I'm by no means an expert in crypto, but maybe that makes me semi qualified to say why at least they feel different to an outsider - replacing gasoline with electric seems at least like a potential win in terms of cost analysis. I can (theoretically) power my car with renewables? Awesome, and it makes sense that moving a vehicle would require some form of energy. It is nowhere near as obvious that the power output of Argentina should be required for a currency, as evidenced by various other proof algorithms. Is Bitcoin so useful to humanity that the tradeoff of burning forests is worth it, when there are alternatives?
Further, because Bitcoin is a currency, mining wants to be profitable, so mining is not incentivized to pursue renewables if they are more expensive than e.g. coal. However, when powering my electric car, if I have the privilege, I don't defeat the purpose by paying my electric company more for wind power.
Well, I'm pretty sure Bitcoin does not have livestock waste, air pollution and similar impact compared to the energy use of Argentina. So comparing Argentina and Bitcoin with just energy use is a bit odd to me too.
I'm not sure where I said what you believe I think.
My opinion is that using more electricity than Argentina is not as dramatic as the comments make it out.
Bitcoin is never going to be as destructive to the environment as these countries.
Saying that PoW is immoral or that Bitcoin is horrible because of electricity use is fine. But the immorality or horribleness is magnitudes away from what the rest of the stuff using electricity does to the world.
If we want to optimize something, make reductions, Bitcoin is at the bottom of the list, rationally.
You know what else consumes heaps of electricty?
Your computer, your data centre, your AWS account the bank services you consume, your appliances and a large etcetera.
Bitcoin is the first financial break-through in a long, long time. Is designed to move control away from the few back into the hands of the people. In Argentina people love investing in Bitcoin because their currency is awful. It loses value because the government can print more. Just like in the US. No government can print more Bitcoin so the value keeps growing.
Bitcoin alternatives like Bitcoin cash (or regular Bitcoin but with a bigger block size) can be used across the border without censorship. Remember MasterCard banning donations to Wikileaks? Bitcoin cannot be banned.
Back to your comment. Now we have solar, we have wind power. All clean sources of energy. They are cheaper than coal and can power everything. Including Bitcoin.
I do not understand the argument, i have read it a lot in the last weeks. Does bitcoin not just incentivise the currently cheapest energy source? Which is still not renewable for most markets afaik.
It's not negative or unexpected. Bitcoin naturally uses the cheapest energy it can find (arbitrage), which usually ends up being stranded energy. Something like a third of all electricity generated is wasted. So the idea that Bitcoin is unique compared to any other arbitrary & subjective use of energy is just anti-Bitcoin propaganda & green dis-information.
Whereas it may be difficult for one reason or another to transmit energy from where it's most abundant (a desert, or other remote areas), it's not hard to co-locate miners in those places & incentivize further development & utilization of that energy resource.
Because you’re comparing the energy consumption of this one thing to the total energy consumption of $x million households along with all the country’s local industry to say that Bitcoin isn’t worth that cost compared to an alternative that requires trusted parties but uses orders of magnitude less energy.
Other merit's aside, Bitcoin's incentivizing cheaper energy provides nothing new of value.
All uses of energy incentivize the search for cheaper energy.
Not all energy uses are optimized to increase usage over time, to cancel efficiencies. Proof of work, whatever it's merits, is anti-efficiency with respect to itself.
1) The energy consumption of bitcoin mining alone is estimated to have reached the levels of entire countries (Argentina was the latest country I've heard it being compared to), while actual usage of bitcoin (except for speculation) is still a fringe niche thing
2) When shown that the coins do not scale, instead of moving on to an improved version, those coins continue to grow. Instead of 'okay, proof of concept done, it does not scale, let's move on to an improved version', the bonanza just continues.
There are probably more reasons like these, but I think it would be straight-up weird if the technically versed audience of HN would disregard the reasons above as much as the current crypto-markets do.
First, it assumes crypto is "stuck in time" and not evolving. Proof-of-Stake + Layer 2s are orders of magnitude more efficient. Like any new tech, it gets more efficient over time.
Second, there's a distinction between energy usage and carbon emissions. Energy usage with zero carbon emissions is not bad for the environment. Bitcoin mining is perfect for carbon neutral energy sources because it can be mined anywhere, which is why Bitcoin mining energy sources are between 39% and 73% carbon neutral and growing [1].
Third, I think there is real value in a widely-used currency that is not centrally controlled. There is some cost to do this, manifest in the form of energy consumption. The fiat banking system also consumes substantial energy, and I would be curious to see a complete comparison.
In general, I get a sentiment of "it's ridiculous all these people got rich" followed by "there's a reason to justify my outrage" and, without further research, calls to ban an entire technology.
I should have explained the "BS" part at the beginning of my comment in a different way.
I think that comparing Bitcoin energy consumption with a country (it used to be Chile, now Argentina), while technically correct, misses the big picture.
I also avoided a discussion on the true cost of having a global currency like the US$, which one might argue pollutes far more (military, etc).
It feels like we spend a disproportionate amount of energy running the bitcoin network for its benefits.
That's the reason it comes up a lot in those debates. Sure, cars use more energy emitting more CO2 right now, but the benefit of all the cars worldwide is in an entirely different dimension compared to Bitcoin. Most people intuitively grasp that stuff having a huge benefit for a huge lot of people must be allowed to use up more energy in absolute terms than stuff that has a very minor benefit for a very small group of people.
The collective energy spent by Bitcoin miners equals the energy consumption of Argentina, yet the Bitcoin network only processes a small fraction of the number of transactions per day that Visa processes. For reference, Visa itself consumes only a small fraction as much energy as Argentina.
In other words, you must cover the cost of vastly more energy per Bitcoin transaction compared to the mainstream financial system. Environmental concerns aside, that amounts to a huge tax on every transaction that reduces the economic efficiency of the system. Note also that this is a per-transaction tax, regardless of transaction size, making Bitcoin less useful for small transactions.
There is also the fact that such a high energy cost per transaction causes the value of Bitcoin to be more strongly correlated with the price of energy. Energy prices are notoriously volatile; hence Bitcoin's value will also be volatile. Volatility makes a currency less useful (it introduces risk into every transaction and disincentives investment) and a very volatile currency will eventually be abandoned entirely. It should surprise nobody that the overwhelming majority of merchants who "accept cryptocurrency" as payment do so via services that immediately convert that cryptocurrency payment into their local fiat currency, because the majority of the world's fiat currencies have very stable values (compared to Bitcoin etc.).
I could go on but to be honest the technical objections to Bitcoin outweigh the economic objections, at least in my opinion. Happy to get into those objections as well if anyone is interested.
people on HN like to whine about the environment. they love the statistic that bitcoin uses more energy than argentina. ask them 6 months ago (when bitcoin still used the same amount of energy as argentina) and they will tell you how much they love btc and decentralization.
It's like trying to optimize my internet usage. Instead of having 200Mbit downlink active all the time (because I'm streaming random bits), I'll reduce it to 2Mbit because of energy consumption. Compared to everything else I'm doing, internet usage is a non-issue.
We need to think about optimizing environmental destruction, water pollution, air pollution. Bitcoin consuming as much electricity as Argentina still does magnitudes less damage with that electricity than Argentina.
I really do not see the issue. This Bitcoin environmental/energy footprint subject is getting so much attention and I really can't grok why.
I can't believe someone would try to optimize the fastest functions first, instead of slow ones.
"But Bitcoin, the scientists say, is something different — and a worry. The efficiency trends elsewhere in tech are blunted because Bitcoin’s specialized software churns through ever more computing cycles as more people try to create, buy and sell digital currency."
No, increased Bitcoin usage does not increase the amount of energy needed to process transactions.
More people are mining (and thus burning more power), because it is a profitable venture if you can get best prices on hardware and lowest costs of electricity.
The least expensive electricity in the world happens to be either stolen, stranded, or hydro / geothermal.
Further, because Bitcoin is a currency, mining wants to be profitable, so mining is not incentivized to pursue renewables if they are more expensive than e.g. coal. However, when powering my electric car, if I have the privilege, I don't defeat the purpose by paying my electric company more for wind power.
Edit: I'm slow, everybody else said it better.
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