imagine we would still need 1000 bases in 80 countries around the world if we didn’t have to protect the petrodollar and reserve status. The same goes for gold. If only used for jewelry and industrial applications we wouldn’t need to strip mine so much of it.
- ramchip 3y ago
  Could it be that they protect more than just the value of the US dollar?
MithrilTuxedo 3y ago
Isn't it how electricity is produced that's causing the problem you describe?
tasuki 3y ago
0.2% is one in five hundred. That's just not a lot. Yes, better off without it, but it really makes no difference whatsoever...
teh_infallible 3y ago
Maybe we can just get rid of Greece and keep bitcoin?
npoc 3y ago
What is money if it's not proof of work?

Heliodex 3y ago

I do believe there are many better proof systems available at the moment, and I thought its emissions would be higher than 0.2%. Though if fossil fuels account for the majority of global carbon emissions, and banks providing the majority of fossil fuel investments, banks should surely account for a much larger portion of global emissions. There is an argument to be made that Bitcoin could end up producing more carbon emissions if it already produces this much with a much lower transaction capacity than most banking systems. However, systems like the Lightning Network <https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network https://wiki2.org/en/Lightning_Network> build on top of Bitcoin by settling transactions before they ever reach the blockchain, slashing fees and bundling possibly hundreds or thousands of transactions into one, so the number of payments that actually occur could be much greater than it seems.

lowkey 3y ago
Ignoring banks for a moment, consider the US military which some claim protects the value of the dollar. According to The Atlantic, the US military alone counts for 5.5% of global carbon emissions. https://archive.is/DVWZs https://archive.is/DVWZs
- cdchn 3y ago
  Whats the total market cap of the economic value protected by the US military?
kinakomochidayo 3y ago
Lightning Network design is horrible, and it's literally impossible to onboard millions of users without increasing the L1 blocksize to an absurd amount. The world will likely move onto using rollups on other chains like Ethereum instead, which scale better, and pays gas to validators to get included into the blocks. Seems like the Bitcoin community is looking into rollups on Bitcoin, but it'll be impossible to get trustless Bitcoin on them, even with BitVM, without a hardfork.
miohat 3y ago
You are wrong! Okay, the banks might cause more carbon emission than blockchains. But, the banking system serves the whole world, providing services for 8 billion people. But Blockchain is still a niche thing. You might say, no, Bitcoin is not niche, Blockchain is used by a lot of people! Then, you are wrong again. The media is talking about Blockchain all the time, but it is indeed a niche thing. No one is using, say Bitcoin, to buy real physical stuff, cryptocurrency is not taking part in the people's real life. So, my point is, if Blockchain is adopted by the world and replace the banking systems, it will definitely emit much much much more carbon, I am saying orders of magnitudes more.

emporas 3y ago

Computer chips do not need to use energy useful to humans, BTC and also deep learning algos just to name a few. Sam Altman should go to Saudis and plug GPUs directly as petroleum gets out of the ground, and then transfer the trained bits to any country he likes. Blockchain mining was a favorite for Icelanders who have in excess geothermal energy. Energy is expensive or not cheap, only on places in the world in which it is not abundant. Factories of robots (see Jeff Bezos), or computers mining numbers, or computers training statistics can be located anywhere we like. Also BTC is a blockchain, which support less than 1.000.000 tps, so not very useful. As soon as we want to put identities on a blockchain, thousands of identities per person or even millions, legal agreements hundreds and thousands per person every day, property transactions in the magnitude of a grain of sand, millions of property transactions per person every day, then 2 transactions per second on the whole blockchain does not cut it.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
but but but layer 2s!
yownie 3y ago
>Blockchain mining was a favorite for Icelanders who have in excess geothermal energy. Icelander here, our main power generation is from hydroelectric not geothermal, it's a common misconception. Also most of the mining here has moved on to easier places like Sweden and Norway. And for cooling / humidity reasons not solely electrical prices. It was also just foreign owned companies most Icelandic folk don't like it here (I think it makes good use of our remoteness and shit latency however)
- emporas 3y ago
  Interesting, one question i had, was hydroelectric due to mountains/hills glaciation or in the sea like the UK. I googled it, it seems like the former. Geothermal always seemed to me, it's a pretty difficult source of energy to extract for factories n stuff. Like, a factory can melt steel, but no one wants the ground he stands on to melt as well. Hydroelectric is a much easier source to work with. Humans have used rivers as a source of energy for thousands of years.

halfcat 3y ago

Always strikes me as a weird take. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. As long as someone somewhere in the world keeps mining it will continue to exist. It would take the equivalent of a world war effort to, maybe, get enough people to stop mining, that a 51% attack could be successfully carried out. At which point the community would just fork and continue on. The only realistic option is to outcompete it. Build something better, where even the most greedy bad actors want in on the new thing, not because it’s better for the environment, but because it’s better for them (and happens to also be better for the environment). What people can do though, is try to get gas-powered leaf blowers banned in your neighborhood, and expand from there.

dgfitz 3y ago
Would you be surprised to learn that a lot of people live in a neighborhood where there is not a central broker with a power to ban anything?
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  Yes. And I think anywhere that leaf blowers are noticeable is almost certain to have a central authority with that power.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dgfitz 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago

treyd 3y ago

This event does reduce the incentive to expend that compute power, which is generally good thing.

yownie 3y ago

And what percentages do videogames or movies add? Or gold mining?

vitus 3y ago
> Abraham broadly estimates the gaming industry produced between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 to create video games. That includes energy bought from local grids and used to keep the lights on and computers powered as developers make games. https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/features/video-games-are-finally-waking-up-to-climate-change/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/features/video-games-are-fi... Compare this to the linked wiki article: > A 2022 non-peer-reviewed commentary published in Joule estimated that bitcoin mining resulted in annual carbon emission of 65 Mt CO2, representing 0.2% of global emissions, which is comparable to the level of emissions of Greece. So, bitcoin mining results in CO2 emissions comparable to twice that of the entire video game and movie industries combined.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  That's just the energy that goes into making them, what about the energy that goes into playing them? Has to be at least an order of magnitude greater
  - vitus 3y ago
    That's a good point, but I'm not sure it's quite as drastic as you think. There are about 400 million current and last-gen consoles that have been sold, all-time. I'd wager most of them spend 95% or more of their time unused. Steam shows about 20-30 million players online at any given point. Let's pretend this represents 50% of the PC gaming population (a vast underestimate of Steam's market share in the US and EU, not sure about other markets like China). What fraction of those are gaming PCs? Gaming laptops? Laptops with integrated graphics that really aren't meant for gaming? Let's say that your typical PC gamer uses 300W when playing video games. That's probably on the low end for a gaming PC, but an overestimate for any laptop. 300W * 24 * 365 * 60 million is about 160 billion kWh. That translates to, um, 33000 tons of CO2? So like 3 orders of magnitude smaller? I'm not even going to bother with the mobile game population because the power draw on those is like single-digit watts so even if there are 100x more players, the numbers are around the same order of magnitude. Even if my estimates of number of PC gamers at any moment and the wattage of the typical device are both off by 10x, that's still way smaller than the estimate of how carbon-intensive it is to make games.

lowkey 3y ago

I think you would be shocked to know how that compares to the emissions of the US military which some argue forms the security backing the US dollar. [1] “There are no solutions, only trade offs - Thomas Sowell” [1] https://archive.is/DVWZs https://archive.is/DVWZs

UncleOxidant 3y ago
Sure, the US$ is backed by a large military-industrial complex (as well as the power to tax and the productivity of the people and companies of the US), but if we switched from the US$ to BTC as the national currency we'd still need a US military - it's not like the only utility a military has is to keep the currency afloat.
- lowkey 3y ago
  Can’t imagine we would still need 1000 bases in 80 countries around the world if we didn’t have to protect the petrodollar and reserve status. The same goes for gold. If only used for jewelry and industrial applications we wouldn’t need to strip mine so much of it.
ramchip 3y ago
Could it be that they protect more than just the value of the US dollar?

MithrilTuxedo 3y ago

Isn't it how electricity is produced that's causing the problem you describe?

tasuki 3y ago

0.2% is one in five hundred. That's just not a lot. Yes, better off without it, but it really makes no difference whatsoever...

teh_infallible 3y ago

Maybe we can just get rid of Greece and keep bitcoin?

npoc 3y ago

What is money if it's not proof of work?