[teterphiel]

The environmental issues with crypto need no more solving than the environmental issues associated mining gold (much worse), producing aluminum, and in a wider sense humans doing things on earth need solving --- which is not to say that they don't, but to single out bitcoin is disingenuous, uninformed, or just plain neophobic.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

That argument has the distinction of being universally valid, so no single issue will ever be tackled following its logic.

And just to be clear: Bitcoin is a bit more pushback than, say, residential heating, because it’s an entirely new CO2-emitting industry, and it is neither necessary nor beneficial except maybe for the thin slice of humanity that spends too much time on Reddit.

[paulgb]

It’s not just that it’s new, but that it is wasteful by design. If you were to create a miner with 2x efficiency and make it generally available, the mining market would not have an incentive to halve their energy use, they would just double the hashrate.

In other industries carbon emissions are an issue too, but at least there are people trying to bring energy use down with technology. Bitcoin’s difficulty mechanism nullifies any such attempts.

[TeMPOraL]

Exactly. Bitcoin advocates like to point at the fiat economy and ask, "but what about the banks and the offices and the ATMs and the security vans, ...?". Yes, added up, they use more energy than Bitcoin (looking at the trends, probably not for long). But the core difference is that for fiat economy, energy use is upkeep. It's the cost they want to minimize, because it eats into margins. They have every incentive to make all operations as energy efficient as possible. Bitcoin, on the other hand, structurally relies on ever growing energy waste.

[jsiepkes]

Gold, bauxite, etc. are all used to produce things with an application such electronics.

Name a single thing we produce with Bitcoin.

[meepmorp]

> Name a single thing we produce with Bitcoin

Internet arguments about Bitcoin?

[TheRealDunkirk]

A worldwide shortage of gaming video cards. I've been thinking about building a new box for a couple of YEARS now, waiting on the prices to come down. I don't have any hope of that for at least another year.

[iamacyborg]

Build a new pc now and get a new graphics card as and when you can? No point holding off on the whole build just because of a single component.

[TheRealDunkirk]

My current "build" is an Athlon64 with a 760. Surprisingly, it plays a lot of games just fine, but there's really no point in putting a 760 in anything like a Ryzen. ;-)

[teterphiel]

and these applications give people a fuzzy warm feeling that lasts for about a month before it recedes and attention shifts elsewhere.

I have it on good authority that owning bitcoin gives people a very similar kind of feeling and there is nothing wrong with that. humans doing human things.

of course now there's plenty of arbiters of what constitutes proper warm fuzziness, and apparently a new BMW made from aluminium and steel is AAA+, but buying 0.1 of a bitcoin is not.

[akdor1154]

The environmental cost of the beemer is not linked to its dollar value. As tfa demonstrates, this is not true of the 0.1 bitcoin.

[bambax]

Well, when we think about it, the things with the most value are usually the ones that harm the environment the most. Rare foods... Big petrol cars... Traveling to far-off destinations...

We think of them as having _other benefits_ besides environmental costs, but is this true? Is it better to travel far away to enjoy nature and a magnificent view, or to have the patience to look at things living in your own backyard for example?

[mtrower]

Yes?

Unless these things are being used as status symbols, or the person in question is actively attempting to destroy the environment, there must be some other benefit. Indeed, I certainly don't consider environmental cost to be a "benefit".

My "big petrol car" (which isn't really so big; more of a mid-sized coupe, but I digress) gives me the following benefits:

- "Warm fuzzy feeling" (the rumble, the hum, the traditional construction, etc).

- Plenty of power when I want it

- A traditional, relatively simple design that I understand; when something breaks or needs maintenance I can generally fix it. Some electronics, but not riddled with it throughout every system as today's vehicles are.

> Is it better to travel far away to enjoy nature and a magnificent view, or to have the patience to look at things living in your own backyard for example?

Well, not everybody has much of a backyard to speak of; however...

I would say that both are good. I don't get to travel much. Once every couple of years if I'm lucky. I wish I could more often. I probably won't even see most of my own country in my lifetime, let alone the wider world, and that... seems something of a shame. To imply that this feeling is somehow connected to the environmental cost of travel, well... seems a bit off.

[kevingadd]

The article addresses this. In summary: both things are bad, but it would be nice to not make them worse. Expanding the power spent mining crypto makes them worse, with how things are right now at least.

Also, NFTs are generally based on Ethereum, not Bitcoin. Did you read the article?

[gitrog]

No they certainly need solving, that is, if we are able to justify them causing any environmental impact at all.

If can start on the agreement that we need to curb our environmental impact, then any new technology we embrace surely needs to be very useful to as many people as possible in order to justify any significant affect on the environment.

[eru]

Interestingly, the amount of real resources (as percentage of GDP) spent mining gold have increased since most of the world went off the gold standards.