Does Bitcoin harm the environment? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Bitcoin mining is a process that consumes a lot of energy. However, it is difficult to determine the environmental impact it causes. To begin with, all aspects of the digital economy require energy. Think of the entire global banking system and the immense amount of energy needed to process bank transactions and provide electricity to office buildings, ATMs, bank branches, and so many other resources and processes.

Reality A study by the New York-based Ark Investment Management concluded that "Bitcoin is much more efficient than traditional banks and global gold mining". The current percentage of that mining done with renewable energy varies between 20% and 70%, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI). Researchers at the University of Cambridge concluded that "the environmental footprint of Bitcoin is currently minimal, at best."

It is possible to argue that the economic incentives inherent in Bitcoin mining help to generate innovations in terms of sustainable energy, as miners are always looking to increase profits by reducing electricity costs. In addition, mining is taking place in a world in which renewable energy is quickly becoming the cheapest option.

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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 8 Nov 2023

It's also less damaging to the environment than military enforcement of Dollar hegemony.

Welcome aboard!

190 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 8 Nov 2023

agree. thanks undisciplined

110 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 8 Nov 2023

My advice to new SN users is to not hold back on zapping content. There's a daily reward pool that heavily rewards engagement.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 8 Nov 2023

The longer I think about bitcoin the more convinced I am that it doesn't matter how we try to frame bitcoin and the environment. Complaining about bitcoin's energy use is laughable if you understand how the world works. And that is the real issue with most people. They are blind to the evils of the state. Bitcoin fixes something they can't even see as a problem. If you think bitcoin is pointless you are always going to think it is a waste of energy. The good news is that we don't have to convince people of how messed up everything is. They will learn by experience. So I think we should focus on using bitcoin and helping those that can be helped to learn about it. Ignore the rest. Most are followers and when enough people accept reality they will as well.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 8 Nov 2023

agree

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @antic 8 Nov 2023

I wrote up a big post on this a couple of years ago. The arguments are old and tired and fail to see the bigger picture:

https://medium.com/@atomantic/response-to-bitcoin-and-other-pow-coins-are-an-esg-nightmare-25b577eb7a79

My point #9 I think is the one that laypeople understand the most:

bit of a gripe: “That’s about 70.4 TWh in a year. Which is about as much energy as Colombia or Bangladesh use.” — I find the constant usage of “as much as X country” as a comparison to be alarmist, headline-journalism, marketing buzz. US clothing dryers alone consume ~72 TWh/year (US Residential power 2019 (1.44 Trillion kWh): https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php and Breakdown of Residential Energy [5% clothing dryers]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37813). Not to say “What about dryers” as a whataboutism, but this “as country” framing bothers me because I see it as a bad alternative to comparing like things. Bitcoin is more like a clothing dryer than it is like a country. The author at a later point brings up GDP of countries as if it’s a valid argument for energy usage (Bitcoin doesn’t have an equivalent GDP of the country it matches in energy usage) but this is a misleading concept as Bitcoin is a technical utility, not a country. Clothing dryers also don’t have a GDP. I don’t see articles saying that other globally used technologies and practices use the energy equivalent of a small country, even though they do, which leads me to think of this framework as propaganda every time I see a headline comparing bitcoin energy to a country. Comparing Bitcoin to other global technologies and systems like clothing dryers, idle electronics, etc makes it more relatable and accurate than comparing it to reports of energy consumption by entire countries with all the complex reasons they use electricity (including mining). Energy usage data by countries aggregated across all reasons is easy to find, but estimating individual energy usage categories across the globe requires the same level of research as estimating bitcoin consumption — so I get why it’s not done (because it’s work), but it also feels like we aren’t doing the full job of research by just grabbing at some data that’s easily available and turning it into a series of headlines.

People also miss that Bitcoin can run with only a couple of raspberry pis and process all the transactions and mine all the bitcoin. The hashrate is an economic effect of the demand for competition in making blocks, not a measurement that can be used to evaluate the cost of a single transactions by dividing the power consumption by use.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 8 Nov 2023

⚡⚡Versão portuguesa 🇵🇹 🇧🇷 🇦🇴 🇲🇿 🇨🇻 🇬🇼 🇬🇶 🇸🇹 🇹🇱