Bitcoin Forum

For long I read bitcoin isn't environment friendly and the cost of bitcoin mining is exorbitant.
 This is the main reason why many organisations and governments are criticizing bitcoin.
However i feel defferent.
I feel bitcoin can become a great tool of creating a much cleaner and greener environment. We should come together and work to create a better future world.

Most of the cities around the globe produce tons of waste and that waste end up in landfills, garbage hills, drains and so on.
Civic bodies don't really have capability, resources or even will to address these problems.

I feel if we allow bitcoiners to set biodegradation plants  for waste treatment. Such plants which decompose these waste and generate bio-gases like methane and other which can inturn generate electricity sufficient for running their bitcoin grids.

This will be a win win situation for all.

There will be cheap electricity for bitcoin mining , there will be biodegradation of waste as needed by civic bodies.
There will be greener and cleaner environment.

Overtime  an international  network or a global bitcoin grid, where citizens can invest for creating waste biodegradation plants and the bitcoin mined will be their reward in proportion to their investments.

I think bitcoin is an opportunity to bring together world and achieve the mammoth goals of environmental protection, poverty eradication and bringing prosperity and equality in world.

Please express your thoughts on this.

The energy companies are against carbon neutrality and fixing the problems they caused.

The issue with biofuel I can think of is it still produces waste gasses (but does reduce overall waste and might redirect some but landfill is normally compacted well to do that too - the waste normally isn't allowed to breathe for long).

I was looking into using renewables for crypto mining and it looks like they might pay higher than directly connecting them to the grid (for smaller sized operations) as the power companies normally only offer half the price of the electricity in return while it's generated (although that was taken from solar and I was looking into wind). That being said, at $400-2k a miner and $3-6k a wind turbine to power it there's probably a reason there aren't that many people doing it.

There are some questions or threads we see here mables me. What bitcoin has to do with environment again? Bitcoin is an online or a digital currency which can be used to buy goods and services and if the  service providers accept it. so I don't see any connection between the two. But if you understand bitcoin you would not ask such question. What your Fiat currency can do bitcoin can also do if only the environmental service agencies will accept it then bitcoin can be used.

I believe it's not only about cheap electricity.. it's also more about creating a sustainable system.
A system which can address not only out current waste management and energy needs but future needs as well.
Tons of waste end up in sea, microplastics have already made their way to human fetus.

My point is if make our waste useful, we will have a sustainable and clean future and bitcoin can be a great tool to do that

---

I am a biological scientist maybe i don't understand bitcoin as good as many here, but i understand 2 things.
The biggest challenges of our generation is environmental issues and much of it is human waste and emmisions.
Currently there is no real rewards for waste management and and secondly bitcoin mining..( not trading or transaction)needs lot of energy.  If we can club them together can't we mine bitcoin using otherwise useless waste..

Thankyou

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

There are energy and environmental concerns involved with mining bitcoins but any organisation and governments that hides behind those reason alone as their major reason for not allowing bitcoin are merely being hypocritical. I have always said that prior to bitcoins we have always had environmental concerns and then rather than criticizing the environmental friendliness and mining cost of bitcoin they can seek to profer proper solutions to address these issues or if they are without idea seek to adopt ideas like what OP has suggested and make it work.

I completely agree with you... The governments are being hypocritical .
But what if we make bitcoin mining become a reward for setting up  bio digesters for waste management..
The higher the prices bitcoin achieve more will be the rewards for creating clean energy from waste and utilising it for mining.
The world will embrace, bitcoin as a saviour.

maybe there are some bitcoin miners who take advantage of the environment, for example mining bitcoin with solar power or maybe what you mean is like using waste, if you have an idea and do an experiment, it doesn't hurt right, where it can generate electricity to mine bitcoin well of course it will help too reducing waste and being friendly to the environment, this is also a problem with Elon discussing bitcoin mining which he says can damage the environment, but I'm sure in the future there will always be new breakthroughs for bitcoin to be more environmentally friendly

I have long argued that bitcoin mining not only uses a completely inconsequential amount of electricity (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395812.msg59954383#msg59954383) in the wider scheme of things, but also uses a much higher proportion of renewable electricity than almost any other sector and is actively beneficial in the development of new renewable infrastructure (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5413870.msg60954542#msg60954542).

But, here's my question to you as a biological scientist about your proposal: What is stopping the development and building of these bio-degradation plants right now? If they can reduce waste while producing usable energy or electricity which can be sold at a profit, then why do we not have more of them already? Why would sticking a bitcoin mining operation on the side make any difference?

I couldn't agree more.

Bitcoin is a digital decentralized currency, it has nothing to do with environmental problems
Those topics are basically an attack on bitcoin. Soon we will ser authorities trying to PoS or similar to bitcoin   so it can be environmental friendly.

If Bitcoin bankrupts banks and the military industrial complex, it will have done more for the environment than anything in history.

Bitcoin is mostly environment friendly since it is digital rather than physical but the claims that Bitcoin does use a lot of electricity are true. Mining is an expensive process and big miner farms use a big amount of electricity and when you put it all on paper - Bitcoin uses as much as electricity as some countries, at least that what most articles about this matter claim. I think it's more of a negative comment on Bitcoin than an actual worry about the environment since there are much bigger threats (as you have mentioned) to it than just Bitcoin and they haven't been questioned for a long time now because it isn't anything new, but Bitcoin is.

Yeah it can and I talk about it extensively on https://bitcoincleanup.com (scroll down to "bitcoin mining can help the environment", I'll add an anchor link for that soon).

Bitcoin is a currency and a decentralized currency, so Bitcoin doesn't have anything to do with environmental sanitation or environmental clean up, the way i have seen it. Unless you know exactly the aspect you are emphasising on. And secondly bitcoin can be compared with fiat currency, if fiat currency can be used for environmental clean up in any condition bitcoin can do also. Except that i did not comprehend well of what you meant by environmental clean up.

Yeah, no. Pretty much another unwanted expenditure on the part of the mining firms that it's best to leave the waste as it is and just focus on their main goal: make bitcoin. The idea you outlined is great, although its implementation would require shaving tons of resources from these mining firms. Perhaps some of them can start a movement, but I doubt that they'll ever do that. Recycling waste and turning it into energy is a good thing, but would the energy generated be worth the hassle anyway? Would it remove their 100% dependency on the grid? I don't think so.

I think from OP approach he meant that there should be alternative means whereby bitcoin could benefit and widens it application in providing a lasting solution in some particular aspect of the economy such as how it imoact could contribute to the development of an environment by making it less concerned in destroying it, bitcoin could be profitable enough in building a good and stable friendly environment, using bitcoin in securing valuables that could contribute to the growth of an environment is also a good and welcome idea aside the currency and asset usage which is the common use.

I always thought the anti btc argument based on energy usage was flawed. Why not go after Walmart? They use a ton of energy. Or tv sets. People don't need those, they use lots of power. Why not computers in general? Or Ford motor company, or air conditioning, etc. To single out bitcoin seems strange. Lots of stuff uses lots of power, and yet this one thing is singled out. I think it has more to do with the traditional banking system putting out negative stuff about crypto, although I don't know how I would prove such a thing. But, many media outlets are owned by just a handful of people.

Technology in general is creating more electricity demand. Look at the insane policy in California, where they want all cars to be electric? But where will this electricity come from? They already have rolling blackouts in the summer. The electricity prices, already some of the most expensive in the world, will become even worse. But that's just an example. In general tech will require more energy, so I think we need better ways of making that energy. In the usa we still use some pretty old school stuff like coal power. Time to invest in new power, rather than attacking a particular technology.

The idea of what you've brought about using waste management into generating clean or alternative energy to mine bitcoin is good.

But before you've come to that idea, there have been mining facilities or they call, farms that have been already using clean/green or alternative energy for mining bitcoin. Like solar and hydroelectric energy for which I've seen myself in some docus and stories that I've watched because I was interested into knowing how they do it.

Those farm owners have that idea too since they're also worried about high cost of electricity if they will not find a way to have that alternate source of electricity.

Bitcoin haters believe that bitcoin mining is way too much expensive and this will consume too much fossil energy and the energy required for mining bitcoin can produce too many greenhouse gases you can see many bitcoin miners are starting to use renewable energies and leave the fossil energies, regardless of that comparing to many other monetary systems bitcoin will can help to have a cleaner environment, you won't need to have physical money and much other waste, so this can help to have a clean environment.

Currently, more bitcoin miners are using renewable alternative energy so that it does not have a negative effect on the environment. many say that bitcoin is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect and makes the ozone layer thinner. despite the fact that bitcoin only uses a few percent of the world's energy and large industries still use it more and it is protected by the government. Bitcoin is always a suspect when it comes to global warming.
Cleaning the environment from waste pollution is not the task of bitcoin, it is not completely related because bitcoin only uses a few percent of energy. Especially now that some bitcoin miners use energy that is more environmentally friendly. This is the duty of the government and everyone's awareness so that the environment can be clean.

You have a great idea and if you do, we will contribute a lot to reducing waste into the environment but with this to say makes bitcoin a savior, I don't think it will. Even if we make bitcoin cleaner using renewable energy or your idea, they will find other reasons like bitcoin is heavily used by criminals, highly speculative, and highly manipulated...I believe they will always find a way to stop bitcoin, and slander bitcoin because they didn't like bitcoin in the first place because it is decentralized and uncontrollable.

Miners are only consuming energy from the available source. Carbon emission is not only caused by Bitcoin mining energy consumption but by many energy consuming activity and Biofuel consumption. Its in the place for the government to create a habitable source of energy consumption that way Bitcoin mining will be more eco friendly creating a greener environment as well.

There are so many good ideas on how to be using Bitcoin to be helping the environment. One, we can make volunteers clubs all over the world and make them part of the clean-up movement and use the garbage collected for energy generation which can used to mine Bitcoin. And we can be paying volunteers with tokens of appreciation using Bitcoin. Of course, I am not so sure if my idea can be workable.

Let us say bitcoin never existed, then why aren't they doing this now? There would be less "wastage" and countries would have almost "cheap" electricity like you have stated. There are countries that struggle with electricity productions. Why don't they use this method? I am sure this is because it is more complicated that you think and isn't as much feasible as you think.

Maybe if you read the post, you would have known what OP is talking about.

If we consider that BTC is smaller than banks, but transactions traveling on Blockchain are at least 30% of banks, yes, BTC helps the environment. And that percentage will grow more and more

The earth will not stop warming until humanity gives up all building millions of industrial plants, mining minerals, environmental resources...That is the real cause of global warming. Bitcoin and miners are under a lot of pressure on the energy usage and waste of bitcoin, I believe we will definitely move all to clean energy in the future. What I expect is what they will say next with bitcoin when the energy issue is resolved even though it's not entirely bitcoin's fault. Will they accept bitcoin or will they find another reason to keep blaming bitcoin?

As you said that Bitcoin is not environmentally-friendly because of mining, so it is the duty of every Bitcoin holder to do something for the environment. Your idea of setting biodegradation plants for waste management can really help with environment protection.

Generation of bio furl is not easy as we say because it takes lot of infrastructure and land structure to fill all the space so why we have to go for the more expensive ways.

The real reason why government doesn't like bitcoin is decentralisation not because of it is consuming more electricity or producing anything which is against the nature.

Honestly there is no need for biodegradable waste and so forth, just use solar panels and you are done already. Simply put solar panels on the roof of any place that mines bitcoin or any other coin, gpu or asic mining, whatever you do and after a certain level is passed (not to people who mine with one small rig, just mining farms) then you would have renewable energy and would help the world.

They could generate more than they use and sell it back to the world and there will be more clean energy. But that initial investment is not really at acceptable level because it already takes so long to recoup your investment, plus with volatility it may take even longer.

Might be possible but we could have seen the results of this process on fiat production or even for the other energy needed stuff. What I mean is, we already know different ways to produce the fuels from wastes, for example, we already know how to make biodiesel from waste material, methane gas is literally thing of school project these days. However, sadly no subsidies are available for such projects which are more environmental friendly than ever.

Imagine if we apply same strategy for the bitcoin mining projects then we could be winning the world in no time. Pure energy based mining thus pure transactions. Feels like futuristic movie scene if you ask me.