[hopevillian]

bitcoin incentivizes the search for cheaper energy, and allows for the instant monetization of once wasted energy. That's a LOT. this whole argument of energy use... i bet most of these people would have fallen for the same energy propaganda when the internet was just getting started... "what's email?? why would you waste electricity to send an electronic mail??"

[brabel]

You haven't addressed the parent commenter's point though: that PoW will cause increase of energy consumption every time you make any progress in making energy cheaper, hence cancelling out any improvements energy production efficiency.

It would only be benefitial if after a certain level of efficiency were achieved, PoW got banned and all that efficiency increase could actually benefit consumers of energy that did not have to keep increasing spend to keep up (though even that's not sure, because if energy becomes 10x cheaper, it's just a matter of time for people to invent new creative ways to use all that cheap energy that's prohebitevely expensive right now).

[tsimionescu]

There's rarely such a thing as 'wasted energy' outside crypto. Energy can be exported (even if at low efficiency) or stored in various forms (pumping water up a mountain, hydrolisis of water to fuel hydrogen plants, etc). Unfortunately, Bitcoin, Ethereum et al are actively making these productive uses of energy un-economical, as they have worse return on investment than simply burning that energy on crypto.

[mrkramer]

>There's rarely such a thing as 'wasted energy' outside crypto.

There is a lot of resources getting wasted in the real life. For example I'm from East Europe and we do not have good water pipes' infrastructure and lots of water gets leaked every month.

Speaking of wasting and leaking electricity I did a quick Google search and this is what I found:

"Are your appliances leaking electricity? Some of you might not be familiar with what this means. Not only do we have more small- and medium-sized appliances than ever before, but many of these never really stop using electricity. For example, if the television has a remote, then part of the TV is always on, waiting for a signal from the remote. If there is a clock on the microwave then the microwave is always using some electricity. Experts call this usage "standby consumption" or "leaking electricity" because people are often not aware that the appliance is using electricity.

A single appliance usually leaks only a small amount of electricity each hour (see Leaking Watts Chart below). Since these appliances leak electricity whenevery they are not turned on, and since people have a lot of these appliances, the amount of leaking electricity is significant. The average household spends about $40 a year on leaking electricity. The federal government works with appliance manufacturers to reduce the amount of electricity that leaks out of new appliances[1]."

Also here is another good resource on electricity leak which is related to the first web document I linked[2].

And then how much food is getting wasted every month globally? Probably billions of dollars of food is getting thrown away every month.

[1] https://www.uwsp.edu/cnr-ap/KEEP/nres633/Pages/Unit3/Section...

[2] https://www.teachengineering.org/content/cla_/activities/cla...

[Nevermark]

Other merit's aside, Bitcoin's incentivizing cheaper energy provides nothing new of value.

All uses of energy incentivize the search for cheaper energy.

Not all energy uses are optimized to increase usage over time, to cancel efficiencies. Proof of work, whatever it's merits, is anti-efficiency with respect to itself.

This is a significant difference.

[hopevillian]

nothing new of value? I know this sounds cliche but maybe consider you dont know enough about it?

[Nevermark]

I made a strong statement, so maybe I need to be more precise with my point.

Bitcoin has merits. So proof of work, being a part that is currently necessary for it to work has merits.

But the argument that proof-of-work has the merit of incentivizing cheaper energy sources does not stand up.

1. All uses of energy already incentivize the search for cheaper energy. This isn't a novel incentive that proof-of-work provides.

2. But proof-of-work does have a relatively novel disadvantage. It won't just incentivize greater energy uses as prices come down, as in normal supply-demand curves, but must keep up the original and even grow the amount spent on energy.

This would not be a problem in a market without negative externalities, but energy is famously a huge industry that will be struggling with negative externalities for quite some time and at great cost.

[jq-r]

> bitcoin incentivizes the search for cheaper energy, and allows for the instant monetization of once wasted energy.

This is just like saying: let's burn as much coal and oil as fast as we can, so we can accelerate the need to develop alternative fuel sources.

[the_why_of_y]

There's a trend now of Bitcoin mining businesses buying fossil fuel power plants in the US, in many cases plants that had already been shut down due to being unprofitable.

https://futurism.com/bitcoin-mining-company-buys-entire-coal... https://grist.org/technology/bitcoin-greenidge-seneca-lake-c... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/old-coal-plant-i...