[dfee]

I don’t follow. Can you explain?

[vasilipupkin]

gold mining uses a ton of energy, more than bitcoin mining. To the extent that people substitute gold for bitcoin in financial portfolios, this is positive since net energy waste is lower.

[mikeash]

It seems like a bad comparison, since you don’t need to mine gold just to move it around. Transferring ownership can be accomplished for the amount of energy it takes to send a small electronic message.

[vasilipupkin]

to move it around you need trucks which use gasoline

[mikeash]

You don’t need to move it to transfer ownership of it.

[vasilipupkin]

by that logic, same thing applies to bitcoin. on a centralized exchange ownershp is just an entry in the database

[mikeash]

It would apply to bitcoin if that were the usual way to transfer it, but it doesn’t look like that’s the case.

[moocow01]

How do you know that gold mining uses more energy than bitcoin mining?

[vasilipupkin]

I mean, I don't know it for sure, that's why I said "to the extent..." but here is one article

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-i...

[JBReefer]

Gonna need a lot of citations to believe that

[vasilipupkin]

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-i...