Topic: Congress Hearing On Bitcoin’s Energy Use - page 2. (Read 615 times)

Blaming mining for climate change is not right. The problem is with the sources of electricity, not with it being in high consumption. The US is a very wasteful country. They waste tons of food, people live in huge houses, they are not even a part of major ecological global agreements. It's a fact that based on the US ecological footprint per person, we'd need 5 Earths if everyone lived the same way as people there do. It's worse than any other country in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
And now they care about crypto mining? It's great that the fact-checking alternative was written, and I hope it will be taken into account. I also hope the US will actually start caring about the ecology, but Bitcoin is not the right place to start.

You know I always wondered why US and Asia are so against nuclear energy and I know the bomb and plant meltdown are problems but the first to me is not even related and the second can always be improved.

I read that in Europe even nuclear energy will be classified as green. Instead of expensive and politically crippling energy, if everyone began using the same nuclear technology in some countries of Europe, wouldn't all this arguments lose their value (they have value now because they are being said by people in power backed by fossil fuel and other mining industry).

Right they will only blame bitcoin with all these bullshit excuses and not expose what affect other things have on the environment that are far more worse than bitcoin mining.The congress and all other government houses will try to figure out some new way to defame the image of bitcoin and mining is one of the biggest thing they have in their minds not in hands as just claiming this or that will not help them in making people fools.

Here is one example of the same and their so called federal reserve is not of much environment friendly mining which is clear from the pictures :


So now who's environment friendly? Take a note about how many workers and labour have died during gold,coal and other metal minings and what affects they have on environmental status of that particular area and compare it with btc mining then answer would automatically be clear.

Okay so this is interesting topic for me to debate over and give more possible explanations in favour of Bitcoin and going to collect more facts and figures about the same and post in this thread.Congress lies won't live any longer neither their fake and useless talks.

Yeah, I always get curious and even sometimes furious when all these narratives about bitcoin energy consumption. I sometimes feel all these are just a bid to destroy the reputation of bitcoin and have reason to keep it from soaring high, because we cannot compare the energy consumption of bitcoin and that of industrial energy consumption.

I have faith on initiatives taken by bitcoin miners and devs to stay greener as much as possible. Over the years, I believe bitcoin might be more green than fiats as most countries are not having any proposal to strop using paper money but bitcoin already started working on making use of renewable energies.

yea governments and utility companies should not be in the business of telling people:
to 'turn down their heating and insteadsnuggle a pet to stay warm'.
to unplug their TV's at the wall socket instead of putting them on standby

and instead should make power plants/utility companies incentivized to upgrade to keep up with capacity.

one issue with utility companies is the cost of electric. back in the days of only 1-2 utility companies serving an entire nation meant that the 'bidding' of allotments of twh's was highly strengthened by just 2 companies buying thw from the grid and these bulk contracts meant better deals. but now with dozens of utility companies. its diluted their buying strength, and also sucks more of the bills 'profits' into the utility company admin offices. rather then going more direct to power plants.

governments should try getting the money to power plants so they can upgrade to renewables faster. rather then letting utility companies keep the profits and tell customers to switch devices off

This is why I don't think this kind of hearing or discussion will progress into something serious. Because there are more pressing matters to address. Like you mentioned, if they looked at EV industry requirements in the years to come, then, they better address it now because 2030 is not very far. So for me, the discussion regarding energy use of bitcoin may not really be serious in tackling it right now. They will find out as they go deeper that this won't need urgent attention from them because there are more important things to address.

I have followed this up. This people are not actually to take bitcoin down, and I think that is not there intention. US as a nation has a unique and unbiased ideology. Which is Liberty.
So, bitcoin is about liberty, US government cannot go against their ideology.
Besides, bitcoin has created and is still creating numerous opportunities for the people.
People are at liberty to chose the finance or investment they want to get into.

having watched the 2 hour video. many things were stated wrong, many seemed positive.
i didnt feel that it was a war against crypto. but more of an intro to further discussions.

i found things funny that they worry about 'grid operators' able to meet the demand of crypto..
yet the ~38TWH worldwide(better guess) is nothing in comparison to other industries.

EG if people travel on average 20miles a day for work/leisure. an electric car scenario of all 290million cars being EV in a decade, would need over 1000TWH a year just for the US
 
if governments think 38twh WORLDWIDE (14TWH US) is a problem now.. yes US only 14twh.. . then they have a real problem in the electric car plan for 2030 which would need over 1000twh

14 vs 1000. i think they need to concentrate more on regulating and making the EV industry more efficient

US politicians are not going to easily ban something that creates economic opportunities and brings taxes, especially when arguments for banning are so weak. So I'm not surprised that this hearing was positive, after all the hearing about Facebook's Libra also turned positive for Bitcoin.

It is a pity that all these hypocrites did not show up to get entangled in their lies - and if they need legal help, they should turn to the Swedish government, which has been trying for months to persuade other EU members to ban crypto mining.

Definitely, because there is nothing there to discuss as all of the data points to other sectors having a more negative impact on the environment than Bitcoin and all these hypocrites ain't saying anything against those. It is clear that this is just some conspiracy against the cryptocurrency industry and they want a takedown by any means necessary.

I watched the entire hearing and it was surprisingly positive toward mining and cryptocurrencies. There were no environmentalists testifying and very little discussion on environmental impact, and minimal discussion on any negative impact of energy usage.

I suspect that there will be other hearings in which the environmentalists will get their chance to speak.

The representative from Virginia even asked the Bitfury speaker to talk to him later about building mining operations in Virginia.

The hearing took place, and apparently it wasn’t as hot as expected.

No fireworks at House's Bitcoin mining hearing, but pending climate bills could home in on crypto

The tone were much more downbeat than anticipated.

Executive summary:


I think the focus was more about a “challenge” of the Chinese reaction of the same issue. And evaluate all the possibilities with an eye to the possible geopolitical implications:

The argument that Bitcoin has a bad impact on the environment boils down to the mainstream media continuing to try to stop mining operations. It is no longer strange for us to dismiss things that emerge from the news that they try to distort the facts.

If we talk about the impact of the mining industry, we compare it with executives who continue to oversee the mining of gold, oil, natural gas, coal, nickel, iron ore, tin, silver, and copper. Simply put, we can see from changes in environmental conditions such as soil, air, and water. Isn't that all damaging and detrimental to human, animal, and plant life?

Then what is the most dangerous impact of Bitcoin mining?
Waste of electricity? Don't be afraid to run out of your wits, as El Salvador is mining Bitcoin using volcanic energy.

This hearing is going to be a farce. Just a bunch of politicians and environmentalists who don't understand how Bitcoin mining works. They cherry pick easy statistics to make mining seem bad when mining is actually a strong net positive for the environment (promotes the energy sector, promotes green energy production, already heavily uses green energy, etc).


The best thing that could come out of this hearing is if politicians actually listen to the people who understand Bitcoin instead of the ones who don't know undestand Bitcoin, though I put that as a low possibility as the politicians who already think it is bad are likely to think the Bitcoiners are just trying to defend their thing.

The best side effect I could see from this hearing is just convincing more US miners to focus even more on mining from renewable energy just to throw that back in bitcoin opponents faces when politicians and others say that it destroys the environment.

But the whole reason this hearing is happening is a farce so I don't expect it to be a reasoned and educated debate.

The title of the hearing does not show it is an investigation or fact finding mission. "Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency" shows that cryptocurrency has being judged before the judgement. Anyways, let us keep the hope alive.
Who or which counsels are representing bitcoin? Who will intercede for bitcoin?

good ol' america, land of the freeky

Politicians won't send them to school, since uneducated people is easier to manipulate every 4 years...
And as long as garlic, holy water and such are still getting on TV as remedies for viral infections in the XXI-th century, I have a feeling that our expectations vs "the world" are, unfortunately, a bit high.

According to what can be read (although such data are very dubious), after China dropped out of crypto mining, the US increased its global hash rate to over 35%, an increase of more than 100% over the previous period. Consequently, all these anti-pollution fighters have now even managed to reach the US Congress, which they will certainly use to try to impose their agendas. A year earlier, something like this would not have been possible, because US miners allegedly had only a 15-16% stake in hash power, now they have more than 1/3 and will certainly not stop there.


All of them should be sent to school to learn the basics of mathematics and statistics, because if in the past we concluded that according to all relevant research Bitcoin annually consumes about 0.2% of the world's electricity, and more than 50% is from renewable sources. I still think that money is the main motivator, although there are certainly weirdos among them who believe that the earth is flat, that Martians have bases in wheat fields and that Bitcoin is the work of Satan

sounds like they have already set the agenda (cleaning up crypto) and set the narative as to why (energy impact), before even discussing if its even an impact or a problem or something needing to be handled.

if the hearing was more like:
"blockchains energy use, good or bad" then it would be more unbias. but i think they are looking more so into actualy cracking down on mining.

..
for me i see it as this. mining farms dont use the allotted 'residential' capacity of the national grid. they instead purchase from the industrial or excess capacity.
the excess capacity usually goes unused/unpaid, meaning a loss for energy companies. but by having asic farm using it and paying it increases the energy companies profits and thus gives them more money to upgrade and expand capacity..

also most asic farms set up in regions that use renewables. so the "climate" argument is near moot in most cases

but hey, by the title of the hearing it already seems bias toward the negative

lets just hope they use this hearing to incentivise asic farms in fossil fuelled regions to move to renewable regions. or incentivise fossil fuel region power plants to convert to renewable... instead of ban asic farms as a whole.

after all the climate 'solution' is not to tell everyone to stop using electric.. but instead to get the electricity producers to change how its produced