[Melingo]

Comparison why?

We are in a state that every emission is a problem.

And if you have a particular technology which create megatons of CO2 but does nothing for society besides transering money from a lot of people to less and less people what does a comparison matter?

[lowkey]

* Bitcoin mining is by far the largest cryptocurrency consumer of electricity.

* The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources.

* Bitcoin mining uses a higher percentage of renewable energy than any other industry.

* A huge amount of Bitcoin mining is also done in partnership with energy utilities in a demand-response model where miners go offline immediately if grid demand spikes and come online exclusively during periods of excess electricity supply that would otherwise go to waste. By this mechanism, Bitcoin miners, for example in Texas, actually make the grid more stable and economically enable utilities to provide excess capacity to manage fluctuating supply and demand.

* Bitcoin mining uses electricity to secure the network and protect billions of dollars worth their depositor's savings, allowing Bitcoin savers to avoid counter-party risk and enjoy a 100% reserve ratio, unlike say a fractional reserve bank that speculates with their depositor savings.

> We are in a state that every emission is a problem.

Notably, the currently dominant global reserve currency is protected, not by clean energy and mostly not even by electricity which has the potential to come from clean and renewable sources. The US military protects the value of the US dollar.

* The US military is not just the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the world, they are the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the history of the world.

* The US military consumes something on the order of 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining, mostly from greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels.

* In 2007 Department of Defense consumed over 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year alone along with almost 30,000 GWH of electricity.

* If the US military were a country it would rank 34th in the world in oil use and 58th in the world by electricity use [0].

I often hear criticisms about how bad Bitcoin mining is for the environment, but rarely hear any concerns about the energy used by the military. Why is that?

If we are going to ban energy use, wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize the largest and most polluting users?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta....

[kuhewa]

> The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources.

Do you have evidence that over half of miners are on exclusively clean energy? That is a slightly different claim than this industry group recently makes about the overall energy mix:

"the global bitcoin mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix has improved marginally to 58.9% and remains one of the most sustainable industries globally."[1]

Regardless, I'd have to consider myself unimpressed when a) almost half of a large amount of energy used isn't sustainable b) at least some of that usage is simply pushing other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources, regardless if some of what is used for crypto is purely excess production, and c) unlike the other industries refered to in the quote, this industry's additions to society are negligible d) the vast majority of the energy burden is self-imposed. It is a very peculiar situation to feel compelled to try to defend, I imagine.

1 https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-council-surv...

[lowkey]

I went searching for a source and came up with the same one you cited.

Per the Bitcoin Mining council,

> 58.9% of global Bitcoin mining uses sustainable (i.e. renewable) energy

58.9% > 50% and higher than any other industry. What am I missing?

> a) almost half of a large amount of energy use isn’t sustainable

Per your own source, it isn’t almost half renewable globally. It it over half renewable (58.9%) which is higher than any other industry.

> b) at least some of that usage is simply pushing other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources, regardless if some of what is used for crypto is purely excess production,

Per the 4th point in my parent comment, using the example of the Texas grid which relies heavily on wind power, not only is Bitcoin mining uniquely suited to consume otherwise wasted intermittent power.

By doing so it actually strengthens the resilience of the energy grid by making a higher baseline energy capacity available to offset spikes in demand.

I challenge you to find a real-world example of Bitcoin mining pushing any other would-be consumers of renewable energy onto fossil fuel sources.

In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Bitcoin subsidizes building new renewable capacity by enabling grids to monetize highly variable solar and wind energy output. Most other industries rely on consistent power, which Bitcoin mining provides by monetizing otherwise unused variable capacity.

> c) unlike the other industries refered to in the quote, this industry's additions to society are negligible

It is your opinion, cited without substantiation that Bitcoin’s security model has negligible value for society. My bullet #5 in the parent comment cites several examples, so clearly me and hundreds of millions of Bitcoin holders disagree.

> d) the vast majority of the energy burden is self-imposed

I don’t understand the point of your last comment. How does the energy burden of Bitcoin mining compare with the energy Burden of the US military industry which consumes 1 million times the energy, mostly from fossil fuels?

[kuhewa]

Its just wild to be shilling for Bitcoin this blatantly in 2023

[lowkey]

Why is that?

For the record, my post wasn’t an attempt to shill, but I did feel it was appropriate to correct innacuracies I noticed in your earlier comment.

For example, Bitcoin actually subsidizes renewable energy investment by creating a market for intermittent electricity. It doesn’t force would be buyers of renewable energy towards fossil fuels. It helps make more renewable energy available than would otherwise exist.

Would you be so kind as to point out the error in my reasoning instead of accusing me of being a shill?

[wernsey]

> The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources.

The problem with this argument is that if it wasn't for Bitcoin, those renewable energy sources could've been used for other activities.

[lowkey]

That is simply not true. As I explained up thread, Bitcoin mining actually subsidizes the build out of renewable energy such as wind and solar by being a buyer of last resort for otherwise unmonetizable highly variable energy. No other industry that I know of can run profitably on intermittent power.

Perhaps you could provide an example of another industry being pushed out by Bitcoin mining that would otherwise operate efficiently consuming electricity only when there is excess capacity on the grid?

[Melingo]

No. It incentives two things:

1. Consuming as much renewable/ cheap energy possible because of how mining works and consumed energy might heat houses but I have seen only ACs in this mining farms.

2. It decentivie energy usage for real use cases like humans who can't afford to compete with the GDP from some us dude who wants to get rich.

3. It also doesn't add any motivation to try to make this energy more accessible because mining will just eat it up anyway.

We don't need to burn of gas. We can regulate it and don't allow to just reap in profits without also taking care of the rest gas

It's the industry which is fucking with us.

[lowkey]

> Consume as much renewable cheap energy as possible ..

I agree that this is true. However you may have missed the nuance of my argument. Apologies if I wasn’t clearer. Let me explain:

Not all elecricity is the same. For most industries or residential uses, electricity only has value if there is demand for it in real-time. Energy storage technologies are neither mature nor economically viable, with the exception of Hydro dams which depend on supporting geography.

Bitcoin creates a market for this intermittent excess electricity in real time. There is no other market demand for intermittent electricity and therefore no market price.

Were it not for Bitcoin mining the variability of wind and solar would make their energy available when not needed by the grid and the excess load would simply be shed. As a result the cost of these renewables would be higher since they would no longer be subsidized by mining.

Miners are unique in that the capital cost of a miner is dwarfed by the energy cost. So turning off a miner when demand (and therefore price) of electricity is high makes perfect sense economically.

No other industry has a similar use case for stranded or highly variable electricity.

[Melingo]

That's the problem not a solution.

This should incentive people to build energy storage not burn through it...

[Melingo]

You are strawmanning...

You don't know if I wouldn't criticize this too but it's about crypto and not your military.

Also the green washing of crypto is also dishonest. Crypto is primarily using dirty electric and we're not they actually take clean and good energy away from others because it's buying power is decoupled from the local energy market.

[lowkey]

To be clear, other than Bitcoin which uses proof of work, virtually all other cryptocurrencies use proof of stake which consumes only a modest amount of electricity, no more than any other server app.

So to be accurate, the real issue is Bitcoin mining, not altcoins. For the record, I am not a fan of altcoins but their energy use is not a sound argument against them.

The US military exists in large part to protect the US Petrodollar system that gives the dollar value. Bitcoin mining exists exclusively to protect the Bitcoin stored on the blockchain.

Why aren’t we talking about the US military since it consumes 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining for a similar use case, Almost all of it in the form of dirty fossil fuels and with no meaningful plan to go green?

[Melingo]

Bitcoin and Ethereum for quite a long time and now only Bitcoin.

Why we are not talking about the us military? Because it's a strawman argument.

[lowkey]

I don’t think Straw man means what you think it does. As I pointed out with the cases of the invasions of Iraq and Libya, both of which it is clear in hindsight were based on false pretenses, a major reason the US has such an enormous standing military with bases around the world is to protect the value of the US dollar.

Again, it is not a straw man to point out that both the military and Bitcoin miners both serve to protect the value of their currencies, or that while both consume a lot of energy, the US military consumes 1 million times as much energy as Bitcoin mining.

[Melingo]

It is because it's not about the military in this thread and you try to justify the energy usage of Bitcoin with the us military.

And I already agree that the energy consumption of the us military should also be checked and reduced.

[mike_d]

> We are in a state that every emission is a problem.

Some things will forever burn dinosaurs, like a diesel generator keeping a hospital going in a grid down situation for example.

While cryptocurrencies might not rank as important as a hospital to you, the people fleeing Russia who couldn't take rubles with them or the people of Venezuela who can't trust the banking system have a very different opinion.

Should crypto move to non-PoW systems or use renewables? Absolutely. But some CO2 generation is worth the value crypto brings.

[Melingo]

Ah yes the few rich and digital smart people who are fleeing some country.

One of the best arguments for crypto...

Just that it's as easy or hard to even exchange the local currency with crypto in the first place is probably as harder than getting us dollar or euro...

[lern_too_spel]

The only reason that is possible is that cryptocurrency is underregulated in the countries they are fleeing to, not because of any magical properties of Bitcoin. Those countries will soon regulate it to stop money laundering, making it completely useless.