> What's your point here? Climate change has been around for ages so it's OK to blow a load of electricity on something that's not particularly useful?
So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment? I mean Bitcoin isn’t consuming electricity just for fun. People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power. Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and cars. Furthermore, the raw KWh figure the Bitcoin network is consuming (which AFAIK currently is unknown because miners moved all around the globe in the last couple of years) is not a useful measure of its green house gas emissions as we don’t know how it’s energy is created. It could well be on renewables by large percentage as they are cheaper in some countries (e.g. hydroelectricity in Norway) and mining is expensive.
> Power companies are literally putting their prices up because of a shortage of sources of power.
Price surges among some goods are not inflation but simply an indication of scarcity. Power scarcity affects Bitcoin as much as other sectors of the economy. Price surges across all economic sectors are inflation. BTW: It’s the inflationary policies of the FED and its equivalents creating cheap money and driving the investment bubbles … including the crypto bubble. If you‘re angry about the crypto craze put the blame also on the current monetary regime.
> I don't understand what you're trying to say here, that Putin invading Ukraine is making the most if it's vast and empty territory?
I was referring to parent‘s blame of the Ukrainian war on cryptos. It’s not the fault of crypto heads that Putin invaded its neighboring country and caused gasoline and electricity prices to rise. BTW: It’s probably not even Putin‘s fault alone. Government regulations to support the transition to renewable energy sources have been pushing prices up for electricity and gasoline already for years, at least in Europe.
> I mean Bitcoin isn’t consuming electricity just for fun.
Not exactly for fun, but sort of: frivolously, needlessly, and with an arms race dynamic: Put in 1000x more energy, and you get - exactly the same result, because the algorithm adjusted the Proof of Waste to make it 1000x more wasteful.
> So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment?
That wasn't my argument. My argument was that Bitcoin etc. are bad because of the power they consume when as far as I can tell almost all of what happens on these blockchains can be done far more efficiently and faster on existing technology, or in the case of transactions, existing banking infrastructure.
> People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power.
I don't doubt it, it would be nice if they owned their externalities so I could stop being angry with them for it.
> Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and cars.
Things that we (realistically in modern society) need. The alternative to, for instance, washing machines would be to hand-wash clothes.
We don't need Bitcoin. It hasn't enabled anything that couldn't be done already using the banking system, or with existing non-power abusive technology.
> Furthermore, the raw KWh figure the Bitcoin network is consuming (which AFAIK currently is unknown because miners moved all around the globe in the last couple of years) is not a useful measure of its green house gas emissions as we don’t know how it’s energy is created. It could well be on renewables by large percentage as they are cheaper in some countries (e.g. hydroelectricity in Norway) and mining is expensive.
Worldwide power generation is a zero-sum game. There is limited power generation available each day. Right now even though we're trying to move to renewable or green energy, there is not enough of that to power what we need through renewables alone so we use fossil fuel.
If you removed the blockchain load from that system you could reduce the fossil fuel burn by approximately one whole country per day of load.
It doesn't matter where the generation comes from, using any of it to power what is effectively a pointless distrubuted heater is removing our ability to shift away from fossil fuels.
> I was referring to parent‘s blame of the Ukrainian war on cryptos.
Once again, that's not what I wrote. Ukraine is at war with Russia. Much of the rest of the world is at war with Russia by proxy, because most of the rest of the world is sick of Putin's bullshit.
Putin is making shit loads of money from selling Gas to Europe, especially Germany.
If we instead of running PoW blockchains, and used the far more efficient existing banking infrastructure, we could almost completely shut off all of Germany's gas from Russia (at least that portion used to generate electricity), significantly weakening his position.
It's a zero sum game. We're using renewable electricity to power bitcoin so we have to use fossil fuel for other stuff.
> Government regulations to support the transition to renewable energy sources have been pushing prices up for electricity and gasoline already for years, at least in Europe.
I'm pretty sure renewables are actually cheaper to produce than fossil fuels.
> We don't need Bitcoin. It hasn't enabled anything that couldn't be done already using the banking system, or with existing non-power abusive technology.
The advantage of Bitcoin may seem questionable if you believe dependency on central banking is fine and hedging against financial risks of traditional banks is silly. But mind you there are many people in the world without access to stable banking services.
> If we instead of running PoW blockchains, and used the far more efficient existing banking infrastructure, we could almost completely shut off all of Germany's gas from Russia (at least that portion used to generate
Come on, the number of Bitcoin miners in Germany might approach zero. Energy is way too expensive there. Miners operate in countries with access to cheap energy (which could be coal like in China but also renewables like in Norway). There may be validation modes in Germany but those draw much less power than a mining facility that append to the ledger. So Putin wouldn’t even notice if Central Europe would be shutting down the Bitcoin network.
And do you know what services had similar energy consumption in the past and nobody cared? Peer to peer file sharing like Bitorrent. Running seeding nodes 24/7 or your desktop computer for days just to download illegal copies of movies and software was not exactly environmentally friendly either. Can’t remember any outrage about that. While it’s valid to criticize Bitcoin‘s energy consumption it is not completely out of place and not without precedent.
> I'm pretty sure renewables are actually cheaper to produce than fossil fuels.
Yes, they‘re cheap to produce but very expensive to distribute. Germany e.g. heavily subsidized renewables in the past making electricity very expensive here (AFAIR even one of the most expensive in the world). The most economic renewable currently is hydroelectric power where you also can regulate power generation in response to demands.
But that wasn’t my point. I was just arguing Bitcoin is not a significant contributing factor to rising electricity costs.
> Worldwide power generation is a zero-sum game. There is limited power generation available each day. … It's a zero sum game.
No, that’s not how markets work and energy markets neither. If demand rises energy producers react by increasing production, if demand falls they lower production. If demand rises long-term, they invest in more production facilities. That, of course, takes time so prices will rise temporarily but still creating an incentive to invest. If Bitcoin miners manage to leverage renewables they might actually encourage a net production rise of renewable energy.
BTW: The Bitcoin network‘s power consumption is not fixed either, it depends on the network load and the number of miners competing with each other. At the peak of the bubble it may be much higher than on average. The next crypto winter is likely to come soon and then power consumption goes back to normal. Until the next crypto craze competing networks will hopefully have switched over to Proof-Of-Stake successfully.
So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment? I mean Bitcoin isn’t consuming electricity just for fun. People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power. Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and cars. Furthermore, the raw KWh figure the Bitcoin network is consuming (which AFAIK currently is unknown because miners moved all around the globe in the last couple of years) is not a useful measure of its green house gas emissions as we don’t know how it’s energy is created. It could well be on renewables by large percentage as they are cheaper in some countries (e.g. hydroelectricity in Norway) and mining is expensive.
> Power companies are literally putting their prices up because of a shortage of sources of power.
Price surges among some goods are not inflation but simply an indication of scarcity. Power scarcity affects Bitcoin as much as other sectors of the economy. Price surges across all economic sectors are inflation. BTW: It’s the inflationary policies of the FED and its equivalents creating cheap money and driving the investment bubbles … including the crypto bubble. If you‘re angry about the crypto craze put the blame also on the current monetary regime.
> I don't understand what you're trying to say here, that Putin invading Ukraine is making the most if it's vast and empty territory?
I was referring to parent‘s blame of the Ukrainian war on cryptos. It’s not the fault of crypto heads that Putin invaded its neighboring country and caused gasoline and electricity prices to rise. BTW: It’s probably not even Putin‘s fault alone. Government regulations to support the transition to renewable energy sources have been pushing prices up for electricity and gasoline already for years, at least in Europe.