Bitcoin Forum

Found this interesting article on Hackernoon, which states that the main source of the negative press surrounding Bitcoin's environmental impact, is completely untrustworthy and unscientific.

Here's an excerpt from the article:  


Do read the full article, it's very interesting.

https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7

If all data show that BTC mining is consume about 1% or less of total annual world consumption of electricity, then it is clear that such stories can not be true. Most of such conclusions are based on China coal-fired power plants as main source of electricity, but it is hard fact that almost 80% of China miners are located in Sichuan province and that province is mainly produce electricity from hydro power.

Some other researchers conclude that almost 80% of electricity used for BTC mining comes from renewable energy sources. Potential of such sources is still inadequately exploited, especially in terms of sun and wind energy.

Although hydro power plants produce clean energy, they are not considered as friendly for the environment because of its permanent impact on the habitats of humans and animals. But at this moment we can say that BTC is pretty green if we compare it to some other industries which pollute the environment in incredible proportions over the past few decades.

the power consumption of bitcoin mining has never been about power consumption of bitcoin mining!

it may sound strange but if you read between the lines of all those articles you can clearly see that they are all saying the same negative nonsense about bitcoin itself trying to undermine its utility and potential. and they all are ignoring the fact that bitcoin is the only decentralized payment system that has been working seamlessly on a global scale for 10 years.

Makes you wonder if Alex de Vries has been paid off by companies that benefit from the demise of Bitcoin.
He does put traditional credit card networks into a good light, by making a false comparison to Bitcoin.

The amount of mistakes made by De Vries is simple appalling, like the conclusion that most Bitcoin in China is mined by coal power plants.
If you look up his name on Google, you'll see that his "research" has been published by a pretty big amount of popular news websites

I think there are many worse things for the environment than mining bitcoin & we should look at them long before we question the negatives of mining.

90% of the bitcoin related news websites are desperate for smallest things to publish and get some traffic directed to their shitty website so you can only imagine how a heated topic like the supposed bitcoin's environmental damage could spread like wildfire. and that is exactly what happened, they hyped up the issue by exaggeration and false information and then the click baiters took care of the rest.

Here are a few simple facts.

1. Approx 90% of bitcoins mined are sold to pay for the electric.
2. That equates to $5 million a day on electric costs, sure some might be green, but some of that that electricity could be used by someone else that subsequently didn't have the green electric.

So basically bitcoin must be wasting $2 Billion a year that is in effect environmental damage.

If bitcoin increases, more people mine and so the environmental impact is linked very closely to the price of btc.

I hope bitcoin becomes worthless asap.

Bitcoin maybe causing an environmental damage and everything in this world which uses electricity or any other things cause environmental damage for some extend for an example we see hybrid cars as environmentally friendly concept because of the fuel efficiency and low air pollution  but to make the hybrid battery some expertise say there is a huge pollution that is causing in the long run but most people buy hybrid and why we should concern about the small bitcoin environment damage when it gives more advantages and benefits

@coinycoiny

If those are indeed facts, you wouldn't mind sharing all the studies that you've read to base those 'facts' on.

Not all energy that goes into Bitcoin mining is suitable for other use.
Take for example the excess energy that a hydro power plant produces, in some cases it's better to actually spend that excess energy than to store it.

Here's one example of what happens when there's excess power:
http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/germany-excess-power/

Also interesting:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/mining-for-cryptocurrencies-could-be-the-future-of-energy-storage/

So you think, VISA and MasterCard run without power? Amazon got insight from massive data without any use of power? What do you think about the process of making paper that waste so much water? Every luxury that we use is putting pressure on nature, but they never told you that you should live in Forest/ or nomadic type of life. But they told you do not use BTC because BTC is causing environmental issues.

Of course they do, but they are massively more efficient then bitcoin. Also, it's in the banks interest to use as little energy as possible whereas bitcoin encourages more people to mine it as the price goes up. If the price goes up by 10 times, energy wasted goes up by the same amount. Stupid, stupid stupid. Anybody who thinks otherwise is also stupid.

Hmmm, I wonder where have you pulled off these numbers. If these are facts, where are the statistics, or even a link explaining how do they get such numbers.


No. If bitcoin's price increases, more people are trading more than mining. Mining equipment/machines also goes up when the price of 1 bitcoin goes up; they are, at most times, directly proportional to each other, so why would people risk their money into mining when they can just buy bitcoin on the spot and wait for the price to go up? Wouldn't that be practical and easier for them to do so? The environmental 'damage' these people are referring to is really not a problem, and if it is, then why are we turning a blind eye on industries that also utilizes a huge amount of energy? The problem is not on bitcoin's utilization of enormous amount of energy, pseudo-environmentalists.

you can not make a guess and call it a "fact" instead! so far it is simply your guess.

whatever that real number is, why do you think it is "wasting"? just because YOU don't think bitcoin is useful it doesn't mean it is not providing a well needed service to thousands of people worldwide.

more electric is used to keep bottles of Pepsi chilled.

Its not a guess, its economics. People tend to spend 90 cents if they get a 100 back. If you only had to spend 50 then more people would do it hence the price goes up. If it was more than 100 then people would stop and the price goes down. Economics 101.

If you think its not wasting then you are delusional. But that's true of most bitcoin fans.

Except that it was the mainstream media that spread this crap, I remember well how articles about Bitcoin consuming ALL world's electricity were hitting reddit's front page some time ago, and to this day when someone mentions Bitcoin outside of crypto subs, people jump in with the same statements that Bitcoin is killing the environment. I find it especially ironic, because those comments are most likely made by a middle-class American, who drives a car every day, uses air conditioning, buys a ton of useless items, thus contributing to the global warming much more than Bitcoin.

Yeah, I've mainly remembered pretty big newspapers who actually published this, they probably sourced their "facts" directly from De Vries himself.
The numbers that were being mentioned back then already seemed exaggerated to me, now it comes out that some of them were completely fabricated almost.

i like this statement! LOL


one thing i can say, with the introduction of cryptocurrencies especially bitcoin, many people have been served and continue to be served by this crypto revolution. time and money have been saved by utilizing those payment centers that accept bitcoin and other crypto for instance. so i don't see any wasting of energy here. it saves energy instead.

Although we may not be able to see with the naked eye the harm bitcoin mining has done to our environment, there is no doubt that the bitcoin network will have to reduce its energy consumption before the bitcoin block chain becomes widespread. It is not surprising that regulators are trying to control/reduce electricity consumption by formulating policies and regulations for miners.
Because Bitcoin miners are so sensitive to electricity prices, this will drive research and development in the energy sector and produce more effective energy solutions. It's hard to understand the positive and negative externalities of Bitcoin, so it's hard to say whether the energy consumed by mining is really "worth it". However, if the power consumption of mining is not controlled or efficiency is not improved, if people realize the negative impact of Bitcoin mining on the environment, then its impact on the environment may be irreversible.

Or he is paid to do what he does, or it is about ignorance or some kind of hate toward BTC, I do not think there's a third reason for what he is doing. What a writer of Medium article think about that person speaks for itself :


Whoever visits his site (https://digiconomist.net/) and read all the nonsense he publishes on it, can very easily conclude that he think BTC is main world problem. But I was curious how much energy is spend by all banks in the world in one year, and by some researches (http://climatestate.com/2018/01/15/energy-consumption-bitcoin-vs-banking-system/) it is close to a 100 terawatt hours a year., and BTC is just using 28.67 terawatt hours a year. In addition to this card readers, credit cards and their data centers consume 10% of the global energy consumption.

What is even more important to be emphasized is that BTC mining is using almost 80% energy from renewable sources, so to blame this activity for global climate and environmental issues is a complete nonsense.

just one of the things to try to discredit bitcoin which is false
like "bitcoin is used by criminals" stigma , while in reality it is just a fraction of what fiat money figures are
I liked the keep coke bottles chill comment, pretty much true
there are things  that we spend electricity on without thinking but we do not claim it is damaging environment
think of all the netflix movies we watch at home and all the electricity our TVs are using =netflix is damaging environment  :D

If bitcoin is an environmental damage, each and every advancement is an environmental damage. From my understanding bitcoin is completely network dependent and requires adequate supply of electricity for its functioning. In specific what bitcoin consumes will be little higher than the normal consumption by systems. But the outcome of these systems were much high in comparison to others.

People have tried everything possible to drag the $Bitcoin name to the mud, from being a tool used by criminals to perpetrate, crime to being a tool for terrorism, trafficking, money laundering, child abuse, power wastage/consuming activity now claims of environmental hazards! All these tales are balderdash!

Reports of bitcoin environmental damage are ignorable because none have calculated and measured precisely how much environmental damage does by bitcoin due to electricity use or any other way but we should agree that traditional system make big damage to the nature due to there ineffective, inefficient methods and procedures but sadly no one talks about them because most want to show and spread about the bad side of bitcoin  and some how restrict its expansion

Miners aren't generating the electricity. They're consuming it. This is an important distinction to make.

To prevent an unreliable power grid, power plants generate electricity above and beyond demand. Miners can actually make power generation less wasteful through load balancing agreements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_balancing_(electrical_power)) with power plants.

We should be asking not only what percentage of mining is green, but how much miners are increasing electricity demand beyond what is already generated. Where miners are causing utility districts and power companies to purchase electricity beyond normal capacity, that's relevant. The sum total of all mining inputs is not relevant.


If you actually account for the above, it's probably far less. Miners have incentive to operate where there is excess capacity because electricity costs will be cheaper.

You should also consider what Bitcoin might be replacing. The gold mining and banking industries require huge amounts of energy too, much of which is not green.

This news will still appear in order to spread negative information about bitcoin. It is not clear what purpose it is done. After all, if you delve into the topic it becomes clear that bitcoin mining does not harm the environment. Usually people tend to believe the scientific justification and the opinion of scientists, but how much truth in their words no one will check, because they are scientists. But it could actually be anyone, he just pretend to be a scientist and keep misinforming people. We should encourage people to always check any information and always get to the truth. This is the only way to not be deceived.

Proof of Stake and Proof of Works are basically thesame in terms of energy consumption. Where is the source of money for staking on ethereum or other PoS blockchains?  Don't forget we don't pluck money from trees...  Energy creates Value(money) or Energy = Money.
How is the money for buying ethereum stakes earned? From clean energy?

If you want to know the bad / negative things about bitcoins, then the list is long and you can say anything about bitcoin like it support criminals etc but this is only one side of picture. If you see the positive things in bitcoin then again you will find it very positive and useful also. It is our mindset in which way we want to see bitcoin and those who like / support bitcoin always think of positive aspects of bitcoins.

Majority accuse bitcoin of destroying the environment by consuming or wasting electricity in a bad way but We spend electricity and other valuable resources for unnecessary things that has no value and make no production but some point out the Bitcoin energy consumption as a huge problem to the world environment but with sustainable mining methods and other systems in the future Bitcoin electricity usage will headed low and such problems will not occur again

creating a negative list about something is not hard. and there is no end to that list either. but what matters is that if you start putting meaningful negative points in that list then your list wouldn't go any higher than 2 or 3 items.
all the rest such as criminal activity, money laundering, environmental damage,... are invalid things that are added to make that list long.

Bitcoin mining needs to use some devices and devices that operate on electricity also negatively affect the environment. This is a bad thing. But why don't we look more positively about mining when minerals in real life depleted and you have to look for new solutions. Mining is also a solution that can help us earn a sum of money from it.