[nmlnn]

Bitcoin doesn't waste energy. Bitcoin consumes energy waste.

The global market for adding bitcoin blocks is as competitive as it is possible to get. No barriers to entry, no one even has to know who or where you are. As such only miners who can secure the cheapest energy survive.

Excess hydro capacity in China during rainy season; capturing flared gas from shale oil fields in the US; geothermal in Iceland; any source of stranded or wasted energy.. bitcoin mining will soak it up.

Bitcoin mining using fossil fuels is simply not cost competitive.

This "#hashes => #GWh => #tonnes CO2", is broken logic full of unsubstantiated assumptions made by bitcoin haters.

[corty]

That is full of broken assumptions and excuses. Bitcoin mining drives up the cost of those "waste" energy forms.

Excess hydro capacity can be used for electrolysis to hydrogen, hydrogen can also be produced from flared gas. Which can then be used to produce low-carbon-emission steel with hydrogen as a reduction agent.

Bitcoin mining makes all that more expensive, less likely and risky, because setting up a few miners is quick and easy. Running a steel mill or electrolysis plant is expensive and longterm. Too risky if bitcoin miners might buy all the cheap intermittent power you planned with.

[nmlnn]

You can't drive up the cost of "waste", all you can do is use it such that the waste is decreased. If people want to make hydrogen with it they should do so. As I said, the Bitcoin network is not capable of bidding for energy at higher prices.

Your argument boils down to: why aren't people doing this uneconomically viable thing that I think is better than this other economically viable thing.

[DonHopkins]

Think of all the useful productive things that you could do with all that precious time and energy you personally waste by shilling and hyping Bitcoin. You could take a nice walk. You could pat your dog. You could take a bath. You could write a poem that makes somebody smile. You could write a computer program that solves somebody's problem. Find something productive and constructive to do with you life and the limited time and energy you have here on Earth, instead of wasting your energy shilling and mining Bitcoin.

[nmlnn]

Trying to get people to understand Bitcoin is without a doubt the most productive thing I can do with my time for the future of humanity.

[DonHopkins]

Oh, give me a break. Get over your delusions of grandeur that you're "without a doubt" such an essential savior of the future of humanity. The last thing humanity needs is yet another Bitcoin shill, making baseless arguments full of broken assumptions and excuses that ignore the science and the facts, and encourage pollution and global warming and fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid scams.

[nmlnn]

That just means we disagree on what humanity needs. Good thing I don't have to justify how I spend my time and energy to you.

[JoeAltmaier]

Preposterous logic. Any energy used has to be made up with other sources. The idea that all bitcoin miners are public-spirited eco-warriors is pure imagination.

[kingo55]

This may surprise you:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-06/why-bitco...

Rather than venting greenhouse gases produced from the oil and gas mining process, they use it to mine Bitcoin. Sure this results in some CO2, but that's a lot better than venting straight methane.

[nmlnn]

It's not like excess hydro power in China is stored anywhere. It's literally wasted.. why do you care if people use it to mine bitcoin? How is it cutting in to the energy that other people can use?