| > We are able to catch gas, store and transport it. Great. Now you need to find way to make it profitable. You could force-entangle it with something profitable with a law. For example you could say that if you own a well you must not burn the gas, but you must capture it and transport it at least some distance before it's burned. Then people would have incetive to find a buyer that will burn it to get some utility out of it (heating something probably). But! That law would reduce profits of rich people in USA and since only rich people in USA decide which laws are created (they can practically veto all laws they oppose) no such law will be created. So you have two options. Either wells will be just burning gas for nothing except turning more potent greenhouse gasses like methane into less potent one like CO2. Or you can burn it and mine bitcoins. Which makes bitcoin less profitable for everyone else since all miners compete for a fixed number of bitcoins. If bitcoin mining is less profitable other miners must look for cheaper energy to keep mining which means laeger percentage renewables at peak production times. So in current political reality of USA this news is actually good news despite everything. Another positive factor in using this gas to mine bitcoin is that it turns that gas into valuable resource, so there's no incentive to "loose" it due to leaks accidental or intentional and that would be the case if you tried to force owners to transport it away to somewhere where it's useful. And this gas, as I mentioned, is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 produced by burning it. |
Just that BTC consumes the energy and probably need AC so even more energy and consumed additional CO2 through making the ASIC.
And we are not in a isolated world. The miners will search and find a cheaper energy source anyway. Either by buying a gas power plant or by moving to cheaper country. No one is forcing a miner to use 'excess' energy.
'excess' energy is energy we need to make viable and work together for finding solutions. Bitcoin destroys this motivation.
Thanks to Bitcoin a global market can not only strip poor people from normal resources like oil, ors, metals but also from energy in any usable form.
Whatever it is doing it will find the cheapest energy possible and will consume it as long as the Bitcoin price allows it, totally independent of they type of energy.
Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect.
The supply chain of Bitcoin is minimal with little to negative effects.
Asics consume chip production capacity. Talking about Bitcoin creates mental load.
And of course let's be realistic: we have already a PoS system (our currencies) which is highly optimized. BTC doesn't even solve anything.
There is no positive thing we as a society gain from Bitcoin.
99,999999% of all humans are getting hurt by it.
We all pay for Bitcoin.