Topic: Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument. - page 6. (Read 5220 times)

Well, some of the big companies are also thinking about the future, including in the issue of environmental issues of mining. For example, Marathon Digital seems to have made a decision to switch from using the energy obtained from burning coal to renewable energy sources and stated that by the end of the year all their 30,000 miners with a capacity of 3.3 EH/s will be moved and become carbon neutral, only the fact is that the coal mine in Montana, which is powered by a power plant (energy from which Marathon Digital is now using for mining) and she, in turn, uses the same coal, and will continue to work.

Marathon Digital to Move Mining Rigs From Coal-Powered Montana Site

in fact bitcoin mining is carried out by several people who incidentally are financially well-established people who don't want to bother themselves with things that will happen in the future for the sake of a bitcoin coffers in their pockets to get strong and stable energy, without thinking about their children and grandchildren In the future, will they still be able to see the beautiful snow mountain and breathe the fresh air in the morning?
only a few are done by a large-capacity corporate agency which of course may have switched to renewable technology [this is my personal assumption]

   and I myself don't blame them for this because the negative impact of the energy crisis and global warming at this time is not too felt and it is human nature that the ego wants to be rich and richer so this is all a little neglected even though true wealth is a rich heart, wealth that is prosperous and happy when they are grandchildren we can feel it too later

     My hope for now is that miners should be able to switch to looking for energy at a lower cost by utilizing the environmental resources around them, be it sun, water and air/wind, because of course the sustainability of bitcoin's life is in the hands of the miners, and things happen as they are the ban in china, it doesn't happen in their country whose impact will be felt by the miners themselves and the impact also blockchain and crypto users

         WE may not be environmental activists but the environment needs to be cared for

After some minor testing we also documented on this thread, one of the big sisters is moving toward making good use of gas instead of flaring it:

ExxonMobil Running Pilot Project to Supply Flared Gas for Bitcoin Mining: Report


The original report from Bloomberg is quite interesting: Exxon started with a few tests in North Dakota in partnership with Crusoe Energy (Winklevii have invested in it), but they are now expanding to Alaska, Nigeria, Argentina, Guyabbaa and Germany.

Preventing gas from being vented in the air would have many implications, from the most obvious environmental benefits, to the more subtle effects on oil field profitability,  bitcoin mining operations and also comprehension on the fact that bitcoin mining is not dispacing energy otherwise used for other purposes, but using completely new energy that would be otherwise wasted.

Those companies already constituting environmental disaster in energy usage already have their way of settling with the government in through paying of tax and issuing of contracts awards for new projects, this is politics, but in crypto such is not applicable because it is decentralized, and the ones they can easily hook up with are the miners who have specific location and also demand from the country's electricity.

The fact is that bitcoin energy waste is nothing compared to the global energy lost due to inefficiency. secondly research are still ongoing regarding building bitcoin mining equipment with lesser noise and energy consumption such as in GPU and ASICs used in mining rigs.

This will only be homework for supporters of the continuation of bitcoin, not people who continue to blame bitcoin because they have their own homework to do with their business which is more problematic with energy consumption. Especially in the transportation industries, bitcoin is a real competitor not only in energy consumption, but also in its goal of efficiently helping people's multimillion-dollar businesses (without involving transportation services). Because of this, it seems that bitcoin is getting closer and closer to becoming a global alternative currency that will disrupt competitors' businesses (which feel competitive).

I like this part:

I have only gotten up to your post so far in the thread, but I have become motivated to post even if your point has been made by others in the thread dark1234.

In other words, you seem to be making a good point dark1234 in relationship to the incentives that bitcoin creates to be innovative... and for sure there are other posters in this thread making similar points, but it seems to be worthy of emphasis and repetition.

For several years, I have been asserting that I could give few shits about how much energy bitcoin is supposedly causing to be used in the aggregate, because the incentives of bitcoin empower each miner to choose for himself/herself regarding whether and how much to mine bitcoin or to engage in other activities....

So if a miner determines that that there could be ways to make more profits by lowering energy costs, then such miner is going to seek out such lower cost energy - which will likely cause the putting to use of energy that had not been previously used.  Surely, some of the beneficiaries of the lower cost energy are going to become perturbed because the miner would be causing their energy costs to increase.. but still i tis quite likely that benefits outweigh the costs in terms of miners seeking out lower cost energy and thus incentivizing the development and use of lower cost energies... so without intervention, bitcoin already seems to contribute to the causation of decent incentives to both utilize low cost energy and to develop more low cost energy, if possible (or economically justifiable to attempt such ongoing developments of low cost energy).  

So for sure there is a bit of a balancing of interests in terms of both the driving up of low cost energy, but also considerably great likelihood of ongoing development of such low cost usage of energy - which seems to actually be supported by the data (empirical evidence).

Maybe my own punchline is that I could hardly give any ratt's ass regarding the extent to which there are various kinds of clean or dirty energy usages.. because those seem to be side issues in which sometimes bitcoiners or bitcoin miners might end up getting involved if they might get involved in producing energy or selecting between sources of energy.. so in that regard, whether the energy is clean or not does not seem to be central towards whether bitcoin miners might be wanting to purchase energy that might be available in one location versus another.. just confusing regarding blaming bitcoin mining for preexisting situations.. and sure it may well be true that some improvements have been made to the energy grid over the last 50 years so that skies are not as polluted and water is not catching on fire.. so there surely are continued likely ways in which some forms of energy are cleaner than other forms of energy or if some forms of energy need to be coupled with cleaning or filtering technologies to cause them to be less polluting.. if it is truly the case that such forms of energy are more polluting than the benefits that they might otherwise bestow on the energy grid (infrastructure) - which likely varies quite a bit from region to region based on what resources might be naturally available in one area versus another... surely it is less energy (resource) efficient for people to live in a dessert.. or on a flood plain... but they still do.. so sometimes there can be meaningful and reasonable balancing of the varying interests.. which surely is a decent part of the story of bitcoin mining in terms of the individual incentives and whether those incentives might possibly go contrary to the balancing of public concerns.

Probably the latter affect the former. People who dislike Bitcoin for some reason will get advantage of this environmental impact. In fact, few propagandists found some really attractive titles. For instance, "One Bitcoin transaction costs millions of dollars!" which is false broadly; the transaction cost isn't inextricably linked with the computational power that is required to solve a block. Another catchy phrase is "Bitcoin: Wasting more energy than ".

I do remember that headline, but it wasn't "Sweden", it was only a proposal to the UE parliament.

Sweden is Calling for EU to Ban Cryptocurrency Mining to Meet Climate Goals


Of course, that was enough to feed an endless feed of clickbait.

You are right: it's not Bitcoin's task to solve the global warming problem. This is one of the most debated issues here on this thread: bitcoin already is the most efficient way of consuming electricity, and it even incentivizes to recover wasted energy (on-field gas burning as opposed to flaring, geothermal generation, hydropower).

Of course, it’s nonsense, it’s clear to anyone who knows the basics of math and knows how to read all the objective studies that have analyzed the impact of total Bitcoin mining on energy consumption and any kind of environmental pollution. I don't know if the people who are persistently pushing this agenda are stupid or it's just a job for which they are well paid, but to anyone with a little common sense, everything can be crystal clear in less than 15 minutes.

If memory serves me right, Sweden is the one that asked the EU to ban crypto mining, and I'm just wondering what their comment will be on the news about a mining farm that will use only renewable energy sources. Maybe now the agenda will be redirected in the direction of creating electronic waste, and we had a claim a few months ago that crypto mining generates as much waste as the Netherlands or something similar.

I can only repeat once again, if someone wants to solve problems with greenhouse gases and pollution in general, let them start from the top of the pyramid, and not from the bottom where Bitcoin is definitely in that regard.

I think it is also more on the aspect of being entirely bias about cryptocurrencies. People that are somehow close-minded tend to believe stuff that are against cryptocurrencies even if there are other aspect or things that are way more harmful to the environment. They tend to believe their own biases even if actual proof and facts are showed to the contrary- which is somehow sad given the full potential of BTC in our day-to-day transactions.

Banning any human activity because it burns "too much energy" is statist nonsense.
Who decides what is "too much" energy?
Bitcoin mining consumes "too much energy"? What about "Christmas lights?", or Iron smelting? and what if this iron is used to produce arms to be sent to Ukraine?  Yes? No? And if the arms are sent to Russia?


This is utter nonsense.
These are all considerations built on the most efficient information transmitting mechanism: prices.

Also, the idea that POW is polluting is quickly losing steam.

Genesis Digital Assets Announces New Bitcoin Mining Farm in Sweden Powered by 100% Clean Energy


As per my understanding is the one of using hydro plants to power the miners, similarly to what APLS Blockchain is doing in Italy:

ALPS BLOCKCHAIN: mining in Italy from 100% renewable energy

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

Sometimes I am not against those that says Proof of Work is bad for the environment since due to energy consumption, it’s quite good to know that they do care about the environment, BUT… If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

There are lots of industries that consumes so much energy, like 90% more than what PoW can ever go, and these industries pollutes our environment and no one seems to talk about it, rather they all choose to focus on Bitcoin for no good reason. It doesn’t make sense at all, seriously, they have got to stop all these. Bitcoin is not had, and critics should take a break please (although I know they wouldn’t ).

I like this thread so much, and I just like the fact that someone took out his or her time to make a thread like this that debunks most, if not all, of the accusations that critics have been using against Bitcoin over the years. I didn’t waste time when I saw this thread and went through it.

The first thing I just did was to bookmark it, because a few times I have came across those critics who are always trying to put Bitcoin down and for sure I have done my best to defend it the way I can, but it good to have all these references to quote from and also show to anyone that tries make false statements about Bitcoin, because I am really tired of people who keeps on spreading fake news, when they are not sure of it.

bitcoin is just that solution you ask of.
.. your just 12 years behind how your solution plays out
EG within a fortnight a person has 2 computer. then a fortnight later 4 computers. then 8 then 16
and all of a sudden he has a whole garage of computers
then needs to set up an industrial warehouse of computers.

then someone smart comes along and invents a special computer that does the job of 100 computer for the cost of 1 computer
then that evolves into 1000pc rating for cost of 1, then 10,000rating for cost of 1.. and so on and so on

in your narrow view of "CPU only"
do you realise that a CPU can only mine at like 10mhash.
meaning if we had say 100mill CPU mining at 400w each
40,000,000kwh =40GW/h = 350.4TWH/y
yep just 100million people mining around the world with 1 pc each would use 8.75x power consumption than the current network
=11.429m to be on equal power consumption to now
but here is the thing
because hashes are based on a lower difficulty in your CPU utopia. them 100mill at 10mhash each =1petahash
meaning if someone was quietly making an asic in private for 12 years and enhanced it to being 110thash .. they only need 10 asics to over run the 100m users
or if we go with the 11.429mill users with 1 PC each. that smart guy secretly developing asics for 12 years only need 1-2 asics to overwhelm the network

i meant that the mica has been "in progress" since 2019. with a date of actual implementation in 2025. meaning this announcement is not causing any actual delay to the 2025 time table. and if they just keep announcing 'no decision' for the next 2 years, it changes nothing to the schedule plan.

EG if the implementation was for feb2023.. well. then they would have needed to adjust the implementation date to allow a years grace before it becomes active after a later vote. but because they have until 2025 anyway. they  can reconsider many times until 2024

there may be another opportunity to vote in april2022. but that too can be reconsidered. point being they can keep it 'in progress' for 2 years and not be deemed as 'stalling'/delaying

we can all hope they remove certain parts and vote it in, in april2022 without the bans..so we can be at ease of expectation of 2025
 or they can keep it up in the air like a smoggy cloud for 2 years keeping the 'possibility' of a ban existing

The vote on this amendment was due to happen shortly. Of course reversing a legislation before enacting it is simpler that doing that later. But not reverse a legislation, is even simpler.
So, luckily, for the moment they won’t vote on it.
They will silently scrap that paragraph and vote the law. Nobody will get hurt. Business as usual.

this Mica thing was not to be implemented until 2025. so its not a delay. its just a 'we dont need to decide yet'
they have until late 2024 to implement it. and always had until late 2024 to implement it.

meaning this stuff will keep popping up now and again until 2024 without it causing any 'delays'

that said.
i believe that the analytics sites that hyper inflated the TWH usage as 200THW and 58.6% renewable(actual numbers more like 40TWH and 75%+),
and they done so. so that next year they can redo the numbers and show a drop down to say 190TWH, then in 2024 a further drop to 180TWH
while increasing the renewable to 65% 75%  
to pretend they physically helped make bitcoin greener. where its actually just a number shuffle on paper to later appease any environmental concerns that they first advertised as a bad disaster.

its like shouting out that a orange is a acidic fruit that can damage health (we know its actually a health fruit from the start) and then later pretend they done something to an orange to make it a health fruit, to then release a report of its health benefits. pretending they triggered a revolution in fruit. where reality is the fruit remained a fruit and all that changed was the report

truth is bitcoin is not as bad as the analytics chosen to advertise.

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

For those not exactly on the ball, let’s do a little recap of the ongoing situation:

A few days ago, we saw on social platforms a warning about the incoming vote, with an high probability of an imminent approval.


Here is the Text from LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6902320022740373505-oXAJ

This would be a huge strategic risk for the Eu, as they would risk staving stay from the frontier in this innovative field of research, business attractor and strategic asset. All this for a misinterpretation of the basic functioning of a POW algorithm, which we tried to debunk in this thread.


Today we read a news that the vote has been postponed:

European Parliament delays vote on crypto assets bill over proof-of-work debate

This is the main point:


This is the Berger Twitter:



Google translation:


TL; DR: given the Twitter fuzz, they realised they were doing a stupid thing, and delayed the vote.

It’s not over yet, but at least we now know where to look.

I know I'm a little late to this thread, but I want to express my opinion about this matter which is truly important to discuss. I don't like to support something that goes against my moral temperament.

Does Bitcoin use much energy? Yes, it does. The security of Bitcoin and its environmental footprint vary analogously. When there's a rise in difficulty, it means more energy is used to strengthen the network.

According to the above statement it'd be logical to conclude that Bitcoin is not environmentally friendly. However, this is really not the case. It indeed is. It's an innovation in which the people try to find the least expensive sources of energy. It happens to be renewable. So, it incentivizes you to not harm the environment. And it turns out that the transition is easy. More than 50% of the hashes are green. Which part of the banking system uses renewable sources? Definitely not that much, even if they aren't comparable.

The world tries to transit to cheaper energy, not necessarily renewable. Remember: Humans want incentives. Every action they take is based on those either consciously or not. Morally-wise it's good to have voluntary incentives, but there should always be an incentive.

It happens for the renewable sources to be extremely cheap compared to non-renewable ones, fortunately.