Bitcoin Forum

Here is an interesting article from The Guardian UK: Waste from one bitcoin transaction ‘like binning two iPhones’. Whereas the carbon footprint issue has been debated in the forum this article puts a different spin on the impact of mining.

According to the article, the Bitcoin network processed 112.5m transactions meaning that each individual transaction “equates to at least 272g of e-waste" which is the equivalent of two mini iPhone 12 handsets because ASIC miners have a limited shelf life of just 1.29 years. If the calculations are true, those are mind-boggling numbers.

Will statistics such as these (though debatable) affect the way investors continue to invest in Bitcoin and crypto in general?


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/17/waste-from-one-bitcoin-transaction-like-binning-two-iphones

No. I don't think so. I am wondering why the calculation is too tight when it's come for Bitcoin. Are wasting and pollution only coming from Bitcoin? There are many sectors still alive that are generating a lot of wastage. Is all this business going to stop? If not, then Bitcoin investors shouldn't stop as well from investing in Bitcoin. And I don't think Bitcoin investors are thinking about wastage before investing in Bitcoin. Same as when you are buying a company share you don't consider how much waste is generating from this industry.

Opponents of Bitcoin seem to have begun to change the narrative by which they will continue to try to discredit what they do not like. The OP cited some parts of the article, but I missed one comparison that literally shows how pointless it is to show BTC transactions in such a bad world - compared to other transactions.


It means hundreds of billions of transactions versus just over 100 million when it comes to BTC - so I would ask how much of that is a waste if I were to express it in the iPhone 12 minis?

Furthermore, everyone remembers comparing the energy consumption of BTC mining with the consumption of a country like Ireland, the Czech Republic or maybe Argentina, so that now great geniuses will discover a new way to show how Bitcoin will bury the country with garbage.


Should it be mentioned that the author of the article finally looks at some altcoins as alternatives to Bitcoin and states that the only salvation is to implement "proof of stake".

It would be very interesting to be able to read the full paper rather than just the abstract.
There may well be some/ lot of bias against Bitcoin , especially as one of the Authors is an employee of - De Nederlandsche Bank !!

What factors and parameters were used ?
Any members have free access to the paper ?

https://i.imgur.com/jv9ccbH.png

On a personal level - one very good friend was interested in Bitcoin , but has decided to go very anti bitcoin due to supposed environmental issues . I’ve tried to have a gentle discussion , but he is adamant it’s bad for the environment and we’re all killing the planet blah blah etc etc ! We have agreed to disagree  :)

Well, if we keep the ratio it couldn't even work as it would require 14 times the world electricity if they would have the same power requirements per transaction. If bitcoin would have stayed at 3k so would have consumption, if it goes to 300k by December assuming we will have enough Asics to plug in it will probably consume more than the entire banking sector in the world. Then, the halvings will do their jobs but till then

At the same time, it's understandable for some to look at those numbers and wonder why this..
There are 10 million people in the Czech Republic who do on average 6 million payments daily, go to work, play games, have sex, ride the metro, bake, have sex, print, and cook, visits malls and so on and so on,....and yet all those people with all their activity will consume less energy than the 2 million Asics securing bitcoins' network. Of course, it would look weird to anyone, and a lot will obviously ask, can't this be done in another way?

Well, not that I'm aware of any solution that wouldn't be just as problematic.
Right now the chip and gear shortage, rising energy costing, and the situation in China has put a hold on the increased consumption, I doubt we will see any spike unless the price goes nuts so long-term the problem will be somewhat solved.

Anyhow, the focus should not be on comparing consumption, but on what this consumption achieves differently than others.


You have $40 million a day in rewards going to miners, of course, the numbers would be insane, even assuming the most efficient gear on the market right now you would need about 17 000 tons of those. That's about 100 million iPhones mini.


Probably it will stop something between 0.004 or 0.007 of them! ;D

I wonder where the ASICs are taken to after they are nolonger useful for mining Bitcoin? Are they thrown away, or are the parts used for something else?
I always believe the miners should be multi purposes.. . When they are nolonger useful for mining Bitcoin they can be used for something else or maybe the parts could be used for making other useful things. Things like that are  better when they have multiple uses.
Guess we could blame on lack of better tech that's energy efficient, multi-purpose, portable, less power hungry, last long and do more work with less hardware.

Dave looks over at a pair of miners in his server room that are 3+ 4+ years old [1st batch of S9] so 1.29 years I don't think so.

Also, there are many e-waste recycling facilities so it's not like the miners are just scrapped. They can be, just like you can put your old PC in the garbage bin on trash day.
Or I don't know, sell it to people who want to play with old miners etc.

I am sure some do wind up as landfill, but not nearly all of them will.

-Dave

It's a never ending debate. Haters gonna hate! But does that make bitcoin look bad? Ask those people who are able to see financial freedom because of bitcoin. Ask those people who have become millionaires because of bitcoin and living their dream life. On the other hand, you will also find those people who have lost money from bitcoin investment because they have followed the fomo curve. So all types of people are in there, who were benefitted and who were not!

Pow is an energy intensive algorithm and unfortunately there is no way to change it to POS. Even if there's a way, who's gonna execute it? I don't think such statistics hold the power to bring down the image/charm of bitcoin.

POS devices brought by banks have no use besides serving as a method of payment either, and at some point they will be discarded. Why are we not talking about this?

The recent narrative mainstream media is trying to push forward is quite stupid. I mean, it's almost always been ever since they (and authorities) started to attempt to push people away from crypto.

Same goes for crypto ATMs. They serve as a way of withdrawing and/or depositing cash, and that is their only purpose. And I'm sure they're gonna be much more of a waste when discarded than BTC miners will be. Moreover, Bitcoin will work even without today's ASICs because it's decentralized. Banks will always need a running central power to make all the POS devices and ATMs of any utility.

Some would end up being recycled for parts but their usage is limited to mining therefore have no other real value except to be dismantled and used for parts. It is a shame that the miner manufacturing companies have kept the devices for single purpose use only.


The 1.29 years quoted in the article does seem hard to believe and not only that there is a recycling element you referred to that was not factored in the article either. I have never dumped an old PC in the bin before and have no intention of doing so in future because when electrical parts are concerned there is always scope to try to make some sort of recycling attempt. I agree, not of all miners end up in a landfill site.


This particular article from The Guardian does not seem to have a feel of Bitcoin haters promoting hate, it never alluded to the ceasing of Bitcoin or crypto mining operations. As for those that became millionaires from Bitcoin, I agree with what you implied - they and most people would probably rather get rich than worry about the latest trends regarding the alleged environmental impact.

One thing that the winning cryptocurrency will have to be is super efficient. The blockchain may just be the first step towards the right model, but it has definitely proven that a cashless society that is independent from banks is possible. Bitcoin has been able to bring down the fees per transaction substantially with segwit and that was a major boost when comparing it to historical costs - it is now competitive again. Speed is super important as well for it to be used in day to day transactions, unfortunately the low cap of 21 million has already stunted the long term potential of this currency but there is still a lot of useful experimenting that can go on with it. Unless the developers confront energy usage and are able to beat existing payment networks on that, it might struggle to get future governmental support.

I read the article and there is a twist in the comparison as the article claim that the entire BTCitcoin network cycles through 30.7 metric kilotons of equipment which is equivalent to the equipment waste in one sector produced by Netherlands, so what will be the total wastage in each and every sector  :D, just think about the global waste that is produced and they just want to compare them with the waste an entire BTCitcoin network produces.  

We are seeing all these excuses for a long time now, Elon Musk who is producing electric cars is complaining about the electric wastage while mining BTCitcoin and now a comparison of electronic wastage for the entire network with a country. What kind of comparison is that, it is like comparing apples to oranges and similarity is that it is round in shape. What about the millions of mobile phones that are obsolete in the past 10 years, if they could compare just the mobile electronic waste with the wastage of ASIC machines produced then that would be a good comparison. The binning rate would be 20:1  :D.

 

It's amazing how such institutions will come up with a different narrative every time their previous spin-offs were discredited by facts and facts alone. We're looking at data and study made by financial institutions that are trying to bring down bitcoin and crypto, and of course, the bias will always shift in their favor.

I'd love to know how would they equate in iPhone 12 minis the waste produced by other industries that have far too low of an impact in the economy, or those sectors that add nothing of value to society yet they cannot do shit about because they have vested interests on it.

Unless some maths are shown within the article where they showed how they came up with such an absurd amount of e-waste, I wouldn't believe it blindly. There has been a history of these people especially those connected with the corporate and government hating on and cryptocurrencies in general so this feels yet again like another black propaganda directed towards bitcoin so environmentalists would tag along with this hate. What I want to hear from them is how the amount of e-waste bitcoin makes compare to the amount of pollution the use of non-renewable resources produces over time. These institutions will do whatever they can in their power to topple the legacy bitcoin is trying to make right now and keep fiat and the use of non-renewable resources as active as possible. After all this is where they get their money from so it comes to no surprise that these people will do whatever they could do to keep their primary source of power and income alive. Then again they'd realize that their efforts will be rendered useless.

You are right, non-crypto related financial transactions run at well over 500 billion per annum and to my knowledge no real economic study has been carried out to ascertain the waste produced by that sector but if anybody can provide a link it will be appreciated because figures can be compared with what has been written about Bitcoin.

I do not see the article in The Guardian as being anti-Bitcoin, I think the author just wanted to get the report by economists mentioned. As you said when you have 539 billion transactions versus 112.5 million then it would defeat the object of trying to show Bitcoin in a negative light which is why I think the author intended no malice.

Bitcoin is still contributing only a tiny fraction of global e-waste (which is 50 million tons per year). Yes, it's bad that Bitcoin does that but the world can afford it. In the future there will be better technologies for recycling old electronics automatically, so it will be less of a problem. And maybe ASICs will hit a performance limit and will have much longer lifespans.

Using Bitman / Cannan as my 2 references with the newer miners with the built in power supplies.
75% or more of the weight is aluminum for the heatsinks and case. Which is totally and easily recyclable.
15% to 20% is the power supply and some steel which are also recyclable in just about any part of the world.

The rest? The circuit boards and chips and other stuff. Yes, it takes a bit more to recycle it, but it's done all over the world every day.

-Dave

I hate when they frame it as waste per transaction. If you interpret it literally then you would think your electricity bill would be hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just from transacting but that is not at all how Bitcoin works. The amount of electricity they are talking about is not used for making transactions, it is used to keep the network secure. If you see it that way then you might understand why this electricity usage is necessary.

Just because it can be recycled doesn't mean that it would be. Recycling metal is quite a tedious task and many a times, it makes far more sense economically to just throw them to a landfill and mine for new material than trying to waste money and recycle them. E-waste is quite a prominent issue because parts of it are either hard to recycle or expensive to do so, due to the miscellaneous costs incurred in the process as well. Recycling doesn't really do all that much, it doesn't offset the environmental impact from mining it in the first place and incurs even more through the process of recycling it.

It's quite absurd that people are not acknowledging the fact that these argument actually have some substance and makes sense. Instead, they are dismissing it as a "propaganda" or fake news and instead shift their argument towards other activities which generate far more utility. Come on, it is just a Bitcoin cult defending the coin for the sake of doing so ::).

Someone is mentioning here a bias against Bitcoin and I can sense that this is really true. I mean...these BTC haters are focusing on Bitcoin because it is a single entity unlike other industries which are scattered like the banking and other financial institutions...they are all consuming power and they are all producing wastes in so many wastes. Heck, as long as one is doing business and is breathing we are all making wastes. I am expecting that next time we can hear another argument against Bitcoin. Instead of hiding the bias in technical terms and explanation, why not just say that they don't like Bitcoin and does not want to do anything with it? Nobody is forcing them or campaigning for them to be a part of us, anyway.

Once again price trend is starting to reverse and go up as bitcoin is trying to break the resistance and this type of idiotic articles/topics started on bitcointalk again. As I always said, they can slow the bitcoin adoption down but it is inevitable.

I read the article and did not get any positive impression, and someone who otherwise thinks negatively about Bitcoin after that article will certainly not get a positive opinion - because for me it is just an upgrade of the story of how Bitcoin is bad in any possible way. If you add to this the years-long story of how Bitcoin mining has a big impact on the environment, and that it is used by criminals, pedophiles, and drug dealers - then I logically conclude that this is just a continuity of coordinated attack to discredit Bitcoin.

It is no secret what the position of the Bank of England is when it comes to cryptocurrencies, and the media are an extended arm of the government anyway, regardless of the fact that someone is calling for media freedom and similar nonsense.

Can they release the numbers for fiat too? Because I am pretty sure that it's a big one too given that we spend some resources to make fresh batch of fiat to inject into the economy, I think that this is just another attempt to deter bitcoin and make it the scapegoat.

There's a more fundamental problem with these "statistics": it's trying to link things that aren't directly related!

You can't just divide those two numbers and then say each transaction creates 272 grams of waste. If I make a transaction, I pay the minimum fee. That's 111 sat, which equates to $0.05, and nobody is buying 272 grams of hardware for my 5 cents. The waste is caused by the high value of finding a new Bitcoin block, and this value barely changes from low-fee transactions.
This same thing is also ignored when calculating CO₂-emissions per transaction.

If you want Bitcoin to pollute less, you'll need new blocks to be less profitable. That can either be from a lower Bitcoin price, or from lower block rewards. Until now, block halving was more than compensated by Bitcoin's increased value, but after several more halvings that will turn around eventually. So unless we all start paying very high transaction fees, eventually Bitcoin will have to consume less resources.

Lol. So a banker making up dirty statistics about the one thing that can take away his power over money (and people).
I guess they'll just be silent if 10 years from now there are more (low-resource) LN-transactions than traditional bank transactions.

It's most likely recycled: the metal still has value, just like other e-waste.

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I'll make up my own (equally useless) statistics: Let's assume 1000 bankers per year write something bad about Bitcoin each year. That adds up to 30.7 metric tons of waste per publication!

They're probably correct but it is a "rubbish stat" either way because network users are not the entities that cause the e-waste by making the transaction. This analysis should've been solely scoped to the ASIC mining industry, where a statistic like this would actually make sense e.g. for every X blocks mined, Y kg of e-waste is produced is a lot more useful metric because it directly involves something that ASICs are performing (ASICs do not create or process transactions).

It makes zero sense to compare such incongruent items as transactions and miner e-waste.

Instead of per block, I'd like to see the amount of waste per dollar earned! That would make it possible to compare the Bitcoin mining industry to other sectors.

Not quoting (https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2) mainstream media but a company involved in Bitcoin

Bitcoin estimates 113TWh/y
Gold estimates 240TWh/y

The daily income of miners is around $50millions, the gold production is at around 2500 tons, so around 7 tons of gold, $320m
112% consumption but 540% income, gold would win with those numbers.

But again, the focus is wrongly put here, Bitcoin DOES consume a ton of energy, you can't even have an argument against banks, if a whole country consumes less than the network is clear banks do even less. And if Bitcoin would be used by 4 billion people we would be at 10 million per coin by now and guess where the electricity consumption will go?

The thing is that there is no better option right now, otherwise, we would see a different coin taking over, we would see another algorithm or another type of currency altogether. Comparisons are useless, it is what it is, that energy consumption is because people are trusting the network with that amount of money, just how people spend money on gaming rigs, on Christmas lights, and so on if it weren't the trust there won't be any consumption.

The circuit boards are the hardest to recycle and may or may not be.
The same with the power supply and the other small components.

The aluminum is quick and simple.
And on older miners makes up even more.

For the old S9 miner I just took apart full weight: 152 ounces using a postage scale.
Take off the fans, the controller, the fan guards, the other steel bits, 3 ribbon cables, screws and put them in one pile.
Knock off all the heatsinks which are aluminum, and put them on top of the case which is also aluminum. 128 ounces.
Gives me a bit over 84% that can be recycled anywhere.
*The fans were not the ones that came with it, not sure about the fan guards so your numbers might be a bit different.

Any MAJOR farm that can't sell their old equipment on the secondary market because the hardware no longer works is going to have some way to get rid of this stuff.
Remember, there is a monetary value attached to it. Here in NY at the low end you get $0.50 a pound for aluminum, that is me waling in off the street.
If I had more, like I pile all the broken miners from a large operation and strip them. I could probably get 10%+ more if I am bringing in 1000s of pounds.

Now, on the individual scale, yes stuff might nor be recycled, but a commercial operation would never leave that money unclaimed.

-Dave

There’s a lot of garbage from humans in general. We systematically pollute the environment with plastic and polyethylene, pour tons of slop into rivers, contaminate land with different pesticides every day, permanently deforesting, fires destroys trees on hundreds hectare of land, greenhouse effect of mega-cities also have harmful effect on environment. I can go on and mention about regular rocket launches into space and a lot of other factors. Pollution that comes from mining crypto is only one of factors that destroy our planet, but it’s unlikely to stop anyone to mine as well as to live ordinary lives with all its modern facilities.

A study funded by a bank and written by Alex de Vries, who is employed by a bank and who has a long history of writing opinion pieces about how terrible bitcoin is. I'm absolutely positive that such an article will be completely neutral and not at all biased. ::)

You should be able to download it from here: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0921344921005103-mmc1.docx

I've looked through the paper at length to try to figure out how they came up with this figure of "1.29 years" that they base their entire analysis on. They make a lot of references to "Supplementary Data Sheets", but these data sheets are nowhere to be found. I have full access to the Elsevier website and cannot find them there either. I downloaded the PDF of the article as well as the PDF of the entire Volume this article is published in, and can't find the reference data anywhere. So at least for the time being, a lot of their data is shrouded in mystery. Amazing that not a single one of the "news sites" which have reported this story have picked up on that. ::) It's almost like they just spam anything for the clickbait headlines. ::)

What they do say in the main paper is that all their assumptions regarding device lifespan are based upon it still being profitable at a cost of "USD 5 cents per kilowatt-hour" of electricity. Given that we know from other studies that the majority of bitcoin miners are using renewable energy supplies at prices far cheaper than this, and that some bitcoin miners are even being paid to use up electricity which would otherwise be wasted, this seems like a big assumption. They reference another paper for their $0.05/kWh figure (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3700822) which specifically states that this price is "comparatively higher" than others, with some regions reporting a median electricity price of only $0.025/kWh. So assuming that $0.05/kWh is a global average is incorrect, even by their own sources.

The data that they do share shows that reducing their incorrect assumption by a tiny amount to $0.045/kWh increases their predicted lifespan by a whopping 18.6%. Reducing further towards a true global average will increase the lifespan dramatically, and so the ridiculous comparison regarding 2 iPhones is complete nonsense.
 

Correct. Many a times, they are the ones that fail first and contributes mainly to the e-waste problem. The silicon in the chips are difficult to recycle because of the purity needed.
I get the point about aluminium being recyclable. That isn't really much of a concern given that we've already been recycling such a huge percentage of our aluminium cans and other miscellaneous stuff made from aluminium. The problem lies not only with the recycling aspect of it, as I've mentioned but rather the demand of it. We are incurring significant environmental impact by producing specific chips and boards that are designed for one purpose and one purpose only... Which is to mine a specific algorithm and afterwards there is no use for it. Great, it is recyclable. Does that mean it is environmentally friendly just because it can be recycled?

The answer is no. It might be feasible to recycle them(depending on their area and the parts we're concerned with), but that would only solve part of the problem, which is trying to mitigate part of the e-waste problem. The problem with this is that it is a multi-dimensional problem. We have to calculate both the carbon footprint for producing these ASICs, and recycling them as well to factor in the true derived carbon footprint of a single transaction. I want to bring the attention to the efficiency of a transaction instead, for which is it more efficient for Visa to process a transaction or for Bitcoin to process a transaction?

I agree, it would be interesting to read about the formula used ascertain various information regarding the waste output per Bitcoin transaction and use that same formula against other waste producing entities, it would be a good way to read side by side comparators.

If your friend has decided to become anti-Bitcoin then maybe one day he will change his mind and return back to the crypto embracing world, just keep trying to have your gentle discussions from time to time :)

I am relieved by all the good comments that you guys have posted. Because I was surprised by the news by how unlikely it could be.
I cannot believe that the use of bitcoin could cause such costs in economic terms.

When an economist opines in the digital media, I already feel that the news is an anti-bitcoin.
We need bitcoin and crypto friendly economists who tell the whole truth.

Blockchain developers have all these calculations too.
But unfortunately this news affects the truthfulness of bitcoin and people are moving away from knowing more how it really works.

One of the Authors- De Vries - loves certain words
- assuming
- estimates
There are NO hard figures , so nothing to compare.
I’ve done some digging round and he seems to be the founder of

https://digiconomist.net/

And this quote is from his LinkedIn page
“Digiconomist is a platform that is dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends, typically from an economic perspective. Tech trends often open up a world of possibilities, but also bring their own unique challenges. It’s easy to get lost in the optimism that accompanies those new possibilities,  but it’s important to maintain a healthy dose of realism. New technologies are rarely perfect, as illustrated by the gigantic environmental impact that the cryptocurrency Bitcoin had (as a result of its mining mechanism)”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-de-vries-a5b51349

Don’t think he likes Bitcoin too much :)

That's it exactly. It's all based on assumptions.

IF we assume that every bitcoin miner draws power from the standard electricity grid of the country they are mining in, and
IF we assume that every bitcoin miner pays $0.05/kWh for that electricity, and
IF we assume a couple of arbitrary adjustment factors which we don't explain how we arrive at, and
IF we assume peak sales of each ASIC is within a month of release, and
IF we assume that the second an ASIC becomes unprofitable with these previous assumption it is immediately disposed of, and
IF we assume it is disposed of to a landfill and none of these devices are ever recycled, used to mine other coins, or any other purpose,
THEN we reach this conclusion.

Change any one of those largely unsubstantiated assumptions and their entire conclusion is moot.

Maybe also worth noting that in their paper, they use the word "assume" (and its derivatives) 20 times, and "estimate" (and its derivatives) 50 times.

It is very difficult to disagree with what you wrote highlighting the ambiguous nature of certain words used in the article but him stating "as illustrated by the gigantic environmental impact that the cryptocurrency Bitcoin had (as a result of its mining mechanism)”, well that just puts different spin on things. Mabe he does have a hidden agenda which was not made clear in The Guardian article.

Does it really mean he dislikes Bitcoin for another reason and has then taken a hard line environmental view as a result of his personal feelings or that he dislikes mining in general along with what he perceives as the environmental impact therefore Bitcoin is in his sights?

Actually if we compare it with paper money then it still better. Paper money cause polution more than we think. Every destructed paper money will be replaced by new one which means more and more waste. Maintaining paper money also need cost such as administration cost, security cost, delivery cost and etc. I think bitcoin transactions is still the best in this century.

I wonder if this news appeared in your local media? The reason is very simple, they say that good news spreads fast, and bad news spreads even faster. I read this news yesterday on a very prominent local portal, and many other internet portals in the country relayed that news. Regardless of the fact that the whole thing is completely meaningless, such stories are then used by those who see Bitcoin as some evil innovation and definitely shape public opinion.

Well, they won't tell you that because if they do, their agenda won't be successful which is to make cryptocurrency look bad, remember that they want it to be that way, that's why you don't see how much the waste that paper money produce when they talk about the waste that cryptocurrency produces.

The more I think about it the more it becomes clear that the article did not provide hard provable data to derive to those conclusions about 272g of waste. Maybe the article was not supposed to overtly attack Bitcoin and crypto but was intended to be more subtle to push through an anti-Bitcoin and anti-mining agenda on a more subliminal level.

Either way the article raises a lot of questions in the way the author probably did not intend.

many false assumptions

first. asics dont process transactions.
asics have no hard drives and no matter if a block is empty or full the asics job is the same

secondly
yep. devs can remove the cludgy stifling code that limits transaction count tomorrow. and asics would be unaffected. if average transaction count went to 4k or even 10k (physically possible with 4mb 'weight')
that can instantly mess with the analysts numbers. without touching a single extra asic

thirdly.
doing some actual maths based on the s19pro and average hashrate of 135exa for the time period=1.2mill asics at 15.8kg each with 136million transactions performed in last 1.3 years

the assumption at real data is actually 142g.. so they are doing a 2x multiplier to make things sound 2x worse. even when they cant even understand there is no correlation between transaction count vs asic count

The BBC news website is mentioning the 272g e-waste too, they are quoting Alex de Vries and Christian Stoll: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58572385

Some parts of the media are not putting Bitcoin in a good light to those that might be interested in getting involved with crypto.

Of course not. The media, banks, Wall Street, etc., are all owned by people who have little to gain and a lot to lose from bitcoin's growing dominance. They will never portray it in a good light.

Reporting stuff like this without any investigation is pretty poor journalism, though. You expect it from all the trash that passes as crypto "news" sites, but you expect better from corporations like the BBC. It is an article funded by a bank and based on assumptions with no hard data. It is the equivalent of Philip Morris funding a study saying that if you smoke you look 30% cooler.

In fairness to the media they went in to overdrive against the bankers when the financial world came crashing down in 2008 resulting in Lehman Brothers collapsing. There was a clear and open anti-financial institute agenda all over the media but sadly it did not last long enough. A stunning £90 billion worth of value in listed UK companies was lost in one day during the height of the collapse and the UK bailout to its banks was around £500 billion from tax payers money which included buying a huge stake in RBS which they sold later.

We hardly ever see or read anything in the media nowadays about exactly what happened in previous crashes that were attributed to the recklessness of the banking sector.

Keeping that aside, you are spot on about the Bitcoin article in The Guardian, it is poor journalism in general but any large media corporation such as athe BBC news should know better than to regurgitate the same highly debatable information.

They will, when their bosses or people who pay them their salaries finally get behind Bitcoin,,, and I say finally because there is no other option but to accept. You can fight it but you cannot win something that cannot be killed.

We only have to look and ask JP Morgan bank employees or even Nasdaq how quickly things changed and how they also had to change their tune :)