[portportport]

The biggest case against crypto seems to be proof of work is inherently bad, because wasting power is bad for the environment. This completely side steps the fact that the entire world is moving towards carbon neutrality in electricity generation, in which case power consumption will no longer be an environmental issue. I'm yet to hear a convincing argument against proof of work under the assumption of carbon neutral electricity generation.

[arcticbull]

No, it doesn't. Every TWh wasted on proof of work delays decarbonizing the rest of the economy. There's no benefit to anyone to build a whole ton of solar and wind capacity then literally wasting it on a sudoku puzzle of global scale. That doesn't help. If anything it hurts because it generates e-waste. 27 thousand tons of e-waste per year. [1] E-waste without a disposal strategy, that gets buried or burned or dumped on poor countries.

97% of all bitcoin miners will never mine a block in their entire useful lives. They will be manufactured, plugged in, they'll sit there, desperately guessing, never guess right, and be thrown out.

[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

[Nursie]

> in which case power consumption will no longer be an environmental issue.

But it is right now.

We don't live in a world with carbon neutral power generation. We're not there. PoW is even encouraging people to bring fossil-fuel based generation back online just for mining and making the transition to low-carbon economies slower.

> I'm yet to hear a convincing argument against proof of work under the assumption of carbon neutral electricity generation.

Yeah, let's have that argument when we're closer to actually having that. Oh, and before you say "Increased demand will get us there sooner"... no, it won't, we already have a huge amount of demand that can't be met, it's making things worse.

[isoprophlex]

The sheer wastefulness of it. Can you see the objection in making a million cookies (completely carbon neutral of course), and throwing 999.999 of them away?

POW is that, but worse.

[malermeister]

>the entire world is moving towards carbon neutrality in electricity generation

Yes, and increasing energy demand for crypto is slowing down that move towards carbon neutrality. If you have more demand, you need more carbon neutral energy generation until you can be fully neutral.

[matheusmoreira]

We simply need ways to use the heat generated by miners for useful purposes. That way the power used to generate that heat will not be wasted.

[oblio]

* left as an exercise for the reader.

[matheusmoreira]

Not at all. There seems to be many products in the market for heating up stuff using miners. I just didn't want to advertise.

[oblio]

Yeah, but are they reliable? Cost effective? Easy to deploy?

In short, can they compete with traditional heating? Radiators, in floor heating, heat pumps, etc. I doubt it.

[matheusmoreira]

I don't know for sure. I'd like to try it out myself.

[furry-worry]

See rest of article. Only paragraph 3 is about proof of work; 4-10 are arguments unrelated to environmental impact.