The environmental problem

[Kprawn]

The Tree-huggers are all worked up by the amount of energy and electricity that are used by Bitcoin mining, but they forget

that Fiat currencies are much worst. These guys get worked up by FUD that are spread in the media and these articles

are mostly biased. Can you imagine how much damage is done to the environment to manufacture coins and paper money?

How many trees are cut down? Now paper/silk money is being replaced by plastic money in the UK, which is even worst. 

[Johnyz]

Mining bitcoin is not so bad on this planet compared to the volume of the number of factories or also the oil and coal mining, all will be fine.

The only concern with bitcoin miners are they consume too much electricity which big factories also do the same thing. What I mean is, its happening that there's a shortage on electricity even before bitcoin comes because the demand for this are quiet increasing day by day and the supply are being lowered.

[BillCoin]

That's true and I totally agree with you, the current POW system is burning too much electricity and huge percent of the electricity usage in China goes directly to cryptocurrencies mining, that's why I assume that soon enough countries will notice it and will start doing steps to prevent people from mining so electricity waste will stop.
I believe that we are not really far away from switching up to POS, and once we do that we will no longer need to worry about electricity wasting.

[jseverson]

I believe that we are not really far away from switching up to POS, and once we do that we will no longer need to worry about electricity wasting.

I'm a lot less optimistic about this than you are. Either way, at least there's a viable alternative for when the problem gets big enough. We might not even reach that point, with the rate renewable energy tech is progressing. Massive consumption shouldn't be a problem for as long as they come from clean sources after all.

[A Feeder]

Hello. I was thinking about bitcoin disadvantages, and I just realized how bad the bitcoin was for the environment. We are literally destroying the planet with mining. And it will get worse and worse.
I think, if we want the bitcoin to be a viable money we have to solve this problem. I was thinking about green energy.
What do you think about this problem, and how could we fix it?

We cannot blame the minerd because they are not the ones that produces energy. The only possible reasons that can affect the environment are the ones producing the energy. The coal miners are the ones damaging the atmosphere because of the burning of fuels.

[Yaunfitda]

Hello. I was thinking about bitcoin disadvantages, and I just realized how bad the bitcoin was for the environment. We are literally destroying the planet with mining. And it will get worse and worse.
I think, if we want the bitcoin to be a viable money we have to solve this problem. I was thinking about green energy.
What do you think about this problem, and how could we fix it?

This is now the new mode of attacks from those who are hostile to bitcoin. Now the fight is taken to the next level and its seems that those against it and eco friendly now. How pathetic.

But there was one article saying that Japan GMO will built a mining hardware that will consumed less electricity and they are even thinking of using solar panels as well.

https://news.bitcoin.com/japanese-electricity-company-uses-excess-solar-power-crypto-mining/

So I guess the next arguments against bitcoin will be coming from WWF (World Wildlife Fun) because of the "whales" roaming and manipulating the market. 

[gareng1468]

the use of energy in bitcoin mining does eat up a lot of power resources, but I think the electrical energy required comes from renewable energy, not petroleum, so it's not a big deal. the problem of electricity consumption in developed countries can support this business to keep going. and the use of hardware on the current mining is low in energy, more mining users can be efficient in its use.

[chocomartin]

I share your sentiments in general, the part about using renewable or "green" energy. Not really sure if this is also applicable where you live but where I'm from the problem is renewable energy isn't cheap (ie. buying and setting up solar panels on the roof of your house). I think a person who runs a btc mining farm would have sufficient resources to also invest in tapping sources of renewable energy if they cared enough but that's another problem, some people just lack sincere concern for the environment.  

[rarg]

I was thinking about green energy.

Well, if you were thinking about green energy, maybe miners could use a solar panel for their electricity usage.
But I think it still not profitable. But the idea using solar panel can be implemented several years later.

[zhuiyongliang8]

COINS work proof mechanism, that is, the so-called "dig", is often reviled: so much to the machine works, what all don't cost a lot of energy, and output, just in order to maintain the currency network safe operation. Doesn't this amount of wasted energy mean that bitcoin is not environmentally friendly?

We say that the currency system than traditional monetary system more efficient, but that doesn't means that the currency is more "green", what exactly is "environmental protection", it remains to be investigated, at the very least, environmental protection is more than a problem of energy saving.

[Troysen]

Bitcoin mining didn't start global warming. industrialization did.there has not been a permanent solution for environmental degradation and BTC cant shoulder the sole responsibility. besides, there are lots of other computer apps that operate heavily on electricity and internet and iv never heard complains about them, im not in defense of BTC mining, just thinking all should accept responsibility  and work together to minimize the pollution.

[Herbert2020]

the environmental "problem" is not a problem at all. you are making it into one because possibly you have read some bad articles on some FUD campaign news site about this. the fact is bitcoin is providing a very important and much used utility and compared to that the energy that it is consuming to provide that utility is very very small.
as an example i can tell you that when you heat your house during winter and when it is snowing outside you are wasting energy and YOU are an "environmental problem"

besides if you compare the amount of energy that mining bitcoin consumes with other things like branches of a small bank (not all banking system just a couple of them) you can see that the energy consumption is not that high.

[Kakmakr]

A lot of mining are done with electricity that are generated from environmentally friendly sources. "Green power" is a term used to describe sources of energy that are renewable and considered to be environmentally friendly and harness natural processes, such as geothermal energy, wind energy, biomass energy, and solar energy.

Some of the biggest Chinese Bitcoin mining farms are situated close to hydroelectric power plants. So this is just a FUD story that was concocted by the media to draw negative attention to Bitcoin. 

[Shenzou]

Hello. I was thinking about bitcoin disadvantages, and I just realized how bad the bitcoin was for the environment. We are literally destroying the planet with mining. And it will get worse and worse.
I think, if we want the bitcoin to be a viable money we have to solve this problem. I was thinking about green energy.
What do you think about this problem, and how could we fix it?

Well the percentage of pollution that bitcoin miners cause with their machines is a very negligible number, one because there is not many high/ extremely consuming rigs out there, second hard core mining farms that I know of use clean energy as a secondary power like geothermal power in order for their business to be profitable.

[droptableguy2]

The bitcoin mining consumes a lot of power, but I think it does not really affect the environment as the amount of power consumed for bitcoin mining is very small compared to other industries. There are also a number of bitcoin-producing farms using renewable energy sources to reduce electricity and not affect the environment.

[stompix]

The amount of energy required for a bitcoin transaction is rather abstract, but the power consumed by each bitcoin transaction can be spent by a single U.S. family for a week, which more or less pollutes the environment...

There is no way to quantify the energy spent on a transaction.
We can have 400 000 or 23 675 transactions a day , the same amount of energy will be spent for mining.

Soon we will be forced in to using greener energy (not from fossil fuels) and then even if the cost of energy required for BTC rises it won't be anywhere near as bad as it is currently. Solar and Geothermal power are far superior to fossil fuels in terms of protecting the environment and these alternative energy sources should soon phase out the heavily polluting methods. In the long run I don't think Crypto will generate that great of an issue for the environment

Greener energy is not cheaper.
It's cheaper because it receives subsidies from the government.
It is also efficient because right now wind farms and solar panels are installed in the best spots.
Like in the first days of gold mining, when gold was found directly in the riverbed.

Once we ramp up the production you will have to put panels in not so efficient places, so the cost will just go up.

The Tree-huggers are all worked up by the amount of energy and electricity that are used by Bitcoin mining, but they forget that Fiat currencies are much worst. These guys get worked up by FUD that are spread in the media and these articles are mostly biased. Can you imagine how much damage is done to the environment to manufacture coins and paper money? How many trees are cut down? Now paper/silk money is being replaced by plastic money in the UK, which is even worst. 

Well, let me answer one of your question:
http://www.designlife-cycle.com/us-penny/
So the US mint that is servicing 300 million people is pending less than 1/7 of what bitcoin consumed in December and since then with the difficulty skyrocketing we can assume it has grown a lot!!!!

think about it this way..
if we were mining using GPU's the electric used by the network would be much higher but the difficulty(security from brute forcing) would be weaker

that said
the total 23exahash is about 1.8mill S9 miners

however
there are half a million ATMS in america
there are 6700 banks in america, many bank call centres, head quarters
(1.4mill employee's probably with access to a pc each)
then we have the background stuff like visa, mastercard and amex servers

and thats before you equate the fuel consumption of the secure bank note armored delivery vehicles and staff getting to work
and thats before you equate the physical resource consumption of printing bank notes..
if you done some maths you would see moving fiat around uses more electric and is less secure than bitcoin
in short FIAT is less environmentally friendly

So, you add ATMs, banks, call centers, headquarters, their pc...
But you don't add bitcoin nodes, bitcoin atms, the servers that run exchnges, online wallets, and the computers of all 1 million people that have an account on bitcointalk .
This qualifies for quite a biased view, isn't it?

[BelieveInBTC]

Let's be honest, printing fiat is also expensive and in some cases it exceeds the value of produced coins. A lot of money is spent on securing bills from forging. Try to imagine how much electricity is wasted on such things. Bitcoin has a potential to become the international cryptocurrency then the cost of maintaining it would be much lower than fiats'. Some cryptocurrencies are also being backed up by a lot of miners which use a lot of electricity. Take Ethereum as an example. It's not only being used a payment (in some cases) but also runs ICOs, smartcontracts and dapps.

[ethereumhunter]

I was thinking about green energy.

Well, if you were thinking about green energy, maybe miners could use a solar panel for their electricity usage.
But I think it still not profitable. But the idea using solar panel can be implemented several years later.

I think the problem is let say we want to build solar panel, in every country the price of solar panel is really expensive and only a few people which could build that green energy. and if there is a cheap price, then I think small mining industry will try and compare with the electricity that they use and will apply this energy to supply their hardware. but personally, I agree that we can use renewable energy like solar panel to replace the electricity which need by many people so we can reduce the electricity fee.

[nc50lc]

-snip-
if you done some maths you would see moving fiat around uses more electric and is less secure than bitcoin
in short FIAT is less environmentally friendly

Just bitcoin, but all digital currencies in total can match the power consumption of banking systems.

But enough with the environmental damages, it's been discussed several times in the past.
Bitcoin blockchain is way more convenient than banks however, if banks cease to exist due to the introduction of blockchain in financial sector (that is impossible during our time) the problem would be less employment ratio.

Bitcoin's hashrate could grow too to consume even higher resources if mining become more competitive and if newer generations of ASICs failed to solve power efficiency.

[shulio]

Maybe with the mining energy needed, the world move to greener energy sooner than later. How ever maybe some day, Bitcoin may implement POS and the mining will be stopped.