Topic: Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument. - page 13. (Read 5036 times)

All this debate and very informative thread hurt my head too much LOL.
I don't really understand it that much but I know that even without crypto the environment would still be fvcked up,
It just happen that crypto did add up a little bit to it.
That's it I'm done I couldn't debate with you guys I would just sit back and relax reading this topic.

Bring it on, I see you are very good at insulting other people and name calling, so one more sticker for me being a cultist is nothing new for you, and I see no point of talking more with someone who thinks that he is always right about everything.

Have a nice day.

Seems like you're not spending too much time reading what others say, let's go through a small recap:


I assume that's what Greta would say, right?


You see, this is cultism, instead of answering why do you still cling to those numbers which are obviously false you resort to empty words.
So, if by chance Inner Mongolia goes through the same scenario and 20-30% of the hashrate goes down showing another chuck is powered by coal, making it close to 50% just in China, would you still stand by those studies?


Irrelevant, we're not talking about what the effects are, we're talking about what the accident unveilled.


Yawn!!!! Derailing the discussion again. That's all you've got?


Same here, so, who are you again? Bottom line you haven't understand anything of what I've said, too bad, but that's the cultist way, whoever disagrees with even a single opinion should be hanged. You like hearing opinions but only the opinions you like to hear, yeah, that's the way of doing non-biased research, lol.
PS, nice that you didn't address any number this time, at least this is a good sign.

Bitcoin looks like an environmental to the eyes of the stupid because it is a growing industry and they don't really know what they are talking about in terms of energy hierarchy, almost everyone that uses electricity in this world is using mainly fossil fuels as a main energy source with small amounts of hydro power, green energy and nuclear.

First you called that guy who wrote an article a moron, than you say that I lie and spread propaganda... I think you need to chill a bit, but I can understand if you are some eco warrior who wants to save the world like Greta Thunberg.




Nobody said that bitcoin is greener than life except maybe you in previous post, and we are nowhere near the point of no return, whatever that means.


Here we go mister honesty talking about lies and dark winter scenarios again... I am not defending anyone or anything but I can think with my head.
You think that same thing can't happen if we are using greenest possible nuclear or hydro energy, and drop of hashrate can and will happen in future sooner or later.


I didn't wrote any of this articles and sure I can change my opinion about anything, articles I read and not gospels set in stones, but maybe you should apply for new job of fortune teller if you are so good in predicting future, I am sure you will get lot of customers.
Can you please tell us Bitcoin price in 2022 and 2023, and when the world will end because of Bitcoin?  


I am not defending anything but I like to hear different opinions and think with my own head, and not mainstream news or some random dude on forum.


I was talking in future tense and something like this didn't happen yet, but maybe you can tell me exact day when this will start so I can prepare.


It was 2sat/b today actually, but I don't expect that to be the case every day, and I am well aware how high fees can be on Bitcoin network.

So we should strat our own propaganda that is just as toxic as theirs as it's based on lies too, how does that make you better than them?
Look where all the environment-friendly garbage describing Bitcoin as being greener than life has led us, into a shitty situation like this where there is no point of return, all those claims of clean power have been busted in a flash because of one freak accident. What are you going to say if this happens again in Inner Mongolia and another 30% of the hash rate goes down? To what LIE are you going to resort then?

Deal with reality and be objective, the manufacturing will return to full power and thousands of Asic are going to invade the market as mining is insanely profitable right now, when the electricity consumption will continue to grow as BTC value will continue also to do so, will you remember those graphs about BTC consuming less than 10 times what the banking industry does? Then less than 6, 3, half almost the same but still below...Well, we do consume 3 times more but BTC is better than banks, are you going to change your speech just like CNN does when they are caught red-handed?

All the people defending bitcoin consumption should treat it as normal, it's a damn business that consumes power and brings in $. Simple!
It's just the same, nothing special, just as datacenters consume power, just as gold mining does, just as coal mining does.
You don't need to defend it, nobody does, what is being defended here is not bitcoin's consumption is the cultist's ego!


And where was the FUD?
Could you in reality send a transaction with 2sat/b fee and get a confirmation in 5 seconds? It was a fact, it wasn't FUD.

That was caused not by POW it was caused by some of the people who have a say in BTC's development who for god knows what reasons are stubborn as mules and can't even change the difficulty adjustment period to a shorter interval without a war of the roses going on. POW or POS or whatever the results would have been the same. If the difficulty adjustment would have been set for every 144 blocks none of that would have happened, but as usual, it's the simple solutions that are never applied.

Oh, and don't get me wrong, I truly dislike PoS because it's really a Piece Of S**,  I can't understand how you can even claim true decentralization with that as it will inevitably lead to the same situation we have now in the world with central banks and commercial banks and same goes for proof of space or data or whatever, not even mentioning the masternodes crap.

This is a great article.


How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?





This is the exact list of arguments I would pick to convince a sceptic about what bitcoin mining is about.

EDIT: I just saw @dkbit98 posted this a few post above. Thank you! Keeping this post because I want to make sure everyone see this!

Like I said, it's somewhere between 39% and 72% according to various research and you need to take this seriously because climate change global warming propaganda shit is just getting started.
CNN will be one of the first to report this news 24/7, this will include Bitcoin in bad image package, and I already see some crypto influencers claiming that Bitcoin should switch to Proof-of-stake because it's bad for environment, and btw I don't agree with this at all.
We can survive few incidents with hashrate drops but remember what happened with fees days and weeks after that with very high fees, and constant media fud would be like putting more petrol on fire.

Haha  
We just had one coal mine accident leading to a hashrate drop of 30% and you still quote that moron claiming 72% of energy coming from hydro?
Seriously, seeing how much they've screwed up with their estimation I would be amazed if not 39 but 7.2% would be actually coming from hydropower.
Some got the wake-up call although they still refuse the entire truth, some still live in dreamland.
https://decrypt.co/68591/flooded-coal-mine-highlights-chinese-bitcoin-miners-reliance-on-dirty-power

Remember the accident that happened in Xinjiang, Bitmain's first and rumors say largest mining facility is in Ordos, Inner Mongolia and you can guess what kind of fuel they burn there. As for that graph, don't forget about it when the chip shortage problem is fixed and mining gear can be produced as much as clients demand, remember we were at 130 exa when BTC was at 10k, . When all that gear hits the market you will have to forget all those fancy graphs and "studies" and embrace the obvious, as I said before: Bitcoin is not running on unicorn farts, but that's not a problem at all.

The whole ignoring Bitcoin PoW is an energy wasting issue.

I get it, how dare anyone claim anything about bitcoin is a problem.

But here is the problem, whether you see it coming or not.

https://forkast.news/inner-mongolia-shut-down-crypto-mining-china-bitcoin-miners/


https://www.nelsonstar.com/news/nelson-council-bans-bitcoin-mining-industrial-scale-computing-from-city/

https://earther.gizmodo.com/new-bill-would-ban-bitcoin-mining-across-new-york-state-1846828277


Now you can make all of the comparisons , you want ,
but the facts are the people banning bitcoin mining really don't care what you or i think.

Is the ban global, nope. But the bans are increasing.

Different Energy Efficient Algorithms have been designed and available since 2013,
but bitcoiners don't want to give up their tried and true PoW.
That fine, until it's not fine , and that day is approaching faster than any of us know.

Adding more interesting recent information to this topic because I think bad news propaganda against Bitcoin is going to get worse in near future, so we need to have more debunking information about this topic.

Nic Carter wrote and posted interesting new article for HBR Harvard Business Review explaining how much energy Bitcoin actually consumes.
We hear people talk a lot about Carbon Emissions (btw we are all made of Carbon so think about that) for Bitcoin and confusing it with energy consumption, but various research are showing that between 39% to 72% of all energy used for mining Bitcoin is actually hydro energy.
Interesting thing is that Bitcoin mining consumes energy that can be spent anywhere in the world and Bitcoin doesn't have that limitation like all other applications that need to be near energy sources.

In other article written by Hass McCook we can see great comparison made for energy consumption for Bitcoin, Gold, paper currencies and banks.
We can see that much more energy is spent and much more CO2 is produced with combined gold mining, making of gold jewellery and gold recycling  than for Bitcoin mining.
If we look at all Banking system and ATMS than we can see multiple times higher numbers according to McCook research with 400 milllion CO2 produced and 700 TWh energy used.
Maybe we still do need to use current banking system everyday but imagine how much energy would be saved if we didn't have ATMS anymore and if we stop making more gold jewellery.

This image speaks louder than words:


source archive

A collection of resources from my fellow Italian bitcoiner Giacomo Zucco:




Here is the List:

• Proof of Work, a pictorial essay by Adam Gibson
• Bitcoin's Energy Consumption by DerGigi
• The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption by Nic Carter
• Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy by Parker Lewis
• Bitcoin Doesn't Waste Electricity by BeautyOn
• Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work by Truthcoin

Bitcoin is a user of electricity.
It’s not bitcoin fault if such electricity is produced using dirty sources.
It’s not bitcoin’s scope to shift energy production towards cleaner sources, but definitely can help.

I think the reason that people are lumping bitcoin with being a contributor to environmental problems is because the world still uses more fossil fuels for electricity rather than renewable resources and with the narrative that bitciin consumes a lot of electricity, it will be definitely be blamed but we know that it isn't the case.

I think the OP is crossed with Trump&Limbaugh, but that's fine.

It doesn't matter, once COAL mined BITCOIN in CHINA is halted, lets let the OP find new sources of cheap power for the miners.

The USA,RUSSIA, &CHINA agree on this issue.

BTC is a waste of energy, it one btc buys 1,000 barrels of oil, so who cares about energy costs, or how many ton's of coal must be burned?

It doesn't really matter about the argument, what matters is the scale of wasted energy. All people are asking is you get over it, its coming down.

Wasting energy the scale of an entire country say Argentina, is not something to defend.

We already know the BTC community don't give a shit about the world's environment, that they only care about getting rich, while locked down under COVID.

IMHO the BITCOIN-ORG-COMM shouldn't even be in this debate, allocate them say a few 100 watts per miner, and then its up to them to figure out how to find the green energy they need.

Where this is all going is 99% tax on BTC, which is probably what the IMF wants, and the BITCOIN-ORG as well. Outcomes are always pre-planned.

That may very well be how things come to pass IF, and it is a BIG if, people, corporations and regulators realize Bitcoin's importance as the only trustworthy PoW currency of the new financial world. The way finance has functioned in the last few decades, there has been a lot of regulation but zero accountability for the people that move money across oceans and manage it in various ways to make the most out of retail investors and "markets", in general.

Again, for all the silly estimations of the Electricity consumed by Bitcoin, the detractors should know that the Bitcoin network will continue even if it is just a million home miners instead of concentrated operations. How many million households consume similar energy for their heating or cooling needs?

Bitcoin and the entrepreneurial initiatives it is unleashing are an urgent need. The increased usage of blockchain can make several current processes much more energy efficient. There can never be a comparison of Bitcoin's energy cost without calculating the social/ economic/ entrepreneurial and efficiency benefits that it is giving. If we start calculating the energy cost of every useful human activity then there are multiple of them that can be stopped without losing any benefits.

Yup, I understood that, I was just adding to the idea on how this regulation of consumption could be done, and how it can't be done without investments and investments mean $ which would simply turn miners to the nextcheapest possible thing.
And no, I don't agree with the paper, especially since from the first paragraph


Nothing!
Well, right now, the lack of mining gear, but previously and fast forward from 6 months in the future nothing.
It could be money, gear does not come cheap, but other than this, nope, nothing.
It like asking what keeps the average Joe from buying bitcoin? It's their choice of doing business.

My 2 cents .. I wouldn't be surprised if, 15 years from now, the leader of the S&P 500 is not a tech company or an oil and gas corporation, but energy giants, the majority of whose profits will come to mining, (perhaps this is an overly abstract statement, but still). I am certainly not an expert in mathematical forecasting, but I think that energy consumption by 2035 will increase by at least 1000%. I just assume that if energy consumption is already at almost 130 terawatt hours this year, then taking into account inflation and electricity prices in 10 years, it will not be difficult to calculate the ratio to the exponential growth of BTC.

In the Grossman paper I linked in the OP the concept “battery” doesn’t mean to be taken literally, but as a “proxy” meaning bitcoin can “use” excess energy when, or where, it is abundant to pay for it when or where it is scarce. In this sense act as a battery. Not in the physical way, but as a “Store of Energy” meaning.


I am wondering what is keeping energy companies to install on massive mining operations at their plants. They would pay for themselves.

Bitcoin mining and renewables in the form of solar and wind are not making a good combination.

The whole idea of a battery is to accumulate power when is excess production and supply it back when there is demand, bitcoin mining is not storing energy, it's consuming non-stop the same amount of power. While it helps burning energy when there is extra production it also drives up consumption when there is peak demand during the daytime.

A miner running on solar power will have to come up with at least 3 times the consumption as storage capacity assuming no day without sun, a single S19pro burns in 18 hours 60kwh, a tesla powerwall has 13.5kwh, a battery on the entry-level tesla S is 70kwh.   The cost is simply prohibitive.


Atomic plants are actually the best match for bitcoin mining.
Unlike solar who delivers power at the peak time for demand and goes black at night, atomic power's weakness is that it can't shut down at night and power up at daytime, nuclear power while reliable is not that easy to turn on and off. Bitcoin mining could take advantage of this excess power that is produced when nearly nobody wants it.
Bitcoin mining and nuclear power are a perfect match, constant power needs, production is not influenced by weather, no need to be near a coal mine and thousands of freight trains carrying fuel, they ran on fuel rods that go for years, and as long as you have some water nearby you can set them in cold areas so mining farms would need no cooling.

But, we're living in an era where the eco-green propaganda would turn install against this idea.