Bitcoin Forum

I was reading a great article today on coindesk by Ian Allison that talked about Bitcoin's sustainability in this new era of climate change activism. It proposed an interesting question that because Bitcoin uses so much computing power to mine blocks, and therefore consumes vast amounts of energy, will it be sustainable in the long term? I would add a follow question to this of: Will or how greatly will this affect mainstream adoption going forward? I think this is a good time to reignite this discussion as climate change and activism has never been more prevalent.

My thoughts are that although Bitcoin uses a considerable amount of energy, when related to climate change and its impact on the environment it pales in comparison to other industries burning of fossil fuels, as well as deforestation and farming. Furthermore, because Bitcoin is reshaping global finance, I feel that it will be around for the long term.

That's not to say Greta Thunberg will ever approve of Bitcoin's mining rigs, but most people, business, and governments will understand Bitcoin offers a valuable technology, even in the face of tightening climate change practices and policies.

But what do you think?

I think it is important to acknowledge this up front: Electricity usage does not cause climate change.

Focusing on electricity usage is not an effective way to minimize or mitigate climate change. Climate change is primarily caused by the release of CO₂ and methane into the atmosphere. Certain types of electricity generation are major producers of CO₂, so the effort should focus on these types of generation. Reducing or eliminating them will have a direct effect on climate change, regardless of how the electricity is used.

It seems to me that reasons such as "it pales in comparison to" this and that is simply lacking. That is not convincing at all. You cannot just say, "oh yes, we are destroying the environment but there are others out there that are doing it much worse." That does not excuse you. In the same manner that you cannot invoke your contribution as an excuse to the damage it causes. That argument of justifying the means for the end is wanting.

I guess Bitcoin is pretty much in the path of sustainability. I think Bitcoin is not so stubborn and adamant to stick to the old unsustainable ways. Bitcoin's mining energy consumption is now turning into green or renewable sources of energy. I cannot confirm whether this is true or not but it is being claimed that at least 74% of Bitcoin's mining power is coming from renewable energy.^[1][2][3]

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy
[2] https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-shockingly-renewable-energy/
[3] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/study-74-percent-of-bitcoin-mining-powered-with-renewable-energy

Although this scenario will only take place in the long run, this should be taken care of and should be studied well to get ready when those times come. they should think of other alternatives to use other than consuming a massive amount of electrical energy. I'm sure later on they will find something suitable to use if they will move and fund some research for this. Blockchain technologies are improving one by one, developers are making something new every year, to have some kind of technologies that will make bitcoin an eco-friendly thing, that would be a good thing to consider right now.

Millions of people worldwide are using their PlayStations, Xboxes and such, and no one cares. Pretty much devices that's mostly only for entertainment. Meanwhile a lot of miners are mining bitcoin that benefits the network(and of course for them to make money) to help people become self-sovereign and suddenly it's all a waste of energy.

Speaking of Greta Thunberg, I actually secretly wish she starts attacking Bitcoin. That's going to be a lot of extra publicity for us LOL.

Lol, this has been discussed so many times before, and I think it has been debunked already.

And as far as I can remember, majority of China's bitcoin mining farm are using renewable energy.

You can also read everything here, https://phys.org/news/2018-08-energy-bitcoin.html

First; Gold mining/Finance sector currently uses ridiculously more  - Bitcoin could potential replace both.

Second; Bitcoin incentivizes renewable energy - cheaper you can mine Bitcoin, the better.

Thirdly; Generally speaking Bitcoiners tend to be quite ethical and are all about improving the world. The way I see it Bitcoin could also be used as a token to more accurately price electricity, in whatever form it takes place.

Regardless of all of this, hard money will eventually become extremely important (probably sometime soon by the looks of it).

Bitcoin in my opinion, will be a blessing in disguise for Climate Change.

Bitcoin is a drop in the ocean in terms of energy consumption and the release of greenhouse gases. Last year, streaming online pornography accounted for over 30 times more greenhouse gas release than the entire bitcoin network and all bitcoin mining did. With so many people currently on lockdown or quarantined within their own homes, that number is going to be several multitudes higher right now. While we get posts on here at least once a week saying that bitcoin is doomed because it isn't environmentally friendly, I've never once seen climate change campaigners try to convince people to watch less porn, even though it is by far and away worse for the environment than bitcoin is. I've never once seen climate change campaigners try to convince people to stop using cash, despite cash requiring huge amount of energy to print, circulate, move around in armored vans, destroy, replace, all the electricity use of ATMs and banks, etc.

Bitcoin is extremely efficient for what it does.

Yup. Factoring in the electricity consumption of games consoles, TVs, sound systems, and PCs, it absolutely dwarfs bitcoin. Making video gaming 1% more efficient would save more energy than the entire bitcoin network.

It might not be, but it can be a cause of climate change. Please do consider, some power plants mainly those who support wide scale service of providing electricity to a wide scale people do actually burns allot of coals and fossil fuels in order to generate electricity. There are some renewable electricity sources but that wasn't really enough to replace the traditional production of electricity through coals.

In terms of bitcoin and climate change, there is no clear evidence that it doesn't consume a huge amount of energy. There are some country that surrenders being a bitcoin mining site, just because the electricity bill is quite high.

It could cause it, let's remember not all the electricity came from clean energy like a water press... Most of the energy is generated by burning carbon or nuclear plants. A good example is Las Vegas Nevada. That's one of the places that spend more energy in the world and all that energy comes from burning carbon. So, we can be sure that is a piece of climate change.

Now is not the best time to think about climate change. Now you need to sit at home, trade cryptocurrencies and donate to create a vaccine against COVID-19.

People should stop reading stupid articles written by even more stupid people, which aim to create a false image of how BTC is an evil that destroys our environment. Among other things, this component is one of the main attack vectors used by the banking sector mercenaries, who in addition to declaring us criminals, terrorists, or those who undermine existing financial systems, also want to attach to us the etiquette of people who destroying the planet using unbelievable amounts of electricity produced in coal-fired power plants. The lie told thousands of times in the global media, however, is taking root and is becoming something the majority adopts as truth.

One wonders what's in the head of the person making the statement Your Bitcoin Should Be Seized to Pay for Climate Reparations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221226.0) or The huge amounts of electricity used to trade the cryptocurrency could push global temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius by 2033. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5059941.0)

Will there come a day when they will truly mark us as the ones who destroyed the planet?

this subject has been brought up hundreds of time, nearly every week in some months. and there is always one obvious problem that is overlooked, bitcoin is not consuming fuel and is not producing pollutions, the electric companies are. bitcoin is just the consumer of the electricity they produce. if you want to complain about climate change, pollution,... you should go to the source that is electric companies and complain there.
now here is the interesting part, a large portion of bitcoin's electricity comes from clean sources such as renewable energies!

I don't think so. We should investigate which energy source we use when we are mining Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies.
Some energy sources create pollution. Not just air but water, flora, soil... etc. Therefore, we can not say that mining does not affect climate change. But if clean energy sources are used and this is sufficient, then what you say is correct.

However, as far as we know, the energy consumed during mining operations is still very small compared to the energy consumed worldwide. Therefore, it is not yet taken into consideration by anyone. However, I am sure that serious examinations and data will emerge in the future.

the problem is that bitcoin can not change that. for example if you were a bitcoin miner with a big mining farm you can't force your electric company to use clean energies instead of whatever they are using right now. you must accept whatever they offer you or not mine at all. and that is what all miners do.

I think the same when it comes to electricity. Some things can be reduced, such as not buying a car or eating less (or no) meat, but the energy consumption is bound to grow if we don't want the technological development to stop. My country is not very eco-friendly, but even here half of electricity is sustainable. I also remember various reports claiming that Bitcoin mining is mainly using eco-friendly sources of energy, actually, so the whole topic of Bitcoin harming the environment is partially a misconception. But whose responsibility it should be where the electricity comes from is another question. I think it also largely depends on a country because not everywhere a company can make this choice alone.

These are my thoughts exactly, Bitcoin's footprint is really tiny compared to things like cruise liners or agriculture, so people who want to stop Bitcoin because it causes global warming are likely just being misled by nocoiner trolls who spread all sorts of negative information about Bitcoin. It's especially ridiculous when they say that Bitcoin will soon consume all the Earth's electricity, just because it's energy consumption was growing in the past very quickly. In reality it will slow down significantly because of the halvenings.

Electricity usage does not and will not affect climate change. The production of electricity, however, is a different thing. CO2 emissions mainly help in increasing the global average temperature here on earth, and most of the electricity being generated today are from fossil fuels which are being burned, producing CO2 and being trapped in the atmosphere. If you are keeping up with most bitcoin farms, most of them have since moved into cleaner, cheaper and more efficient ways to generate electricity, so the notion that bitcoin mining contributed heavily to CO2 emissions and climate change is false.

For China alone, miners have moved into mountains near waterfalls so as to harness energy from resources available in there. In Iceland where most of their electricity comes from geothermal or hydroelectric power plants, some miners have already moved to the said location and began hashing there. If you look into the statistics published recently, the banking industry alone reaps a massive 100 terrawatts of electricity (https://bitcoinist.com/banks-consume-energy-bitcoin/) to sustain their ATMs and other devices, compared to the puny 28.7 terrawatts consumed by bitcoin miners all over the world.

Such people like the OP wont search the forum for relevant topics and they wont even check the thread they open to read the comment and answer to their post. Mining is no more for the poor, so most people getting to it have enough fund to cater for the energy consumption most especially as renewable energy. Mining is equally a long term investment as in any other cryptocurrency project, they can afford to keep every bitcoin mine till the bullrun and take their profit in bigger bags.

The important thing to consider is that renewable energy sources are becoming cheaper and cheaper. For roughly 2/3 of the world, renewable sources are cheaper than coal and other carbon-based sources (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/renewable-energy-is-cost-effective-says-michael-milken.html).

That's why 3/4 of the Bitcoin mining network is already running on renewable energy (https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy).

Since Bitcoin miners rationally seek out the cheapest electricity sources, over time they will be increasingly using renewable energy. That's just a market reality. These fears about Bitcoin contributing to climate change are not warranted.

There was a time when this topic of how Bitcoin contribute to climate change was hot, but I just feel it is a shilly argument because climate change is an inevitable even we can only try to delay it. We have seen how the cloud suddenly become clear because of Corona virus. Where are all the Climate change activist in this period

If anything, as I’ve read in the previous discussions above, people are connecting climate change to the amount of energy that we use when trading, buying, selling etc. etc. using these bitcoins. However, using bitcoins does not as well lessen the emissions that would cause climate change. Mining of bitcoins use renewable energy, like solar energy which basically means that they use the energy of the sun to mine these.

There are many reasons for climate change such as gas emissions from cars, burning of plastics or non biodegradable wastes, wrong segregation of wastes, oil disposal in oceans, and many many more. Considering that Bitcoin is a digital mode for transaction in the crypto world, it uses energy - it uses electricity. And this energy is a renewable one. So, even though we see Bitcoin's role in this. The margin or percentage for the uses of energy by large countries is far more than the use of Bitcoin. What the Bitcoin industry could do as countermeasure or payment in the world is maybe to help in the rehabilitation of natural resources by means of investments on projects that would help in this.

I also had a mistaken thought that BTCitcoin miners could be abusing the use of electric power and causing effects on climate change. Thanks for such clear explanations.
I am also aware that we are moving forward creating useful tools to manage Bitcoin and faster and low latency digital assets and that it would be a great contribution to energy savings.

One specific industry (in this case, mining) cannot influence global things such as climate on its own. Only a combination of factors can influence this. It is useless to stop mining to reduce supposedly harm to the environment, if not to reduce other aspects that can also be harmful.

This is a topic to discuss after 10-15 years.Right now i don't think bitcoin is causing any damage to climate.Yes the use of electricity has increased but that is not a matter of concern right now.We are thinking only one side of coin as there can be lot of advantages with bitcoin on climate example we can save hell lot of paper and trees if bitcoin becomes the mainstream currency to be use globally.Machines and spaces can be save.

I think your phrase should be supplemented, and wroten like this: "Electricity usage does not cause climate change, if this electricity is obtained from sources of green electricity and is not related to the use of hydrocarbons." Because the electricity received from oil has a great impact on the environment.

The source of energy production is important, if green resources are used then there is nothing much to worry and if the major mining farms takes a decision that they will use renewable energy then the entire blame game will end. The fools who cry that BTCitcoin is wasting too much energy and causing pollution, they need to focus on companies that produces the majority of the pollution which is the oil companies around the world with some are government owned and some are private and they produce these climate changing chaos. Right now we are in a lock down and i am seeing reports that the pollution is considerably low because there are no vehicles on the road nor any factories functioning and in a short period of time the skies are clear and the pollution is reduced considerably and during this period i have not heard about any mining farms shutting down ;) :D.

Despite the very fact that this example will just occur over the end of the day , this need to be addressed and need to be concentrated well to organize when those occasions come. they ought to consider different choices to utilize aside from expending a big measure of electrical vitality. I'm certain afterward they're going to discover something reasonable to utilize within the event that they're going to move and store some exploration for this. Blockchain advances are improving individually, engineers are making something new consistently, to possess an innovations which will make bitcoin an eco-accommodating thing, that might be something worth being thankful for to believe this moment.

I don't think it's worth linking bitcoin and climate change. These are completely unrelated things.

That's quite a comprehensive answer. Reminds me of Australian energetic problem that's been solved in months by Elon. No CO2, loads of basically free energy

Of course, pollutants produced by bitcoin mining are not comparable to pollutants produced from motorized vehicles in big cities, factories, and other industries. Energy consumption for bitcoin mining  (https://www.blockchainanalytics.pro/btc/electricity-consumption/)is quite large, and it continues to increase every year. This creates a new competition where mining equipment manufacturers will compete fiercely in making energy-efficient products, although there are several aspects that must be derived.

It is true that bitcoin requires so much electricity consumption, especially for mining. But it is alleged as the main cause of climate change
still need an investigation related to this matter. And also can't really blame bitcoin, because of the electronic equipment industry such as
televisions, game consoles, air conditioners, and so on. I think that all electricity consumption is more than bitcoin.

There is a great lack of a more organic way of mining cryptocurrency. As long as we use electricity, we don't worry about it. But it is better to think about the alternative now

Cryptocurrency investment products and research firm CoinShares estimates that 74.1% of bitcoin (BTC) mining is powered by renewable energy.

Does anyone really connect the crypto industry and climate change?

Right now it is time to talk about the reduction in pollution around the globe due to the lockdown. Even now mining is taking place all around, which means the pollution isn't due to the electricity consumption. The pollution is the cause for climate change, and slowly this has got recovered over the past few weeks. Today its been found, a big hole in ozone layer has got closed as there is not much of pollutants and gases from industries, vehicles and other chemical reactions.

nature is totally cured now for a few more years

In terms of getting more bitcoin one of the methods we used is the mining this kind of work is good because the half of the block is for the miners and one of the block is to the community to make it more balance and the miner does not abuse this kind of earnings but how do the miners get their coins it is with the use of the graphic cards and cpus with the help of high specs mining PC they can earn faster but this time it affects too much electricity if you are leaving in a country that has a high bill of electricity mining is not good for you because it is more or less all of your earnings will just go into paying your bills. What are the connect of the climate changes into bitcoin?
Just simple most of us are using the natural resources to make electricity, using the wind, air, and water as use to make electricity if that will going to lack of natural resources it affects the bitcoin hardly we cannot make a good and fast creation of the bitcoin if we are lack of electricity. That's why we need to take care of our natural resources so we have a lot of electricity to consumers to mine more bitcoins.

I thin that Bitcoin will eventually shift to a more economic model, rather than using power hungry miners to maintain its integrity.

I wouldn't be surprised if it switched to Proof of stake, or some sort of hybrid consensus model.

Either way, there will need to be a change to the proof of work algo when quantum computers hit the prime time, since SHA256 wont be able to resist a quantum attack forever.

The process and the method use in generating electricity might cause environmental hazards. Apart form the most common generation of electricity through hydropower, some other means such as the burning of fossil foil and other biomass releases poisonous gas that causes ozone depletion and green house effect.