Dearest Bitcointalk community,
The other day I published a detailed research paper on the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network, when compared with the impacts of the gold mining/recycling industry, the physical currency printing-&-minting industry, as well as the broader banking system (although this is probably unfair to compare with bitcoin, many people were interested to know what the carbon footprint of legacy banking was, and this has now been quantified).
The research was well received on reddit, but despite receiving a lot of upvotes and replies, was buried all the way down to the 12th page within a few hours of publication. I would like to share this research with you all here, as it is a more serious and friendly community than r/bitcoin.
Link to research:
http://bitscan.com/articles/is-the-bitcoin-network-sustainableLink to original reddit thread, which contains community feedback and questions, along with my answers to said feedback and questions:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27d793/research_is_the_bitcoin_network_sustainable/I hope you all enjoy the read (even if you only read the TL;DR executive summary), and I hope that this research is valuable to you all in your BTC promotion and evangelical efforts.
Thank you all in advance
Hass
TL;DR of the ResearchComparison of Annual Economic Costs:- Gold Mining:
USD$105 billion- Gold Recycling:
USD$40 billion- Paper Currency & Minting:
USD$28 billion- Banking System Electricity Use:
USD$63.8 billion- Bitcoin Mining:
USD$0.66 billionComparison of Annual Environmental Costs (Tonnes CO2 produced):- Gold Mining:
54 million- Gold Recycling:
4 million- Paper Currency & Minting:
6.7 million- Banking System:
390 million- Bitcoin Mining:
0.55 millionComparison of Annual Socioeconomic Costs:See the exec summary of the PDF - I couldn't figure out how to create a multi row/column table! :p