[tossl568]

Yeah yeah. Bitcoin is an open financial network that anybody can use and nobody controls and is secured by energy. What an amazing, historical feat of human ingenuity. It's neutral and just like the internet can be used by anybody. We're not going to apologise for its energy use.

[lolsal]

>Yeah yeah. Bitcoin is an open financial network that anybody can use and nobody controls and is secured by energy. What an amazing, historical feat of human ingenuity. It's neutral and just like the internet can be used by anybody. We're not going to apologise for its energy use.

If you think the ends justifies the means, I suppose you could do anything.

[tossl568]

Bitcoin disappearing tomorrow wouldn't make a dent in our current fossil fuel emissions. Bitcoin mining ASICs don't emit CO2. Take it up with policymakers who subsidize fossil fuels.

[jkepler]

Bitcoin mining currently consumes less that 0.2 % of global energy consumption. Smartphone use and the associated radio infrastructure use somewhere between 1% to 2% of global energy.

How much energy do central and commercial banks, auditors, accountants, corporate currency hedge trading desks, and the armies that back fiat currencies use? Way, way more than bitcoin... and they don't provide a way to pay electric grids to build out renewables the way bitcoin mining does.

[nh23423fefe]

Is this what indoctrination looks like?

[tossl568]

What does dollar indoctrination look like? Like asking a fish what water is I suppose. It's all we've known.

[anonporridge]

It looks like supporting two unwinnable, simultaneous wars in the Middle East that cost the country trillions and hundreds of thousands of humans directly and indirectly murdered.

[lolsal]

> Bitcoin disappearing tomorrow wouldn't make a dent in our current fossil fuel emissions. Bitcoin mining ASICs don't emit CO2. Take it up with policymakers who subsidize fossil fuels.

This sounds a lot like you're not contesting the assertion that Bitcoin uses lots of energy, but deflecting the issue by saying it is irrelevant that it uses lots of energy and it's more the responsibility of policymakers to make the energy it uses clean instead of dirty. Am I understanding you correctly?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that mining literally emits CO2; the concern is about where the energy itself comes from.

[tossl568]

I'm not contesting it no. And I'm saying it's a perfectly valid use of energy. It will use even more energy in future. And it's worth it. Energy use doesn't need defending and isn't a bad thing. Energy secures the financial network, it's doing that work, even if the network isn't useful to you. Disincentivising fossil fuel use for every purpose needs to happen, not just Bitcoin.

[forum_ghost]

It’s very disturbing to read comments on an allegedly techie forum that insist the expansion of energy capacity is somehow bad.

What, we will be the first spacefaring, Kardashev Type 2 civilization that is powered solely by windmills?

Why is energy demonized so much?

There will be 100x, 1000x more energy use in the future in the entire economy.

You are worried some tiny fraction of a percent is an issue?

[Nursie]

> You are worried some tiny fraction of a percent is an issue?

YES.

Adding a whole new country to the map right now, when we don't have enough clean energy to go around, and we are killing our environment with emissions from energy generation, is a BAD idea.

Far from helping to increase demand for clean energy, as is the meme, cryptocurrency mining is incentivising the return of fossil fuel power plants to service (as has happened in the US and other places) and using vast amounts of coal power in places like Kazakhstan. It's the opposite of what we should be doing, which is reducing our power footprint until we have a handle on things.

> There will be 100x, 1000x more energy use in the future in the entire economy.

Maybe, but if that was using our current mix of tech, we'd cook ourselves in the process.

[_aavaa_]

I don't think that's quiet right. To paraphrase Kranzberg, Bitcoin is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral".

We can debate whether it's good or bad on net, but the fact that crypto provides monetary incentives for mining it (and thus spending electricity and computer equipment) is not up for debate.

[tossl568]

But whether that is a bad thing definitely is up for debate. Bitcoin mining is a buyer of last resort for stranded renewable energy. It also incentivises renewable energy capture. Energy isn't fungible, it can't be magically teleported to where it can be used. Energy consumption in itself isn't something to be ashamed of or avoided. Personally I think mining Bitcoin with fossil fuels is wrong, but trying to tell people what they can compute is a dangerous road to go down.

[_aavaa_]

Yes, I keep hearing that it's a buyer of last resort. Is there any info on how true that it? What % of mining is done with last resort energy, and what % is just simply creating more demand. I would guess that most is increasing demand.

[anonporridge]

This is really hard to answer because mining is a fiercely competitive business, and miners aren't eager to give up this kind of information.

But I would suspect probably not a lot right now. There is some mining that's efficiently burning off nat gas that otherwise would have been inefficiently flared or vented, which is net positive from a GHG emissions perspective, but that's an outlier. Realistically, I suspect there's such a high profit margin that hunting for stranded energy isn't the primary goal right now. Getting cheap ASICs is.

This is why I'm a big proponent of increasing mining regulation. I want to see miners heavily taxed for using carbon sourced electricity and pushed out to the fringes of electricity production. We'll probably need to use regulation to force the industry to actually be the consumer of last resort. Right now, there's just too much low hanging fruit for miners to put in that work voluntarily.