[pshin45]

Indeed, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, to put those numbers in context, Bitcoin consumes as much power globally as a single large power plant, and roughly 10% of the world's data centers [1].

To be sure, it's the growth rate of that consumption that is more concerning. But at the same time, there are lots of reasons to believe that Bitcoin's electricity consumption will naturally moderate and flatten over time.

If you think Bitcoin has even a 1% chance of changing the world for the better e.g. via increased financial inclusion for lower-income populations, I think that amount of electricity is a reasonable "investment" to make (for now).

[1] https://medium.com/@petershin45/bitcoin-is-killing-the-plane...

[beefield]

If there is one percent chance of bitcoin making world somehow better place, I wonder what are the odds bitcoin makes world somehow worse place ( e.g. fostering criminal endeavours, pseudolegal scams,failed monetary policy and environmental problems) and how does those odds change the equation?

[pshin45]

The same could be said for any new technology – they are always a double-sword, and it's our responsibility as technologists to do what we can to maximize the upside and minimize the downside.

The internet has changed society for the better in innumerable ways, but it's also robbed us of privacy and freedoms. Cars allow greater access to economic opportunities for people living outside urban centers, but they are also responsible for most of the world’s air pollution, and millions of people are killed each year as a result of traffic collisions.

This is the reality we have to face as people who work in technology.

[samastur]

1% chance of changing the world for the better says nothing unless you also specify how much better.

Local bakery makes world a bit better, but not really worth if you needed a whole power plant to run it (intentionally ridiculously extreme for demonstration purposes).

[pshin45]

> unless you also specify how much better.

That is impossible for anyone to say with any certainty, because the future impact of new technologies are, by their nature, impossible to predict.

The oft-cited statistic is that 2 billion adults worldwide are still completely “unbanked” and don’t even have a basic checking or savings account. One percent of 2 billion is 20 million people (roughly the population of a mid-size country), many of them living in poverty.

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with M-Pesa in Kenya to happen more easily in any country in the world.

I've written about this as well. You can skip to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked" to read data on how m-Pesa has improved life for many poor and rural Kenyans.

https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan...

[notahacker]

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with a global decentralized currency like Bitcoin to happen to the 2 billion unbanked too. I'm not convinced that foisting 50% weekly price swings, MtGox-calibre ecosystem security and Bitfinex-style creative accounting upon poorly educated people who rely on those savings to not die is a net positive for society.

Aside from the obvious downsides, Bitcoin doesn't even do any of the good bits of m-Pesa (local currency denominations, works on dumbphone, instant transactions, intuitive because it's basically mobile credit, loans and repayments)

[pshin45]

I agree that everything you say is true or has been true of Bitcoin at some point.

However, the more important question is how all of those things will change going forwards.

Is Bitcoin's volatility decreasing? Yes.

Will Bitcoin ever become stable enough to be a reliable store of value comparable to gold or the US dollar? We'll see.

Will cryptocurrency security and management improve? Most certainly.

Will new regulations help weed out bad actors? One would hope so.

Will Bitcoin become easier to use on mobile devices? I can't see why not.

Will Bitcoin transactions become instant or near-instant? Many people in the space are working on it.

Will Bitcoin become more intuitive? I would bet yes.

[notahacker]

To put the "single large power plant" whose output exceeds Bitcoin usage in context, it's one so big that 1.3 million people were displaced to build it...

If one wanted to help lower income populations, it could be difficult to conceive a solution less likely to help them than bidding up energy prices to safeguard the proceeds of wealthy hackers' speculation. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Bitcoin neither provides nor ever will provide as much utility to the world as, say, Ireland.

[pshin45]

> so big that 1.3 million people were displaced to build it.

The fact that China built a large hydroelectric power plant (Three Gorges Dam) that displaced a lot of people, shouldn't be an argument against Bitcoin. There are ways to provide electricity for Bitcoin mining that are green and don't displace people.

> safeguard the proceeds of wealthy hackers' speculation

The people who get richest from the stock market are those who are already wealthier to begin with. Are you against the stock market and securities in general?

> nor ever will provide as much utility to the world as, say, Ireland.

Apples to oranges comparisons aside, a better comparison would be Bitcoin eventually becoming a popular alternative for gold investment, and/or an alternative to Western Union.

Gold mining causes direct physical destruction of landscapes and ecosystems [1]. I think Bitcoin mining largely displacing gold mining is a good thing.

Western Union charges as much as $95 to send $1,000 [2], and their customers are generally poorer working-class people. M-Pesa in Kenya has already demonstrated that mobile money services can lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty [3]. The Bitcoin protocol doesn't have a corporate profit motive and can become a cheaper and more globally scalable version of Western Union or M-Pesa.

[1] https://www.brilliantearth.com/gold-mining-environment/

[2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/western-union-review...

[3] https://news.mit.edu/2016/mobile-money-kenyans-out-poverty-1...

[notahacker]

> The fact that China built a large hydroelectric power plant (Three Gorges Dam) that displaced a lot of people, shouldn't be an argument against Bitcoin.

It was an observation about how much of an understatement "a single power station" was, not a suggestion large scale hydroelectric was the world's only power source. I mean, another way of putting it would be 10+ large coal fired power stations which is probably a more accurate reflection of how the additional power generating capacity is supplied...

> The people who get richest from the stock market are those who are already wealthier to begin with. Are you against the stock market and securities in general?

No, but I'd never pretend that, say, an HFT trading shop was going to save the poor, still less that it had such potential to liberate the poor it would be worth using the same amount of electricity as Ireland to run their trading algorithms

> a better comparison would be Bitcoin eventually becoming a popular alternative for gold investment, and/or an alternative to Western Union.

Whether you love gold or find its appeal faintly ludicrous, its demand has survived over several thousand years of increasingly advanced alternative investments, and continued to increase after the end of a gold standard, so arguments that the existence of Bitcoin might seriously dent gold mining are hard to take seriously even before we get to the stage where the actual litmus test is dent gold mining to the extent it cancels out the energy use consequences of Bitcoin

I've used Western Union to send myself amounts in the $1k range to a developing country before. Cost including currency conversion was nowhere near $95 (people have paid more than I did for BTC-BTC transactions!) and I got cash I could actually spend. And I don't think a better Western Union (everything in the history of Bitcoin suggests catastrophically worse Western Union) would be a good use for more energy resources than a typical developing world country either, and am confident relatively few remittance-recipients in those developing world countries would agree. For the tech and price savvy, cheaper options already exist.