[skyzadev]

Electricity usage will forever be a human need and people need to realize and accept that. Taking down bitcoin because it's software that runs on computers that uses electricity is not the answer here - renewable and sustainable energy is the answer. Everybody is just echoing the same headline they read on some news article about bitcoin using a lot of energy without thinking it through properly.

[auggierose]

I think you are the one not thinking it through properly. Yes, humanity will use energy. But it is kind of by design that bitcoin uses more and more energy, and that just doesn't make sense. Sorry.

Bitcoin is not humanity using energy. It is humanity flushing energy down the drain.

[birdyrooster]

Bitcoin doesn't have to keep halving until 2140, their governance could decide to stop mining early once it becomes an existential crisis for the network. Bitcoin is code and there could be special cases made so long as they can get the miners to agree. The miners can name their price on processing transactions on the network in lieu of continuing to mine. The transaction processing is much less onerous in terms of power consumption.

[skyzadev]

Our sun is shooting out so much energy that is not getting used at all. That is flushing (sustainable) energy down the drain!

[aspaceman]

"Bitcoin is wasteful"

"But look at the sun man! That's the real waste"

Are you high?

[skyzadev]

I was indirectly referring back to my original post above if you did not notice. And no I'm not high, just having a conversation about Bitcoin energy usage in relation to renewable and sustainable energy technology.

[memorysafety]

I find the "Bitcoin burns energy" argument completely laughable. With all due respect, your skepticism appreciated; let me explain.

A more useful perspective is "humanity uses more and more energy for computation". The many devices which enable us to post these comments burn energy. The astronomically high video-traffic these days burns energy. Modelling early universe, protein folding, advanced chemistry... every damn thing we compute has the cost of burning energy.

As an aside, let's not forget how much electricity gets used simply for heating. There's no shortage already of "smart heaters" with a nice side effect of mining you some coins while they keep your house warm. Anything environmentally wrong with that?

See, it's not the endgoal of cryptocurrencies to burn energy; it's simply a cost. Now, thanks to bitcoin, we can have economies of scale drive optimization of that cost: improving the core compute-per-joule ratio of our technology. With all the collateral improvements across the globe with regards to environmental impact.

Could you say that porn distribution industry "kind of by design" lead to people watching more and more porn? Regardless of the answer, thanks to that we can have fast internets now. Similarly with bitcoin: thanks to it, we'll pack more & more bitflips into every joule, up to the thermodynamic limit.

[auggierose]

I can definitely see the value in porn; can't say the same thing about bitcoin.

[simonw]

Maybe the solution to the Fermi paradox is that significantly advanced civilizations discover crypto currencies and then furiously burn through all available energy sources until they go extinct.

( https://twitter.com/simonw/status/938231139914825728 )