22 ms·
The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a c
by edgefield0 6y ago
The fact that bitcoin mining on its own is now consuming as much electricity as the country of Argentina with no end in sight, as we are accelerating toward a climate change cliff, is sickening. Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ptd 6y agoWhy is the idea of people using electricity to make money so sickening?
- pushrax 6y agoImplicitly they are arguing the value to people is low compared to energy consumption. They are sickened by the allocation of our limited sustainable energy production to this inefficient endeavour. Presumably a proof of stake system with energy consumption within a few orders of magnitude of centralized ledgers would not be sickening.
- tshaddox 6y agoThat’s the question that I never see answered. Presumably if someone is using electricity to mine bitcoins, it’s because they couldn’t use that electricity for something more valuable (including things this commenter would probably consider more wholesome? or “valuable to society”?) like producing food.
- dTal 6y agoBecause money is a collective fiction we can easily "make" using only ideas, while electricity is a real and finite resource, the safe and sustainable generation of which is a primary concern for our future. It feels like a bad trade.
- lottin 6y agoThank you. This is exactly it.
- saltyfamiliar 6y agoSure, but if you want it to be _sound_ money, it has to backed by some kind of inherent scarcity or guarantee which implies work and energy expenditure. If you want to be able to store it on a flash drive and transfer it to a different continent with no intermediaries, that too will cost something. If it were 'fictional' enough to be free, it wouldn't be useful.
- dTal 6y agoI don't think that's inherently true. What's required is trust that one hasn't fiddled the numbers, and scarcity of some token is just one way of accomplishing that. Here's a monetary system, not unlike bitcoin: All transactions occur in the market square, at the Town Ledger. Everyone's balance is public, and every transaction is witnessed by everyone else lining up for their turn at the Ledger. Everyone keeps an eye on their balance and the balance of a few friends. The mayor locks up the Ledger at night of course, but discrepancies tend to get the mayor lynched so she keeps a very close eye on it. The system started by tracking barters, but it got too confusing to track all the different things, so it was agreed to simply write down a number equivalent to the trade's value in chickens as determined by average exchange rate over all previous transactions - nothing special about chickens, they were just a very commonly traded good which made for well-defined exchange rates. After a few chicken runs, the villagers agreed to abandon the chicken standard in favor of shiny meteorites that fell from the sky once every ten years. They were technically slightly inflationary, but people lost them from time to time as well so it kind of evened out. Anyway, there weren't many of them around; most transactions were in fractions of a shiny meteor-pebble. It was just a convenient reference. And nobody had to mine anything.
- simonw 6y agoBecause if there's a direct connection between the amount of electricity used and the amount of money generated, the only logical conclusion is for human society to burn up every possible available ounce of energy as quickly as possible.
- young_unixer 6y agoMaybe we should blame the defenders of constant inflation and government overreach. You mentioned Argentina, which is a prime example of these problems. If we didn't have those problems in the first place, Bitcoin wouldn't be as attractive.
- Moodles 6y agoWhat % of bitcoin owners own it for political reasons along your lines, compared to people just using it as an investment?
- iamricks 6y agoWell, since you can own bitcoin anonymously, any answer to this question other than “i don’t know” will have a huge margin of error
- jki275 6y agoBitcoin isn't anonymous at all. It's at best pseudonymous, but even that is pretty easy to break. There are companies who do nothing but provide analysis services that link real people to bitcoin addresses.
- vinger 6y agoThey haven't uncovered who created bitcoin yet. While working with exchanges accounts can be linked to a person. The ability to do this at scale or find any person from any account isn't real.
- jki275 6y agoSure it is. Chainalysis does it all the time. Satoshi left the scene without ever cashing anything out, and before blockchain analysis really became a thing. He's not relevant to modern bitcoin at all outside of having been a founder of it a long time ago. If he were spending bitcoin today, he could be found and identified easily, which is likely why he (actually the conglomerate that posed as him, Satoshi isn't likely a person) left once he achieved his goals.
- ajmurmann 6y agoThe real solution here is not complaining about individual use cases of energy, but effective carbon pricing. Wit cap & trade on a global level, this wouldn't be an issue. Of course there seems no political will nor ability to make this happen any time soon.
- kevingadd 6y agoIn some cases miners literally steal electricity or other resources to mine, so carbon pricing won't affect scenarios like that [1]. Maybe we can treat those as a rounding error... At the point where miners are willing to do things like build a transformer station you're in wild territory way beyond a neighbor tapping into your cable line for free TV. If the money's good, what's stopping a connected miner from bribing the right people to get a discount on electricity and skip the carbon tax? [1] https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/russian-power-firm-illegal-crypto-miners-steal-9-5m/ https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/russian...
- wmf 6y agowhat's stopping a connected miner from bribing the right people to get a discount on electricity and skip the carbon tax? International sanctions. Civilize or die.
- vinger 6y agoThe big miners in China and Iceland are using hydro and geothermal. Pricing the other miners out might have some interesting side effects.
- exyi 6y agoChina is relying heavily on coal power (AFAIK, can't find reliable source quickly). Iceland has clean energy, but in contrary to the popular wisdom "only" ~30% is geothermal, most is hydro. See https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/IS https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/IS for more detail.
- 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rcstank 6y agoHow much energy is consumed by online banking? Big Tech in general? These are sincere questions.
- philjohn 6y agoA single bitcoin transaction uses ~ 600,000x as much energy as a single transaction on the Visa network.
- kfrzcode 6y agoDo you have a source to cite here?
- shawnz 6y agoBitcoin's energy usage isn't determined by the transaction count but by its valuation. Raising the limit of transactions on the Bitcoin network wouldn't affect the energy consumption (but it would have other trade-offs).
- kevingadd 6y agoAren't there significant technological obstacles to raising the transaction limit, not to mention the fact that large miners have actively obstructed attempts to raise it in the past? My understanding is that we only finally got a block size increase with segwit in 2017 and that only happened after people worked around miner sabotage.
- shawnz 6y agoThere are no technological obstacles per se, but it will increase the rate which the size of the blockchain grows. It's true miners have obstructed attempts to make these kind of changes but they don't control the price of Bitcoin. If market demand for a higher transaction rate becomes great enough and they don't adapt, then another coin with bigger blocks will simply outcompete Bitcoin.
- another_sock 6y ago
- ssss11 6y agoTo give you the other side: It also uses less than all idle devices plugged in, in the US. Either Argentina doesnt use as much as you’d think or the US wastes a whole lot of power doing nothing. I’d argue thats way worse than mining bitcoin! Anyway its a sensationalist statistic designed to arouse your response. I’d expect theres heaps of things more wasteful.. office building services running 24/7 comes to mind
- smeyer 6y agoYeah, but the rest of us don't have to put up with legions of people excitedly explaining about how idle devices are great and everyone else should idle more devices. Bitcoin consuming massive amounts of electricity is bad. Idle devices consuming massive amounts of electricity is also bad.
- rcstank 6y agoGP claimed that generating dollars using electricity is bad. Isn't that what the majority of companies are doing? Edit: that's my whole point: mining BTC is generating value by verifying transactions. In turn, the miner gets paid for their work.
- mrb 6y agoPlease realize that Argentina uses slightly more energy than a single hydroelectric power station like the Itaipu Dam (103 TWh/year). A single dam. So, really the comparison is more a testament of how little electricity Argentina uses.
- Symbiote 6y agoThat is the second largest hydroelectric dam is the world. Pick the Netherlands instead for the comparison, which has similar consumption to Argentina.
- mrb 6y agoThat is still a single dam. A whole country could be powered by a single dam.
- fifilura 6y agoThe number of places where you can build a dam is limited, and when you find one it is not unlikely that you have to relocate > 1 million people to build it (Three Gorges Dam). That is on the other side of the scale you are talking about.
- mrb 6y agoThe point is about making a comparison. When Bitcoin's energy consumption is equaled to that of a single dam, it just doesn't seem that impressive.
- fifilura 6y agoThat is not just any "single" dam, but the world's second largest. The largest dam in Sweden, which is my reference, a country where hydro is the biggest source of electricity, produces 2TWh/y. (And sadly much of that energy now goes to heavily subsidized Facebook and Google servers because it is cool to have those companies in your town, and collect income tax from the 10-ish people that work there)
- DennisP 6y agoSome cryptocurrencies are trying to fix that by moving to proof-of-stake, which does away with the mining effort entirely.
- pcthrowaway 6y agoSome cryptocurrencies also use PoS natively, and have been for years
- willbudd 6y agoProof-of-work =/= cryptocurrency. There are cryptocurrencies that work without proof-of-work, and those that quantitatively rely on it to a far lesser degree. Honestly, it continues to surprise me how clueless most of HN commenters are on this topic.
- coolestguy 6y agoIt really is pretty bewildering how many top comments here show almost 0 understanding of the technology. How many other topics that get posted here have the same thing happening??
- hddu 6y agoWow it's almost like the media is all propaganda and lies, people on the internet claim to be smart while they don't really understand what they are talking about, wow who knew. (Yes I include myself in the pulling shit out my ass on the internet group)
- notjtrig 6y agoThat's a very good point. It is sort of demonised in the media but tech people understand encryption and cracking, phreaking, p2p networks, finge topics are our speciality. An intrested mind does not sit in front of a powerful research platform to claim ignorance year after year. People in tech disporportantly ignore crypto and it's a shame. Why would we want to create another currency system when we feel enslaved to the first one but at the same time aware we are the minority of people, and hold an incredible privilege. It's easier to pretend you don't understand, or just don't think about it, look the other way and suck on those corporate titties to the tune of 250k USD/year because that's the attitude that got us to the top.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoI have a theory that Hacker News is sufficiently influenced by the investor class that anything disrupting their business model gets special treatment quite outside the site's usual techno-optimist repertoire.
- 6y ago
- justblaze23 6y agohttps://nano.org/ https://nano.org/ - That's the reply
- kasparkallas 6y agoThere are many alternative cryptocurrency projects to solve the environmental, speed and cost issues of Bitcoin. Nano looks like a genuine project but ultimately it’s an experiement with a non-inflatonary currency with high-volatility. This model is bound to fail barring a miracle.
- mareko 6y agoNot all cryptocurrencies are the same. Many newer ones run PoS which doesn't 'waste' energy. The Celo network goes even further and is carbon negative. It sends a portion of block rewards to Project Wren, which uses them to buy carbon credits to offset more carbon than the network emits to run. https://medium.com/celoorg/celo-to-go-carbon-neutral-with-project-wren-66f7dda5512d https://medium.com/celoorg/celo-to-go-carbon-neutral-with-pr...
- balaa 6y agothis is painful VC virtue signaling, Celo is an AOL blockchain.
- jki275 6y agoTezos and Cardano are the top two cryptocurrencies that don't use this model at all. They use proof of stake, which doesn't consume any significant amount of electricity. Also, the vast majority of the electricity being consumed for bitcoin mining is hydro in China and has nothing to do with climate change. Also, equating bitcoin to cryptocurrency isn't accurate at all. There are hundreds of others.
- samsonradu 6y ago> the vast majority of the electricity being consumed for bitcoin mining is hydro in China Side concern but isn’t this concentration a red flag? Likely many miners are in China or Russia due to the electricity prices. Can’t they collude to execute a 51% attack?
- jki275 6y agoThey possibly can. Nearly all of them are in China, and nearly all of them are owned by a single company that manufactures the ASIC processors that do the mining. This is why I'm not a bitcoin maximalist and I'm not a huge fan of it. I have a suspicion that eventually it will fail.
- akra 6y agoThey could and can. The problem with both PoW and PoS is concentration of consensus/trust over time I think. There are models I've seen that break that up somewhat in PoW and potentially other forms by relying on something that is hard to concentrate (e.g. the market for consumer grade CPU's, social networks, etc). I would like something that anyone can run, but has some natural barrier that prevents it from being centralised.
- jki275 6y agoThat's proof of stake. Look at Cardano and Tezos.
- ericflo 6y agoElectricity consumption doesn't equal climate change per se - not all electricity is created equally. I see PoW cryptocurrencies as one of the most promising incentives to move to a sustainable energy future. Given the lack of political will for policy-based incentives for this goal, a market-based incentive is welcomed.
- throwaway3699 6y agoPower consumption is irrelevant if we're using green technologies for mining. The fact that the green lobby is staunchly anti-nuclear makes it very hard for me to care, though.
- cableshaft 6y agoYep, nuclear really should be part of the discussion for clean energy.
- jonplackett 6y agoKind of a weird buy-in from Tesla on that basis isn’t it.
- hddu 6y agoEvery time I hear someone talk about the electricity consumption of argentinia I laugh and think of the soy wojak gif.
- macawfish 6y agoIt's hard to see it as anything but that because cryptocurrency people don't collectively realize the gravity of the PR disaster they have on their hands. Central banks are looking for reasons to shut down the whole cryptocurrency space and in an ignorant public's eye, bitcoin's absurd energy waste is a perfect reason to do just that. Where is the coinmarketcap-like tool that indexes cryptocurrency projects' energy (in)efficiencies and e-waste footprints? Where is the tool that's easy to use and shows how efficient cryptocurrency projects are in real time? Without that, the whole space is in serious jeopardy, including those few projects that actually have the potential to benefit people and the planet?
- macawfish 6y agoIt's hard to see it as anything but that because cryptocurrency people don't collectively realize the gravity of the PR disaster they have on their hands. Central banks are looking for reasons to shut down the whole cryptocurrency space and in an ignorant public's eye, bitcoin's absurd energy waste is a perfect reason to do just that. Where is the coinmarketcap-like tool that indexes cryptocurrency projects' energy (in)efficiencies and e-waste footprints? Where is the tool that's easy to use and shows how efficient cryptocurrency projects are in real time? Without that, the whole space is in serious jeopardy, including those few projects that actually have the potential to benefit people and the planet.
- nietzsch3 6y agoBitcoin uses 7% of the energy the global banking system uses and its energy use doesn't scale with adoption
- K0nserv 6y agoDoes that follow? Surely as Bitcoin becomes more and more valuable there's more and more incentive to mine and the more entranched it becomes more important to defend against 51% attacks become. It seems to me that what has happened historically i.e. ever more people starting to mine will continue as long as Bitcoin remains valuable.
- nietzsch3 6y agoYeah and I simply don't see 51% attacks working or going on for long periods of time due to adoption and game theory. Nation states simply can't afford gain 51% because it would mean they're already losing legitimacy of their currency IMO.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoBitcoin is probably the most important social/technological innovation since the internet (which uses how much energy?). Most people realize that moving humanity forward requires energy. There's loud neo-luddite contingent that missed the boat on crypto (it's actually not too late), but I wouldn't take angry anti-crypto HN comments as public sentiment. The public is in desperate need of a finance system not tied to the existing oppressive establishment.
- nietzsch3 6y agoThis comment is incredibly ignorant and I'm going to have an aneurysm if it gets brought up again - bitcoin uses a 1/3rd of the energy used in gold mining - bitcoin uses 7% of the energy used in the global banking system - bitcoin energy usage does not scale with adoption, actual payments are meant to be made on the lightning network (faster and cheaper than Visa), and settled eventually on the blockchain https://www.danheld.com/blog/2019/1/5/pow-is-efficent https://www.danheld.com/blog/2019/1/5/pow-is-efficent
- SamBam 6y ago> bitcoin uses a 1/3rd of the energy used in gold mining - bitcoin uses 7% of the energy used in the global banking system Those are both gigantic energy expenditures, and to say that BitCoin uses only a third of the energy that another despicable planet-destroying industry does doesn't speak much in the favor of BitCoin. Nor does saying that something ~50 million people own (0.5% of the Earth's population) is "only" 15% of the entire global financial system used by 7.3 billion people.
- nietzsch3 6y agoWould you rather have us use the bad system that uses more energy or the better system that uses less energy?
- SamBam 6y ago...which is which? Since the global financial system clearly uses much, much less energy per person, I'm guessing that you're also calling it the "better system?" Or are you pretending that if BitCoin were used by every person on Earth that it would still be using the exact same energy?
- nietzsch3 6y agoDid you read my initial comment? Bitcoin uses 7% of the energy the global financial system uses and its energy usage does not scale with adoption. Transactions are meant to be run on the Lightning Network which consumes next to nothing compared to Visa, and long term savings are meant to be stored on the blockchain. This argument that Bitcoin uses too much energy has been around since its whitepaper and has been countered multiple times. *edit, not debunked but countered with practical solutions
- bookmarkable 6y agoSickening? Really? Don't you find it interesting that currency free of nation-state regulators would be attacked as anti-environmental? These same regulators would love to steer policy and public opinion by calling something that reduces their influence bad for the climate, even if such a thing is run on clean energy, solar, etc. That seems suspicious. Beware of what -isms you are repeating and supporting - they are very likely aligned with other -isms you would not support, or are a root cause of the issue you care about in the first place. Environmentalism is no exception. Overall, blockchain currency has the ability to help humanity. If that requires more power, well, so does everything. I'd focus on how to generate that power renewably, not to argue against a technology that millions in the unbanked world could use to better their situation. I'd suggest you learn more about the problems that present cryptocurrency as a potential solution before just listing new problems.
- jboog 6y agoI've been hearing for almost a decade how Bitcoin was going to change the world and help humanity and yet...nothing. Other than some speculators and early adopters getting rich. I've yet to hear of anything "world-changing" BTC could do that isn't already done better by traditional systems.
- wtfrmyinitials 6y agoIf people can print money, they will.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoFor the past 10 years you could have kept your money in a savings account or Bitcoin. One of those has been decimated by a fiat printing press, the other has been a great investment. Bitcoin has already changed humanity for the better and it's only getting started.
- jlmorton 6y ago> One of those has been decimated by a fiat printing press, the other has been a great investment How has the US dollar been destroyed? It has enjoyed remarkable price stability, very close to the target rate, which is what everyone expects and can plan for. The other has seen astronomical, wild price swings, which no one could plan for, and while it's currently enjoying a high value (just as tulips once did), it was worth 95% less just 10 months ago - and probably will be again soon.
- base698 6y agoYeah it's definitely more sickening than fiat that allows endless wars and death all over the globe.
- IntFee588 6y agoThis is precisely why Ethereum and its new proof-of-stake mechanism will take over as the dominant currency in the next few years. I wouldn't expect crypto to disappear. The market is currently worth $1.5 trillion, people will fight for its adoption to keep their investment.
- cableshaft 6y agoIt very well might. Bitcoin has first mover, an easier and better name, and more awareness behind it, but ETH might eventually take over. I'm rooting for both (and for bitcoin to eventually find a better solution to its power issues).
- xtian 6y ago> Given this fact alone it's hard to see cryptocurrency as anything but a selfish crackpot scheme to generate a few dollars at the expense of humanity and our planet. You could say the same thing about the US military, which is the world's single largest producer of CO2 emissions.
- thamer 6y agoIt really is terrible, and many enthusiasts don't seem to understand enough about Bitcoin to even realize it. For so many it's just a way to make a quick buck when Elon tweets about it. To put in in numbers, according to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index[1] (they link to other research that arrive at similar conclusions, if not worse): the total footprint is almost 37 million tons of CO2, a single transaction accounting for over 300 kg. A single transaction requires the same amount of energy as an average household over 22 days, or emits the same amount of CO2 as a 2020 Civic driving 1,000 miles. The comparison with the visa network is just as wild: a single bitcoin transaction takes more energy than 432,000 visa transactions. At this point it's highly irresponsible to continue using and supporting Bitcoin. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
- varajelle 6y agoTake the cost of your house, divide by the amount of time you enter your house through the door. You get the price each time you get into your house. For a 300k$ house and entering the house twice a day for 20 years that's about 20$ each time you enter your house. Does not make sense? Of course not because dividing the amount of electricity used to mine a block by the amount of transactions also doesn't make sense.
- vkou 6y agoNo, what you're saying makes no sense for a different reason. When you buy a house, you don't take $300,000 and set it on fire. If you, after 20 years, sell that house for $600,000, does that mean that you were paid $20, each time you entered your house? A bitcoin transaction, on the other hand, is quite literally a colossal waste of electricity, to enable an incredibly small amount of value (Settling one transaction.) You may be able to argue that it also enables another kind of value (A bunch of bitcoin hoarders getting rich), but that's not value that's of relevance to literally anyone else in the world. Look, you can make an argument that traditional billionaires help the world by much handwaving of invisible hands efficiently allocating resources in open markets. What second order forms of value for the world does the existence of bitcoin speculators create?
- Helloworldboy 6y agoThis environmental concern trolling is so blatantly astroturfed.
- fuf7ru44yyruf 6y agoAre we done pretending people like you are anything more than the new anti-industrialists yet? If it were up to the green crowd we'd be back to using candles and carrier pigeons.
- cableshaft 6y agoWe might have no choice at some point (like the choice will be made for us, by the planet), at the rate we're going. But that being said, I think there are bigger fish to fry than bitcoin in that department right now. And besides, if Proof-of-Stake becomes viable and desirable enough, they'll adopt it into Bitcoin's protocol, or some other Proof-of-Stake coin will eventually take over. Maybe it'll be Ethereum once it switches. Or something else. And then this will be a non-issue.
- o_p 6y agoIts the cost of a decentralized currency, people find it worthwhile and priced it accordingly. Who are you to say that is wrong?
- balaa 6y agoBitcoin's security is a function of the electricity that is expended for its operation. Unfortunately, Bitcoin's unwavering commitment to a lack of technical innovation (via political coercion) will be the catalyst of its eventual downfall barring any adjustments to the economic goalposts ie when fees aren't enough to sustain security once block rewards dry up. Bitcoin is either a self fulfilling prophecy or it isn't. The biggest threat to Bitcoin are the much more efficient 2nd and 3rd generation distributed consensus mechanisms; See ETH, DOT, AVAX, etc. Proof-of-stake blockchains are accomplishing more than was ever imagined possible with Bitcoin at a fraction of the cost. It's unfortunate how uninformed people willing to jump into a conversation/invest in cryptocurrencies can be.
- o_p 6y agoHow much energy consumes the industrial military complex that sustains the fiat value of your US dollar?
- hahahahe 6y agoWait till Satoshi is revealed to be Jensen Huang.
- antonzabirko 6y agoLol, it is probably one of the least unethical uses of electricity that i can think of while not being net positive. If you care about this, realign onto cloud computing or industrial equipment for deforestation. It's disingenuous to care more about btc mining.
- notjtrig 6y agoThe USD is backed by military might and risk of invasion, this is known as the petrodollar it currently requires a US military that uses the equivalent resources as 140 countries. If you consider 98 million barrels per year used by the military to protect 1.5 trillion USD, every million in the bank uses 65.5 gallons of oil per year.
- colinmorelli 6y agoYou're really attributing the entirety of the US military's oil consumption strictly to the preservation of US currency? That's quite disingenuous. Did I miss the part where moving to cryptocurrency will eliminate the need for a military?
- analog31 6y agoThe entire economic and technology infrastructure of the world is backed up by military power. I believe we should talk about all three things: Military expenditure, energy usage, and money systems. All can be improved or made more efficient independent of the others to a substantial degree. The things that are worth buying with bitcoins are still largely produced by the conventional economy.
- doggosphere 6y ago73% of mining is renewable energy https://pd.coinshares.com/EN-Mining-Whitepaper-December-2019 https://pd.coinshares.com/EN-Mining-Whitepaper-December-2019
- opinologo 6y agoYou know what else consumes heaps of electricty? Your computer, your data centre, your AWS account the bank services you consume, your appliances and a large etcetera. Bitcoin is the first financial break-through in a long, long time. Is designed to move control away from the few back into the hands of the people. In Argentina people love investing in Bitcoin because their currency is awful. It loses value because the government can print more. Just like in the US. No government can print more Bitcoin so the value keeps growing. Bitcoin alternatives like Bitcoin cash (or regular Bitcoin but with a bigger block size) can be used across the border without censorship. Remember MasterCard banning donations to Wikileaks? Bitcoin cannot be banned. Back to your comment. Now we have solar, we have wind power. All clean sources of energy. They are cheaper than coal and can power everything. Including Bitcoin.
- louloulou 6y agoThen there should be a global tax on carbon emissions. This is not a Bitcoin issue it's an issue with atmospheric carbon emissions not being priced correctly.
- AngryData 6y agoIs that any worse than our culture of disposable items that have no business being disposable? Washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers have no reason to not last 25 years, they haven't changed how they function in over 50 years. And all the smaller consumer crap that works maybe a dozen times before an irreparable part or piece fails. Or how many working cars were destroyed in cash for clunkers only to be replaced by trash that is harder to repair and maintain? Using energy on "worthless" cryptocoins isn't great but we produce tons of other worthless shit using tons of energy and materials that will be worth nothing in just a few years without blinking an eye.
- hjek 6y agoAgreed with your point of disposable items. Regardless of whataboutisms, the point about Bitcoin using more power than Argentina still stands. (If person A says that traffic accidents are horrible, and person B says "Is that any worse than war?"; while B is correct, that doesn't make traffic accidents any less horrible.)
- hulahoof 6y agoOf course not, but taken to extremes we would have nothing to compare actions to. At a certain level of abstraction we need to be able to compare at the fruit level and not apples or oranges.
- Solvitieg 6y agoTo everyone complaining about energy: We will almost certainly use more energy in the future than we use today. The proper response to climate change is not necessarily to consume less energy.