Topic: Jakarta is in a pollution emergency, Is it caused by crypto mining? (Read 390 times)

Jakarta is a very crowd city where so many cars and motorcycles trapped at the road because of traffic jam, people spend a lot of time on their vehicles at the street. i think the pollution are mainly caused by those vehicles, power plant, and wind. crypto mining need electricity but i think it's not significantly contribute to this pollution.

I think it is very unlikely that the cause of the worsening pollution in Jakarta is caused by crypto or bitcoin mining alone. Because even though crypto mining does use very large electrical resources, and it can indeed cause carbon pollution. However, if I look at the activities that occur in the city of Jakarta, the fact is that there are many other things that pollute the environment more and make air pollution in Jakarta very bad. Examples include the large number of motorized vehicles and the large amount of waste originating from factories.

If you look at a global scale, I think that in certain countries crypto mining is indeed very large, such as in the United States, which definitely requires more electricity, and perhaps the pollution it causes will also be greater. So on a large scale, crypto mining can also cause more or less pollution. But for now I think the pollution caused by crypto mining is still minimal compared to other pollution factors.

If done using coal or something like that of course it's part of the problem. At the same time let's not forget that many big cities, especially in Asia, have been dealing with serious pollution problems for tens of years, it's nothing new and sadly things got even worse because now there are more people than ever, and more people means more pollution.

It's not a news, but the conversation on social media where I am involved and denied the opinion.

We live in Indonesia in awry, In the other side we must save and use green energy, but on the other side if we use that green energy like a solar cell, we will face tough rules where must be permitted to PLN (state-owned national company), we can't make the solar cell on my home right away, we have to permit to that company, so if don't have permits, we will be fined with a lot of money. This is insane.

https://dinsights.katadata.co.id/read/2022/10/21/bali-protests-pln-for-restricting-installation-of-rooftop-plts

Other users have already shown the real reasons for the high level of pollution at Jakarta, and if anything this should be a lesson for everyone, no one should trust anything they read on social media as it is full of bots and other people trying to influence popular opinion, personally I would not even engage them and reject their arguments as there are many other things we can do with our life than trying to convince someone with the truth when they know they are lying and they are making a deliberate attempt to spread their lies.

Actually it happens here in us as well, but that is not purely because of crpyto mining. It happens because of the pollution , we need to be aware that pollutants can be seen in different things that are using everyday. It is surely caused by power plants, cars, appliances and crypto mining devices. I just hope that at least we can have a day in a month that we can turn off all our devices so that nature can breathe.

That was a long time ago!
There was a report of Christmas light consuming close to 6TWh but that comes with two big buts:
- funny as it might sound Christmas light consumption has gone down by a ton because of led bulbs
- Bitcoin consumption has only gone up and as long as the daily $  in reward for miners will keep going up so will consumption.


Estimated energy consumption has fallen, not the real one!
The whole drop was caused by their estimating that there are less old-generation models on the market and more highly efficient ones so the actual consumption for the said hash rate would be lower.

But energy efficiency can't really change the overall consumption this is a bit different than one might think:
Case one:
You have an air conditioner that consumers 5kwh, you replace it with one at the same specs that does 3kw, you will consume on average 3/5 of what you previously did.
Case two:
You have there S9s you replace them with an s19xp, you now consume the same amount of electricity but with a higher hashrate so you get more income. Even if everyone switches their gear from older generation to the newer they will not try as a consumer does to keep the same hashrate, they will simply exchange 1MW of gear with 1MW of gear.

No matter how efficient the gear is if the reward spikes by tomorrow to twice as much in a few months' time you will have twice the electricity consumption cause miners will do everything to get a larger chunk of that reward.

CO2 greenhouse gas is what causes air pollution in Jakarta to become crazy, CO2 which is produced from the process of burning coconut charcoal to make briquettes is indeed fatal, so when you hear the news that bitcoin miners are the cause of air pollution in Jakarta it is just slander.
Based on scattered data, the number of vehicles in Jakarta last year reached 11 million 800 thousand and there is a possibility that the number will increase this year, so the most obvious fact is that the cause of Jakarta's pollution is due to combustion produced by vehicles, factories, power plants and briquettes combustion, not bitcoin mining.

Can you please share any source of the news where it says crypto mining is causing pollution? I am just curious to read how cryptocurrency mining could pollute nature. As far as I know, crypto mining consumes energy, of course, but how could it directly pollute? Energy sources would pollute the environment, but whether you mine crypto or not, power sources will still generate power and pollute the environment. We can't blame cryptocurrency mining for the pollution.

So that's your problem, coal burning. Is this power subsidized? then that's your other problem. Artificially cheap power makes the more expensive coal power generation attractive. Mining Bitcoin or soldering steel doesn't matter. Don't blame the customer.

Local media is not a place to get the news for sure, it's a lot more important to get it with proof on social media. Of course the downside for both of them would be getting to the bottom of the source and proof, because if someone says "X happened today", then you do not know if you should trust them or not, but if you look for the source and find proof that indeed X happened, then you could feel better and online is the way to go, because local media doesn't have a source for you to look into, but online does.

This is true even for wikipedia, there could be something wrong in wikipedia too, it's just people and nothing more, which is why I think it should be quite important to make it work somehow and find the source.

Pollution already exist since human existed in this world.

People are just blaming cryptocurrency mining because bitcoin miners are earning a lot of money while those envious people do not. Well, this should be expected since that's the only thing they can do, maybe they are hoping that the government will stop bitcoin mining if they are going to put it in a hot spot by continuously blaming it for pollution and too much energy usage.

I think @mk4 is referring to an old story in which the consumption of electricity in the context of Christmas lights in the US was mentioned again in relation to the total consumption of electricity in some other countries in a period of 1 year. In other words, more energy is spent on Christmas lights in the US than a country like El Salvador spends for the whole year.

In addition, it was calculated that all electrical devices in the US consume more energy only in standby mode than Bitcoin consumes for a whole year.

Bitcoin Mining Wasteful? Christmas Lights Use More Energy Than Some Countries


A lot of energy in relation to who or what? A new report says that energy consumption has fallen even more compared to last year, which means that mining devices are becoming more efficient. If you take into account that at least 50% of the energy that miners use comes from renewable sources and that the annual losses in the electrical grid are as much as 50 000 TWh, then can we translate a number between 100 and 150 TWh as "a lot of energy"?

Most of the electricity used for Bitcoin mining comes from fossil fuels. This activity is most prevalent in China and is growing in countries that can provide cheap and stable energy supplies. That's why Iran and Kazakhstan are popular areas. As in most South Asian countries, most of their electricity comes from dirty sources such as coal fired plants and natural gas. The proliferation of clean renewable energy will naturally reduce the negative impact of crypto mining. Bitcoin mining in underdeveloped countries may have an impact on the climate but i don't think Bitcoin is at a level that could cause a climate crisis.

I'm from Indonesia and I don't find the news that this is caused by bitcoin mining because the main reason when Jakarta is a pollution emergency is as you said before because of the steam power plant besides that, the surge in the increase in vehicles entering Indonesia especially Jakarta is very large which makes pollution in Jakarta and its surroundings dangerous even currently ranked 1 for the most polluted city in Southeast Asia.

On the other hand, I have also discussed this in the local Indonesian section Jakarta Darurat Polusi and there have been several responses which I think are quite good for discussion.

Big companies are exactly doing more harm to the environment than BTC mining could. Jakarta is also a business hub and capital, with more automobile emitting CO2, along with the processes involved in getting coal. Its not as if the place is sparcely populated in the first place, to think that it could efficiently mine BTC.
A miner may be limited in movement and has alternatives to energy sources, but what may be questionable is the emissions that is produce from the source of the energy, powering the mining process and not the mining of BTC itself.

I have never heard from the news that pollution occurs because of the Bitcoin or crypto mining industry.
In fact, as far as I know, there are no bitcoin/crypto mining companies in Indonesia, all mining is done individually so the scale is very small.
Saying pollution in Jakarta is due to bitcoin mining is a black campaign against Bitcoin.
The government has stated that it is because of emissions from motorized vehicles that it has started implementing work from home for several institutions, and also one of the causes is the housing industry making charcoal briquettes from wood and some of these industries has been close by the authority, and drought is also one of the causes.
Source use machine translation to understand it.

Wait? How come Christmas lights are using more energy than crypto mining? That's hard to believe because those lights only work in December period, that's when the world will want to celebrate Christmas and start putting up the Christmas lights.

Crypto mining on the other hands work every blessed day, this is the only way miners get their ROI back, so I am quite lost about your point @MK4, can you please explain better?

I'm not going to pretend as if Bitcoin mining isn't the most energy consuming of them all, a single Asic miner use over 3000 watts of power, that's like using 5-6 GPU for mining Ethereum back in the days, crypto mining in general uses a lot of energy.

When I read news about crypto mining polluting nature, I think there are many things they need to look at other than crypto mining. But since those who make these news do not report that big companies are killing nature, these news do not make much sense to me.

Big companies have been polluting clean water for years. The media doesn't report it. Now they come and say that Bitcoin mining pollutes nature. Meaningless.

Although crypto-mining uses a lot of energy, its unlikely to pollute Jakarta. Crypto-mining has a more complex environmental impact. Your skepticism is understandable, especially since crypto-mining isnt one of Jakarta's top pollution sources.

However, crypto-mining has been criticized worldwide for its enormous energy usage, especially when fueled by coal. By researching sustainable energy sources, the crypto community is addressing this legitimate problem. Attributing Jakarta's pollution on crypto-mining is unlikely. First, we should address the sources, such coal-fired power plants, then discuss how crypto-mining could become greener.