Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument

[fillippone]

Recently I often heard bitcoin critics telling me that "Bitcoin is too polluting", "Bitcoin wastes too much energy", or other similar arguments.


Those arguments are as old as bitcoin, even Satoshi discussed those, and they had been debunked several times, but I am trying here to organise the material to counter those accusations.

I will try to "answer" specific claims with a few counterarguments supported by data, websites and references. So that it will be easier to organise a "defence" of Bitcoin in the unlikely case that Bitcoin needs a defence.

• • Accusation
    
    • The bitcoin network consumes as much electricity as XXX
    • Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
    
    
  • Defence
    
    • Televisions, aeroplanes, Christmas lights, plastic, all require enormous amounts of energy to be produced and used: what is the amount of energy considered excessive to produce them? Why is this calculation done for Bitcoin and not for other goods?
    • According to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, devices kept on standby in the United States alone could power the bitcoin network for more than a year and a half (a figure that has been constantly decreasing).
    • Mining bitcoin is actually quite environmentally friendly compared to mining other Stores of Value (Gold)
      
      

      Bitcoin is recognised as a store of value, making it comparable to gold. In 2020, 3,200 tonnes of gold was mined, equating to approximately 90,301,440 million tonnes of CO2 emitted.
      In comparison, Bitcoin is estimated to emit around 37 million tonnes of CO2 throughout 2021, with China powering 65% of the hash rate in March 2021. China pledges to be net zero by 2050, along with most of the world, under the Paris agreement. Under the assumption this is achieved, this would indicate Bitcoin will be powered by renewable energy by 2050, making it a zero-carbon technology. In addition, gold mining is renowned for being one of the most destructive industries responsible for polluting drinking water with cyanide, mercury and other heavy metals whilst destroying pristine environments and causing damaging health effects. Removing reliance on the need for gold not only has the potential to decarbonise the gold reserve industry but also reduces these negative environmental and health impacts. However, the reliance on countries sticking to the Paris Agreement is needed in order to decarbonise Bitcoin.
      Edit: Information on China's energy policy
      China uses the most cost-effective renewables and could viably generate 60% of its energy with green energy by 2030. It is estimated the renewable energy implementation could save China around 11% in monetary cost. Feasibly following the laws of economics, Bitcoin miners will be more likely to use renewable energy sources if they are cheaper. Therefore, reducing Bitcoin's carbon footprint.
      

      Reddit Source
      
      
    • Other human activities produce comparable results.
      According to a recent study, watching Netflix for an hour produces 100g of CO2.
      Netflix has 205 millions of subscribers.
      Each Netflix subscriber watches two hours daily, on average.
      Hence Netflix streamed 149 billion hours last year.
      If each of these hours is 100g of CO₂, then to watch Netflix, 15 million metric tons of CO₂ have been added to the atmosphere every year. Netflix alone is almost one-third of the whole Bitcoin industry. So guess what happens when we add other services.
      
       
      
      

• • Accusation
    
    • Miners in China ravage the environment to produce Bitcoin. A large part of electricity production in China is made from fossil sources, especially coal, and the ecological footprint of Bitcoin is unsustainable.
    
    
  • Defence
    
    • Miners, by their nature, have the incentive to search for energy at the lowest possible cost. The energy market, like any other, is governed by the laws of supply and demand. The cheap energy is typically produced in excess that otherwise would not be exploited and literally wasted.
    • Many miners are concentrated in large hydroelectric plants (for example, in China) where the levels of production surplus are enormous and can thus obtain very low energy prices. Suffice it to say that in 2017, compared to 250twh produced by the Yunnan dams, 155twh were used (95twh thrown away, since they cannot be stored).
    • Recent studies show that bitcoin mining uses 39% energy from renewable sources (solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, etc.) and 25% from energy derived from nuclear power and, to a minimum, fossil fuels. This percentage is steadily increasing, especially in China, where the transition to low carbon footprint production is happening more rapidly.
    • Bitcoin helps the efficiency of the energy industry; for example, it can help prevent "Renewable Curtailment" as well as making it profitable to capture gas otherwise destined to be burned in gas flaring which encourages producers to reduce carbon emissions. Low-carbon energy projects such as hydroelectric, nuclear or renewables can be made profitable by selling the excess energy produced to the mining of bitcoin.
    • A very large part of the energy produced is not used correctly, partly because it despairs in unprofitable uses (dispersion in networks, thermal dispersion in endothermic engines etc ...) and partially because it is produced in places or moments where not necessary (e.g., power plants producing during off-peak times, nuclear power plants when price is too low, etc.). Well, in this space, Bitcoin can make a massive contribution by efficiently using resources that would otherwise be wasted.
      
      

      Notice that rejected energy accounts for around two-thirds of all electricity generation. This energy is produced but ultimately does not go to practical work. The amount wasted annually is around 66.7 quadrillions of BTUs (for short: "quads") of power. For perspective, that is the energy equivalent of wasting 2.3 billion metric tons of coal every year.

      
      

      The potential for Bitcoin-powered renewables is already evident in China. A 2019 report by Coinshares found that approximately 75% of Bitcoin mining comes from renewable energy sources, much of which stems from newly created hydroelectricity. These new revenue streams have brought power plants online, which otherwise would not have been economically viable given existing conditions.

      
      
      
      
    • Bitcoin is a battery.
      

      So, if we think of Bitcoin as a battery, what can we do with it? The critical properties of Bitcoin's battery are: 1) always on and permissionless (no need to find customers, just plug and go) and 2) naturally seeking low-cost electricity: it will always buy when the price is right.
      
      Given those properties, Bitcoin's battery can assist renewable builds (and electric grids more generally) in several ways:
      

      • Interconnection lines: When developing new energy resources, you must apply them to connect them to the grid. Texas alone has over 100 GW of renewables in its lines. These lines can take years to clear. In the meantime, these assets could be online and earn Bitcoin.
        
      • Project finance: Renewable developers need capital to finance build-outs before they have customers. Bitcoin's battery is always ready to be the first customer.
      • Geographic issues: Sometimes, the sunniest, windiest places are not the ones with the most customers, so it's hard to justify the development of new renewables. Bitcoin's battery solves this, becoming a "virtual transmission line" of sorts.
      • Timing & grid balance: Sometimes, when the sun shines and when the wind blows is not when we need the most electricity. Yet, electric grids are marketplaces that must balance supply and demand perfectly. Therefore, grid-connected renewables often have to "curtail" (turn off) if they produce too much energy at the wrong time. Bitcoin's battery is ready to buy 24/7/365 when the price is right, turning up and down as needed and participating via direct power purchase agreements and demand response programs.
      • Underperformance: Related to the timing & balance issues above, often, renewables produce more energy than is needed on their grid, leading to subpar financial performance. Bitcoin's battery is ready to buy if no one else will.
      • Cleaning the grid: Even outside of renewable generation, Bitcoin's battery can help improve both emissions and the energy mix. For example, Crusoe Energy attaches efficient turbines and mining equipment to existing gas flaring sites, both improving emissions and converting energy into Bitcoin's battery. Taking this a step further, you could even then take those profits and reinvest them in on-grid renewables elsewhere, another twist on the idea of Bitcoin as a "virtual transmission line" (aka battery).

      
      

      
      
      

• • Accusation
    
    • The Bitcoin network is maximally inefficient. PoW leads to a considerable amount of energy consumption for each Bitcoin transaction if, for example, we compare it with Visa.
    
    
  • Defence
    
    • The energy consumed by the Bitcoin network is also used to secure it since an attacker who wants to try to destroy Bitcoin would have to use (therefore buy or produce) a higher amount of energy compared to that used by the Bitcoin network.
    • PoW is efficient and mining is a highly competitive industry. Any slightest energy inefficiency is punished by lower profitability. This guides miners towards the highest possible efficiency.
    • The cost of mining is not the energy cost of transactions, and specific metrics they claim to compare, e.g. the price of a single bitcoin transaction with the energy consumption of a transaction on the Visa circuit, are entirely meaningless. The mining mechanism serves precisely to make the system safe (from double-spending to other possible attacks on the network) in a trustless network, i.e. without a central authority that effectively updates the ledger. The only honest comparison would be with the overall cost of circuit security systems and banking systems. How much is spent each year globally to make banks and payment systems safe and reliable? With all the dedicated servers, data centres, network infrastructures, and procedures constantly running for authorisation, settlement, clearing, reconciliation, etc. Not to mention the costs for the construction, operation, maintenance and surveillance of ATMs, bank branches, vaults and related security systems, etc.
    • In a very well-written article, Conio's Guido D.Assori (who signed the very first SegWit transaction), says this is a feature, not a bug.
      Here is a courtesy translation of this specific part of the article, where he answers Paolo Attivissimo's accusation about bitcoin consuming all that energy to validate only 7 transactions per second.
      
      

      All this energy for 7 transactions per second?
      The third attack would be that Bitcoin would move 7 transactions per second, and that in a nutshell for a system of this kind even a few kilowatt hours would be wasted (curious, then, that Attivissimo remembers this after accepting Bitcoin donations for years, on his blog, of this big problem).
      Quickly: this number unfortunately arises from a profound misunderstanding of the real decoupling between the technological infrastructure called "blockchain" and the transfer of value named in Bitcoin.
      It's frequent, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.
      Premise: "It's a feature!", i.e. the size of the Blockchain is deliberately small.
      Being able to write on a blockchain must be a luxury, in order for it to remain decentralized, so that everyone, at any time and with relatively little effort, can autonomously verify the correctness of transactions on the network, and not just the large banking institutions.
      However, now at every moment of the day, on cryptocurrency exchanges, on custodial platforms, by means of pegged tokens, on sidechains, on Lighting Network, by means of CFDs, Bitcoins are intermediated and exchanged, or contracts that are traced back to their value , with varying degrees of enforcement.
      And this happens through a number of transactions that are much more than 7 per second, believe me! To expect the opposite would be like demanding that our morning coffee paid for at the bar be recorded by all the backups of all the nodes of all the interbank circuits in the Eurozone.
      So how many transactions, really?
      In general it is an unmeasurable number, and it will be less and less, the estimates will be more and more heuristic, also thanks to privacy preserving platforms.
      We can say, to make the general idea, that every transaction that takes place on an orderbook of any platform, which represents Bitcoin, can only exist thanks to the fact that, underneath, there is the Proof Of Work which, if necessary, allows the settlement of a precise state of a chain of transactions of indefinite length (my token goes to you, who gives it to him, who gives it to the other, who breaks it in three and gives it to the other, who collects 8 ). Don't you expect all the coins you exchange to end up noted down somewhere?
      Simply, people rely on intermediaries every day to exchange value in Bitcoin without using a blockchain directly.
      The global concept of decentralization is maintained, relocation increases with confidence on the last mile (not always! LN!) but the connecting element always remains the last, only, true, mandatory, digital ledger in which the compensation movements.
      Therefore, comparing the imaginary 7 transactions (which is a number that was good in 2013, today there are many more even on-chain) to the world's ability to transact Bitcoin, and linking it to PoW, is a bit like pretending that there are, at all times, a sufficient number of armored cars to move all the gold in all the vaults of the world that intend to exchange gold.
      
      Of course, that's not how it works.
      

      
      Bitcoin is not a payment system but a settlement system. Therefore, the comparison should not be made with payment circuits (credit cards), but with the various settlement layers (SWIFT, CHIPS) or Fedwire.
      
      On this particular aspect, please consider reading A Closer Look at the Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining
      
      

      
      Bitcoin is a settlement system, not a payments aggregator
      
      First things first. What is Bitcoin, and what is it not?
      
      Bitcoin is a settlement system like FedWire. It is not a payments aggregator like Visa. I constantly see Bitcoin compared to Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal. This is the primary source of mathematical atrocities whereby Bitcoin's overall electricity cost is divided by its transactions and then compared to something it's not. Energy use per settlement transaction is a nonsensical metric by which to judge Bitcoin's energy use.
      
      Just like the 800,000 or so daily FedWire transactions are not a good measure of the total amount of daily Dollar (USD) transactions, Bitcoin's 325,000 or so daily transactions are not a good measure of the total amount of daily bitcoin (BTC/XBT) transactions. This is because most bitcoin transactions are not visible. They take place inside the payment aggregation systems of exchanges, on the Lightning network, and yes, even inside of actual aggregators like PayPal, Square, or MasterCard. Only periodically are they settled onto the Bitcoin blockchain as visible transactions.
      
      Solutions like this are referred to as network layering. This is a tried and tested approach to separating casual retail transactions from heavier settlement transactions, and it is precisely how we already do things in the fiat monetary and payment systems. In such a system, the base layer, like FedWire (or Bitcoin), only acts as the final arbitrator of settlement transactions. Everything else, which is the vast majority of all transactions, happens in higher payment aggregation layers, which are often entirely different systems.
      
      In other words, Bitcoin is not a competitor to Visa, MasterCard or Paypal. Instead, Bitcoin is an independent monetary system that aggregators can make use of.
      
      Presenting Bitcoin's electricity consumption in terms of its daily number of settlement transactions is a red herring.
      
      

    • Similar considerations can be made for a comparison between gold and bitcoin as "digital gold", and then in addition to the costs for the safe custody of gold, those for its mining, refining, smelting, transport etc. should also be added. I challenge anyone to argue that all these can be considered particularly "green", but strangely I have never heard anyone complain and ask to ban gold for its environmental impact.
    
    

A very Good long-form by Nic Carter debunking a Bloomberg article on mining contains a summary of all the above arguments:

Noahbjectivity on Bitcoin Mining

The Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith has a lot of thoughts on Bitcoin. Some of them are really solid and engage with the reality of the protocol itself, which is rare for a member of the mainstream media circuit. He also discloses that he owns Bitcoin, which is impressive for an economist and an established member. So I'm pretty happy with him overall. I don't want this piece to be interpreted as a blanket critique of Noah's stance on Bitcoin. However, Noah's recent column in Bloomberg, Bitcoin Miners are on a Path to Self-Destruction, makes a few claims that warrant a response.
Noah's basic premise is that Bitcoin miners are effectively hogging the grid in the various places where they operate and risk getting banned entirely. Not only is the notion of a global coordinated ban on mining far-fetched, but Noah relies on a few claims that are dubious at best. Let's investigate.

A few "all-rounders" long form:

• Bitcoin Energy Consumption written by Paul Veradittakit, from Pantera Capital.
• 
  How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?, by Nic Carter.
• 
• Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future by Square

Other Useful Links:

• Gold produced in 2020
• Estimations of CO2 emissions by gold mining
• Paris Agreement
• Environmental impact of gold
• China’s renewable energy

If you have any other suggestions, please point me in the right direction, and I will try to address every issue.



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[coinycoiny]

Currently there are about 900 bitcoins generated each day by mining worth about $50 million dollars.

Miners must be spending at least half of that on electric so say 25 million a day.

Back of the envelope calculations but I bet I'm pretty close.

Since the world isn't 100% powered by green energy, any cut in mining will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons.

I bet you disagree with this though

[fillippone]

Currently there are about 900 bitcoins generated each day by mining worth about $50 million dollars.

Miners must be spending at least half of that on electric so say 25 million a day.

Back of the envelope calculations but I bet I'm pretty close.

Since the world isn't 100% powered by green energy, any cut in mining will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons.

I bet you disagree with this though

Indeed, I disagree.
First, I think you hugely overestimate the price miners pay for electricity.
Second, as many articles in my post demonstrated, the energy is not produced BECAUSE of the miners, but rather the other way round: there are miners because there is plenty of energy.
Third, this reasoning can be applied to everything, why only to mining? "Any cut in indoor lightning will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons", so why concentrate on mining?
Fourth, fossil fuels generated electricity is only a brief accident in history, soon, very soon, electricity will be entirely based on renewable energy.

[coinycoiny]

First, I think you hugely overestimate the price miners pay for electricity.

My assumption is based on if you can spend $1 and earn $2 then most people would spend more. If you have a more accurate method that says people wouldn't spend that then please share.

Second, as many articles in my post demonstrated, the energy is not produced BECAUSE of the miners, but rather the other way round: there are miners because there is plenty of energy.

Are you smoking pot? People mine to make money.

Third, this reasoning can be applied to everything, why only to mining? "Any cut in indoor lightning will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons", so why concentrate on mining?

It does apply to everything, that's why we use leds these days. Bitcoin uses thousands (or millions) more energy per transaction then visa/debit systems.

Fourth, fossil fuels generated electricity is only a brief accident in history, soon, very soon, electricity will be entirely based on renewable energy.

Well at least you got one point right. But its not there yet, and won't be for 10 years at least.

[Charles-Tim]

About the issue with China, miners in China according to 2020 statistics mined approximately 65% of bitcoin into circulation. I have noticed the use of coal to generate energy has been reducing since 2015.

The reduction in 2020 was so significant in a way that China are focusing more on nuclear, wind and solar energy which are clean source of energy.

           

The focus of the critics are on electricity producing carbon which contributes to global warming, while the electricity source that produces carbon are mostly from coal (thermal). But with the pictures above which is from Wikipedia, shows how coal energy production greatly reduced and substituted with clean sources.

But, about the renewable energy, I see this links usefully:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-76-crypto-miners-use-renewables-as-part-of-their-energy-mix
https://moneyweek.com/investments/alternative-finance/bitcoin/602678/bitcoin-energy-consumption

From the link, it is clear that over 70% of bitcoin mined are from renewable energy, but what I am still considering is that of hydroelectric, hydroelectric in the process of producing energy, I have read online how some hydroelectric power plants emit carbodioxide and methane into the environment, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is 20 times more effective/potent than carbodioxide in contributing to global warming. Although, properly constructed ones have ways these gaeses are trapped and not released into atmosphere but wind, nuclear and solar as been the best clean source of energy, while wind and solar sources are on the rise in China.

[cryptoperkele]

I don't think that whataboutism is a way to combat this argument. Thing is that general public will most likely see this POW as a energy wasting giant. And after bitcoin hits 200k or 1M the attention doesn't exactly go away from us.

In fact at some point governments most likely set up a bigger tax for btc and that will launch another bear run. They will use enviromental reasons as an scapegoat and most likely try to tax btc to death, and not just btc, but all the cryptocurrencies, because the public doesn't know the difference or care.

[Charles-Tim]

I don't think that whataboutism is a way to combat this argument. Thing is that general public will most likely see this POW as a energy wasting giant. And after bitcoin hits 200k or 1M the attention doesn't exactly go away from us.

The critics will not see how mining industries benefiting, employing workers also miner manufacturing companies employ workers and provide more employment. They will not check the fact that bitcoin mining generates energy, in a way miners mine bitcoin, profit from the mining and pay their electricity bill so electricity company will benefit in a way they will also employ more workers. In that case, I do not think bitcoin waste energy so far miners profit from it and pay electricity bill. If it is said that bitcoin waste energy? That is 100% wrong. If it is said that bitcoin energy production also produces carbodioxide which can contribute to global warming, that is yes, but know that miners are moving towards the ones that will not produce green house gases, miners are moving towards solar and wind as the source of energy to avoid future complains.

[hatshepsut93]

I don't think that whataboutism is a way to combat this argument. Thing is that general public will most likely see this POW as a energy wasting giant. And after bitcoin hits 200k or 1M the attention doesn't exactly go away from us.

I partially agree with it. Things like Netflix or video games and other entertainment brings happines to billions. Bitcoin users are counted by tens of millions and many of them are only into Bitcoin for investing.

I personally think Bitcoin's ecological damage is simply insignificant, if Bitcoin mining stopped tomorrow, the difference in temperature change in decades would be far below the margin of error. So why ban it? Better focus on fossil fuels, agriculture and other big polluters. Fighting Bitcoin is a waste of time.

[rosenbauer02]

With great development and industrialization also comes with great environmental disaster but not to bitcoin. As what the OP had shows that there are many environmental disaster that industrialization and development has brought.

I agree to OP that when it comes to production relatively like plastics produce too much waste that most organization had been too concern. The question is that are they doing something that could reduce the use of these plastics? The answer is YES they had done something but the result is not visible and still plastics produce a lot of waste and after being use is becoming troublesome. Actually one of the worst environmental disaster that has been cause.

This is why those environmental friendly called people could be sometimes be more like hypocrite people. They tend to scrutinize every development like bitcoin and then later on began to silence with some sort of reason and that is corruption. They like to attack to get attention and then they will ask for money to for them to make their silence. I know most critics has done strategy like this in which they called AC/DC. "Attack Collect, Defend Collect" and these groups usually use publicity stunts to get more attention to get paid. The more attention they get the high amount of money they will ask for their silence.

[Kittygalore]

I do believe that this problem with energy sources is problem of both sides, I mean miners can choose to invest in renewable energy like solar or wind but they chose to go the fossil fuel route, but if the energy sector doesn't change how they are getting their energy source then the cycle will continue. The only environmental disaster here is that we are still using fossil fuels and other polluting energy sources when the technology to make an efficient and environmentally friendly energy source is available already.

[aoluain]

Great OP fillippone! This should be pinned somewhere for everyone to visit constantly.

Bitcoins energy consumption has been used as a stick to beat it with for years by those
opposed to it but this certainly highlights the facts. Unfortunately the vast majority
of people will continue to believe the bankers and politicians when they play that
card again but we have the facts.

We can also compare the cost of minting coins and printing notes for the FIAT system,
the process used for all currencies around the world.

I would love to see the statistics and numbers for this.

The cost considerations of producing coinage:
1. Heavy machinery production
2. Transportation to mining site
3.Fuel and energy to extract raw material from the earth
4. Raw material transported to a refinery and the cost of refining itself
5. Transportation of refined metal to minting locations and 6. Minting process
7. Transportation to central banks
8. Distribution from central banks to regional banks
9. Distribution from regional banks to retailers
10. Management of coins
11. Storage and security

The cost considerations of producing paper notes
1. Transporting heavy machinery to forests
2. Felling trees
3. Transportation to paper mills
4. Transportation of fibre to the mills
5. Producing raw material for notes
6. Printing of notes
7. Management of waste chemicals
8. Transportation of notes to central banks
9. Distribution of notes to regional banks
10. Distribution of notes to retailers
11. Management of used notes
12. Storage and security

And after all that, what is the cost to the environment?

[coinycoiny]

Sometimes I feel like an atheist walking into a church.

I know I'm right, but nobody has an open mind.

[PointHope]

Just keep it simple.
Bitcoin is inherently Green Energy.

https://youtu.be/E5gXD40OHcg

[ABCbits]

I've seen few people says there's no point of having ~100K Bitcoin full nodes when each node do same thing. While those people don't mention environmental impact, it's possible someone will use such argument on topic "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster". Anyway, here's few defense

1. Bitcoin full node isn't resource demanding, even Raspberry Pi can run full node.
2. Full node can act as server to SPV wallet which give necessary data (block header, transaction, address balance, etc.)
3. Improve user's privacy

Sometimes I feel like an atheist walking into a church.

I know I'm right, but nobody has an open mind.

Both atheist and religious people usually think they know they're right.

[ranochigo]

Very well thought out and I didn't have much to counter as well.

Televisions, aeroplanes,Christmas lights, plastic, all require enormous amounts of energy to be produced and used: what is the amount of energy considered excessive to produce them? Why is this calculation done for Bitcoin and not for other goods?
-snip-

You're comparing Bitcoin to its substitutes instead of the various other human activities which could produce significant carbon footprint. Heck, I can think of tons of activities that directly contribute to an increased carbon footprint; transportation, chemical industries, etc. Does that mean that we can just stop producing metals, refining fossil fuels, completely eliminate them from our lives? Probably not.

In comparison, when you're talking about Bitcoin, the adoption currently is far lower than most of it's substitutes. At 7tps, there are tons of other payment methods that easily outpaces this by a factor of thousands without a strain on their network. Can people stop using Bitcoin? Probably, there are other payment methods because really, do the majority of the people absolutely care about decentralization, transparency? I can see an argument for this if your transaction volume rivals them but if the benefits are still fairly limited, then probably not.

What about the e-waste that is constantly generated from Bitcoin mining? The competition makes it such that old ASICs are always phased out once the profit margin diminishes and as ASICs can never be reprogrammed into something else, they usually end up being useless afterwards. Of course, they're always turned on 24/7 with the chips pushed to their limits and the failure rates can be higher than most electronics. Surely both the production and disposal of these ASICs are fairly detrimental to the environment? You can't recycle silicon, or that's what I know.

I'm a strong proponent that Bitcoin's electrical usage, while fairly significant doesn't pose as a serious problem. I can't see how e-waste wouldn't be an issue, as we're talking about environmental impact after all.

[ModelT]

Sometimes I feel like an atheist walking into a church.

I know I'm right, but nobody has an open mind.

I mostly agree with what you have posted here @coinycoiny. Don't forget that people will close their mind and grasp at any straw to protect what they perceive as their economic interests...often times this is done subconsciously. Lot's of what is being said reminds me of Big Tabaco trying to paint smoking as healthy or the Oil & Gas industry trying to confuse the climate change debate. What most BTC holders don't understand is that they can sell BTC and switch to a greener crypto that has more potential upside and less environmental baggage.

@fillippone All your defenses to accusation 1 basically say that other human activities also use electricity that emit greenhouse gases, so why pick on bitcoin. To someone who believes that GHG emission is leading us towards a climate disaster (i.e. https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_to_Avoid_a_Climate_Disaster/pHK0DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover), that’s like saying “Yes, your honor, I   ______ (stole money, cheated on my taxes, beat my wife, etc.) but lots of my neighbors do the same thing.” It’s my believe that all industries need to get to net zero as soon as possible. Some are trying harder than others. People’s fascination with bitcoin put it in the news and its INCREASING CARBON FOOTPRINT put it in the crosshairs.  

In 1.2 you say “According to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index devices kept on standby, in the United States alone, could power the bitcoin network for more than a year and a half. (a figure that has been constantly decreasing)” Are you saying that the number of years is going down? If so, that means that the amount of electrical consumption by standby devices is going down and/or the amount of power used by the bitcoin network is going up.

1.4 What gives you and other humans more enjoyment, watching bitcoin get mined or watching Netflix?

Your defenses to the Accusation that “Miners in China ravage the environment to produce Bitcoin. A large part of electricity production in China is made with fossil sources, especially coal, and the ecological footprint of Bitcoin is unsustainable” are more nuanced.

• 1. Environmentalists would say that it is a good thing and NOT A WASTE for coal to stay in the ground where it has sequestered carbon for many years.
  
  2. Yes, SOME bitcoin mining uses green sources that would otherwise be wasted.
  
  3. According to your link, one study estimated 72% of mining energy came from non-renewable sources (like coal and nuclear), while another, that you cited, had the figure at 61%. In either case, the majority is coming from unpopular sources that either emit GHG or produce hazardous waste that has to be stored for multiple generations.
  
  4. Yes, bitcoin does help the profits of the energy industry.
  
  5. Yes, there are ways for the energy industry to get more efficient. Some blockchain applications may help with this. See also 1.4 as many would say there are more beneficial ways to use computing power in the positive ways you suggest that the bitcoin network may be doing currently or in the future.

   

Accusation- “The Bitcoin network is maximally inefficient. PoW leads to the consumption of a huge amount of energy for each Bitcoin transaction if for example, we compare it with VISA.”

• 1.Aren’t there more energy efficient ways to secure a network?
  
  2. Yes, miners are trying to use the most efficient computing power and lowest cost of energy, regardless of source. When minors upgrade from one computer source to another (or replace an ASIC) lots of e-waste is created.
  
  3. Yes, lots of industries have negative externalities that should be better factored in. Emissions/Pollution fees that charges all polluters which is then returned equally to all individuals would help incentivize less pollution and be a net benefit to those that cause less than their fair share. As you mention with bitcoin, it is not just the transactions that lead to CO2 emissions, but also securing the network for anyone that holds BTC. This is why I suggested that governments may tax holders in cases where the miners are outside their jurisdiction (the rational being that those importing a polluting product should not get a free pass just because they don’t purchase locally). https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5323833.0
  
  4. Yes, per the Bitcoin whitepaper, the system is designed to use lots of energy.
  
  5. Again, two wrongs don’t make a right. Gold isn’t green either and should also be subject to pollution/carbon/environmental fees. My guess is that gold hasn’t exponentially increased its GHG emissions in the last 5 years like bitcoin, but they should still look to be going to net zero and pay for any negative externalities. There are those that object to gold (I.e. Now, https://www.earthworks.org/campaigns/no-dirty-gold/impacts/ and before bitcoin was in the crosshairs https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/environmental-disaster-gold-industry-180949762/) and the US prohibited the hording of gold in 1933 (albeit for economic and not environmental reasons). As a side note, if you stopped gold mining, the price might go up and additional ecological issues would be virtually eliminated (but long term effects of past mining would still present a problem)...with BTC, as you point out, the network relies on miners indefinitely for security purposes.

Yes, its unfair to single out bitcoin rather than have broad rules/fees/taxes that apply equally to everyone, but with more people concerned about climate change, no broad self-regulation from the bitcoin community on electrical sources, and the fact that electrical use is DESIGNED TO GO UP as the price goes up (regardless of how much utility it is providing), bitcoin will stay in the environmental crosshairs until something changes. Having control over money is power, and governments could certainly use bitcoin's environmental shortcomings as an excuse to regulate and take back that power if they feel BTC is a threat. Smarter for the crypto community to proactively find a greener horse to back (or for the bitcoin industry to clean up its act ASAP)

[masterrex]

I think it's only black propaganda tactics from those people that were critical to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, It's too obvious and very noticeable that they are trying to single out the crypto Industry to blame in the name of preserving the environment and ignoring other Co2 contributor industries how ironic isn't it. But thanks to a useful thread like this those accusations will be debunked easily.

[worle1bm]

A list of great statement to defend the Bitcoin network by the @OP in response to the critics who are always trying to defame the image of Bitcoin which is not under their control.There have always these arguments from the start and have fueled up with increase in prices and demand but you have given possible justification for each statement.

Accusation
The bitcoin network consumes as much electricity as XXX

The amount of electricity which Bitcoin consumes is around 150Tw/H which is huge and can light up the entire country of Denmark and some others but if we make comparisons with other sources like banking sector then it is much lower like Banks are also using high cost of electricity like 200-250 Tw/h if we take combined cost of banks around America.Its not debatable why? Because they are centeral authorities that's why.

Accusation
Miners in China ravage the environment to produce Bitcoin. A large part of electricity production in China is made with fossil sources, especially coal, and the ecological footprint of Bitcoin is unsustainable.

Miners are now trying to find new renewable resources to mine bitcoin as China is major source of Bitcoin mining with 65% of control but miners are continuously finding optimal ways to reduce the cost because they are the ones who are bearing cost of electricity and paying taxes to the government which is reducing their profits.China is undoubtedly exploiting its natural resources on building new projects daily and they don't blame themselves because who can argue with CCP its their rule.

Accusation
The Bitcoin network is maximally inefficient. PoW leads to the consumption of a huge amount of energy for each Bitcoin transaction if for example, we compare it with VISA.

To keep the network secure POW is the most secure algorithm used in Bitcoin network and it will consume high amount of electricity.Miners need some rewards for their work to keep network secure, validate transactions for which they need to mine Bitcoin and they are now using ASIC for mining which is more upgraded,fast and best for mining because they need to solve cryptographic puzzle whose difficulty is in trillions and every 10 minutes a block is mined.But you can't argue on this.Why are employees of bank paid so much of fixed salary just to keep the funds of people safely right? Government and private sector are spending so much money on employees just to provide services to the people and same is the case with Bitcoin mining.Miners need rewards in return of their work.

So these arguments will keep on going with rise in Bitcoin price and demand and slowly they all will be appreciating the Bitcoin network.

[kryptqnick]

Thanks for compiling this list of arguments and sources. I agree that there are other things to focus on when it comes to ecological problems. Renewable sources of energy, cutting down the meat industry, promoting the usage of public transportation instead of cars could all make some difference. As for reducing the energy consumption, I believe there's another argument to be made here in Bitcoin's defense. Namely, as our civilization progresses, we're bound to use more and more energy in various forms (this reminds me of the Kardashev scale a little). Trying to cut down on energy consumption means using laptops, artificial lights, washing machines and many other things less, and turning instead to a more natural (in a sense of being close to nature) way of life. This clearly isn't happening, and humanity doesn't seem to be eager to let go of innovations that make our lives easier (and I don't think it should let go). So what's important is to focus on sustainability. Instead of trying to reduce energy consumption, we should focus on getting this energy from more eco-friendly sources and cutting down on other things that harm our planet. So what's bad is not that Bitcoin mining needs a lot of energy, but that the sources of this energy aren't always great.

[Lucius]

If we were to assume that Bitcoin never existed at all, would the world be a better place to live in the sense that all this tremendous energy it currently uses would be redirected to some other things? All the energy used by crypto miners would be produced anyway, maybe some part would be used, but surely some of that energy would be wasted - therefore, I do not see a problem at all that energy is used for something like Bitcoin, but of course I understand that there are those who will declare even 0.2% of the world's total energy consumption a natural disaster.

That argument has been defeated hundreds of times, and all those who think Bitcoin is a problem of environmental pollution - stop using your cars, don't turn on the heating over the winter and completely eliminate plastic from your life. Of course, we have all been doing this for decades and no one wants to give up the comfort of life, and all our actions are a thousand times more dangerous than the fact that there is something called Bitcoin that currently consumes as much as 0.2% of total world electricity.

[ModelT]

If we were to assume that Bitcoin never existed at all, would the world be a better place to live in the sense that all this tremendous energy it currently uses would be redirected to some other things? All the energy used by crypto miners would be produced anyway, maybe some part would be used, but surely some of that energy would be wasted - therefore, I do not see a problem at all that energy is used for something like Bitcoin, but of course I understand that there are those who will declare even 0.2% of the world's total energy consumption a natural disaster.

That argument has been defeated hundreds of times, and all those who think Bitcoin is a problem of environmental pollution - stop using your cars, don't turn on the heating over the winter and completely eliminate plastic from your life. Of course, we have all been doing this for decades and no one wants to give up the comfort of life, and all our actions are a thousand times more dangerous than the fact that there is something called Bitcoin that currently consumes as much as 0.2% of total world electricity.

You're right that in the last 170 years or so, a very small fraction of human existence, new technologies and lifestyle choices (not to mention a rising population) have been putting a growing ecological strain on the planet. In recent decades, machines have been doing more physical work and humans less (one of the reasons for weight gains). For many, computers are starting to take the place of exercising their own brain. The planet doesn't really need healthy humans to survive, but maybe we need a healthy planet?

Some people look at these things as a problems while others don't. Some of the most polluting industries have reduced their ecological footprints in recent years while bitcoin's has been increasing exponentially.   

[ranochigo]

If we were to assume that Bitcoin never existed at all, would the world be a better place to live in the sense that all this tremendous energy it currently uses would be redirected to some other things?

Perhaps. It could've had a domino effect for all you know.

All the energy used by crypto miners would be produced anyway, maybe some part would be used, but surely some of that energy would be wasted - therefore, I do not see a problem at all that energy is used for something like Bitcoin, but of course I understand that there are those who will declare even 0.2% of the world's total energy consumption a natural disaster.

The energy that is wasted cannot possibly be sufficient to be able to outweigh the amount of electricity used by Bitcoin mining. You can also store excess energy in batteries or converting it back into GPE through a pump in the case of dams. Not too sure about the efficiency of long distance electricity transmission nowadays but it could've resulted in less fossil fuels burned elsewhere as well.

It is certainly not a natural disaster, nature doesn't consume electricity.

That argument has been defeated hundreds of times, and all those who think Bitcoin is a problem of environmental pollution - stop using your cars, don't turn on the heating over the winter and completely eliminate plastic from your life. Of course, we have all been doing this for decades and no one wants to give up the comfort of life, and all our actions are a thousand times more dangerous than the fact that there is something called Bitcoin that currently consumes as much as 0.2% of total world electricity.

Its estimated to consume 0.5%. Environmental pollution, no matter how small is still considered pollution. All of the examples that you've listed are also culprits of carbon footprint but so is Bitcoin mining. Mining and processing silicon and the production of ASICs may not always be carbon neutral. There are bound to be people who both practice what they preach and advocate for their cause as well, can you really fault them?

If the benefit that arises from using Bitcoin with a higher transaction volume and adoption grows, then I would think there'll be less noise. Most of the commotion is almost always generated by the media.

[Sterbens]

It turns out that recently there have been new innovations about mining with wind and solar power sources, I found here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5325045.msg56602987#msg56602987

This shows that the existence of mining continues to be in demand. however, this does not remove a high level of power boost from the consumption level of the Bitcoin network. Just imagine that China is massively carrying out a mining system with power saving from each power, they are able to minimize the damage.

and the rebuttal is very representative for us, of course it is not easy to break an argument which is quite exhausting

[Lucius]

The essence of the whole story is that those whose actions make life on this planet worse every day suddenly become ardent advocates of the idea of preserving the environment. They find no problems anywhere else except in the mining of BTC, and what about the mining of ETH or some other coin - I personally have not seen anyone ever talk about it?

Even if it is scientifically substantiated that 99% of the energy for mining Bitcoin comes from renewable sources (one day), does anyone think that even that 1% would not be enough for Bitcoin haters to continue with the same agenda?

The problem is not how much Bitcoin actually consumes, the problem is in an idea that some people will never accept - they have already labeled us as criminals creating a parallel financial system, and now anyone who owns BTC will be labeled as someone responsible for destroying the planet.

I don't know if anyone remembers the woman who said that everyone who mines or owns a BTC should pay a special tax - maybe her idea isn't so unrealistic ...

[Fesatmas]

the more difficult it is to mine and decode increasingly complex math, and requires quite expensive hardware. When the price of electricity in a certain area is high, automatic income will not be profitable. added with quality hardware is increasingly difficult to find. hardware mining efficiency because different hash power determines the speed offered. Therefore, we often use bitcoin mining calculators to calculate the amount of expenditure with the benefits obtained from each block or by using Cryptocompare it is quite optimal to use. and most importantly we have to pay attention to the graph of changes in mining difficulty, one of which is an increase in difficulty until 2021.

source image

[bryant.coleman]

The essence of the whole story is that those whose actions make life on this planet worse every day suddenly become ardent advocates of the idea of preserving the environment. They find no problems anywhere else except in the mining of BTC, and what about the mining of ETH or some other coin - I personally have not seen anyone ever talk about it?

Even if it is scientifically substantiated that 99% of the energy for mining Bitcoin comes from renewable sources (one day), does anyone think that even that 1% would not be enough for Bitcoin haters to continue with the same agenda?

The problem is not how much Bitcoin actually consumes, the problem is in an idea that some people will never accept - they have already labeled us as criminals creating a parallel financial system, and now anyone who owns BTC will be labeled as someone responsible for destroying the planet.

I don't know if anyone remembers the woman who said that everyone who mines or owns a BTC should pay a special tax - maybe her idea isn't so unrealistic ...

It was Janet Yellen who first claimed that Bitcoin is an "inefficient" way of doing transactions. Then media restarted their fake news factory, to churn out articles such as this one:

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/bitcoin-shocker-cryptos-rise-may-soon-leave-carbon-footprint-equivalent-to-size-of-londons-emissions/2215513/

Unfortunately, 90% of the world population doesn't have enough intelligence to understand these are plain lies. Take this statement for example:

A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2 – equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube

First of all, the figure claimed by them is a lie. And secondly, Bitcoin is still in infancy and the number of transactions per year is still at a very low level. On average we have ~150 million Bitcoin transactions per year. Once BTC becomes more popular, there will be billions every month and that will not correspond to a rise in electricity consumption. Electricity consumption will remain the same, irrespective of the number of transactions.

[ranochigo]

First of all, the figure claimed by them is a lie. And secondly, Bitcoin is still in infancy and the number of transactions per year is still at a very low level. On average we have ~150 million Bitcoin transactions per year. Once BTC becomes more popular, there will be billions every month and that will not correspond to a rise in electricity consumption. Electricity consumption will remain the same, irrespective of the number of transactions.

Bitcoin is popular, the rate at which (unconfirmed) transactions are being made is much more than the actual capacity of the network in terms of the transactions that can be confirmed. Transaction volume is currently a technical limitations, by the concept of weight units and making it more popular will not help. So if you want to tackle the people trying to bash Bitcoin by drawing comparisons from carbon footprint per transactions, the argument would be to solve the transaction capacity problem instead. I'm sure the profitability of mining would increase with more fees or adoption?

Proving that Bitcoin's utility outweighs its cost is far more important than saying its environmental damage is unsubstantial.

[Ozero]

In general, I think this problem is completely contrived. The question is raised about the consumption of energy when mining bitcoin, as if there is an acute problem in us. The use of solar panels can very quickly solve this problem, because the energy reserves of the sun are practically inexhaustible. In any case, you can oblige the miners to use the energy of the sun and wind.

[fillippone]

the more difficult it is to mine and decode increasingly complex math, and requires quite expensive hardware.

The math underlying the mining algorithm is fairly simple, it can be performed on very basic devices, or even by hand:


Bitcoin Mining on an APPLE II Computer! Highly Impractical Other Devices? Poll!

Difficulty doesn't make the math harder but makes the target where you want to land on increasingly smaller.

[pixie85]

The simplest way of answering this accusation is to make the accuser understand how supply and demand works.
If someone pays a tomato farmer a lot of money to switch to lettuce he will do it.

Elon Musk saw a demand for electric cars so he converted a car factory into an electric car factory. If you feel like there's not enough green energy produced, there will be more because miners will pay for it.

[Plutosky]

https://www.nickgrossman.xyz/2021/bitcoin-as-battery/ 

[arulbero]

https://medium.com/lunar-ventures/bitcoin-is-not-a-battery-it-is-a-sink-852db9669f20

[Vishnu.Reang]

In general, I think this problem is completely contrived. The question is raised about the consumption of energy when mining bitcoin, as if there is an acute problem in us. The use of solar panels can very quickly solve this problem, because the energy reserves of the sun are practically inexhaustible. In any case, you can oblige the miners to use the energy of the sun and wind.

If the Bitcoin miners want to go for green energy, then I welcome that step. But as of now, I don't think that there is any need for us to worry about these stupid arguments. First of all, according to the critics Bitcoin mining consumes 0.6% of all the electricity generation in the world. Out of that, a large fraction may be from coal-fired thermal power plants. Is this 0.6% such a big number? Why these people are focusing so much on this 0.6%, and ignoring the remaining 99.4%?

It is time for Bitcoiners to take a strong stance against these propaganda mongers. No one is providing electricity for free. Bitcoin miners are paying for the electricity and if these people have any issue then they should take it with those who work in electricity generation. It is like blaming someone who own a car for all the global warming that is occurring.

[fillippone]

A very Good longform by Nic Carter debunking himself a Bloomberg article on mining:

Noahbjectivity on Bitcoin Mining

The Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith has a lot of thoughts on Bitcoin. Some of them are really solid and engage with the reality of the protocol itself, which is rare for a member of the mainstream media circuit. He also discloses that he owns Bitcoin, which is impressive for an economist and a member of the establishment. So I’m pretty happy with him overall. I don’t want this piece to be interpreted as a blanket critique of Noah’s stance on Bitcoin. However, Noah’s recent column in Bloomberg, Bitcoin Miners are on a Path to Self-Destruction, makes a few claims that warrant a response.
Noah’s basic premise is that Bitcoin miners are effectively hogging the grid in the various places where they operate and risk getting banned entirely. Not only is the notion of a global coordinated ban on mining far fetched, but Noah relies on a few claims that are dubious at best. Let’s investigate.

Recommended spending 20 minutes reading it.

[Lucius]

Definitely interesting reading from which I learned some new things such as that in addition to the "environmental disaster" argument there is a new one for which BTC can be blamed - and that is including the production of mining devices which causes a shortage of chips that cause great damage to the car and mobile industry

As it turns out, the way foundries like TSMC (the foundry Bitmain relies on) operate, is that they tier their customers. They don’t optimize just for revenue, but consistent demand. They treat their Tier I customers much better, and give them privileged allocations to foundry space. Bitmain, the largest ASIC manufacturer, is not a Tier I customer. They have to settle for scraps. According to Big Al, the chip shortages are mainly due to a skyrocketing demand for consumer electronics and cloud during Covid (as everyone was stuck at home with nothing to do). Ultimately, Bitcoin miners represent a small fraction of TSMC revenue — around 1% according to Bernstein. The notion of a marginal, Tier II industry being responsible for chip shortages is fanciful.

A very interesting fact is the sales of mining machines in the past 2 quarters, which shows that 60% of sales ended outside China, and that customers are mostly located in North America, where electricity is on average cheaper than in China.

The conclusion of all this is that a lot has started to change when it comes to BTC mining, and that everyone is looking for alternatives not only in the locations, but also how to make mining as efficient and cleaner as possible.

[fillippone]

Another very interesting longform by Christopher Bendiksen, Head of Research at CoinShares.
This article put some focus on the fact Bitcoin is a settlement system like FedWire, not a payment system like VISA.


A Closer Look at the Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining

• Bitcoin (BTC) is a settlement system like FedWire, not a payments aggregator like Visa
• It uses energy to deliver that function independently of central authorities
• Global energy production continues to rely on fossil fuels
• However, cryptocurrency mining is mobile and global — constantly seeking out the cheapest available electricity, often stranded renewables
• Bitcoin mining has a substantial role, both in the present and the future, in eliminating waste and in load balancing power systems based on intermittent renewable energy
  

Particularly, on the above note about the difference between a payment system and a settlement layer:

Bitcoin is a settlement system, not a payments aggregator

First things first. What is Bitcoin[1] and what is it not?

Bitcoin is a settlement system like FedWire, it is not a payments aggregator like Visa. I constantly see Bitcoin compared to Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal, and this is the main source of mathematical atrocities whereby Bitcoin’s overall electricity cost is divided by its transactions and then compared to something it’s not. Energy use per settlement transaction is a nonsensical metric by which to judge Bitcoin’s energy use.

Just like the 800,000 or so daily FedWire transactions are not a good measure of the total amount of daily Dollar (USD) transactions, Bitcoin’s 325,000[2] or so daily transactions are not a good measure of the total amount of daily bitcoin (BTC/XBT) transactions. Most bitcoin transactions are not visible. They take place inside the payment aggregation systems of exchanges, on the Lightning network, and yes, even inside of actual aggregators like PayPal, Square, or MasterCard. Only periodically are they settled onto the Bitcoin blockchain as visible transactions.

Solutions like this are referred to as network layering. This is a tried and tested approach to separating casual retail transactions from heavier settlement transactions and it is exactly how we already do things in the fiat monetary and payment systems. In such a system, the base layer, like FedWire (or Bitcoin), only acts as the final arbitrator of settlement transactions, everything else, and that is the vast majority of all transactions, happen in higher payment aggregation layers, which are often entirely different systems.

In other words, Bitcoin is not a competitor to Visa, MasterCard or Paypal. Bitcoin is an independent monetary system that aggregators can make use of.

Presenting Bitcoin’s electricity consumption in terms of its daily number of settlement transactions is a red herring.

[CarnagexD]

Very well said. I'm honestly getting tired of people being very misinformed about bitcoin telling things like it's polluting the environment when millions of dollars are being spent into burning fossil fuels, mining oil, mining gold and basically all other non renewable energy resources that are much more polluting to the environment than bitcoin. Plastics, the food industry, phone production, I can literally go all day here talking about industries that are much more damaging to the environment than bitcoin mining.

[fillippone]

Very interesting, long paper about the carbon footprint associated with Bitcoin mining in China.
A good scientific paper, with some objective data.

Policy assessments for the carbon emission flows and sustainability of Bitcoin blockchain operation in China

Abstract
The growing energy consumption and associated carbon emission of Bitcoin mining could potentially undermine global sustainable efforts. By investigating carbon emission flows of Bitcoin blockchain operation in China with a simulation-based Bitcoin blockchain carbon emission model, we find that without any policy interventions, the annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China is expected to peak in 2024 at 296.59 Twh and generate 130.50 million metric tons of carbon emission correspondingly. Internationally, this emission output would exceed the total annualized greenhouse gas emission output of the Czech Republic and Qatar. Domestically, it ranks in the top 10 among 182 cities and 42 industrial sectors in China. In this work, we show that moving away from the current punitive carbon tax policy to a site regulation policy which induces changes in the energy consumption structure of the mining activities is more effective in limiting carbon emission of Bitcoin blockchain operation.

The view is the usual one, but at least the gathered data have been put in the right perspective.

[Lorence.xD]

Very well said. I'm honestly getting tired of people being very misinformed about bitcoin telling things like it's polluting the environment when millions of dollars are being spent into burning fossil fuels, mining oil, mining gold and basically all other non renewable energy resources that are much more polluting to the environment than bitcoin. Plastics, the food industry, phone production, I can literally go all day here talking about industries that are much more damaging to the environment than bitcoin mining.

The problem is that it won't be able to get through the thick heads of the people that are advocating that bitcoin as a whole is a contributor to the pollution. Maybe the only way to stop all this nonsense is to continue educating people and ignoring all the FUDs.

[fillippone]

The problem is that it won't be able to get through the thick heads of the people that are advocating that bitcoin as a whole is a contributor to the pollution. Maybe the only way to stop all this nonsense is to continue educating people and ignoring all the FUDs.

This is exactly the aim of this thread. Raise the awareness of the unbiased knowledge, letting everyone decide based upon real information, not distorced, word of mouth myths.

[hector3115]

Compared to many other areas of our lives, bitcoin is the greenest industry possible.

[fillippone]

Compared to many other areas of our lives, bitcoin is the greenest industry possible.

Exactly.
We already pointed the fact that Bitcoin is one of the few industries where the total consumption is accounted and scrutinised.
What about the Christmas Light  industry?

[dkbit98]

We already pointed the fact that Bitcoin is one of the few industries where the total consumption is accounted and scrutinised.
What about the Christmas Light  industry?

Now they say Bitcoin is bad, sun is bad and animals like cows are also bad because they create lot of pollution, they should be killed, and we need to eat only synthetic meat (as per dr. Bill Gates and other 'experts' like him).
How about that masks we are all forced to put on are faces every day even if we all know they don't protect us from anything more than polluted air in best case scenarios.
Cheap masks should be used only one time and then thrown away, creating millions and billions more junk that is really polluting our environment but nobody is talking about that.
I learned something new in last two years, villains from comic books actually exist in the real world.

[fillippone]

Bitcoin Magazine wrote a nice article on this topic, that apparently is the hot one (pun intended).


BITCOIN POWER: THE ENERGY OF A MONEY

The energy sector is seeing a complete paradigm shift:

• Bitcoin’s monetary network effect
• Monetization of energy
• Leads to an arms race of energy tech becoming more and more efficient and productive
• Cheap energy production allows for cheap energy utilization
• Cheap energy utilization allows for cheap manufacturing, mineral mining and product R&D

The author focuses on the efficiency improvement the mining industry can give to the power production chain.

[tinopener]

The thing that annoys me most is that although people are aware that a lot of crypto is mined using green energy, some will say:

"Oh, but that green energy could be used for something else".

This seems like a paradox to me, as that energy wouldn't have been brought online if it wasn't for crypto mining.

These green energy companies are hardly going to start creating energy if there are no customers for it.

[ampu]

I've heard a lot about Bitcoin destroying the environment. I wonder if other industries do not destroy the environment?
Suck oil from the ground up and burned; creating plastic and discharging it into the ocean; exploiting trees to serve the needs of home furniture; ...
All of the above industries also destroy the environment.
Bitcoin provides a financial and anti-fraud solution. Applying Bitcoin will benefit the world trillions of dollars lost through the use of financial system failures.
Comparing the negative and beneficial sides of Bitcoin is still better than dozens of industries out there.

[Kakmakr]

The argument is that China is mining the most bitcoins in the world and they are the country with the most "Coal" plants, but they also forget that China is also the country with the most hydro electric plants in the world. (most of the large mining farms use hydro electricity to power their mining farms) and hydro electricity are a renewable energy source.

Look at this : https://www.statista.com/statistics/474799/global-hydropower-generation-by-major-country/

Also compare Apples with Apples and look at the combined power that are used by the Banking industry to power their buildings. (24 hour CCTV / ATMs / IT networks etc..) 

[stompix]

Recent studies show that bitcoin mining uses 39% energy from renewable sources (solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, etc.) and 25% from energy derived from nuclear power and, to a minimum, fossil fuels. This percentage is steadily increasing, especially in China, where the transition to low carbon footprint production is happening more rapidly.

Seems like some researchers need to do their homework again.
One thing we know for sure is that at least 30% of the hashrate comes from good old dirty and more important cheap as f coal.
So the minimum is probably more like the majority, seeing that some of the biggest projects are actually being built on former aluminum smelters close to coal mines even if this happens outside of China.

That being said I don't know why some people are so focused on trying to portrait bitcoin as running on unicorn farts, so it's coal, good, what's the problem? The hospital I was born in ran on coal, from it to the school and kindergarten to which my child goes the hypermarket and the mall in our region everything powered by coal, should I run to a cave and commit suicide because of it?

Mining is business, you go for the cheap thing available, miners don't move their gear a thousand miles because hydropower is good for the environment they do it for $. Bitmain didn't set its main farm in Ordos to help the people by providing jobs, they did it because they could get power ar 2 cents.

[fillippone]

Square released an important white paper about bitcoin power usage.
Bitcoin magazine reported about this:

SQUARE MAKES THE CASE FOR CLEAN ENERGY BITCOIN

In a white paper released today, financial services company Square outlines the opportunity that Bitcoin presents to facilitate a transition to a cleaner and more resilient electricity grid.

The research report, titled “Bitcoin Is Key To An Abundant, Clean Energy Future,” was released as part of Square’s Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative, an ongoing effort to support companies working to integrate green energy technologies within bitcoin mining. Square also supports Bitcoin projects financially through its Square Crypto arm and offers BTC for sale through its payments app Cash App.

The research paper highlighted the opportunity that Bitcoin presents to accelerate a global transition to renewable energy sources, as Bitcoin miners are uniquely positioned to capitalize and make the most of these sources.

“Bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers in that they offer highly flexible and easily interruptible load, provide payout in a globally liquid cryptocurrency, and are completely location agnostic, requiring only an internet connection,” per the report.

You can read the paper here:

Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future

In this memo, we aim to explain how the Bitcoin network functions as a unique energy buyer that could enable society to deploy substantially more solar and wind generation capacity. This deployment, along with energy storage, aims to facilitate the transition to a cleaner and more resilient electricity grid. We believe that the energy asset owners of today can become the essential bitcoin miners of tomorrow.

Well, while I am skeptic about the fact that is the role of bitcoin miners to drive the evolution of the energy grids, as I see no way how electricity sold to a miner is different from electricity sold to any other customer, I recognised they elaborated more on the “Bitcoin is a battery” idea.
Coupling inefficient renewable project with bitcoin mining operation, could lower the marginal cost of the whole project, helping spreading the renewed le usage.

Obviously what the study do not tell you is why bitcoin mining should be used only in renewable energy plants and not atomic plants, who suffer from the exact same issue of production/demand mismatch.

[amishmanish]

--snip--
That being said I don't know why some people are so focused on trying to portrait bitcoin as running on unicorn farts, so it's coal, good, what's the problem? The hospital I was born in ran on coal, from it to the school and kindergarten to which my child goes the hypermarket and the mall in our region everything powered by coal, should I run to a cave and commit suicide because of it?

Mining is business, you go for the cheap thing available, miners don't move their gear a thousand miles because hydropower is good for the environment they do it for $. Bitmain didn't set its main farm in Ordos to help the people by providing jobs, they did it because they could get power ar 2 cents.

Good point. The free market allocating resources where they are most needed and the most productive.

The OP has many good points. What about the fact that Bitcoin has enabled a whole industry where investors are willing to buy a new class of asset in order to manage their financial risks in the long term?  When was the last time that a "commodity" launched a whole side industry with users and communities focussed towards better financial management?

Can the governments, central banks or private investment banks offer an alternative risk management system? What would it cost to keep it running?

This argument relies on the utility of Bitcoin and its importance as a financial innovation. Someone with better data should probably try to put a number on this.

[stompix]

Coupling inefficient renewable project with bitcoin mining operation, could lower the marginal cost of the whole project, helping spreading the renewed le usage.

Bitcoin mining and renewables in the form of solar and wind are not making a good combination.

The whole idea of a battery is to accumulate power when is excess production and supply it back when there is demand, bitcoin mining is not storing energy, it's consuming non-stop the same amount of power. While it helps burning energy when there is extra production it also drives up consumption when there is peak demand during the daytime.

A miner running on solar power will have to come up with at least 3 times the consumption as storage capacity assuming no day without sun, a single S19pro burns in 18 hours 60kwh, a tesla powerwall has 13.5kwh, a battery on the entry-level tesla S is 70kwh.   The cost is simply prohibitive.

Obviously what the study do not tell you is why bitcoin mining should be used only in renewable energy plants and not atomic plants, who suffer from the exact same issue of production/demand mismatch.

Atomic plants are actually the best match for bitcoin mining.
Unlike solar who delivers power at the peak time for demand and goes black at night, atomic power's weakness is that it can't shut down at night and power up at daytime, nuclear power while reliable is not that easy to turn on and off. Bitcoin mining could take advantage of this excess power that is produced when nearly nobody wants it.
Bitcoin mining and nuclear power are a perfect match, constant power needs, production is not influenced by weather, no need to be near a coal mine and thousands of freight trains carrying fuel, they ran on fuel rods that go for years, and as long as you have some water nearby you can set them in cold areas so mining farms would need no cooling.

But, we're living in an era where the eco-green propaganda would turn install against this idea.

[fillippone]

The whole idea of a battery is to accumulate power when is excess production and supply it back when there is demand, bitcoin mining is not storing energy, it's consuming non-stop the same amount of power. While it helps burning energy when there is extra production it also drives up consumption when there is peak demand during the daytime.

A miner running on solar power will have to come up with at least 3 times the consumption as storage capacity assuming no day without sun, a single S19pro burns in 18 hours 60kwh, a tesla powerwall has 13.5kwh, a battery on the entry-level tesla S is 70kwh.   The cost is simply prohibitive.

In the Grossman paper I linked in the OP the concept “battery” doesn’t mean to be taken literally, but as a “proxy” meaning bitcoin can “use” excess energy when, or where, it is abundant to pay for it when or where it is scarce. In this sense act as a battery. Not in the physical way, but as a “Store of Energy” meaning.

Atomic plants are actually the best match for bitcoin mining.

I am wondering what is keeping energy companies to install on massive mining operations at their plants. They would pay for themselves.

[icopress]

My 2 cents .. I wouldn't be surprised if, 15 years from now, the leader of the S&P 500 is not a tech company or an oil and gas corporation, but energy giants, the majority of whose profits will come to mining, (perhaps this is an overly abstract statement, but still). I am certainly not an expert in mathematical forecasting, but I think that energy consumption by 2035 will increase by at least 1000%. I just assume that if energy consumption is already at almost 130 terawatt hours this year, then taking into account inflation and electricity prices in 10 years, it will not be difficult to calculate the ratio to the exponential growth of BTC.

[stompix]

In the Grossman paper I linked in the OP the concept “battery” doesn’t mean to be taken literally, but as a “proxy” meaning bitcoin can “use” excess energy when, or where, it is abundant to pay for it when or where it is scarce. In this sense act as a battery. Not in the physical way, but as a “Store of Energy” meaning.

Yup, I understood that, I was just adding to the idea on how this regulation of consumption could be done, and how it can't be done without investments and investments mean $ which would simply turn miners to the nextcheapest possible thing.
And no, I don't agree with the paper, especially since from the first paragraph

Bitcoin miners are unique energy buyers in that they offer highly flexible and easily interruptible load

That's the bs in it, and every miner knows this, miners are not flexible, miners need constant interruptible power, a miner that switches on and off for 12 hours at a time will simply have a tremendous disadvantage, he can't simply stop mining for a few hours than mine double the next to compensate and gear gets easily outclass, you don't have a decade to achieve ROI and profit like in an aluminum smelter.
As for the easily interruptible load, everyone sees what's happening when miners stop mining, this ain't going to work.

Sorry but that paper holds as much truth in it as a paper from the oil companies or big pharma or PETA.
It's a heavily biased thing published by people who have bet a lot of money on BTC, it's simply lobbying material, yeah, it's good for "our side" but that doesn't make it more accurate than it is.

I am wondering what is keeping energy companies to install on massive mining operations at their plants. They would pay for themselves.

Nothing!
Well, right now, the lack of mining gear, but previously and fast forward from 6 months in the future nothing.
It could be money, gear does not come cheap, but other than this, nope, nothing.
It like asking what keeps the average Joe from buying bitcoin? It's their choice of doing business.

[amishmanish]

My 2 cents .. I wouldn't be surprised if, 15 years from now, the leader of the S&P 500 is not a tech company or an oil and gas corporation, but energy giants, the majority of whose profits will come to mining, (perhaps this is an overly abstract statement, but still). I am certainly not an expert in mathematical forecasting, but I think that energy consumption by 2035 will increase by at least 1000%. I just assume that if energy consumption is already at almost 130 terawatt hours this year, then taking into account inflation and electricity prices in 10 years, it will not be difficult to calculate the ratio to the exponential growth of BTC.

That may very well be how things come to pass IF, and it is a BIG if, people, corporations and regulators realize Bitcoin's importance as the only trustworthy PoW currency of the new financial world. The way finance has functioned in the last few decades, there has been a lot of regulation but zero accountability for the people that move money across oceans and manage it in various ways to make the most out of retail investors and "markets", in general.

Again, for all the silly estimations of the Electricity consumed by Bitcoin, the detractors should know that the Bitcoin network will continue even if it is just a million home miners instead of concentrated operations. How many million households consume similar energy for their heating or cooling needs?

Bitcoin and the entrepreneurial initiatives it is unleashing are an urgent need. The increased usage of blockchain can make several current processes much more energy efficient. There can never be a comparison of Bitcoin's energy cost without calculating the social/ economic/ entrepreneurial and efficiency benefits that it is giving. If we start calculating the energy cost of every useful human activity then there are multiple of them that can be stopped without losing any benefits.

[btc-room101]

Currently there are about 900 bitcoins generated each day by mining worth about $50 million dollars.

Miners must be spending at least half of that on electric so say 25 million a day.

Back of the envelope calculations but I bet I'm pretty close.

Since the world isn't 100% powered by green energy, any cut in mining will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons.

I bet you disagree with this though

I think the OP is crossed with Trump&Limbaugh, but that's fine.

It doesn't matter, once COAL mined BITCOIN in CHINA is halted, lets let the OP find new sources of cheap power for the miners.

The USA,RUSSIA, &CHINA agree on this issue.

BTC is a waste of energy, it one btc buys 1,000 barrels of oil, so who cares about energy costs, or how many ton's of coal must be burned?

It doesn't really matter about the argument, what matters is the scale of wasted energy. All people are asking is you get over it, its coming down.

Wasting energy the scale of an entire country say Argentina, is not something to defend.

We already know the BTC community don't give a shit about the world's environment, that they only care about getting rich, while locked down under COVID.

IMHO the BITCOIN-ORG-COMM shouldn't even be in this debate, allocate them say a few 100 watts per miner, and then its up to them to figure out how to find the green energy they need.

Where this is all going is 99% tax on BTC, which is probably what the IMF wants, and the BITCOIN-ORG as well. Outcomes are always pre-planned.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

I think the reason that people are lumping bitcoin with being a contributor to environmental problems is because the world still uses more fossil fuels for electricity rather than renewable resources and with the narrative that bitciin consumes a lot of electricity, it will be definitely be blamed but we know that it isn't the case.

[fillippone]

I think the reason that people are lumping bitcoin with being a contributor to environmental problems is because the world still uses more fossil fuels for electricity rather than renewable resources and with the narrative that bitciin consumes a lot of electricity, it will be definitely be blamed but we know that it isn't the case.

Bitcoin is a user of electricity.
It’s not bitcoin fault if such electricity is produced using dirty sources.
It’s not bitcoin’s scope to shift energy production towards cleaner sources, but definitely can help.

[fillippone]

A collection of resources from my fellow Italian bitcoiner Giacomo Zucco:




Here is the List:

• Proof of Work, a pictorial essay by Adam Gibson
• Bitcoin's Energy Consumption by DerGigi
• The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption by Nic Carter
• Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy by Parker Lewis
• Bitcoin Doesn't Waste Electricity by BeautyOn
• Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work by Truthcoin

[dkbit98]

Adding more interesting recent information to this topic because I think bad news propaganda against Bitcoin is going to get worse in near future, so we need to have more debunking information about this topic.

Nic Carter wrote and posted interesting new article for HBR Harvard Business Review explaining how much energy Bitcoin actually consumes.
We hear people talk a lot about Carbon Emissions (btw we are all made of Carbon so think about that) for Bitcoin and confusing it with energy consumption, but various research are showing that between 39% to 72% of all energy used for mining Bitcoin is actually hydro energy.
Interesting thing is that Bitcoin mining consumes energy that can be spent anywhere in the world and Bitcoin doesn't have that limitation like all other applications that need to be near energy sources.

In other article written by Hass McCook we can see great comparison made for energy consumption for Bitcoin, Gold, paper currencies and banks.
We can see that much more energy is spent and much more CO2 is produced with combined gold mining, making of gold jewellery and gold recycling  than for Bitcoin mining.
If we look at all Banking system and ATMS than we can see multiple times higher numbers according to McCook research with 400 milllion CO2 produced and 700 TWh energy used.
Maybe we still do need to use current banking system everyday but imagine how much energy would be saved if we didn't have ATMS anymore and if we stop making more gold jewellery.

This image speaks louder than words:


source archive

[TangentC]

The whole ignoring Bitcoin PoW is an energy wasting issue.

I get it, how dare anyone claim anything about bitcoin is a problem.

But here is the problem, whether you see it coming or not.

https://forkast.news/inner-mongolia-shut-down-crypto-mining-china-bitcoin-miners/

China’s Inner Mongolia, once a hotbed of bitcoin mining, is now planning to ban all cryptocurrency mining farms and has asked them to shut down operations by the end of next month, forcing miners to move their equipment elsewhere in China or even overseas.

https://www.nelsonstar.com/news/nelson-council-bans-bitcoin-mining-industrial-scale-computing-from-city/

Nelson council bans bitcoin mining

https://earther.gizmodo.com/new-bill-would-ban-bitcoin-mining-across-new-york-state-1846828277

New Bill Would Ban Bitcoin Mining Across New York State for Three Years

Studies show that mining comes with a pretty hefty impact even as the bitcoin price keeps on surging.
(And in fact, that may be one reason for the surge in carbon emissions as speculators jump into the market.) While the likes of Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have falsely claimed bitcoin is good, actually, for the climate, the preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise.

Now you can make all of the comparisons , you want ,
but the facts are the people banning bitcoin mining really don't care what you or i think.

Is the ban global, nope. But the bans are increasing.

Different Energy Efficient Algorithms have been designed and available since 2013,
but bitcoiners don't want to give up their tried and true PoW.
That fine, until it's not fine , and that day is approaching faster than any of us know.

[stompix]

We hear people talk a lot about Carbon Emissions (btw we are all made of Carbon so think about that) for Bitcoin and confusing it with energy consumption, but various research are showing that between 39% to 72% of all energy used for mining Bitcoin is actually hydro energy.

Haha  
We just had one coal mine accident leading to a hashrate drop of 30% and you still quote that moron claiming 72% of energy coming from hydro?
Seriously, seeing how much they've screwed up with their estimation I would be amazed if not 39 but 7.2% would be actually coming from hydropower.
Some got the wake-up call although they still refuse the entire truth, some still live in dreamland.
https://decrypt.co/68591/flooded-coal-mine-highlights-chinese-bitcoin-miners-reliance-on-dirty-power

Remember the accident that happened in Xinjiang, Bitmain's first and rumors say largest mining facility is in Ordos, Inner Mongolia and you can guess what kind of fuel they burn there. As for that graph, don't forget about it when the chip shortage problem is fixed and mining gear can be produced as much as clients demand, remember we were at 130 exa when BTC was at 10k, . When all that gear hits the market you will have to forget all those fancy graphs and "studies" and embrace the obvious, as I said before: Bitcoin is not running on unicorn farts, but that's not a problem at all.

[dkbit98]

We just had one coal mine accident leading to a hashrate drop of 30% and you still quote that moron claiming 72% of energy coming from hydro?

Like I said, it's somewhere between 39% and 72% according to various research and you need to take this seriously because climate change global warming propaganda shit is just getting started.
CNN will be one of the first to report this news 24/7, this will include Bitcoin in bad image package, and I already see some crypto influencers claiming that Bitcoin should switch to Proof-of-stake because it's bad for environment, and btw I don't agree with this at all.
We can survive few incidents with hashrate drops but remember what happened with fees days and weeks after that with very high fees, and constant media fud would be like putting more petrol on fire.

[fillippone]

This is a great article.


How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?

Summary.  
Today, Bitcoin consumes as much energy as a small country. This certainly sounds alarming — but the reality is a little more complicated. The author discusses several common misconceptions surrounding the Bitcoin sustainability debate, and ultimately argues that it’s up to the crypto community to acknowledge and address environmental concerns, work in good faith to reduce Bitcoin’s carbon footprint, and ultimately demonstrate that the societal value that Bitcoin provides is worth the resources needed to sustain it.

This is the exact list of arguments I would pick to convince a sceptic about what bitcoin mining is about.

EDIT: I just saw @dkbit98 posted this a few post above. Thank you! Keeping this post because I want to make sure everyone see this!

[stompix]

Like I said, it's somewhere between 39% and 72% according to various research and you need to take this seriously because climate change global warming propaganda shit is just getting started.
CNN will be one of the first to report this news 24/7, this will include Bitcoin in bad image package, and I already see some crypto influencers claiming that Bitcoin should switch to Proof-of-stake because it's bad for environment, and btw I don't agree with this at all.

So we should strat our own propaganda that is just as toxic as theirs as it's based on lies too, how does that make you better than them?
Look where all the environment-friendly garbage describing Bitcoin as being greener than life has led us, into a shitty situation like this where there is no point of return, all those claims of clean power have been busted in a flash because of one freak accident. What are you going to say if this happens again in Inner Mongolia and another 30% of the hash rate goes down? To what LIE are you going to resort then?

Deal with reality and be objective, the manufacturing will return to full power and thousands of Asic are going to invade the market as mining is insanely profitable right now, when the electricity consumption will continue to grow as BTC value will continue also to do so, will you remember those graphs about BTC consuming less than 10 times what the banking industry does? Then less than 6, 3, half almost the same but still below...Well, we do consume 3 times more but BTC is better than banks, are you going to change your speech just like CNN does when they are caught red-handed?

All the people defending bitcoin consumption should treat it as normal, it's a damn business that consumes power and brings in $. Simple!
It's just the same, nothing special, just as datacenters consume power, just as gold mining does, just as coal mining does.
You don't need to defend it, nobody does, what is being defended here is not bitcoin's consumption is the cultist's ego!

We can survive few incidents with hashrate drops but remember what happened with fees days and weeks after that with very high fees, and constant media fud would be like putting more petrol on fire.

And where was the FUD?
Could you in reality send a transaction with 2sat/b fee and get a confirmation in 5 seconds? It was a fact, it wasn't FUD.

That was caused not by POW it was caused by some of the people who have a say in BTC's development who for god knows what reasons are stubborn as mules and can't even change the difficulty adjustment period to a shorter interval without a war of the roses going on. POW or POS or whatever the results would have been the same. If the difficulty adjustment would have been set for every 144 blocks none of that would have happened, but as usual, it's the simple solutions that are never applied.

Oh, and don't get me wrong, I truly dislike PoS because it's really a Piece Of S**,  I can't understand how you can even claim true decentralization with that as it will inevitably lead to the same situation we have now in the world with central banks and commercial banks and same goes for proof of space or data or whatever, not even mentioning the masternodes crap.

[dkbit98]

So we should strat our own propaganda that is just as toxic as theirs as it's based on lies too, how does that make you better than them?

First you called that guy who wrote an article a moron, than you say that I lie and spread propaganda... I think you need to chill a bit, but I can understand if you are some eco warrior who wants to save the world like Greta Thunberg.

Look where all the environment-friendly garbage describing Bitcoin as being greener than life has led us, into a shitty situation like this where there is no point of return, all those claims of clean power have been busted in a flash because of one freak accident.

Nobody said that bitcoin is greener than life except maybe you in previous post, and we are nowhere near the point of no return, whatever that means.

What are you going to say if this happens again in Inner Mongolia and another 30% of the hash rate goes down? To what LIE are you going to resort then?

Here we go mister honesty talking about lies and dark winter scenarios again... I am not defending anyone or anything but I can think with my head.
You think that same thing can't happen if we are using greenest possible nuclear or hydro energy, and drop of hashrate can and will happen in future sooner or later.

are you going to change your speech just like CNN does when they are caught red-handed?

I didn't wrote any of this articles and sure I can change my opinion about anything, articles I read and not gospels set in stones, but maybe you should apply for new job of fortune teller if you are so good in predicting future, I am sure you will get lot of customers.
Can you please tell us Bitcoin price in 2022 and 2023, and when the world will end because of Bitcoin?  

You don't need to defend it, nobody does, what is being defended here is not bitcoin's consumption is the cultist's ego!

I am not defending anything but I like to hear different opinions and think with my own head, and not mainstream news or some random dude on forum.

And where was the FUD?

I was talking in future tense and something like this didn't happen yet, but maybe you can tell me exact day when this will start so I can prepare.

Could you in reality send a transaction with 2sat/b fee and get a confirmation in 5 seconds? It was a fact, it wasn't FUD.

It was 2sat/b today actually, but I don't expect that to be the case every day, and I am well aware how high fees can be on Bitcoin network.

[Obito]

Bitcoin looks like an environmental to the eyes of the stupid because it is a growing industry and they don't really know what they are talking about in terms of energy hierarchy, almost everyone that uses electricity in this world is using mainly fossil fuels as a main energy source with small amounts of hydro power, green energy and nuclear.

[stompix]

I think you need to chill a bit, but I can understand if you are some eco warrior who wants to save the world like Greta Thunberg.

Seems like you're not spending too much time reading what others say, let's go through a small recap:

That being said I don't know why some people are so focused on trying to portrait bitcoin as running on unicorn farts, so it's coal, good, what's the problem? The hospital I was born in ran on coal, from it to the school and kindergarten to which my child goes the hypermarket and the mall in our region everything powered by coal, should I run to a cave and commit suicide because of it?

I assume that's what Greta would say, right?

Here we go mister honesty talking about lies and dark winter scenarios again... I am not defending anyone or anything but I can think with my head.

You see, this is cultism, instead of answering why do you still cling to those numbers which are obviously false you resort to empty words.
So, if by chance Inner Mongolia goes through the same scenario and 20-30% of the hashrate goes down showing another chuck is powered by coal, making it close to 50% just in China, would you still stand by those studies?

You think that same thing can't happen if we are using greenest possible nuclear or hydro energy, and drop of hashrate can and will happen in future sooner or later.

Irrelevant, we're not talking about what the effects are, we're talking about what the accident unveilled.

I didn't wrote any of this articles and sure I can change my opinion about anything, articles I read and not gospels set in stones, but maybe you should apply for new job of fortune teller if you are so good in predicting future, I am sure you will get lot of customers.
Can you please tell us Bitcoin price in 2022 and 2023, and when the world will end because of Bitcoin?  

Yawn!!!! Derailing the discussion again. That's all you've got?

I am not defending anything but I like to hear different opinions and think with my own head, and not mainstream news or some random dude on forum.

Same here, so, who are you again? Bottom line you haven't understand anything of what I've said, too bad, but that's the cultist way, whoever disagrees with even a single opinion should be hanged. You like hearing opinions but only the opinions you like to hear, yeah, that's the way of doing non-biased research, lol.
PS, nice that you didn't address any number this time, at least this is a good sign.

[dkbit98]

cultist's ego!

that's the cultist way

You see, this is cultism

Bring it on, I see you are very good at insulting other people and name calling, so one more sticker for me being a cultist is nothing new for you, and I see no point of talking more with someone who thinks that he is always right about everything.

Have a nice day.

[acener]

All this debate and very informative thread hurt my head too much LOL.
I don't really understand it that much but I know that even without crypto the environment would still be fvcked up,
It just happen that crypto did add up a little bit to it.
That's it I'm done I couldn't debate with you guys I would just sit back and relax reading this topic.

[stompix]

~

I'm truly disappointed, we've had different points of view on events in the past but you were far more level-headed on those, probably because you genuinely believed in your own arguments, this time you've chosen to ignore numbers and facts and directly lash out. Calling names? How about you re-read what you've told me on the last page and with whom you've compared me just to realized one post later how wrong you are and then what you do? No more numbers, no more arguments, it's time to pack, call the other person a moron, and leave.

As for your impression that I think so highly about myself, every time when people asked me then what do I think it should be done I've said this

I stated numerous times in the mining board and in some other discussions, I have no $^^&& idea.

I know we have an issue (not going to call it a problem anymore), I  know this will only get worse till the next halving, and no, I don't have a single clue how to make things better. Acknowledging facts don't make you a hater, it simply allows you to have an unbiased view on something.

[fillippone]

Can we guys just stay calm and in topic please?
I like constructive ideas and dicussions, not ad personam arguments.

[fillippone]

In case you have been living under a rock:



https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203?s=21


Please someone forward this thread to Elon Musk.
First time I have been sincerely disappointed by the man.

[icopress]

First time I have been sincerely disappointed by the man.

I'm not at all surprised ... I'm pretty sure that the board of directors showed Elon where he belongs, pointing out how easy it is to remove him from the post of general director. Perhaps some of the Gray Cardinals are receiving first-hand news, and knowing that Musk is facing a lawsuit based on spring manipulations, it was decided to distance himself from everything related to cryptocurrency (in order to preserve the status quo). Perhaps there is another reason, but in any case, I am convinced that Musk's statement is just an excuse, (the most interesting thing is that he posted this tweet ahead of the rainy season in China). 

[finaleshot2016]

I came back here in this thread because of Elon Musk ditching bitcoin as a payment method for Tesla. First of all, this thread should be pinned or must be seen since most of us here support bitcoin, and that's why we are here. The information that can be seen here is very important, comparing BTC to other things that have a massive consumption and being wasted.

https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1391747174950752260

I watched Michael Saylor's interview and he debunked this energy misconception in under a minute. Since the op is tl;dr, anyone who doesn't understand what those numbers mean should watch the video.

In case you have been living under a rock:

!~

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203?s=21


Please someone forward this thread to Elon Musk.
First time I have been sincerely disappointed by the man.

https://twitter.com/MMCrypto/status/1392869357731069956

Elon Musk didn't DYOR. lmao  

and here's a report of coinshares about BTC using renewable energy. https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-2019

[bryant.coleman]

First time I have been sincerely disappointed by the man.

I'm not at all surprised ... I'm pretty sure that the board of directors showed Elon where he belongs, pointing out how easy it is to remove him from the post of general director. Perhaps some of the Gray Cardinals are receiving first-hand news, and knowing that Musk is facing a lawsuit based on spring manipulations, it was decided to distance himself from everything related to cryptocurrency (in order to preserve the status quo). Perhaps there is another reason, but in any case, I am convinced that Musk's statement is just an excuse, (the most interesting thing is that he posted this tweet ahead of the rainy season in China). 

If that was the case, then he would have explicitly stated that Tesla will refuse to accept anymore cryptocurrency payments. But his latest tweet was only directed at Bitcoin. And furthermore, it claimed that they are looking for a cryptocurrency which has a lower carbon footprint when compared to Bitcoin. If your argument was true, then there is no point in Elon tweeting about the alternative cryptocurrency. For me, it is very clear. He either wants to create his own cryptocurrency, or want to pump some crypto such as Dogecoin. 

[fillippone]

Another great article debunking Camilo Mora article, written by Paul Veradittakit from Pantera Capital.


Bitcoin Energy Consumption

For once, I will report here the conclusion of the study:

Being a climate-conscious Bitcoin owner.

As retail and institutional investors increasingly incorporate Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) considerations into their investment theses, I’ve had multiple people ask me about the moral consequences of buying Bitcoin. My personal perspective on Bitcoin’s energy consumption, to summarize the preceding sections, is as follows:

• It is undeniable that Bitcoin consumes a large amount of energy, which, in the short-term, will add some carbon to the atmosphere. However, it will leave far smaller of a footprint than most estimates assume.
• Energy is not “wasted,” it is used to power the most secure blockchain on Earth, allowing for second- and third-layer innovations that expand financial access for billions of people. This is enough of a social good, in my opinion, to justify an expenditure of energy.
• The debate around energy quantity is not particularly useful; instead, we should focus on energy types. Bitcoin already uses large amounts of renewable energy and, as the “energy buyer of last resort,” could help propel us to a carbon-neutral future.

Even if you disagree, one way to dodge the energy consumption debate entirely is just to purchase carbon offsets; that way, you can ensure your purchase of Bitcoin is carbon-neutral (or even negative). As we’ve seen, calculating a precise amount of carbon emitted from your personal engagement with Bitcoin is difficult—it’s not as simple as dividing hashpower by the number of transactions—but some good faith contribution (e.g., 10% of the value of your BTC holdings) can go a long way. Ninepoint, a Canada-based Bitcoin ETF, announced this month that they were purchasing offsets for their holdings. If you’re interested, I’d suggest using Nori, but there are other simple ways to purchase small carbon offsets.

On a final note, I hope to shift the discussion slightly. Instead of judging the uses of energy, which is a strict and selectively-applied standard, let’s focus on making energy production as clean as possible. Purchase offsets. Support renewable energy projects. Vote for a carbon tax. The list goes on. But don’t make Bitcoin the enemy: it only distracts us from completing the difficult work of creating a sustainable future.

[ranochigo]

Please someone forward this thread to Elon Musk.
First time I have been sincerely disappointed by the man.

If you really think Elon Musk actually didn't consider about the possible environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining, then I would strongly urge you to reconsider again. Bitcoin mining is energy intensive (no one can dispute that), if he doesn't find any point in accepting Bitcoin payment and chooses to disassociates himself with it while simultaneously advocating for Bitcoin to shift to a less energy intensive algorithm, then there is nothing much you can do.

Don't bother talking to/about someone who says his own company is overvalued. Anyways, back on the thread, would it be possible to add something about ewaste in the topic, I find it so heavily centered on electrical usage that any other environmental impact isn't really mentioned.

[fillippone]

Anyways, back on the thread, would it be possible to add something about ewaste in the topic, I find it so heavily centered on electrical usage that any other environmental impact isn't really mentioned.

This is something I have been researching for, but I didn't fin any article "good enough" for this.
Please let me know if you can find a good one, or for sure I will ring your bell when I find one.

[fillippone]

Today is a great day, after Pantera Capital's article this one from Galaxy Digital:
 

On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question

Is the Bitcoin network’s electricity consumption an acceptable use of energy? This question has been debated since the early days of the network. Yet despite the numerous published articles and analyses, the debate rages on, typically re-emerging during Bitcoin bull runs.
Bitcoin is a fundamentally novel technology that is not a precise substitute for any one legacy system. Bitcoin is not solely a settlement layer, not solely a store of value, and not solely a medium of exchange. There is no denying that the Bitcoin network consumes a substantial amount of energy, but this energy consumption is what makes it so robust and secure.
Given Bitcoin’s transparency, it is easy to estimate Bitcoin’s energy usage. This results in frequent criticism of Bitcoin, but these critiques are rarely levied against other traditional industries. Bitcoin is most often compared to the traditional banking system (for payments, savings, and settlement) and gold (as a non-sovereign store of value). But the energy usage of these industries is opaque as they do not publicly disclose their energy footprints. If we want to have an honest conversation about Bitcoin’s energy use, it seems appropriate to consider it in light of the industries it is most often compared to.
In this article, we begin by trying to understand the relevant facts around Bitcoin’s energy footprint, and then compare it to the gold and banking industries. Though these comparisons provide interesting context, they are inherently imperfect.
Although the magnitude of different industries’ energy usage can be estimated and compared, the question is still fundamentally subjective. Views on the Bitcoin network’s importance vary, but Bitcoin’s properties do not. Anyone can use Bitcoin. Anyone can hold bitcoins for themselves. And Bitcoin transactions can provide probabilistically final settlement in an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
These features can offer financial freedom to people around the world who may not have the luxury of a stable and accessible financial infrastructure. The network can benefit the energy sector by creating perfect use cases for intermittent and excess energy. And the network will only scale further if network adoption warrants it.
Throughout this piece, we reference several in-depth calculations. The methodology and calculations can be found here.

[Karartma1]

Amazing thread fillippone, thank you very much for having collected the most comprehensive articles selection currently available to destroy the utter shitty arguments against bitcoin and its so-called energy problem.
I see no problem, anyway

[NotATether]

Different Energy Efficient Algorithms have been designed and available since 2013,
but bitcoiners don't want to give up their tried and true PoW.
That fine, until it's not fine , and that day is approaching faster than any of us know.

It dumbfolds me why the entire media (and alarmingly some people here) are so focused on changing Bitcoin's algorithm when the real problem is reducing the power consumption of mining hardware and mining farms.

If somehow Bitmain manage to make the Antminer S19 pull 10% less watts power, suddenly we are looking at a massive decrease in energy usage.

And it would be good for the mining operators too, because they'd pay less for electricity!

But no, "PoW is bad" and the dev community should get a deadline to hardfork to PoS. Do people even realize that the largest bitcoin wallets (that will ultimately influence PoS distribution) are either dormant or belong to corporations or the FBI?

[icopress]

Yes, you are right, because then the rich will become even richer. But still, there are far fewer positive aspects of PoS than negative ones (for example, the fact that staking requires storing coins in a hot wallet). Although PoW also has disadvantages, given the existing monopolies on the production of ASICs and chips ... but one way or another, the main thing is that the energy expended is a real resource.

As for the allegedly high consumption of electricity, I am not worried about such speculative statements, at least because no one has reliable data on how much and what type of electricity is spent on Bitcoin mining, (in the sense that the calculation of energy consumption is a theoretical figure based only on the complexity of the network). No one takes into account that the lion's share of energy costs, depending on the time of the year, are renewable energy sources. I do not know the exact numbers to assert, but it seems to me that most of the hashrate is in China also for the reason that BTC takes on excess energy that cannot be sold. 

[fillippone]

These are only two examples, but many others are there: China-coal powered bitcoin mining is only an accident in time. The competition will drive miners toward more economic sources of energy.

Greenidge says N.Y. bitcoin mining operation to be carbon-neutral by June 1

(Reuters) – Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc said on Friday it will operate an entirely carbon-neutral bitcoin mining operation at its upstate New York facility starting on June 1.

The company said it will purchase voluntary carbon offsets from a portfolio of U.S. greenhouse gas reduction projects. The company converted its power generation operations from coal to natural gas in 2017.

Cap and Trade are a widely available mechanism to allow polluting industries to offset their emissions and incentivising them to lower the total amount of emission.


ARGO BLOCKCHAIN BUYS HYDRO DATA CENTERS TO REALIZE GREEN BITCOIN MINING VISION

Cryptocurrency mining firm Argo Blockchain has continued its move toward environmentally-friendly bitcoin mining by purchasing two hydroelectric-powered data centers in Quebec, Canada, according to a press release on the London Stock Exchange, on which Argo is listed.

This mining operation could very well be on the opposite side of the trade. Being powered by renewable energy, their emission would be lower than the allowed level, giving them the eventual possibility to sell their carbon emissions.

[Fortify]

Recently I often heard bitcoin critics telling me that "Bitcoin is too polluting", "Bitcoin waste too much energy" or other similar arguments.

Those arguments are as as as bitcoin, even Satoshi discussed those have been debunked a few several times, but I am trying here to organise the material to counter those accusations.

• Mining bitcoin is actually quite environmentally friendly, compared to mining other Store of Value (Gold)
  

I'm only going to address the first point, because you get into some quite convoluted arguments and make trivial defensive statements. First off, I doubt Satoshi envisaged bitcoin becoming anywhere near as popular as it has become the 11 years ago when he posted that statement. Anyone clever enough to produce the code behind Bitcoin would be clever enough to revise their original arguments when presented with new information - being that the network is vastly larger than back then.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/a-comparison-of-bitcoins-environmental-impact-with-that-of-gold-and-banking-2021-05-04

If you refer to an article posted by the NASDAQ exchange this month, then Bitcoin uses twice the amount of energy per year than all gold extraction taking place and payment networks like VISA/Mastercard use 20% of the energy consumed by Bitcoin. They use the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index to determine that Bitcoin is using 113 TWh, more than the whole of Argentina. I think the real question that needs to be asked, is whether the environment cost of this new technology is worth the freedom it gives you from the traditional banking system? I'm not sure it is, and many governments might start using that argument as justification to attempt restrictions.

[FinneysTrueVision]

The whole thing is ridiculous. People want to scapegoat Bitcoin but there isn't one individual thing that will destroy the planet. It is a collection of various things. Disposable face masks are also bad for the environment because they end up in the ocean, in landfills, and throughout the environment where they kill all kinds of animals. Do these twitter environmentalists think people should just not wear masks and make the pandemic worse? Plastic is probably the single worst thing for the environment and none of these people are doing anything to reduce their dependence on this. We can always transition to renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions but it is going to be much harder to replace plastic.

We can do this 'what about' game with just about anything but with Bitcoin you can find many more ways in which it will benefit society. You really can't make those same arguments for Christmas lights or for watching Logan Paul videos on YouTube.

[Karartma1]

These are only two examples, but many others are there: China-coal powered bitcoin mining is only an accident in time. The competition will drive miners toward more economic sources of energy.

Greenidge says N.Y. bitcoin mining operation to be carbon-neutral by June 1

(Reuters) – Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc said on Friday it will operate an entirely carbon-neutral bitcoin mining operation at its upstate New York facility starting on June 1.

The company said it will purchase voluntary carbon offsets from a portfolio of U.S. greenhouse gas reduction projects. The company converted its power generation operations from coal to natural gas in 2017.

Cap and Trade are a widely available mechanism to allow polluting industries to offset their emissions and incentivising them to lower the total amount of emission.


ARGO BLOCKCHAIN BUYS HYDRO DATA CENTERS TO REALIZE GREEN BITCOIN MINING VISION

Cryptocurrency mining firm Argo Blockchain has continued its move toward environmentally-friendly bitcoin mining by purchasing two hydroelectric-powered data centers in Quebec, Canada, according to a press release on the London Stock Exchange, on which Argo is listed.

This mining operation could very well be on the opposite side of the trade. Being powered by renewable energy, their emission would be lower than the allowed level, giving them the eventual possibility to sell their carbon emissions.

These are great news! Not only there's an ever-growing industry ready to mine bitcoin taking into account low-carbon sources but also considering, eventually,  to sell carbon emissions too. Dear Elon, are you regretting being a bit gullible on the bitcoin environmental disaster?

[stompix]

If somehow Bitmain manage to make the Antminer S19 pull 10% less watts power, suddenly we are looking at a massive decrease in energy usage.
And it would be good for the mining operators too, because they'd pay less for electricity!

That's now how mining works.
You can look back at the advance in hashing power per watt and you will see that despite constant progress the actually energy consumption has still grown.
A more efficient s21, for example, will simply make people buy 11 of those instead of 10 as for the same amount of power you can get a bigger slice from the reward.
Bitmain could launch a miner that makes 1Petahash for 2kW, the consumption will not go down once they roll out all those miners, it's just that the hashrate will explode and that's all.

What can make the consumption drop is a price decrease, and although I pray it doesn't happen we might test it by the end of the period, below 40k any s9 generation miner running with more than 10cents/kwh is useless, the s11 will follow up at under $35k.

[ranochigo]

It dumbfolds me why the entire media (and alarmingly some people here) are so focused on changing Bitcoin's algorithm when the real problem is reducing the power consumption of mining hardware and mining farms.

If somehow Bitmain manage to make the Antminer S19 pull 10% less watts power, suddenly we are looking at a massive decrease in energy usage.

And it would be good for the mining operators too, because they'd pay less for electricity!

Or an increase.

Miners always attempts to maximize their profits and introducing a more efficient ASIC would result in the sustained electrical consumption for that difficulty epoch (and steady increasing as the newer ASICs are deployed). ASICs are usually never retired until the revenue = cost, among other factors but a more efficient ASIC would likely not result in any significant decrease in energy usage.

[NotATether]

If somehow Bitmain manage to make the Antminer S19 pull 10% less watts power, suddenly we are looking at a massive decrease in energy usage.
And it would be good for the mining operators too, because they'd pay less for electricity!

That's now how mining works.
You can look back at the advance in hashing power per watt and you will see that despite constant progress the actually energy consumption has still grown.
A more efficient s21, for example, will simply make people buy 11 of those instead of 10 as for the same amount of power you can get a bigger slice from the reward.
Bitmain could launch a miner that makes 1Petahash for 2kW, the consumption will not go down once they roll out all those miners, it's just that the hashrate will explode and that's all.

What can make the consumption drop is a price decrease, and although I pray it doesn't happen we might test it by the end of the period, below 40k any s9 generation miner running with more than 10cents/kwh is useless, the s11 will follow up at under $35k.

Bitmain and co. can only manufacture a limited supply of miners and I expect that their manufacturing throughput of hypothetical energy-efficient miners would remain the same or close to it.

So it doesn't really matter if one mining ops buys more of those miners than the old ones, because they're buying at the expense of other buyers. Global usage of ASICs stays about the same, assuming that the manufacturers keep selling out as they frequently do.

Miners always attempts to maximize their profits and introducing a more efficient ASIC would result in the sustained electrical consumption for that difficulty epoch (and steady increasing as the newer ASICs are deployed). ASICs are usually never retired until the revenue = cost, among other factors but a more efficient ASIC would likely not result in any significant decrease in energy usage.

Since only the mining farms know how much of the time they keep their ASICs on or how long they will use them for, we currently can't really estimate their total energy usage for sure other than for the inefficient (and probably nonsensical) worst case of leaving them always on, and it's still unlikely this'll be possible if what I call "green" ASICs are ever deployed, but the energy decline should be noticeable in say 10 years when most of the old miners are phased out.

[stompix]

Since only the mining farms know how much of the time they keep their ASICs on or how long they will use them for, we currently can't really estimate their total energy usage for sure other than for the inefficient (and probably nonsensical) worst case of leaving them always on, and it's still unlikely this'll be possible if what I call "green" ASICs are ever deployed, but the energy decline should be noticeable in say 10 years when most of the old miners are phased out.

OK, let's try a different approach.
The s9 does 14Th/s  at 1400W.  Fast forward a year after its deployment you could have all the hashrate in the world assuming only the most efficient gear powered by 500k of those.
The 19pro does 110Th/s at 3250W, 3 times more efficient, assuming most efficient gear could only be achieved by 1.3 million of those, so that's 6 times the power consumption with 3 times more efficient gear.

The efficiency didn't do #$% about consumption, the halving will take care of that far more efficient than anything bitmain could ever build.

As long as the price goes up and so does the reward and you should not expect anything other than higher and higher consumption, this is not traditional mining where you make better and bigger trucks to pull more coal out of the earth more efficiently, this is a competition where as long as you get more $ than what you pay for a kwh spent you plug more and more and more.

Now think a moment from the point of view of a miner, if with the old gear you made 10 cents per 5 cents spent on electricity and with the new gear you make 20 cents for every 3 cents spent, you would simply say I have enough and not buy more gear?  Common.....

[hector3115]

The impact of bitcoin on the environment is minimal, and hardly anyone can convince me otherwise.

[ranochigo]

Since only the mining farms know how much of the time they keep their ASICs on or how long they will use them for, we currently can't really estimate their total energy usage for sure other than for the inefficient (and probably nonsensical) worst case of leaving them always on, and it's still unlikely this'll be possible if what I call "green" ASICs are ever deployed, but the energy decline should be noticeable in say 10 years when most of the old miners are phased out.

I'm sure mining farms cannot afford to leave any working ASICs undeployed. CBECI's estimation is as good as an educated guess and that is all we can work with.

There are far too many factors that can (and will) affect the electrical usage of Bitcoin. Any noticeable decrease in energy consumption of Bitcoin is NOT enough; environmentalist are not happy with high perceived electrical usage in the first place. There is no reason why they would be content with say 30% decrease in electrical usage. When it gets to something that they're content with, Bitcoin isn't secure any more. Arguably, constantly phasing out and replacing ASICs will have significant environmental impact as well. It is not a one-dimension issue as media perceives it to be.

Economic-wise, the electrical consumption will probably not change and remain at a certain equilibrium.

[conected]

The impact of bitcoin on the environment is minimal, and hardly anyone can convince me otherwise.

- If you talk about farm projects in the past, bitcoin mining may not have too much impact on the environment but modern life is showing how big income is through these farms, mining equipment is also being optimized to improve mining problems. And more power consumption is inevitable in bitcoin mining, a few farms may not be affected but this is a chain of farms with a global network, emissions are increasing rapidly and it seems to affect the environment and climate, there is quite a bit of doubt that bitcoin will be one of the major causes of environmental harm in the near future.

[fillippone]

It’s a coordinated FUD attack involving the Vatican too!



I find it ironic the Church vowing against PoW. They should be the first sponsor of the POW!

Actually, if I think better at this, uh, they might like PoS...
/j

[franky1]

If somehow Bitmain manage to make the Antminer S19 pull 10% less watts power, suddenly we are looking at a massive decrease in energy usage.

so like if the hash rate was at ~165exa in february 2021 using s19 at 3.25kw for 90thash
and like if the hashrate was at ~165exa in may 2021 using s19pro at 3.25kw for 110tash

well thats then not needing to run as many asic mining machines to achieve the same hashrate
thus less electricity used from the grid.

id call that more then a 10% drop in electric need.

so.. um.. let me just say it
your target goal has been achieved

[lunaBTC 12]

I don't agree with the view that bitcoin is an environmental disaster. Although mining will consume a lot of resources, the total amount of bitcoin issued is certain. Once this value is reached, there will be no loss like ordinary currency. There is no need to print again, and the printing resources will no longer be consumed. So bitcoin is protecting the environment.

[fillippone]

From the "El Salvador's Authoritarian Hipster" a lesson on mining: mining with fossil fuels is only a historical accident. Future is mining with full renewable-clean energy:


https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402680890057166858?s=21


Qualcosa sembra già muoversi:

https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402714926800674827?s=21

State owned-clean mining: this is a game-changer.

[stompix]

When I read the news about mining I was praying, please god, please don't let it be solar!!!
But geothermal, yeah, that's one of the few actual solutions for really clean uninterrupted no extra cost mining, not wind and solar that might leave you in the dark for days.

Of course, it's not like they've started digging that well a few days ago and now it's ready to produce energy, it's an older project and the whole powerplant will have 90MW, but the guy deserves it, he really grabbed us out of the bear den, one more week like the last ones and I was going to put bids in the 20k range. Now, all we need is for all of the western US and Canada to understand that geothermal is one hundred times better than playing with solar panels, and a lot more problems, not just bitcoin consumption will be solved.

[fillippone]

When I read the news about mining I was praying, please god, please don't let it be solar!!!
But geothermal, yeah, that's one of the few actual solutions for really clean uninterrupted no extra cost mining, not wind and solar that might leave you in the dark for days.

Of course, it's not like they've started digging that well a few days ago and now it's ready to produce energy, it's an older project and the whole powerplant will have 90MW, but the guy deserves it, he really grabbed us out of the bear den, one more week like the last ones and I was going to put bids in the 20k range. Now, all we need is for all of the western US and Canada to understand that geothermal is one hundred times better than playing with solar panels, and a lot more problems, not just bitcoin consumption will be solved.

I guess the only, big, problem with geothermal is that you cannot decide where to put such plants, but it's linked to your territory. So while some countries are full of geothermal activity and energy, some others might be struggling with this form of energy.

[stompix]

I guess the only, big, problem with geothermal is that you cannot decide where to put such plants, but it's linked to your territory. So while some countries are full of geothermal activity and energy, some others might be struggling with this form of energy.

Yeah, geothermal has a rather limited area, but all types do to an extent, there are areas where solar is just useless, and efficiency on average of 3hours per day like the one in Germany causes more problems than it solves and it works only because of the government pumping more and more money into it. And despite all this eco-friendly trend, Germany has the highest electric costs in the world per kWh. Indeed some countries don't have an acre of land where this would be feasible but there are a lot of areas where there is not a single plant, like all of Canada! And others could build a lot more, like, well...Italy  , it's not like we're going to solve the problem of the world with it alone but it's cheaper and far more reliable, running 24/7 and a perfect grid balancer.

I know pretty well that no matter how much drilling is done in Salvador they can draw a maximum of 600-900 MW and that will not be able to feed even 10% of all the miners but it's a start in the good direction, mining with solar and wind is a fairytale, and if we cut pollution when there are only 3 options left, nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.

Now that I think, this whole Salvador thing is starting to look too good to be true 

[fillippone]

In a previous post, I wrote that geothermal plants cannot be placed everywhere.

This argument works also in the opposite directions: often geothermal plants are in remote regions, where electricity would need bit infrastructures to be moved where it actually is needed. And often those infrastructures are costly to build and maintain.
So, often these resources are simply ignored and not used.

El Salvador plans bitcoin mining using geothermal energy



Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

[stompix]

Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I don't know if this one is targeted at me but no, geothermal or coal or wind I won't ever agree with that theory of bitcoin mining acting as a battery.
That theory is so far-fetched that even me filling my car with gas I'm becoming a battery! A battery works by taking energy when you have a surplus or at least available energy and deploying when you have none, and mining will never act like this, mining is a 24/7 action that drains power even at peak consumption hours.

And I already know the rebuttal, but we have energy that can be harvested in places we can't build anything other than bitcoin mining farms.
Well, ever thought of not investing all that money in producing energy in places when you don't have a need for it?
Nobody is building solar panels in the Ténéré and demands people to consume it!

The bottom line, no, that is pure propaganda material, and one more thing:

Bitcoin’s battery is ready to buy 24/7/365 when the price is right, and turning up and down as needed, and participating via direct power purchase agreements as well as via demand response programs.

Tell this to any miner and he will walk away laughing!
In a race where you have to ROI as fast as you can and hopefully while your gear is still in warranty so you don't end with a burned hashboard before you managed to get at least your investment back, turning on and off miners is just silly..

While I am certainly an optimistic tech VC and not an expert on energy infrastructure, these are not just hand-wavy rosy ideas

Sums everything up!

[fillippone]

Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I don't know if this one is targeted at me but no, geothermal or coal or wind I won't ever agree with that theory of bitcoin mining acting as a battery.

<...>

While I am certainly an optimistic tech VC and not an expert on energy infrastructure, these are not just hand-wavy rosy ideas

Sums everything up!

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be targeted at you. I am not yet obsessed with personal opinion to sneakily reference anyone in my pots.
And, even if we don't agree, I think you explained your ideas very clearly and logically.

 

[stompix]

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be targeted at you.

I didn't mean like a personal attack or something, god no!
More like here, you go, fresh material, let's dissect this one!

Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I felt like you're reminding me of it because we had a discussion about it in the past on this topic, that's why and nothing more. Sometimes I really hate when I use the worse of the worse wording for something, and like in Murphy's laws, guess what, I only do with people with whom I always had nice conversations around here.

[fillippone]

How to answer to a challenging journalist:


https://twitter.com/jasonles_/status/1403453709896478721?s=21

[fillippone]

Bitcoin is the most ESG-compliant industry in the world:




https://twitter.com/documentingbtc/status/1410947786502180875?s=21

[fillippone]

Bitcoin mining council reported a very interesting presentation on how China Ban Impacted mining industry, accelerating the transition toward more sustainable energy sources:

Global Bitcoin Mining Data Review Q2 2021



China Banc is one of the more important events in the mining industry since inception, I qould say. This will determine future scenarios for the industry: in a few months, the time necessary for bigger miners to reallocate all their hash power, we will have a clearer picture of the new situation. I guess we will have less renewable than today, but definitely more than the initial status.

[Lucius]

I agree, the Chinese ban of mining they announced back in 2019 is certainly the biggest thing that happened in 2021 because it will finally break the myth that China controls BTC - and finally there will be (hopefully) more decentralization when it comes to BTC mining.

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

List of largest hydroelectric power stations

[fillippone]

I agree, the Chinese ban of mining they announced back in 2019 is certainly the biggest thing that happened in 2021 because it will finally break the myth that China controls BTC - and finally there will be (hopefully) more decentralization when it comes to BTC mining.

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

List of largest hydroelectric power stations

Well, the point is that the crypto Ban in China has nothing to do with the environment. The party just wanted to regulate an industry it was becoming too powerful and with an orthogonal agenda to theirs.
In fact, the party banned mining because it interacted the wrong way with their CBDC plans. Who would use a digital Yuan, monitored, controlled and tracked by Chinese regulators, if Bitcoin is freely and widely available all over the country?

This is the real reason, masked under the idiotic ESG moratorium of a "polluting industry".

As you point out, the biggest dams are in China. This has to do with the massive costs these structures bear with them. And I am not referring only to financial costs, that make these structures available only for unlimited funded entities (read: Nation states) but also environmental (the creation of a lake where it wasn't supposed to be)  and social (relocation of thousands of people). It this not by chance that in Europe or Northern America these kinds of infrastructures have not being built since a few decades.

Also, their move displaced much investments already completed in China:

Hydropower plants go on sale in China amid mining crackdown and bitcoin slump

• After cryptocurrency mining rig sales, small hydropower stations are now for sale on e-commerce site Xianyu
• Prices of small hydropower stations have dropped amid crackdown, as bitcoin miners head for the exits in China

[oHnK]

This is the real reason, masked under the idiotic ESG moratorium of a "polluting industry".

Yup, I couldn't agree more. I really hope this drama ends soon, because BTC is a viable invention for future financial solutions.  If a lot of people shout that BTC is not environmentally friendly, it's just a rant.  Even gold, which is an investment asset that has been trusted for a long time, also damages the environment.  If you want very real evidence without thinking hard, just look on google "project freeport Indonesia" how mountains turn into ravines just because they want to dredge the existing gold.

[stompix]

Bitcoin is very environmentally friendly and does not require a lot of energy when we compare it with other miners such as Gold miners, oil miners and other miners.

Ok, let's stop all the bitcoin mining for 1 year, how many do you think will die because of that?
Let's stop the oil industry for 1 month! War-z was heaven compared to what will happen.
How about we stop that comparison just for the sake of finding something that consumes more than the bitcoin network?

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

It's called propaganda.
If you look at how the coal and oil mining industry and on the other side the so-called renewable energy are throwing figures around you will have quite the headache as nothing would make sense. Add a bit of data from the nuclear industry and you realize one thing, everyone is lying to protect their interest.
What's bitcoin fault in this? None, it was caught in the middle of a stupid discussion and now everybody is trying to fight for their interest, quite normal after all it's all about money, some go for a reason, some start throwing around figures they know are fake because they know the others can't disprove with them.

I could claim to know that bitcoin burns 80% of coal-generated energy or 90% of pure eolian wind.
Nobody could come up with a claim other than studies that correlate, extrapolate, and mastu...let's leave it like that, data, nobody could come with solid figures to disapprove any of those scenarios because there is simply no data.

As you said, is weird, of course, it is!
Till now everyone was saying all that Chinese hashrate is coming from hydro, 60% of it is clean!
Now miners are moving to Kazakhstan which could barely power 5% of the entire hashrate with all their hydropower they produce in that country and with the rest coming from fossils and suddenly.. we're greener! Of course it's strange because it's impossible!!!!

It's one of the two:
a) either the mix previously was far more polluting with more coal burned in China and they were lying
b) the energy mix was perfectly clean and ....this whole thing is a lie!

And the most annoying thing is the duplicity here, this mini council comes with those numbers, good, we have renewables, etc.
Yet when it comes to press releases, they make this kind of claims:

Once all of Marathon’s purchased miners are delivered and fully deployed, the Company’s mining portfolio will consist of 33,560 state of the art ASIC miners, generating 3.56 EH/s. As a result, the Company will be consuming approximately 100 MWs of power, the maximum amount available at the Company’s data center in Hardin, MT.

1/3 of their hashrate is getting deployed at a datacenter power by coal, yet...they seek renewables. Bs!

[franky1]

Yeah, geothermal has a rather limited area, but all types do to an extent, there are areas where solar is just useless, and efficiency on average of 3hours per day )

thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour(10x demand) meaning in 3 hours it has enough for 30hours of city demand(9MW). and have battery storage facility to store the spare 8mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

two ways to achieve this
warehouse centrally the battery store
or
have houses that have their own battery system that take on 8x of its 'need' in the 3 hours. so that the house has the excess for the rest of the day.
(much like cars charge up/fill up on fuel in the morning for use the rest of the week)
if your the type of person that only fills a car enough for one hours use and returns to refill with fuel/charge every hour. shame on you

there is no need in 2020 that people need to be connected to a national grid that only creates and supplies in the same minute of its creation

i personally dont have my computer connected direct to the national grid power supply.
i have a battery backup surge protector box that has 8 hours of battery store. inline between my devices and the wall.
(shameless plug, for once) ive had my belkin protector for 20 years and has lifetime warrenty
that way im always with power
UK doesnt suffer from many brownouts or blackouts so some think its unneeded but i have always had it just incase

ive previously lived in apartments with "night storage" heating. they warmup(charge) the bricks at night and slowly release heat during the day

im surprised new housebuilds dont include atleast battery backup as part of the design

[stompix]

thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour. and have battery storage facility to store the spare 7mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries. 




 

[franky1]

Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries.  

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..
i dont think house buyers going to cry over a $100 spend when buying a house
..
remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"
so yea to cover 24 hours. you need 8x
with some redundancy hense i say 9x

this means in summer that extra 1 produced is going to battery store. and every day for 3 months of summer
so thats then 90*1
so if there is a blackout of 8 per day.. the battery are good for over 11 days based just on the 3 months of last summers excess store

..
ok let me translate that to your latest numbers
the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh
which is <0.0031twh per hour
lets imagine in summer there is 8 hours of good prime light
so needing 0.01twh per hour in summer (to be 3x demand to cover instant use and 2x evening and night portions of day)
i know your thinking 'but that would be a dilemma in winter..'
so have 0.0093twh per hour for 8 hours in summer(0.0744 produced)
=0.0031 instant consumed
  0.0031 stored for the 4hours morning and 4 hours afternoon offpeak
  0.0031 stored for the 8hours of night

and store the 0.065twh excess each day for redundancy
so that in the 3 months of summer its storing 5.859TWh (2 months excess for winter)

[stompix]

the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh

Never said that. I said that in February those panels managed to get only 2.24. In July they got 8twh.
So you see that the figure is not 1/8 of the capacity is more like 1/16 

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..

Franky, we're talking about a country with 500Twh a year, a country that went dark for 7 days, you're talking about charging phones.
Let's suppose I power up my oven, rated 3300W how long will your 100$ battery last, would it be enough to at least defrost a pizza?
How many of those charges would be needed to power up aluminum plant?

remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"

It's 3 hours peak sun median, all the summer power will need to stockpile all that energy till winter, it's not one period of blackout and then 3 hours, it's 3 hours median a year, with more in the summer and less in the winter. Got it?
All you need is to build 100 times the needed capacity of solar panels, again send me the bill, already Germany is paying 30cents/kwh, no need to make it cheaper, let's add more costs.

[franky1]

sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

.. so i was guessing that winter had like 3 hours. and summer had like 8hours
so try to make up your mind.

dont hide stats to make half a case requiring people to guess.. and then cry that they got numbers wrong because you suddenly now want to reveal numbers
,,
anyway if you want to knitpick the exact numbers fine.. be anal
i was trying to play into your small scope of numbers.. purely for conversation..

but disregarding the numbers...the point is.. and the context is this
HAVE MORE CAPACITY THAN DEMAND,. STORE THE EXCESS

as for comparing my belkin surgeprotector+battery backup from 20 years ago as a reason to think things wont work

i guess you are missing the evolutions of battery tech..
yes my 20 . ill highlight TWENTY YEAR OLD backup is good for a fridge, freezer, PC, laptop, cordless phone, wifimodem for 8 hours
so no its not the silly lil phone chargers you pretend it to be
and for under $100 more i could have enough for other household applience of convenience
so not really breaking the bank to save off brownouts

but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

so lets take this example
if i included all meal cooking. deskfans, ventilation, heating, lighting (all normal use stuff) IT devices. kettle kitchen appliences i could consume 2kwh a day myself
so just a tesla powerwall would be good for 7 days
much more then my 8 hours of essentials

so here is the thing
national grids wont have to store all excess power centrally. it can divvy out 7 days excess to peoples own powerwalls and then only need to store the remaining days it captured in summer

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

[fillippone]

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

[franky1]

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

well not decades..
.. but then again we are talking about city planners. who if given authority to plan.. would take that long.
but practically it can be done in alot less time.
(see how fast california got all the covid testing and PPE.. .. months not decades)
they can create factories to produce a new product in months.. (vaccines, PPE , test kids, PCR labs)
so anythings possible

im pretty sure it doesnt take a decade to facilitate a new car design or a new washing machine design

..
again it doesnt have to be some super megawarehouse for the nation..
it can be city level battery farms each made concurrently in months
plus also having local factories for power-walls to be built on masse

..
the reason why car manufacturers lobbied politicians for 2030 at the earliest is a deeper conversation involving many aspects like:
current leasing terms being 10years
also making the fabricator machines costs alot. but if they wait out 5+ years for other to design them. they can just rent/lease them. meaning save money transitioning
so its about delaying the transition purely to be capitalistic in cost saving
other deeper things are involved like the whole scheme of 'carbon credits'
if they can sell carbon producing cars now and charge people carbon credits
that money then can form grants to pay for the transition without affecting company profits

yep coal and oil refinaries know there is limited unmined resources left that wont be available in 50 years.
so yea they know they have to transition to renewables by 2070 at the latest
so if they can promote that carbon kills the planet and get consumers to pay carbon tax. that tax can be used as grants to pay for the transition to renewables at no cost to the company..
ingenius right..
pretend coal/oil is evil. when reality is they know they are running out of coal/oil anyway

(hint: the real planet killer of human climate change is the water cycle, not the carbon cycle.. rain forests are called rainforests and not carbon forests for a reason)

[stompix]

sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

Franky...it's not a damn scenario it's what happened in Germany at the beginning of the year.
It does not claim it's not a possibility, it's reality!

So if you think you can debunk something, try debunking data from the german grid:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=01
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=02
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=06

Please tell those morons that they don't have a clue how solar panels work and how much solar exposure Germany gets and according to you the sun definitely needs a citation in court to shine more on the fatherland.

And btw, yeah Germany is at the arctic circle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Potential

Germany has about the same solar potential as Alaska, which has an average of 3.08 sun hours/day in Fairbanks.

but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

So from 100$, we went to 6000$ which with good old coal would mean 180 000 kwh, which at  3.381 kWh per household per year means recouping just the battery in 50 years. Send me the bill, please!

Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

Yeah, brings a lot of nostalgia from when I was young.
Hot water between 5 and 9, controlled blackouts at around 9 in the morning and 6-7 afternoon when we needed the power to feed the industry, gas pressure in winter so you could cook some fries in about 2 hours because we needed gas for fertilizer to grow those potatoes..

At least I was used to it, for some in the western world it will come as a shock.
Wait till you will only have internet access for browsing between 8 and 22 to save the planet and your smartwatch will only allow you to tap it to show the hour 10 times maximum a day to save power, more is wasteful behavior that shall not be tolerated!

[franky1]

stompix. i was debunking YOU
YOUR version of the scenario where YOU provided limited scope of numbers
and then you went in 2 anal directions.
first sayin aggressively how im wrong becasue its 3 hours all year
then going opposite by showing the different production rates of 3 months
all without realising you were missing the general point

now please be a polite gentleman that does not want to be a drama queen about silly numbers you play hide and seek with
and just say
"ok i get the point. the CONTEXT is about capacity should always exceed demand. so that the excess can be stored"
and then move on
..
and no.. dont even start a new drama that people should never update their electrics in their house. or never update their central heating because "stompix says $6k is evil"

for people that do suffer from multiple day blackouts. they are willing and need to pay the money needed for the convenience.
i only suffer maybe 1 2 hour blackout a year when local maintenance is done or a bad storm so my convenience is valued at about $100 for 20 years

for areas with frequent more substantial issues
heck most companies would pay the initial outlay and then set a electric per kw rate so they get ROI
heck even governments do grants for the initial outlay of utility upgrades

[franky1]

anyway..
back to the topic

.. where were we
oh yea "bitcoin energy disaster"

debunked:
1. if we remained solomining GPU. the electric combined from residents in their basements in non-renewable area's would he higher than the current state where most ASIC farms have great deals with renewable electric companies which the asic farms set up in those regions as far back as 2014

2. if asics themselves were not invented. then the watts/hash would be far far worse
asics evolve to be more efficient in power/watt

[KevinRosa]

A new study by CoinShares questions the criticism that Bitcoin mining is harmful to the environment, and estimates that three-quarters of mining operations are now powered by renewable energy.

Cryptocurrency investment and research companies have concluded that this makes the blockchain industry "more renewable than almost every other large industry in the world."

CoinShares estimated in its report that 74.1% of Bitcoin mining operations use renewable energy.

I do not agree that Bitcoin is the fuse that detonates environmental problems and causes environmental disasters. If I am a mine owner, my wish is that the price of Bitcoin will rise and the cost of mining will decrease. This is in line with the relevant policies of the government where the mine is located. Maybe It will cause carbon emissions problems in the early stage, but as time goes by, it will become more and more inclined to clean energy, such as wind and hydropower. Bitcoin mining will not be criticized for using too much electricity. If you want to make a comparison, the energy loss of the banking system is greater than that of Bitcoin.

According to the latest report provided by Galaxy Data, Bitcoin's energy consumption is much lower than that of the traditional banking system and the gold industry. In the past few days in the turmoil caused by Tesla CEO Musk, the discussion around the use of cryptocurrency energy has been very intense. However, Galaxy Data, established by former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz, used data to prove that the traditional banking system and the gold industry actually consume more energy than the Bitcoin network.

[fillippone]

Nic Carter is again on the Environmental side of Bitcoin with this new article for Bitcoin Magazine:


THE BITCOIN ENERGY DEBATE IS A MODERN REPRISE OF THE GOLD RESOURCE COST DEBATE

The debate over the resource cost of gold is critical in understanding the present-day fixation with Bitcoin’s energy costs.

AND THE ANSWERS REMAIN THE SAME...
Long before we had the Bitcoin energy debate, we had the gold resource cost debate. The contours were similar: the costs associated with gold refining and extraction were a waste; they were too great relative to a mere fiat standard in which notes could be printed for virtually nothing. Why bother with gold, impassive and unwavering in its supply dynamics, when you could have the cheap and highly configurable paper standard instead? The critique hinges on figures computed by economists finding extremely high resource costs associated with the gold standard. Infamously, in his 1951 essay “Commodity-Reserve Currency,” Milton Friedman criticizes the gold standard on these grounds, calculating that 1.5% of GDP would have to be devoted to the production of gold under a full reserve standard, an estimate he revises up to 2.5% in 1960.

The approach is interesting. He recalls us that many economists demonstrated that mining gold has a cost, but this cost is what preserves the system to grow out of control, events that also bears huge, hidden costs:

Quite similarly, today the most strident anti-Bitcoin voices fixate on its resource costs — and specifically its energy consumption. As with gold, the critics allege that Bitcoin’s resource burden is not just too high but entirely a waste, because to them Bitcoin offers no perceptible utility relative to other monetary and payment systems. As with gold, the constraints imposed by Bitcoin make no sense to westerners raised on a diet of monetary tinkering and steady debasement.
<...>

The debate over the resource cost of gold is critical in understanding the present-day fixation with Bitcoin’s energy costs. The rhetoric is the same; only the names and the jargon are substituted. Today’s critics talk in calm, worried tones about Bitcoin’s concerning ESG characteristics. This sterile corporate speak is of course a euphemism for the following: “I see no value in Bitcoin and hence consider all costs associated with its production and maintenance wasteful.”

A different, more intriguing approach to the question, taking the analogy with gold to a different point.
Very interesting.

[Lucius]

This sterile corporate speak is of course a euphemism for the following: “I see no value in Bitcoin and hence consider all costs associated with its production and maintenance wasteful.”

Sometimes everything essential fits into one sentence, and I believe the author has captured the very essence of the whole anti-Bitcoin agenda. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think there are several categories of people :

• Those who fully understand what Bitcoin is and how it works, and what the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency are - and I believe there are very few such people, in a percentage of less than 10% including those who are for and those who are against.
• Those who understand to some extent, but still are very cautious and very susceptible to media mainstream propaganda that continues to successfully promote the agenda "Bitcoin is bad for the environment."
• In the end, those who are very smart and intelligent, perfectly understand what Bitcoin is, are aware that the impact of crypto mining is actually negligible - but they represent a global financial elite that defends the system they have built for centuries in every possible way.

If there's one thing we could learn from all this, it's that those who control the mainstream media shape public opinion - especially things that the average person has a hard time understanding, and Bitcoin is in the category of such things.

[icopress]

People, does anyone have $ 60 billion? ^{[we will talk about the project of a penzhinskaya tidal power plant with a capacity of 100 GW]} I just look at the capitalization of BTC, and I understand that this is not so much money for a project of such a scale ... the point is that the implementation of this utopian idea would forever put an end to the "anti-ecological" discussions. There is one unique place on our planet where the sea level varies ±15 meters, and this is the ideal place to build a tidal power plant.

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure (as opposed to mining farms, which can be installed on site). Is your mining equipment outdated? No problem, as can switch to liquid hydrogen production (Elon Musk would have turned over in his coffin if he was dead and if the key players in the Bitcoin industry would sell him fuel for Bitcoins). Tell me, am I not a psychopath?

[fillippone]

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure

I really don't like this project: it is heavily impacting on the local ecosystem.
Also, bear in mind that the true benefit is when bitcoin turn into an antieconomic project economic because miners can profit from it. The perfect example is the Vulcano in El Salvador. Producing Electricity from the volcano is trivial, but it is not trivial to distribute it to the nearest users. IF miners utilise that electricity right on the spot, immediately the project is viable.

Your project, on the other hand, does not depend on miners to be profitable: it could sell the electricity to a city, or a farm to be profitable, and nothing would change.

[CLS63]

Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster. Before it comes to Bitcoin, there are so many things that are really detrimental to the environment. People and companies are really aware of this actually. But they still insist on accusing Bitcoin of being the most harmful thing for the environment.

For example, it's been proved that banks are consuming too much energy (even more than Bitcoin) and really harmful for the environment also. But people don't want to mention it. They are only aiming to blame Bitcoin for something. Why are people like this?  Do they still have problems on absorbing cryptocurrencies?  Are they afraid of Bitcoin for real?

[Dax Robinson]

When new technologies appear, they often have an impact on the environment. Developers at the time may not consider these factors. Bitcoin is no exception. Bitcoin is a powerful tool. In fact, Bitcoin has also gained in finance. Great progress has been made. In essence, Bitcoin is not harmful to the environment, but the production resources of Bitcoin are very large, and the mining farm requires a lot of computing power and electricity to operate. Consuming energy is harmful to the environment, but the creation of fiat currency also pollutes the environment, but I believe that with the passage of time, although Bitcoin is not environmentally friendly now, I think there will be better in the future Way.

[stompix]

A different, more intriguing approach to the question, taking the analogy with gold to a different point.
Very interesting.

As with gold, Bitcoin users are happy to pay for the “costs” of the monetary system they opt into

This, one line that says it all!

The consumption of the bitcoin network is a direct result of its value, and it's the same in every single sector of the economy. Gold mining emissions will drop to 1% of what they are if gold drops to 17/ounce, same with oil when oil went down wells closed, emissions decreased if silver would quadruple in times silver mining will consume more energy than ever, every single thing has a price and the demand for it will dictate how much you can spend on it. Simple as this!

The problem is not how much energy is spent and how much of it is clean or not, poeple are giving this process reasons of existence, just like poeple want to play games or they want to pay 100$ a day to light their houses on Christmas, comparing it makes no sense, it's a choice of a few or the choice of many. If only 10 poeple would celebrate Christmas the energy spent would be under an Mwh, if nobody would be using Bitcoin the energy spent would be as much as a laptop or two running. That's the only parallel you need to draw between two human activities, nothing else.

Comparisons of things that don't have the same purpose and achieve the same goal are meaningless, gaming and Christmas lights, gold mining and agriculture, public transport, and hospitals, btw hospitals in the US consumed 200TWh, how can we compare this consumption to anything else? Or rather than how does, anyone dare to compare it? The thing is people should stop comparing things, I'm tired of all the things like you see the banking sector consumers more energy....it was funny when bitcoin was at 5twh/year, started to be less funny at 50twh, at 120twh is becoming also ridiculous, what are we going to do if Bitmain fixes its chip supply problem and the price per BTC hits 300k?

We will need to change the rhetoric to finally point out what matters, what Bitcoin achieves and the trust in it that gives its value, nothing else!

This project was developed a very long time ago, but they did not start implementation, since the catch is that it needs a colossal infrastructure (as opposed to mining farms, which can be installed on site).

Mining is a 24/7 business, that's why there are no miners mining only on solar while not being connected to the grid for night time.
The same will be with this plant, nobody will want to mine it there even if you give them 2 cents energy, without another power source to keep them running nonstop, and with the batteries cost blowing the price higher than traditional power it won't attract anybody.

[KingsDen]

The issue of Bitcoin environmental disaster became a thing of interest to me when I stumbled on Elon Musk reason of halting purchases of Tesla vehicles with Bitcoin.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/13/why-elon-musk-is-worried-about-bitcoin-environmental-impact.html
Now, seeing OP attracted me to join the discussion and/or argument.

Answering why Bitcoin energy consumption is emphasised than similar energy consumers;

1. Someone you love could actually slap you and "I'm sorry dear" will solve the problem. However, someone you hate, whom you believe is a threat to your existence, if he mistakenly slaps you, it will surely end in human right office or a police station. What this means is that bitcoin is a threat to some authorities.  Even if her sins are of same magnitude with others, she would be singled out.

2.  Uncertainty of evolution: If we can honestly analyse the rate of bitcoin adoption in respect to the rate of energy consumption, we can clearly see that we may be at risk if bitcoin is massively adopted, maintaining same energy consumption rate. It's worthy to be a thing of concern.

3. Who are interested in bitcoin?: We only have two voices in the world; the government and the people. When you talk about Netflix and others, the peoples voice is so loud in favour of Netflix because of the pleasure derived from them. The government voice is also in favour due to taxes accruing from Netflix.
Now Bitcoin; the peoples voice is faint (maybe the developers, miners and investors) because the people don't know her much and in the other hand, the government voice is against it. So, her sins will always be magnified and grossly hyperbolized.

In view of the above,  government is looking for reason(s) to instigate the people against Bitcion.

Therefore; Bitcoin miners especially the Lords with high computing powers should consider migrating to renewable sources of energy. If there are companies already practicing upto 70% renewability, they should be encouraged.

Likewise, if the migration from PoW to PoS will not cause security harm, there should be considerations for this(unless there isn't provisions for this in the protocols)because I read that the later is more environmental friendly.

Thanks all.

[icopress]

I really don't like this project: it is heavily impacting on the local ecosystem. [...]  Your project, on the other hand, does not depend on miners to be profitable: it could sell the electricity to a city, or a farm to be profitable, and nothing would change.

Mining is a 24/7 business, [..] The same will be with this plant, nobody will want to mine it there even if you give them 2 cents energy, without another power source to keep them running nonstop, and with the batteries cost blowing the price higher than traditional power it won't attract anybody.

To dispel the myth about ecosystem change, just look at the diagram that I published above ... What I mean is that this type of power plant is absolutely safe, since the construction of the dam is necessary for the installation of turbines, and not for the retention of water masses (in the presence of a dam, the water level in the water area will change in the same way as if it changed during the ebb and flow without the dam). The daily carrying capacity of the dam is 500 cubic kilometers, the same amount of water as the Amazon River carries in 25 days, ("now imagine the 25-day energy of the Amazon compressed into 24 hours").

+ I want to add that I indicated that this is a utopian project, since it is necessary to invest tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure. Due to the fact that within a radius of several hundred kilometers there are no cities or power grids through which this electricity could be transmitted. It is for this reason that I said that it is advisable to install a mining giga-farm locally. And by the way, power generation happens 24 hours a day ... which is perfect for mining.

But the main thing that you guys missed is that I am not suggesting that miners buy this clean electricity ... the idea is to invest in the construction of this project by adding mining power to it (thereby ensuring energy-efficient mining of Bitcoins for 50 or 100 years). I will repeat the above .... in case of obsolescence of mining equipment or in case of excess electricity, ("after all, the power of this power plant is equivalent to the power of 25 nuclear power plants") can switch to the production of liquid hydrogen. This approach will make this object a means of pressure on Elon Musk's space program.

Elon Musk would have turned over in his coffin if he was dead and if the key players in the Bitcoin industry would sell him fuel for Bitcoins.

[MKings]

The energy composition used by Bitcoin mining computers is different. For example, each unit of hydropower energy has a much smaller impact on the environment than the same unit of coal energy.
Laskey offered a compelling reason why the Bitcoin system is environmentally friendly rather than harmful (contrary to popular belief), and he also raised concerns about Bitcoin's environmentally friendly future. If you want to understand why the energy consumption of the Bitcoin system is reasonable, and why the Bitcoin system saves more energy than its alternatives,
you can watchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzT8KlSwlO4&t=25s

[Xinarae*]

Mining is paid for their security services the creation of new bitcoins and the processing of transactions mining provides services like any business. As long as there is a market for bitcoin some people will be willing to pay for electricity in bitcoin mines Whether mining or power is wasted is just a matter of vision for those who understand the benefits of bitcoin it is very clear why the power value of using bitcoins is good. The cryptocurrency industry is committed to contributing to the urgent environmental fight the crypto community bitcoin makes life easier and better for many people.

[stompix]

+ I want to add that I indicated that this is a utopian project, since it is necessary to invest tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure. Due to the fact that within a radius of several hundred kilometers there are no cities or power grids through which this electricity could be transmitted. It is for this reason that I said that it is advisable to install a mining giga-farm locally. And by the way, power generation happens 24 hours a day ... which is perfect for mining.

No, it doesn't, and the numbers themselves should have told you so if with 100GW powerplant you're expecting only 200Thw instead of the 870 Thw such a capacity would produce by running 24/7 it means you have a 22% capacity factor which is in line with the only other major tidal projects like Shia and Racen which both are under 28%.

Besides, it's normal, where do you think all that water that is pushed by the tides goes? It must come back at one point and there are phases of the build-up in both directions, nowhere on this planet, there is a continuous tide with the same amplitude.

[fillippone]

Bitcoin Magazine again on Bitcoin mining and solar energy:

IS SOLAR POWER A GOOD FIT FOR BITCOIN MINING?

Solar power in particular seems like the cutting edge for renewable Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin industry stalwarts Blockstream and Square are constructing a multi-million-dollar solar-powered mining facility, for instance.

But it’s hard to know what percentage of the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate is generated by solar power, though anecdotal evidence from solar developer Blake King of RES Holdings indicates that there are new solar projects “everywhere” in the U.S.

There is an interesting section about the fact that Solar Power could even be considered a green source, as many solar power panels are manufactered in China, ina very polluting way.

[Veter2000]

This sterile corporate speak is of course a euphemism for the following: “I see no value in Bitcoin and hence consider all costs associated with its production and maintenance wasteful.”

Sometimes everything essential fits into one sentence, and I believe the author has captured the very essence of the whole anti-Bitcoin agenda. When it comes to Bitcoin, I think there are several categories of people :

• Those who fully understand what Bitcoin is and how it works, and what the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency are - and I believe there are very few such people, in a percentage of less than 10% including those who are for and those who are against.
• Those who understand to some extent, but still are very cautious and very susceptible to media mainstream propaganda that continues to successfully promote the agenda "Bitcoin is bad for the environment."
• In the end, those who are very smart and intelligent, perfectly understand what Bitcoin is, are aware that the impact of crypto mining is actually negligible - but they represent a global financial elite that defends the system they have built for centuries in every possible way.

If there's one thing we could learn from all this, it's that those who control the mainstream media shape public opinion - especially things that the average person has a hard time understanding, and Bitcoin is in the category of such things.

   If we consider any waste of energy in this way, then we can go very far. For absolutely any waste of energy, there is a person or a group of people who will consider, for example, watching TV programs to be meaningless and useless. If the energy is paid for, then who cares what it is used for? Isn't this a personal matter for everyone? It's just that environmental friendliness is just another excuse for the authorities to curb the spread of the adoption of bitcoin as a value transfer system independent of them.

[icopress]

+ I want to add that I indicated that this is a utopian project, since it is necessary to invest tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure. Due to the fact that within a radius of several hundred kilometers there are no cities or power grids through which this electricity could be transmitted. It is for this reason that I said that it is advisable to install a mining giga-farm locally. And by the way, power generation happens 24 hours a day ... which is perfect for mining.

No, it doesn't, and the numbers themselves should have told you so if with 100GW powerplant you're expecting only 200Thw instead of the 870 Thw such a capacity would produce by running 24/7 it means you have a 22% capacity factor which is in line with the only other major tidal projects like Shia and Racen which both are under 28%.

Besides, it's normal, where do you think all that water that is pushed by the tides goes? It must come back at one point and there are phases of the build-up in both directions, nowhere on this planet, there is a continuous tide with the same amplitude.

I suppose my knowledge in this matter is not very different from yours, so I will allow myself to argue with you ... As I already said, Penzhinskaya Lip is the only place on our planet where gravitational forces change the water level twice a day with the strongest amplitude (although, depending on the orbit of the Moon, there will still be energy loss not exceeding 25%, but this is compensated by a very high current speed). And precisely due to the fact that in this bay, there is a very large difference between the highest and lowest point, ebb and flow currents can be used for the constant generation of electricity, the question is only reduced to the presence of two alternately operating systems _[1].

When the water level in the tank is higher than the sea level, the water flows through the outlet sluice; the inlet sluice is closed at this time. When the water level in the tank is lower than the sea level, the water flows through the inlet sluice; the outlet sluice is closed at this time. Thus, the reservoir and the sea create "tidal waves" of equal strength, with a time lag. This is the most efficient and economically viable way to continuously generate energy with the help of a tidal hydroelectric power station and it is based on the operation of two or more alternately operating systems with independent reservoirs.

[stompix]

And precisely due to the fact that in this bay, there is a very large difference between the highest and lowest point, ebb and flow currents can be used for the constant generation of electricity, the question is only reduced to the presence of two alternately operating systems

Isn't this difference thingy making you wonder anything?
There is a huge difference between producing power continuously and producing power continuously at maximum capacity, it will produce 1% when the tide is changing and 100% in full movement, this is no longer about knowledge on the subject is pure physics, you can't have a mass of water flowing with the same speed constantly as you need a zero moment, that's how all tides work and this is why all tidal powerplants have the same generation curve.

Sihwa 24.8%, Rance 28%.

Besides, why would a 100GW powerplant produce only 200Thw if it would run at full capacity nonstop? The answer is simple, because it doesn't.

[Veter2000]

bitcoin's problem about energy only affects miners, miners on this side are like victims of environmental issues where energy use is large, but actually it doesn't affect because the number of miners in this world is very small. whereas crypto investors, crypto holders, crypto traders don't even have any effect on the environment. this is purely a conspiracy to raise the issue of bitcoin and make bitcoin have a bad image in the world

  I support your opinion that the "non-environmentally friendly" bitcoin mining is nothing more than another excuse for trying to worsen the image of bitcoin as a decentralized asset beyond the control of the authorities and regulators.
   

[fillippone]

China Bitcoin Mining Ban made the market accelerate toward modern, more sustainable, and efficient ways of mining.

Blockstream and Macquarie to Form Carbon Neutral Bitcoin Mining Partnership

Bringing together Blockstream’s market-leading Bitcoin technology and Macquarie Group’s (Macquarie) expertise in financial, energy and commodities markets and green infrastructure, Blockstream is pleased to announce a new partnership with Macquarie to pilot a Bitcoin mining facility and explore carbon neutral alternatives for such facilities.

You might not like the involved firms, but it's uncontestable the effort made towards new ways of running the bitcoin mining. Only the time will tell us if it is the correct, i.e. more efficient way, to do that.

[fillippone]

Something interesting just happened in Wyoming:



https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1441760881038200832?s=20

To me, this is another clear example of the huge historical error China made exiting from the mining industry a while ago, and from the whole bitcoin industry recently (apparently)

Calling themselves out of an industry with so many "branches" in such different sectors, and anyway all at the cutting edge of technology, is something that no country can afford. They are leaving huge advantages to the US in this field of development.

[Lucius]

This is really good news, not only for Bitcoin, but for the environment as well. It reminded me of the Saudi Aramco case from some 2 months ago which at least according to official statements turned out to be a mere rumor, but someone has obviously realized that flared gas has untapped potential that can kills two flies with one blow.

As for China, I think they can obviously afford to turn their backs on Bitcoin (at least as far as crypto mining profits are concerned) because even if all BTCs were mined in China + fees, @stompix calculated that for them this does not represent a significant financial loss. This is not even a matter of consumption or lack of energy, if we know that only one of their largest hydropower plants in one year throws out the amount of energy sufficient for at least 80% of the annual needs of Bitcoin mining.

As far as I can remember, some prominent people from the world of cryptocurrencies in the US have called for this development - because given all the tensions that existed between the two countries, throwing them out in the crypto business was the ultimate goal - and in the end the Chinese threw themselves out without anyone asking for it.

[stompix]

Something interesting just happened in Wyoming:

It didn't "just" happened, it's from April   
https://www.wsmtlaw.com/blog/bitcoin-is-booming-why-wyoming-is-a-virtual-currency-leader-and-how-the-oil-gas-industry-and-cryptocurrency-are-intermingling.html
A bit unexpectedly though, I don't know why but I picture all those states like in the northwest like the ones most resistant to changes and slow to adapt. If you tell me about WY, Montana Dakota I can't picture anything other than mountains and people in hunting gear. 

I wonder how this will last with the current democrat party views, they terminated keystone, stopped issuing leases on federal land, maybe till they make more stupid decisions they will finally realize that their eco madness is driving up prices to an insane level, we're already back to 70$/barrel and no downtrend insight.
Montana could power half of the bitcoin network if they would just be left alone and hopefully, nobody will mess this thing up now.

Calling themselves out of an industry with so many "branches" in such different sectors, and anyway all at the cutting edge of technology, is something that no country can afford. They are leaving huge advantages to the US in this field of development.

You're overreacting.
They've banned cryptos, they didn't ban blockchain projects, they didn't ban any other kind of development, just coins.
What is the state going to lose for real from this? Poeple not investing in bitcoin and gaining profits? They will invest in something else.

Those profits can't be achieved unless some other people buy, the value is decided on a free market so right now even the western world is hurt in terms of future profits since supposedly no more Chinese money will flow into cryptos. There is no actual loss ordinary Chinese people will face in the future, nor this is the state if bitcoin takes over the world and it's valued at $100million they will buy at that price and they will have x worth in bitcoin, this is not a loss but unrealized gains.
A bit of overreacting on both sides, it's not like bitcoin will suffer that much from China but neither is China doomed because they have banned crypto, they've risen to become a superpower without crypto this it ain't going to stop them.

[fillippone]

You're overreacting.

Indeed I am.
You don't know me. A lot of people are coming to me and saying "China Banned!" "Bitcoin is going to fail!" "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster any my raising energy bills are caused by hungry miners!"
So, yes, I might resort to old news and mental construct for a little bit of sanity.... I have probably already lost.

[Kusman]

Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster and they should really give up on defending their own ideas. Because it is not true. In Bitcoin mining, fossil fuels were used for a long time period. But these days, we can clearly see that it is changing. Elon Musk also indicated some months ago that he would think of starting to accept Bitcoin for Tesla payments and he really changed his mind some time later as he saw that renewable energies started being used more than 50% in Bitcoin mining.

[stompix]

A lot of people are coming to me and saying "China Banned!" .....

It's the usual effect of the news, people are agitated for a while, then they realize that the world has not ended and then they lose interest as they were never deeply involved with it. I have a different plan during days like this, rather than trying to convince anybody that this and that is not happening I'm just not debating. What's the point of telling people the sun will rise again tomorrow, they will see for themselves.

So, yes, I might resort to old news and mental construct for a little bit of sanity.... I have probably already lost.

There is no losing here other than losing your time to combat something that will die down on its own. The China ban news will go away since even in normal days there wasn't much news coming from there anyhow, the energy problem is getting fixed by kwh prices and lack of gear, things are actually looking far better now than 6 months ago. Also, there might be another wave of bad news. If they are really serious about this might go after pools and mining gear manufacturers, which is going to trigger another wave of a headless chicken running amok although at this point the consequences would be minimal.

Let a few days pass, enjoy that coffee in the morning when you read the press and everyone has realized that no apocalypse has happened, it's just like in a football match, discussions immediately after the game are completely different than one's two days later.

[fillippone]

A nice article on the WSJ, illustrating how nuclear power plants can benefit from coupling their operation with bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin Miners Eye Nuclear Power as Environmental Criticism Mounts

Bitcoin miners, under fire for their sizable environmental footprint, are forging partnerships with owners of struggling nuclear-power plants with electricity to spare.

The matchups have the potential to solve key issues facing each industry, executives and analysts say: Electricity-hungry bitcoin miners want stable and carbon-free power, while nuclear plants facing competition from cheaper power sources need new customers.

It is something very similar, albeit on a bigger scale, to what Blockchain Alps has been doing with hydroelectric power.

ALPS BLOCKCHAIN: mining in Italy from 100% renewable energy
 

[fillippone]

El Salvador started mining Bitcoin using otherwise wasted Geothermal energy:



https://twitter.com/documentingbtc/status/1442955263149887490?s=21

This bitcoin mining operation is using 100% renewable energy that wasn't used before!

[stompix]

Bitcoin Miners Eye Nuclear Power as Environmental Criticism Mounts

Finally, a thing that makes sense, no solar panels when you have 4 hours of sun, no windmill that might stop spinning 10 hashes away, nuclear power, cheap and reliable, providing power 24/7. I'm almost jumping for joy now as the whole energy crisis in some countries is because they have limited how much energy nuclear powerplants can sell on the market without paying extra taxes on other taxes on taxes, now they can sell it directly and guess what is, cheaper than what other consumers are getting for standard rates.

It's so damn obvious this is the solution, bitcoin is a new technology that requires constant non-stop energy, nuclear is the new technology that gives you constant energy with no fluctuations, enough fuels reserves stored in the reactors for months so you don't have to pray for sun, wind, water or Russian gas.

Exelon Corp. EXC -1.41% in June said that it would shut two of three Illinois nuclear plants that failed to sell their electricity during the most recent wholesale power auction for PJM Interconnection, which operates a market serving 13 states and Washington, D.C. That led state lawmakers to approve a bailout this month to keep the plants running.

This is a perfect example where stupidity leads to, you tax the shit out of nuclear and fossil, you nearly bankrupt them and when they are in danger of closing you realize that you don't actually have enough energy from other sources so you need to bail them out with the same money you've got in taxes.

The whole so-called bitcoin mining council rather than putting one farm there and one from there should simply buy one damn powerplant, with two PWR reactors you can get around 10TWh,  enough to feed 300K S19 Pro/J half of what they have on order till 2023.

It is something very similar, albeit on a bigger scale, to what Blockchain Alps has been doing with hydroelectric power.

The only problem with hydro in Europe is that you can't really expand the capacity, where it was a good place a damn has already been built decades ago if they do generate some excess power you can tap that but you're limited and I doubt the eco-movement will allow any major damn to be built in Europe, so yeah, their expansion on that model will inevitably hit a barrier somewhere in the future.

With nuclear, you can build as many as you want, you need a lake (it can be artificial) and fuel (we have enough for centuries).
But no, we need to fill half of the world with solar panels and the other half with batteries all subsidized with taxpayer money because one crazy kid can't keep her mouth shut. /rant over

[Lucius]

I recently watched a documentary on renewable energy, and was fascinated by the story of a small island called El Hierro (Canary Islands) that became completely energy independent, using a hybrid system that combines wind and a pumped-storage power plant. The man who is responsible for the whole project says that it took 30 years from idea to realization, but he really made something that could be applied to a very large number of islands in the world.

I think human genius has no limits, because how else to call the example of El Salvador volcanic energy or a project on the island of El Hierro.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/10/2812/htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgF0hV9LTy8

[fillippone]

The only problem with hydro in Europe is that you can't really expand the capacity, where it was a good place a damn has already been built decades ago if they do generate some excess power you can tap that but you're limited and I doubt the eco-movement will allow any major damn to be built in Europe, so yeah, their expansion on that model will inevitably hit a barrier somewhere in the future.

Fully agree with your rant.

Anyway, do not think of Hydroelectric power plants as big dams with huge pipes and turbines. Think more a free flows plants like this one:


https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/types-hydropower-plants

Nowadays big dams are actually as difficult to build as nuclear plants!

[stompix]

Fully agree with your rant.
Anyway, do not think of Hydroelectric power plants as big dams with huge pipes and turbines. Think more a free flows plants like this one:

Not going to happen!
You underestimate the eco movements, they will not agree on anything, for them even signs "Do not step on the grass" are bad.

https://wilderness-society.org/romania-destroys-last-free-flowing-river-in-carpathians/
https://kafkadesk.org/2019/12/14/hydropower-plants-in-central-europe-a-threat-to-biodiversity-warns-wwf/
https://www.wwf.mg/?1436391/As-Investors-Look-to-Dam-the-Pliva-River-Citizens-Rally-Against-Them

What you posted is the equivalent of genocide for them, this one got 20 000 opposing signatures



it doesn't matter that is a run of the river concept, it doesn't matter that it's a micro plant that diverts only a part of the water and still lets the river flow in its original place, it somehow miraculously "affects' the environment. Plus, it has concrete and steel so it's bad!

A week ago I ordered 20 silicon straws since plastic ones are banned and those made out of paper are pure garbage, they've come in a plastic box with a lot of bubble-wrap and duct tape enough for 1000 plastic straws, and all this packaging ...went into the garbage, but, I'm saving the Earth!!!!

[fillippone]

[OT]

I like Tyrol.
When BTC will go over my "fuck you price" ^{It has to go up a lot} is am seriously thinking about settling there, opening a shop crafting custom-designed
wooden Japanese jointed mining rigs.

Of course, at the moment I can barely hammer a nail into two wood tables to join them together.

[fillippone]

An improbable Bitcoin Sponsor surfaced today: Ted Cruz.


https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1447264180260818954?s=21


Nic Carter commented:

Sen. Cruz makes 3 key points

- Miners can mine off grid by mitigating waste nat gas (byproduct of oil extraction)

- Miners can participate in demand response and give energy back to grid when most needed

- Miners can take advantage of stranded renewables

Basically Ted Cruz reiterated the ideas in this presentation:



https://niccarter.info/wp-content/uploads/txsummit_nc_oct08.pdf

[perryxi2]

As you can see most miners can choose to invest in renewable energy like solar or wind but they have chosen the path of using fossil fuels, but if the energy industry does not change the way of surname. are receiving their energy source, the cycle will continue. The only environmental disaster here is that we are still using fossil fuels. Yes, I am a big bitcoin lover but I personally do not accept the big impact on life and environment. Because the environment is where we all depend on it and develop where my family is, the current environmental pollution is very urgent, personally I do not support the exploitation of the environment. Bitcoin mining with such environmentally polluting energy sources.

[fillippone]

Emission reduction can be attained either trough lowering mining dependence from fossil fuels, or from increasing mining equipment effciency.

RIOT made some improvement in this second direction:


RIOT BLOCKCHAIN ANNOUNCES 200MW IMMERSION-COOLED BITCOIN MINING OPERATION

The article states::

Immersion-Cooling is the process of submerging miner ASICs in a specialized fluid that circulates, allowing the miners integrated circuits to operate at lower temperatures. This technique can also increase the hash rate of the miners, as they no longer need fans for cooling, resulting in the machines using less energy.

The company is expecting a 25% increase in hash rate from the miners being submerged, according to industry data and the company’s own preliminary immersion-cooling test results, but they could see a potential increase of ASIC performance by as much as 50%.

So it is the twist: RIOT can chose between either emitting 20% less Co2 in the athmosphere, or they can improve by 20% their hashing power without increasing their CO2 allowance.

[fillippone]

Have you ever seen a submerged Miner?


https://twitter.com/originalcolabtc/status/1451738901358448640?s=21

This is what I was talking about on the previous post.

[mrall]

This is an interesting post since it started just before the actual China ban in 2021. At first in September the btc price dropped,
but then went higher than before. Can anyone speculate as to why and how that is? Did other miners just start mining more?

It is possible to come up with elegant solutions to mine cryptocoin.
A simple field of solar and wind power, connected to buildings with mining equipment. It could be organized as farms; a field associated with a smaller building,
and various groups of farms, each connected to also share power as needed. Very modern very eco friendly, cryptocurrency is unique in that manner, it's all digital,
such that generally hands off nature methods are possible with it, so it is definitely the future, but the powers that be want to have control over it.

[fillippone]

Following China ban, bitcoin Mining rapidly moved toward more sustainable ways of generating his power:



The bitcoin Mining Council notes that:

MC estimates the sustainable power mix* for bitcoin mining to be 58%, compared to 22% for the world.
▪ The sustainable power mix in bitcoin mining has increased from 37% to 58% in 2021. China's mining ban had a massive impact since China's coal-powered miners were forced out of operation.

In the Original documents, Thera are a lot off very informative slides.

Have a look here:
GLOBAL BITCOIN MINING DATA REVIEW Q3 2021

One I like the most is this one:




Bitcoin mining provides a free, uncensorable, unconfiscatable, peer-to-peer, worldwide, borderless wealth transferring network for the consumption less than...[drumroll]... Holiday Lights.

[Daltonik]

Bill Smith, the founder of XcelPlus International Inc, suggests using the energy obtained from recycling landfills for bitcoin mining, according to him, landfills are what we have in sufficient quantity, so there are 10,000 landfills in the US. The only thing we have no shortage of is garbage, there are more than 400 closed landfills in Texas alone, so we look at them as overturned oil wells.
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/bitcoin-mining-green-energy

[stompix]

Emission reduction can be attained either trough lowering mining dependence from fossil fuels, or from increasing mining equipment efficiency.
RIOT made some improvement in this second direction:

Increasing efficiency per chip won't lead to reduce power consumption, I don't understand why some poeple who are heavily invested in mining keep saying this.
Bitcoin mining is not like car building, you reduce the energy spent on building one by improvements and that's it, you don't build twice as many cause it's half as expensive,  with the more efficient gear you burn 5$ to get 10$ instead of 7 for 10, it's normal with higher efficiency you will just add more miners as it becomes more productive.
If bitmain would release some 2nm gear doing 10x more hash power W the consumption will stay the same, it will be just that the hash rate will grow 10x.
The only thing keeping consumption down is the price, which:

That aside, yeah immersion cooling rules, especially when you're forced to set up mining in a not so cold climate, wish I could do the same since the noise from gear becomes unbearable for more than a quarter-hour but the cost is a bit prohibitive for small miners, 300E a gallon is a bit steep.
But when you're RIOT and you stand on a pile of millions thrown at you by investors it's a different story.

Bill Smith, the founder of XcelPlus International Inc,

A company that hasn't been able to complete one full project in 10 years now talks about plasma gasification on 10 000 landfills, another company that wants a iggy ride on the crypto wave. Plasma gasification is not always a net producing energy unlike traditional biomass methane capture, and on top of that is expensive as fuck, that's why everyone is abandoning those projects..
Keep it simple and nuclear.

[oHnK]

A company that hasn't been able to complete one full project in 10 years now talks about plasma gasification on 10 000 landfills, another company that wants a iggy ride on the crypto wave. Plasma gasification is not always a net producing energy unlike traditional biomass methane capture, and on top of that is expensive as fuck, that's why everyone is abandoning.

The issue of being environmentally unfriendly to Bitcoin is still very hotly discussed, but when compared to other technologies and innovations there are still worse impacts than Bitcoin itself. In fact, if green energy, which is currently a trend to solve energy problems around the world, could be reached at a low investment price, then maybe this would not be discussed anymore. The construction of solar-powered, waste-based, and other green energy power plants is still very expensive so that in every country still using coal which is cheaper.

[S4VV4S]

I would never say something like that where many people say that bitcoin is a disaster for the environment, we don't see if anyone feels harmed by bitcoin so it is said to be a disaster for the environment, can we say bitcoin causes air pollution so that it pollutes to the surrounding area but that doesn't really happen maybe it's just an issue we can say we want to drop bitcoin indirectly so it's a disaster for the environment

[fillippone]

If bitmain would release some 2nm gear doing 10x more hash power W the consumption will stay the same, it will be just that the hash rate will grow 10x.

Interesting point, and probably very true.
Anyway I believe there's not other way to measure efficiency as Mh/S J/TH.
Provided that this hash improvement would have been delivered anyway, of course power eficiency will keep the electricity consumption at minimum, even if I would doubt that we will ever haves an unbalanced choice of having 10x increase with same power consumption, while I expect a "mixed approach" (i.e. 5x hash with half power consumption).

[dark1234]

many say bitcoin is not environmentally friendly and blah blah blah....
it's just an excuse for those who want to corner it even to eliminate bitcoin from its development....
As we know, bitcoin is indeed one that uses electricity which has a negative impact on the environment, because the amount of fossil fuel used to generate electricity also gives birth to greenhouse gases and air pollution. environmentally friendly and this is not an excuse because one of the most polluting energy contributors such as cars still cannot be overcome even though many countries switch to electric cars, but; this is also not environmentally friendly imagine if the whole world uses electric cars how much electricity usage is used every day....
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology... because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

[stompix]

Interesting point, and probably very true.
Anyway I believe there's not other way to measure efficiency as Mh/S.

J/Th? 
No efficiency, can't be measured by anything else than the secs of the gears used, the best indicator which would show you where the hash rate is going would be the profitability per TH which now might beak 40cents, compared to 10 cents a year ago when the hash rate was nearly the same.

Provided that this hash improvement would have been delivered anyway, of course power eficiency will keep the electricity consumption at minimum, even if I would doubt that we will ever haves an unbalanced choice of having 10x increase with same power consumption, while I expect a "mixed approach" (i.e. 5x hash with half power consumption).

Yeah, it won't be a 10x, and most likely because the gear can't be delivered instantly but in batches,  and with this the last ones that would purchase gear will see a high spike in dif a drop in revenue and an insane amount of days for ROI, I'm fairly certain that if all the poeple mining now would have to go through all this again a lot would quit, but some are mining now after covering their gear cost already, so for them, it's a matter of revenue- electricity cost, unlike new people who would think revenue - electricity costs - purchase costs.

It's clear we're going to see a spike in electricity consumption of the network during the Q1 and Q2 of 2022, a lot of gear will come online, and some comparisons that were done in the past won't be pretty with the updated numbers.

[TheBeardedBaby]

All the el. radiators and water heaters are producing only heat and wasting electricity and are way more polluting than bitcoin...

Every water heater, radiator, and equipment which have capacity to use the heat for household and industrial needs, could actually mine crypto. We have not IoT and smart houses.. electronic components are keep getting smaller.. c'mon, that's the future and you all know it!

In a few years your stove will mine crypto while you are cooking your meal. ... wait wut...

Screenshot this $hit and you'll see I'm right

[fillippone]

It's clear we're going to see a spike in electricity consumption of the network during the Q1 and Q2 of 2022, a lot of gear will come online, and some comparisons that were done in the past won't be pretty with the updated numbers.

I am pretty sure about this, but I bet we also witness a massive increase in "efficiency". I have been told a lot of Chinese miners used older generation miners, relying on very cheap if not free energy. So efficiency wasn't a big issue there. But miners elsewhere have a great concern over operation efficiency, so they relied almost entirely on newer more efficient machines.
So I guess the increase in Electricity consumption will be less than proportional to the increase in the hash.

[stompix]

I am pretty sure about this, but I bet we also witness a massive increase in "efficiency". I have been told a lot of Chinese miners used older generation miners, relying on very cheap if not free energy. So efficiency wasn't a big issue there. But miners elsewhere have a great concern over operation efficiency, so they relied almost entirely on newer more efficient machines.

And who told you that was spot on, otherwise we wouldn't have had those numbers last year.

That's the beauty of speculation about the hash rate and about the future of mining, there are so many variables you never get the perfect picture about what's really happening, an industry far more elusive than the oil industry for example. I'm 100% sure that there was a lot of gear that was mining at below 2 cents per kWh a year ago and which can't turn profitable at over 10 cents in less than 6 months at current gear prices, this whole pile is standing on the sideline now and waiting, God knows for what.

In a few years your stove will mine crypto while you are cooking your meal. ... wait wut...
Screenshot this $hit and you'll see I'm right

I've been waiting for that toaster mining for 6 years already...
Stove, oven, no, heating your house or maybe a water heater that can be done, the problem is the chip costs when a water heater cost 200 euros and the miner 10 000  and the other is that you don't need constant heat. Buying a 15k mining oven that will run only 30 minutes a day and make you 100$ a month is .....childish let's say.

[fillippone]

Buying a 15k mining oven that will run only 30 minutes a day and make you 100$ a month is .....childish let's say.

Well, if there are oven that you can leave on 24/7, and well withing that pricing range, I can't see why a mining oven should be childish!
/joke.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I've been waiting for that toaster mining for 6 years already...
Stove, oven, no, heating your house or maybe a water heater that can be done, the problem is the chip costs when a water heater cost 200 euros and the miner 10 000  and the other is that you don't need constant heat. Buying a 15k mining oven that will run only 30 minutes a day and make you 100$ a month is .....childish let's say.

Lovely, a mining toaster! Jokes aside, no need to have $10K mining hardware, I bought my Cyrix@233 MHz with 32M RAM and 3.2GB HDD back in the day for a big bag of money and it was a low end PC, now you can get a cheap PC for 50$.  Prices of the electronics are going down (except now with this shortage of chips) so sooner or later there will be cheap mining devices on a single chip, included those in our day life devices, imagine higher hash power will less electricity consumption, that will be highly efficient devices.. making the bitcoin network highly decentralized and still making you some satoshi (better than nothing). Future is bright I might be a shitty visionary but I have the feeling I'm right on this one

[TangentC]

https://www.fi.se/en/published/presentations/2021/crypto-assets-are-a-threat-to-the-climate-transition--energy-intensive-mining-should-be-banned/

 

* The reason Ethereum is switching to PoS, because every adult knew the PoW bans were coming since 2013. *

[stompix]

Well, if there are oven that you can leave on 24/7, and well withing that pricing range, I can't see why a mining oven should be childish!
/joke.

Before clicking the link I was thinking of something more like Kentucky Fried Bitcoins or McBit as those things really do work sometimes a full day but those ovens of yours...yeah, nice...30k...they would better come with a cook and a maid in that price. 

Prices of the electronics are going down (except now with this shortage of chips) so sooner or later there will be cheap mining devices on a single chip, included those in our day life devices, imagine higher hash power will less electricity consumption, that will be highly efficient devices.. making the bitcoin network highly decentralized and still making you some satoshi (better than nothing). Future is bright I might be a shitty visionary but I have the feeling I'm right on this one

Bitmain and MicroBT are slowly killing that dream
The direction of ASICs is up, up and up, 1000W, 2000W, 3000W, the more chips you can cram into that miner the more efficient it gets costswise, it's almost impossible for something that has only 1/10 of that hash rate and on top of that needs to be integrated with something else to achieve the same efficiency and profitability.

Unfortunately rather than seeing mining coming back to small home hobby mining I see it going the way of datacenters, which brings us..

I bought my Cyrix@233 MHz with 32M RAM and 3.2GB HDD back in the day for a big bag of money and it was a low end PC, now you can get a cheap PC for 50$.

My second website was hosted on my desk, with a P3 processor as at that time storage was a killer for anything around here, if you wanted more than 10GB it was expensive as hell. At that time there were a lot of small business in hosting, nowadays can you even dream of competing with large data centers? 99% of the ones doing this are just resellers from the big guys.

Just because you can get 30x cheaper computing power from 20 years ago it doesn't mean you're going to have an advantage now, your 50$ PC would still behave 1% of the computing power of even a medium gaming rig, imagine your toaster brought 3 years ago had the efficiency of the BM1385 chip, it would be useless.
No, unfortunately, home mining will probably be completely dead in 2-3 years and appliances will never manage to make even a dent on the global hash rate.

[Daltonik]

Bitmain and MicroBT are slowly killing that dream
The direction of ASICs is up, up and up, 1000W, 2000W, 3000W, the more chips you can cram into that miner the more efficient it gets costswise, it's almost impossible for something that has only 1/10 of that hash rate and on top of that needs to be integrated with something else to achieve the same efficiency and profitability.

Unfortunately rather than seeing mining coming back to small home hobby mining I see it going the way of datacenters, which brings us..

I bought my Cyrix@233 MHz with 32M RAM and 3.2GB HDD back in the day for a big bag of money and it was a low end PC, now you can get a cheap PC for 50$.

My second website was hosted on my desk, with a P3 processor as at that time storage was a killer for anything around here, if you wanted more than 10GB it was expensive as hell. At that time there were a lot of small business in hosting, nowadays can you even dream of competing with large data centers? 99% of the ones doing this are just resellers from the big guys.

Just because you can get 30x cheaper computing power from 20 years ago it doesn't mean you're going to have an advantage now, your 50$ PC would still behave 1% of the computing power of even a medium gaming rig, imagine your toaster brought 3 years ago had the efficiency of the BM1385 chip, it would be useless.
No, unfortunately, home mining will probably be completely dead in 2-3 years and appliances will never manage to make even a dent on the global hash rate.

Yes, throughout the progress in reducing the technological process, we are only seeing increasing energy consumption, since everyone has started using the concept of energy efficiency. Since the production of the first BTC, the technological process from 32nm has reached the production of 2nm chips, for Asic, the start of production was based on 130nm chips, now it is already at 5nm, but now for the production of 1 BTC per day we approximately need to use 1600 S19 Pro or more, while we need to spend 5.2 MW. The same applies for video cards, with each transition to a new process, we see an increase in size and power consumption.

Not so long ago, Tesla developers presented a computing tile for AI with a computing power of 9 PFLOPs to build clusters of 1.1 EFLOPs, but judging by the presentation, only one tile consumes up to 15KW, so yes, soon an autonomous nuclear reactor will be needed for a separate competitively capable data center.

[franky1]

Increasing efficiency per chip won't lead to reduce power consumption, I don't understand why some poeple who are heavily invested in mining keep saying this.
...
If bitmain would release some 2nm gear doing 10x more hash power W the consumption will stay the same, it will be just that the hash rate will grow 10x.
The only thing keeping consumption down is the price, which:

not true at all
mining pools dont want to shoot themselves in the foot ramping up mining and jumping the difficulty up by 2X+ as soon as they upgrade their farm with next gen asics

no matter if its an upgrade or just a passage of time using current asics. mining pools will always only want to increase the difficulty by a few percent per fortnight.
emphases they still want to increase hashrate even if the asic generations dont change

by having more efficient asics does not mean hashrate jumps. because again for emphasis they want to keep a low hashrate progress to not making the difficulty spike

what you do find however is if we were to be on GPU mining and asics were not invented. the electricity usage right now would be much much higher. so infact ASICS has helped reduce energy usage.

this is proven by the recent upgrades from the s9 to the s19
s9 uses 1.4kwh and s19 uses 3.25kwh..

when an asic farm upgrades and say (easy math numbers) takes 232 s9 offline (325kwh)(3248thash)
they did not put on 100 s19 (325kwh)(1100thash) to have same electric bill
because if they did the hashrate and difficulty would jump by 3.38x

no where within the whole history of the last 2 years has the hashrate/difficulty jumped by 3.38x of the hashrate/difficulty of 2 years ago

so if your theory even had a small chance of being correct. you would see 2 things
1. difficulty changing from 13t to near 44t
2. hashrate changing from 94exa to over 310exa

well that never happened.
the max we have seen is, difficulty 25t and hashrate 176exa

so your theory is busted

also

Unfortunately rather than seeing mining coming back to small home hobby mining I see it going the way of datacenters, which brings us..
..
No, unfortunately, home mining will probably be completely dead in 2-3 years and appliances will never manage to make even a dent on the global hash rate.

if you think that there has every been a scenario where people could home hobby mine.. you are limited in your scenario thinking.
heres a thing you are missing
the reward is only 6.25btc.. meaning only 625,000,000 shareable units per block

with transaction fees being over 100sats that means you can only really split a block reward with under 6 million people. just to give someone 1 free unspent sat. when they want to move their value after receiving it

 even if you want to pretend that a pool accumulates 100 blocks before paying out a combined transaction. people will only get 100x of the fee(translates: pay 1% fee to receive reward). so its still not worth it for more then 6 million people to be mining at any one time as it will cost many %
it has and always will be the case that not everyone will get to mine. there just isnt enough slices of a cake to share with everyone at the party
 
so please give up the notion that there ever was a chance that home hobby miners could have been a thing for everyone to get involved in. (therre is never going to be an 'all invited' party with unlimited cake for all)

and one last thing. its not a 'datacentre' thing. asics hold no data. . its a asic mining farm
yep mining farms are going to remain.. thats life. accept it
have a nice day

[stompix]

so if your theory even had a small chance of being correct. you would see 2 things
1. difficulty changing from 13t to near 44t
2. hashrate changing from 94exa to over 310exa

well that never happened.
the max we have seen is, difficulty 25t and hashrate 176exa

so your theory is busted

Franky being franky again, talking about mining when he hasn't seen miner in his life
You do realize that for the hashrate to grow you don;t just need efficient gear, you need those miners to pe produced and delivered.

You obviously ignore a simple fact, that the hashrate is continuously growing, even as we speak without anything more efficient being released, and it will grow a lot since the main thing that determines the hashrate is the income per th.
If you would have bothered to do even the smallest research possible you would have known that right now even with this dip the profit per th/s is 30 cents, 3 times more than it was a year ago, which means a lot more ger is coming online.
If you would have bothered to actually research, you would have known that only US companies excluding Riot and Blockstream have 60 exa of orders to be filled in 2022.

Again, if you would have bothered to look at actual data you would have known that one year after the launch of the s9 the rate was about 4 exahhash, which means 300k machines of 1300w mining.
Right now, even if we assume the best gear in the world you have 1.5 million 3300W machines mining.
What's the difference? Oh well, just a x15 increase in power consumption.

with transaction fees being over 100sats that means you can only really split a block reward with under 6 million people. just to give someone 1 free unspent sat. when they want to move their value after receiving it

So, with 40 million addresses with a balance in the blockchain and with the current hahsrate that could be at maximum consisting of 10 million near obsolete gear, you can picture 6 million individual miners?
Again do a little research before throwing bullshit around.

[franky1]

its soo funny

he is showing a 15x multiple since the S9 release
which was september 2017..
ofcourse the hashrate is going to rise OVER 4 YEARS!!

but here is the thing.
from september 2017 to say may 2020 when s19's came about.
the hashrate still rose.. because thats the nature of bitcoin security
periodic small increases over time no matter if new gen are created or not
in that period of 65 difficulty jumps/hashrate rise..
it went from (your underestimated 6exa) to 120exa.. so for your benefit lets call it 20x

but each fortnight period of just s9's was not 20x it was it was 0.3x
now again your belief is that next gen asics offer the oppertunity to ramp up hashrate
so from may 2020 to may2021 26 periods it went from 120exa-176exa
this again is not some 15x or 3x or even 2x heck its not even 1.5x
its actually even LOWER fortnight growth rate than the 3 years fortnight-rate before the next gen was an option

thus again proving that next gen evolution does NOT cause extra growth beyond the normal growth

so please stop with the rhetoric that next gen efficiency means more asics beyond the norm

the actual reality is when they take off hundreds of old gen, they only put in a few dozen new gen
because.. and this is important
they dont want to shoot themselves in the foot by ramping up difficulty/hashpower too fast

oh and i actually do have an asic. i now use it as a foot stool. i have also visited some asic mega farms prepandemic too. so go take your chest beating hypotheticals to some place where your trash ends up and then try to do the math before acting like a know-it-all, because its getting real easy to debunk your hypothetical assumed guesses.
even if you quote websites (which have a small print that say the words hypothetical assumed guesses.)

as for stompix [his reply below] trying too hard to thump his chest thinking he can climb some non existant bitcoin social hierarchy.. . lets just debunk him one more time
the s9 v1 was short lived. most people went for the s9SE or the s9i which offered a few extra thash for the same kwh. the real efficient s9(SE) wasnt released until september.
but hey it now seems stompix doesnt want actual details. he just wants to create social drama.
just a shame his posts come with small print of assumptions guesses and hypotheticals
(and to pre-empt stomix.. the limited amount of hobby miners may have had the 13thash first version. but majority of farms had the more efficient higher thash version of the s9(released later))

anyways, moving on.. have a nice day folks

[stompix]

its soo funny

he is showing a 15x multiple since the S9 release
which was september 2017..
ofcourse the hashrate is going to rise OVER 4 YEARS!!

Weird...seems like a lot of guys were getting something called an S9 before September 2017..
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493601.0
Get your story right next time! And do a bit of research before showing over and over to everyone you don't have clue what you're talking about.

[fillippone]

Apparently I missed this article by Nic Carter:

Bitcoin Mining Is Reshaping the Energy Sector and No One Is Talking About It

Recently, I was invited to give a talk at the Texas Blockchain Summit on the topic of the growth of bitcoin mining in Texas. Not knowing anything about bitcoin mining in Texas, I interrogated around two dozen mining entrepreneurs, wholesale energy traders, academics and energy experts. What I discovered would completely alter my views on bitcoin mining.

Put shortly, bitcoin mining is converging with the energy sector with amazing rapidity, yielding an explosion of innovation that will both decarbonize bitcoin in the medium term, and will dramatically benefit increasingly renewable grids. What’s more, it appears that only bitcoin – rather than other industrial load sources – can actually achieve some of these goals.

It quite old, but still valuable!

[franky1]

Increasing efficiency per chip won't lead to reduce power consumption, I don't understand why some poeple who are heavily invested in mining keep saying this.
Bitcoin mining is not like car building, you reduce the energy spent on building one by improvements and that's it, you don't build twice as many cause it's half as expensive,  with the more efficient gear you burn 5$ to get 10$ instead of 7 for 10, it's normal with higher efficiency you will just add more miners as it becomes more productive.

funny thing is stompix debunks himself
he admits that with higher efficiency means instead of burning $7 of electric to get $10 of reward, you burn only $5.

but what he also hints at as his rebuttal is people add more rigs..
the thing is. even if there was no efficiency, people still add more rigs.
so their $7 becomes $14 becomes $21 without efficiency
yet its $5 becomes $10 becomes $15 with efficiency.

if we still remained on GPU where the hashrate would still accumulate over the years, the amount of GPU's would accumulate over the years. but the amount of inefficient watts/hash would mean the network is less secure but burning MORE electric than today

if people are willing to spend $8k on a 110thash efficient asic. but it was a scenario of only GPU mining
people would have bought $8k of motherboards and GPU and PSU..
which calculated would be more then 3.25kwh. but way way way less hashpower to protect the network

[fillippone]

Mining bitcoin with renewable energy sources.
A dream came true in El Salvador with their infamous Vulcanode.

The guys of Bitcoin Italia Podcast released a very interesting long post and video (English Subtitles) of their visit.




This is part of a broader project, telling the story of a trip to El Salvador:

Missione El Salvador
( English translation available)

[oHnK]

The El Salvador project so far has been quite consistent, especially since I heard that mining uses environmentally friendly energy sources so that companies that have been constrained to enter this segment can learn from the success of El Salvador later.  But we understand each other, why so far it has been difficult to access BTC because of political interests that are not in favor of users so that disinterest can lead to interest.  Even the issue of the pro-Bitcoin El Salvador government is that the government wants to corrupt through this project so that it cannot be traced.

[uchegod-21]

This is a very good topic. I have bin reading the replies since and all of them are great. But I did not read all the reply in this topic. The person that start this topic try so much to analyse the arguments and the defence.
After I know how much energy bitcoin consume I begin to research why the amount is high. I understand that why the energy is high is not because of number of transaction. It is for security of bitcoin network.
Since then I check what order cryptocurrencies use to secure thier own network. Then I understand this two things.
PoW and PoS
Bitcoin which is using PoW was good from the beginning when only Satoshi and his team were mining in one room. But I think Satoshi did not know that Bitcoin will grow so big within short time.
I begin to think that all the miners using higher computer struggling to solve one and the same problem that can only be solve by one person at a time is waste of energy. I was not sure until I saw it where one person say it on internet.
I know the bitcoin network is now so big to change the whole protocol. But I saw another solution that was said by FORBES ADVISOR But what I don't know is weather the solution will work because bitcoin is not mined in one country alone.

Introduce Carbon Credits or Fees

Carbon credits represent the government-sanctioned ability for a company to emit a certain amount of carbon emission into the environment. They’re often securitized, meaning they can be traded to by companies that don’t need to produce a lot of emissions to other companies that do. This incentivizes a company to produce less than its allotment—as well as penalizes those that go over. In the case of a crypto mining company, this might mean it purchases carbon credits from another company to help offset the amount of emissions it creates or switches to greener energy so it can earn a profit from selling its credits.

“These are a tried-and-true method under a variety of programs like the Clean Air Act to get to net-zero emissions for products,” says Scott Janoe, Chairman of Environmental, Safety, and Incident Response Section at Baker Botts. “So I would see a move toward stapling credit products to Bitcoin mining and transactions to offset those emissions.”

Brody similarly foresees consumers being able to pay to offset their crypto emissions. “I anticipate a future where it will be possible to simultaneously pay a transaction processing fee on networks like Ethereum as well as a carbon-offset fee, just as you have the option when traveling by air,” he says.

Read more from Forbes

[fillippone]

Next week there will be an important hearing at the congress about the Bitcoin’s power usage.

It will be an important event to assess the impact all the reasoning about this topic, much of whose we analysed on this thread, will have on the regulators.

I opened a thread about this:

Congress Hearing On Bitcoin’s Energy Use

[fillippone]

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their Q4 Mining Data.




They updated their data on the global Bitcoin Mining Consumption:


And the energy Mix supporting the network:




Click here for the Press release


Video of the Bitcoin Mining Council Q4 2021 Briefing:

[Lucius]

I hope that at least someone will see this information in that congressional hearing because even if they have trouble reading, pictures speak more than a thousand words. It seems incredible that as much as 50 000 TWh is lost, and that the energy consumed by BTC is just a drop in the ocean.

[Daltonik]

Another example of a rational approach to bitcoin mining is shown by the Norwegian Bitcoin mining company Kryptovault, which uses the heat from bitcoin mining to dry wood and provides this opportunity to local loggers for free. The amount of heat produced by mining plants is enough to achieve complete drying of wood in just a few days, despite the fact that the drying process takes place outside, often under snow and rain.

The company is also conducting preliminary negotiations on the drying of seaweed for a local company, by the way, Kryptovault had to spend about £1.5 million on noise insulation only to reduce the noise created by asics after complaints from neighbors.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/09/can-bitcoin-be-sustainable-inside-the-norwegian-mine-that-also-dries-wood

   

[franky1]

They updated their data on the global Bitcoin Mining Consumption:

over 220TWH/year.... um no.. just no

lets average the hashrate at 180exa for the period (makes math simple)
a. lets use the 110thash asic at 3.25kwh
b. lets use 14thash asic at 1.4kwh
hashrate in thash
180000000

a. asics running      
1636363.636   
power draw per hour
5318181.818   kwh
   5318.181818   mw/hour
   5.318181818   gw/hour
   127.6363636   gwh/day  (above * 24)
   46587.27273   gwh/year (above * 365)
   46.58727273   twh/year

so that is 46.58twh.. not 200

b. asics running      
12857142.86   
18000000   kwh
   18000   mw/hour
   18      gw/hour
   432      gwh/day
   157680   gwh/year
   157.68   twh/year

so that is 157.68twh.. not 200

because the 158 is the least efficient asic
because the 47 is the most efficient asic

the number is somewhere in between
im guessing that the amount of farms still using old tech(s914thash from 2016-17 is now obsolete(most migrated during the bsv purge of 2018 where many were sold or destroyed. giving opportunity for the s17 range to be used and then later the s19 range))
id say the number now is far far far closer to 47. and way below 158.. certainly not anywhere near 200

lets pretend every asic was the old tech s9 at the 158TW i mathed out..
basically its a difference of about 28%. so to achieve a 220TWH consumption for the year entails needing a hashrate 28% higher than the 180exa i averaged. meaning the hashrate would need to be a constant 250exahash for the whole year to then 'spend' 220 twh for the year

lets pretend every asic was current tech s19 pro at the 47TW i mathed out..
basically its a difference of about 79%. so to achieve a 220TWH consumption for the year entails needing a hashrate 79% higher than the 180exa i averaged. meaning the hashrate would need to be a constant 842exahash for the whole year to then 'spend' 220 twh for the year

emphasis my facepalm...   220 twh!!(facepalm) sorry folks but thats just not what is happening in reality

..
if i would have a guess. i would say they want to say a huge artificial number now(220). so that it immunises the politics to how small that number is compared to world wide other industries while also allowing for 0.3x(oldtech)-4.6x(newtech) growth without actually going over a 220twh (because shhh dont tell anyone, the 220 is inflated as a buffer)

[fillippone]

<...>
if i would have a guess. i would say they want to say a huge artificial number now(220). so that it immunises the politics to how small that number is compared to world wide other industries while also allowing for 0.3x(oldtech)-4.6x(newtech) growth without actually going over a 220twh (because shhh dont tell anyone, the 220 is inflated as a buffer)

Well spotted.
Of course, the difficulty is increasing week after week, and presumedly energy consumption too.
So I didn't run the numbers as you did, but it seems rational to me that they added a "comfortable" buffer in estimated consumption.
What's the difference between 0.14% and 0.05% of total consumption, after all?

[franky1]

<...>
if i would have a guess. i would say they want to say a huge artificial number now(220). so that it immunises the politics to how small that number is compared to world wide other industries while also allowing for 0.3x(oldtech)-4.6x(newtech) growth without actually going over a 220twh (because shhh dont tell anyone, the 220 is inflated as a buffer)

Well spotted.
Of course, the difficulty is increasing week after week, and presumedly energy consumption too.
So I didn't run the numbers as you did, but it seems rational to me that they added a "comfortable" buffer in estimated consumption.
What's the difference between 0.14% and 0.05% of total consumption, after all?

my numbers were based in a high average of 180exa (more relating to their Q4 end of year average). but taking the actual hashrate of the 365 days its more like 160exa average, so the electric rate is a few TWH less.

but yea 0.0X% or 0.YY% of consumption is still low which is why i dont think the BMC minded using 220 inflated number


well the way my cynical mind works
i imagine the BMC telling governments "bitcoin WASTES 220TWH". get them to implement a green bill. then go back to them and say, ok we have changed the industry, we now only consume 50TWH, now give us our green grants for complying by reducing TWH by 4x

much like the BMC is pretending that only 56% of asic farms in the US were set up in renewable area's. where as its been a known detail even as far as 2014 that asic farmers actually set up in renewable area's on purpose.
EG 90% of chinese asic farms were in renewable area's but the BMC said last year that china is only <20% renewable so pretended that chinese miners were only <20% renewable

all done so later they can be audited and seen as actually being more like 90% and tick a 'green box' to get grants awarded

[konfuzius5278]

1. There is no "green power". Have you ever seen the pollution of land of windparks, solar parks and even worse water power. and the arguement its not used, if ever truth. Make green H2/hydrogen from it. It can be used in any way you want

2. There nothing secure about higher hashrate since the Antminers go better every few months. So the only possibility to make the network safer is more energy consumtion. Where you wanna end?

3. The changing Miners due to rising hashrate makes much electricity pollution since the old miners can not be used profitable and its the only way to use it

Solutions:

1) Make CPU Mining the only way to produce BTC. So point 3 is obselet, you could mine as running the computer and it gets more decentralised since its hardly possible to make a mining farm

2) Use an Algo that uses the power for SETI or something like that. But thats extremly tricky and currently not an option

3) the one you hate most: 18 Million have been distributed to miners over 10 years. Why not change to POS with a annual ROI of 3% or so. The argument you make the richer more rich is rubbish then because its lower then other assets and with having multiplicated 30% of the invest in 10 years is not too much. And simple keeping the coin so hodl you support the network.
Miners who sell their coins have the same support or even less

[BlackHatCoiner]

I know I'm a little late to this thread, but I want to express my opinion about this matter which is truly important to discuss. I don't like to support something that goes against my moral temperament.

Does Bitcoin use much energy? Yes, it does. The security of Bitcoin and its environmental footprint vary analogously. When there's a rise in difficulty, it means more energy is used to strengthen the network.

According to the above statement it'd be logical to conclude that Bitcoin is not environmentally friendly. However, this is really not the case. It indeed is. It's an innovation in which the people try to find the least expensive sources of energy. It happens to be renewable. So, it incentivizes you to not harm the environment. And it turns out that the transition is easy. More than 50% of the hashes are green. Which part of the banking system uses renewable sources? Definitely not that much, even if they aren't comparable.

The world tries to transit to cheaper energy, not necessarily renewable. Remember: Humans want incentives. Every action they take is based on those either consciously or not. Morally-wise it's good to have voluntary incentives, but there should always be an incentive.

It happens for the renewable sources to be extremely cheap compared to non-renewable ones, fortunately.

[fillippone]

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

For those not exactly on the ball, let’s do a little recap of the ongoing situation:

A few days ago, we saw on social platforms a warning about the incoming vote, with an high probability of an imminent approval.


Here is the Text from LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6902320022740373505-oXAJ

MiCA policies prohibit the provision of crypto services that rely on “environmentally unsustainable consensus mechanisms.” This emerges from a final compromise proposal by the responsible Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), which is available to BTC-ECHO. De facto, this could mean the end for proof-of-work based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin from January 1, 2025 in the European Union. A final decision on the draft is to be made in parliament on February 28. Stefan Berger told BTC-ECHO that the proposal would go through as “very likely”. As chairman of the ECON committee, he is largely responsible for the design of the MiCA directive for the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the European Parliament. In an interview with BTC-ECHO, the CDU politician said the SPD, the Greens and the Left had energetically called for the bitcoin ban to be pushed forward. The factions of the Christian Democrats, right-wing conservatives and liberals vehemently opposed the inclusion of the ban in the negotiations. Ultimately, the Social Democrats, Greens and Leftists threatened to refuse to approve the MiCA draft if they did not. Previously, SPD politician Joachim Schuster had already publicly called for a Bitcoin ban. Green European politician Sven Giegold also spoke to BTC-ECHO in favor of illegalization.

#cryptoban for #blockchain #proofofwork  in the #EU voted at the #europeanparliament European Parliament.
European Union #cryptonews #cryptonewsdaily #cryptoworld #cryptocurrencies #btc #bitcoin #greendeal #digitaleurope #mica #ethereum #marketsincryptoassets #cryptomining #cryptomarkets

https://www.btc-echo.de/news/bitcoin-spd-gruene-und-linke-fordern-verbot-in-der-eu-135678/

This would be a huge strategic risk for the Eu, as they would risk staving stay from the frontier in this innovative field of research, business attractor and strategic asset. All this for a misinterpretation of the basic functioning of a POW algorithm, which we tried to debunk in this thread.


Today we read a news that the vote has been postponed:

European Parliament delays vote on crypto assets bill over proof-of-work debate

This is the main point:

A source close to negotiations over the directive told The Block that the primary point of contention was late-stage changes that some interpreted as bans on proof-of-work networks, primarily out of concerns over their energy usage. After a leak generated negative press as well as overwhelming Twitter response, the right and center-right members withdrew support for the latest amendments.

Berger took to Twitter to explain that "As rapporteur, it is central for me that the MiCA Directive is not misinterpreted as a de facto Bitcoin ban."

This is the Berger Twitter:



Google translation:

The EU Parliament's vote on #MiCA will be canceled at my request and will not take place on February 28th. As a rapporteur, it is crucial for me that the MiCA report is not misinterpreted as a de facto #Bitcoin  ban @btcecho 1/4

TL; DR: given the Twitter fuzz, they realised they were doing a stupid thing, and delayed the vote.

It’s not over yet, but at least we now know where to look.

[franky1]

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

this Mica thing was not to be implemented until 2025. so its not a delay. its just a 'we dont need to decide yet'
they have until late 2024 to implement it. and always had until late 2024 to implement it.

meaning this stuff will keep popping up now and again until 2024 without it causing any 'delays'

that said.
i believe that the analytics sites that hyper inflated the TWH usage as 200THW and 58.6% renewable(actual numbers more like 40TWH and 75%+),
and they done so. so that next year they can redo the numbers and show a drop down to say 190TWH, then in 2024 a further drop to 180TWH
while increasing the renewable to 65% 75%  
to pretend they physically helped make bitcoin greener. where its actually just a number shuffle on paper to later appease any environmental concerns that they first advertised as a bad disaster.

its like shouting out that a orange is a acidic fruit that can damage health (we know its actually a health fruit from the start) and then later pretend they done something to an orange to make it a health fruit, to then release a report of its health benefits. pretending they triggered a revolution in fruit. where reality is the fruit remained a fruit and all that changed was the report

truth is bitcoin is not as bad as the analytics chosen to advertise.

[fillippone]

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

this Mica thing was not to be implemented until 2025. so its not a delay. its just a 'we dont need to decide yet'
they have until late 2024 to implement it. and always had until late 2024 to implement it.

<…>

The vote on this amendment was due to happen shortly. Of course reversing a legislation before enacting it is simpler that doing that later. But not reverse a legislation, is even simpler.
So, luckily, for the moment they won’t vote on it.
They will silently scrap that paragraph and vote the law. Nobody will get hurt. Business as usual.

[franky1]

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

this Mica thing was not to be implemented until 2025. so its not a delay. its just a 'we dont need to decide yet'
they have until late 2024 to implement it. and always had until late 2024 to implement it.

The vote on this amendment was due to happen shortly. Of course reversing a legislation before enacting it is simpler that doing that later. But not reverse a legislation, is even simpler.

i meant that the mica has been "in progress" since 2019. with a date of actual implementation in 2025. meaning this announcement is not causing any actual delay to the 2025 time table. and if they just keep announcing 'no decision' for the next 2 years, it changes nothing to the schedule plan.

EG if the implementation was for feb2023.. well. then they would have needed to adjust the implementation date to allow a years grace before it becomes active after a later vote. but because they have until 2025 anyway. they  can reconsider many times until 2024

there may be another opportunity to vote in april2022. but that too can be reconsidered. point being they can keep it 'in progress' for 2 years and not be deemed as 'stalling'/delaying

we can all hope they remove certain parts and vote it in, in april2022 without the bans..so we can be at ease of expectation of 2025
 or they can keep it up in the air like a smoggy cloud for 2 years keeping the 'possibility' of a ban existing

[franky1]

solutions:
1) Make CPU Mining the only way to produce BTC. So point 3 is obselet, you could mine as running the computer and it gets more decentralised since its hardly possible to make a mining farm

bitcoin is just that solution you ask of.
.. your just 12 years behind how your solution plays out
EG within a fortnight a person has 2 computer. then a fortnight later 4 computers. then 8 then 16
and all of a sudden he has a whole garage of computers
then needs to set up an industrial warehouse of computers.

then someone smart comes along and invents a special computer that does the job of 100 computer for the cost of 1 computer
then that evolves into 1000pc rating for cost of 1, then 10,000rating for cost of 1.. and so on and so on

in your narrow view of "CPU only"
do you realise that a CPU can only mine at like 10mhash.
meaning if we had say 100mill CPU mining at 400w each
40,000,000kwh =40GW/h = 350.4TWH/y
yep just 100million people mining around the world with 1 pc each would use 8.75x power consumption than the current network
=11.429m to be on equal power consumption to now
but here is the thing
because hashes are based on a lower difficulty in your CPU utopia. them 100mill at 10mhash each =1petahash
meaning if someone was quietly making an asic in private for 12 years and enhanced it to being 110thash .. they only need 10 asics to over run the 100m users
or if we go with the 11.429mill users with 1 PC each. that smart guy secretly developing asics for 12 years only need 1-2 asics to overwhelm the network

[dezoel]

I like this thread so much, and I just like the fact that someone took out his or her time to make a thread like this that debunks most, if not all, of the accusations that critics have been using against Bitcoin over the years. I didn’t waste time when I saw this thread and went through it.

The first thing I just did was to bookmark it, because a few times I have came across those critics who are always trying to put Bitcoin down and for sure I have done my best to defend it the way I can, but it good to have all these references to quote from and also show to anyone that tries make false statements about Bitcoin, because I am really tired of people who keeps on spreading fake news, when they are not sure of it.

[MinMan]

EU Parliament just avoided another self inflicted tragedy, delaying a controversial vote on Ban of POW cryptos.

Sometimes I am not against those that says Proof of Work is bad for the environment since due to energy consumption, it’s quite good to know that they do care about the environment, BUT… If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

There are lots of industries that consumes so much energy, like 90% more than what PoW can ever go, and these industries pollutes our environment and no one seems to talk about it, rather they all choose to focus on Bitcoin for no good reason. It doesn’t make sense at all, seriously, they have got to stop all these. Bitcoin is not had, and critics should take a break please (although I know they wouldn’t ).

[BlackHatCoiner]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

[fillippone]

Banning any human activity because it burns "too much energy" is statist nonsense.
Who decides what is "too much" energy?
Bitcoin mining consumes "too much energy"? What about "Christmas lights?", or Iron smelting? and what if this iron is used to produce arms to be sent to Ukraine?  Yes? No? And if the arms are sent to Russia?


This is utter nonsense.
These are all considerations built on the most efficient information transmitting mechanism: prices.

Also, the idea that POW is polluting is quickly losing steam.

Genesis Digital Assets Announces New Bitcoin Mining Farm in Sweden Powered by 100% Clean Energy

The new data center expects to have up to 100 MW megawatts online by 2024. The
energy used by the new farm comes from 100% clean energy sources.

As per my understanding is the one of using hydro plants to power the miners, similarly to what APLS Blockchain is doing in Italy:

ALPS BLOCKCHAIN: mining in Italy from 100% renewable energy

[qwertyup23]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

I think it is also more on the aspect of being entirely bias about cryptocurrencies. People that are somehow close-minded tend to believe stuff that are against cryptocurrencies even if there are other aspect or things that are way more harmful to the environment. They tend to believe their own biases even if actual proof and facts are showed to the contrary- which is somehow sad given the full potential of BTC in our day-to-day transactions.

[Lucius]

Of course, it’s nonsense, it’s clear to anyone who knows the basics of math and knows how to read all the objective studies that have analyzed the impact of total Bitcoin mining on energy consumption and any kind of environmental pollution. I don't know if the people who are persistently pushing this agenda are stupid or it's just a job for which they are well paid, but to anyone with a little common sense, everything can be crystal clear in less than 15 minutes.

If memory serves me right, Sweden is the one that asked the EU to ban crypto mining, and I'm just wondering what their comment will be on the news about a mining farm that will use only renewable energy sources. Maybe now the agenda will be redirected in the direction of creating electronic waste, and we had a claim a few months ago that crypto mining generates as much waste as the Netherlands or something similar.

I can only repeat once again, if someone wants to solve problems with greenhouse gases and pollution in general, let them start from the top of the pyramid, and not from the bottom where Bitcoin is definitely in that regard.

[fillippone]

If memory serves me right, Sweden is the one that asked the EU to ban crypto mining, and I'm just wondering what their comment will be on the news about a mining farm that will use only renewable energy sources.

I do remember that headline, but it wasn't "Sweden", it was only a proposal to the UE parliament.

Sweden is Calling for EU to Ban Cryptocurrency Mining to Meet Climate Goals

The two financial and environmental regulators wrote in an open letter urging for an EU-wide ban on “proof of work” cryptocurrency mining, which is a system used to mint a number of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ether.

Of course, that was enough to feed an endless feed of clickbait.

You are right: it's not Bitcoin's task to solve the global warming problem. This is one of the most debated issues here on this thread: bitcoin already is the most efficient way of consuming electricity, and it even incentivizes to recover wasted energy (on-field gas burning as opposed to flaring, geothermal generation, hydropower).

[BlackHatCoiner]

I don't know if the people who are persistently pushing this agenda are stupid or it's just a job for which they are well paid

Probably the latter affect the former. People who dislike Bitcoin for some reason will get advantage of this environmental impact. In fact, few propagandists found some really attractive titles. For instance, "One Bitcoin transaction costs millions of dollars!" which is false broadly; the transaction cost isn't inextricably linked with the computational power that is required to solve a block. Another catchy phrase is "Bitcoin: Wasting more energy than <insert_small_country>".

[JayJuanGee]

many say bitcoin is not environmentally friendly and blah blah blah....
it's just an excuse for those who want to corner it even to eliminate bitcoin from its development....
As we know, bitcoin is indeed one that uses electricity which has a negative impact on the environment, because the amount of fossil fuel used to generate electricity also gives birth to greenhouse gases and air pollution. environmentally friendly and this is not an excuse because one of the most polluting energy contributors such as cars still cannot be overcome even though many countries switch to electric cars, but; this is also not environmentally friendly imagine if the whole world uses electric cars how much electricity usage is used every day....
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology... because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

I have only gotten up to your post so far in the thread, but I have become motivated to post even if your point has been made by others in the thread dark1234.

In other words, you seem to be making a good point dark1234 in relationship to the incentives that bitcoin creates to be innovative... and for sure there are other posters in this thread making similar points, but it seems to be worthy of emphasis and repetition.

For several years, I have been asserting that I could give few shits about how much energy bitcoin is supposedly causing to be used in the aggregate, because the incentives of bitcoin empower each miner to choose for himself/herself regarding whether and how much to mine bitcoin or to engage in other activities....

So if a miner determines that that there could be ways to make more profits by lowering energy costs, then such miner is going to seek out such lower cost energy - which will likely cause the putting to use of energy that had not been previously used.  Surely, some of the beneficiaries of the lower cost energy are going to become perturbed because the miner would be causing their energy costs to increase.. but still i tis quite likely that benefits outweigh the costs in terms of miners seeking out lower cost energy and thus incentivizing the development and use of lower cost energies... so without intervention, bitcoin already seems to contribute to the causation of decent incentives to both utilize low cost energy and to develop more low cost energy, if possible (or economically justifiable to attempt such ongoing developments of low cost energy).  

So for sure there is a bit of a balancing of interests in terms of both the driving up of low cost energy, but also considerably great likelihood of ongoing development of such low cost usage of energy - which seems to actually be supported by the data (empirical evidence).

Maybe my own punchline is that I could hardly give any ratt's ass regarding the extent to which there are various kinds of clean or dirty energy usages.. because those seem to be side issues in which sometimes bitcoiners or bitcoin miners might end up getting involved if they might get involved in producing energy or selecting between sources of energy.. so in that regard, whether the energy is clean or not does not seem to be central towards whether bitcoin miners might be wanting to purchase energy that might be available in one location versus another.. just confusing regarding blaming bitcoin mining for preexisting situations.. and sure it may well be true that some improvements have been made to the energy grid over the last 50 years so that skies are not as polluted and water is not catching on fire.. so there surely are continued likely ways in which some forms of energy are cleaner than other forms of energy or if some forms of energy need to be coupled with cleaning or filtering technologies to cause them to be less polluting.. if it is truly the case that such forms of energy are more polluting than the benefits that they might otherwise bestow on the energy grid (infrastructure) - which likely varies quite a bit from region to region based on what resources might be naturally available in one area versus another... surely it is less energy (resource) efficient for people to live in a dessert.. or on a flood plain... but they still do.. so sometimes there can be meaningful and reasonable balancing of the varying interests.. which surely is a decent part of the story of bitcoin mining in terms of the individual incentives and whether those incentives might possibly go contrary to the balancing of public concerns.

[noorman0]

-snip-
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology...

This will only be homework for supporters of the continuation of bitcoin, not people who continue to blame bitcoin because they have their own homework to do with their business which is more problematic with energy consumption. Especially in the transportation industries, bitcoin is a real competitor not only in energy consumption, but also in its goal of efficiently helping people's multimillion-dollar businesses (without involving transportation services). Because of this, it seems that bitcoin is getting closer and closer to becoming a global alternative currency that will disrupt competitors' businesses (which feel competitive).

I like this part:

because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

[Doan9269]

Sometimes I am not against those that says Proof of Work is bad for the environment since due to energy consumption, it’s quite good to know that they do care about the environment, BUT… If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Those companies already constituting environmental disaster in energy usage already have their way of settling with the government in through paying of tax and issuing of contracts awards for new projects, this is politics, but in crypto such is not applicable because it is decentralized, and the ones they can easily hook up with are the miners who have specific location and also demand from the country's electricity.

The fact is that bitcoin energy waste is nothing compared to the global energy lost due to inefficiency. secondly research are still ongoing regarding building bitcoin mining equipment with lesser noise and energy consumption such as in GPU and ASICs used in mining rigs.

[fillippone]

After some minor testing we also documented on this thread, one of the big sisters is moving toward making good use of gas instead of flaring it:

ExxonMobil Running Pilot Project to Supply Flared Gas for Bitcoin Mining: Report

Oil giant ExxonMobil (XOM) is running a pilot project to use what would otherwise be wasted gas from its North Dakota oil wells to power bitcoin mining operations, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The excess natural gas would have otherwise been burned off, or flared, because of the lack of pipelines.
The oil company is also looking to supply flared gas to bitcoin miners at other sites around the globe, according to the report.

The original report from Bloomberg is quite interesting: Exxon started with a few tests in North Dakota in partnership with Crusoe Energy (Winklevii have invested in it), but they are now expanding to Alaska, Nigeria, Argentina, Guyabbaa and Germany.

Preventing gas from being vented in the air would have many implications, from the most obvious environmental benefits, to the more subtle effects on oil field profitability,  bitcoin mining operations and also comprehension on the fact that bitcoin mining is not dispacing energy otherwise used for other purposes, but using completely new energy that would be otherwise wasted.

[dark1234]

many say bitcoin is not environmentally friendly and blah blah blah....
it's just an excuse for those who want to corner it even to eliminate bitcoin from its development....
As we know, bitcoin is indeed one that uses electricity which has a negative impact on the environment, because the amount of fossil fuel used to generate electricity also gives birth to greenhouse gases and air pollution. environmentally friendly and this is not an excuse because one of the most polluting energy contributors such as cars still cannot be overcome even though many countries switch to electric cars, but; this is also not environmentally friendly imagine if the whole world uses electric cars how much electricity usage is used every day....
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology... because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

I have only gotten up to your post so far in the thread, but I have become motivated to post even if your point has been made by others in the thread dark1234.

In other words, you seem to be making a good point dark1234 in relationship to the incentives that bitcoin creates to be innovative... and for sure there are other posters in this thread making similar points, but it seems to be worthy of emphasis and repetition.

For several years, I have been asserting that I could give few shits about how much energy bitcoin is supposedly causing to be used in the aggregate, because the incentives of bitcoin empower each miner to choose for himself/herself regarding whether and how much to mine bitcoin or to engage in other activities....

So if a miner determines that that there could be ways to make more profits by lowering energy costs, then such miner is going to seek out such lower cost energy - which will likely cause the putting to use of energy that had not been previously used.  Surely, some of the beneficiaries of the lower cost energy are going to become perturbed because the miner would be causing their energy costs to increase.. but still i tis quite likely that benefits outweigh the costs in terms of miners seeking out lower cost energy and thus incentivizing the development and use of lower cost energies... so without intervention, bitcoin already seems to contribute to the causation of decent incentives to both utilize low cost energy and to develop more low cost energy, if possible (or economically justifiable to attempt such ongoing developments of low cost energy).  

So for sure there is a bit of a balancing of interests in terms of both the driving up of low cost energy, but also considerably great likelihood of ongoing development of such low cost usage of energy - which seems to actually be supported by the data (empirical evidence).

Maybe my own punchline is that I could hardly give any ratt's ass regarding the extent to which there are various kinds of clean or dirty energy usages.. because those seem to be side issues in which sometimes bitcoiners or bitcoin miners might end up getting involved if they might get involved in producing energy or selecting between sources of energy.. so in that regard, whether the energy is clean or not does not seem to be central towards whether bitcoin miners might be wanting to purchase energy that might be available in one location versus another.. just confusing regarding blaming bitcoin mining for preexisting situations.. and sure it may well be true that some improvements have been made to the energy grid over the last 50 years so that skies are not as polluted and water is not catching on fire.. so there surely are continued likely ways in which some forms of energy are cleaner than other forms of energy or if some forms of energy need to be coupled with cleaning or filtering technologies to cause them to be less polluting.. if it is truly the case that such forms of energy are more polluting than the benefits that they might otherwise bestow on the energy grid (infrastructure) - which likely varies quite a bit from region to region based on what resources might be naturally available in one area versus another... surely it is less energy (resource) efficient for people to live in a dessert.. or on a flood plain... but they still do.. so sometimes there can be meaningful and reasonable balancing of the varying interests.. which surely is a decent part of the story of bitcoin mining in terms of the individual incentives and whether those incentives might possibly go contrary to the balancing of public concerns.

in fact bitcoin mining is carried out by several people who incidentally are financially well-established people who don't want to bother themselves with things that will happen in the future for the sake of a bitcoin coffers in their pockets to get strong and stable energy, without thinking about their children and grandchildren In the future, will they still be able to see the beautiful snow mountain and breathe the fresh air in the morning?
only a few are done by a large-capacity corporate agency which of course may have switched to renewable technology [this is my personal assumption]

   and I myself don't blame them for this because the negative impact of the energy crisis and global warming at this time is not too felt and it is human nature that the ego wants to be rich and richer so this is all a little neglected even though true wealth is a rich heart, wealth that is prosperous and happy when they are grandchildren we can feel it too later

     My hope for now is that miners should be able to switch to looking for energy at a lower cost by utilizing the environmental resources around them, be it sun, water and air/wind, because of course the sustainability of bitcoin's life is in the hands of the miners, and things happen as they are the ban in china, it doesn't happen in their country whose impact will be felt by the miners themselves and the impact also blockchain and crypto users

         WE may not be environmental activists but the environment needs to be cared for

[Daltonik]

Well, some of the big companies are also thinking about the future, including in the issue of environmental issues of mining. For example, Marathon Digital seems to have made a decision to switch from using the energy obtained from burning coal to renewable energy sources and stated that by the end of the year all their 30,000 miners with a capacity of 3.3 EH/s will be moved and become carbon neutral, only the fact is that the coal mine in Montana, which is powered by a power plant (energy from which Marathon Digital is now using for mining) and she, in turn, uses the same coal, and will continue to work.

Marathon Digital to Move Mining Rigs From Coal-Powered Montana Site

[fillippone]

Listening to an interview with Frank E. Holmes, I heard about this HIVE summary of the Bitcoin Mining Council back in October.

I think it is worth posting it here, for those of you who prefer the video format:

HIVE Summarizes Michael Saylor’s Slides from the Bitcoin Mining Council’s Oct. 2021 Presentation

On October 19, 2021, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor welcomed the crypto community to review the third-quarter 2021 survey results from the Bitcoin Mining Council’s data review.

In this video we’ve summarized Saylor’s 30-minute segment into 3 minutes, aiming to touch on some of the “need to know” data points from this captivating briefing. We invite you to watch the full-length presentation by visiting the Bitcoin Mining Council’s YouTube page, or by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPai5uoN2tg&t=0s

[franky1]

In this video we’ve summarized Saylor’s 30-minute segment into 3 minutes, aiming to touch on some of the “need to know” data points from this captivating briefing. We invite you to watch the full-length presentation by visiting the Bitcoin Mining Council’s YouTube page, or by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPai5uoN2tg&t=0s

ill watch this. and if i hear the words "guesstimate, assumption, average" im going to stop watching

EDIT.
within the first 6 minutes. im already facepalming for very different reasons.. som im going to stop here

seems they want to confuse the numbers by playing pingpong tennis with the words "energy" and "electricity" by pretending their estimate of electricity is not electricity even though their measure is in wattage(electricity).. now they want to call it "energy" even though they are not using energy terminology like joules

they seem to be trying to dig a bigger hole for themselves.
.
here is the thing. they got the 188TWH completely wrong in the first place yast year.
if they meant 'energy' instead of electricity. they would not be using TWH but instead TJH (joules not watts)

they are then trying to stand by their wrong 188TWH guestimate. by then saying 'electricity' is actually more like 66TWH(bit more accurate and acceptable).. but that means they are trying to save face by saying their 188guess is correct(its not) by then suggesting that bitcoin wastes 64.9% of energy in its electricity conversion.

yep 188-66=122TWH wasted = 64.9% wasted

which. when they quote that world energy to electricity conversion is only a waste of 50k out of 150k meaning only 33% wasted .. they are again stupidly saying bitcoins energy to electricity conversion is twice as worse as other industry conversion

..
seriously, they should just get their heads out of their asses and just admit their number last year of 188TWH was diabolically wrong.. (real numbers are more like 40twh-70twh) rather then suggest that their exaggerated number is a 'energy' number and is real, which represents a high waste of energy..

..
yep the 'committee of mining' love to use 'guesstimate, assumption, average' in their math. but then instead of admitting that their guesses were widely wrong. they prefer to say that bitcoin uses/wastes more then it actually does, and that their maths is perfect..

sorry. but that 188TWH number was completely wrong on multiple levels.
even on 5year old outdated inefficient asic tech, the math, if all old gen asics were used in 2021 the network never even got close to 188TWH, let alone on the numbers if the network in 2021 was using 2021 efficient asic's

in short.. they got that 188TWH completely wrong, and they wasted alot of video speaking time trying to justify their very bad guess.. while also trying to make bitcoin look bad subtly by suggesting their math was good and bitcoin wastes more then average in conversion.. (facepalm)

[Dunamisx]

Well, some of the big companies are also thinking about the future, including in the issue of environmental issues of mining.

The exploration of the natural resources such as gold and petroleum has higher implication to the environment from carbon emission, governments tend to overlook this aspects because they overseas the affairs, lots of conglomerate production companies also impose such environmental threat but yet government see not to that all because they pay tax but bitcoin contribute nothing as compared to what the above mentioned pollute to devastate the environment, yet bitcoin faces more sanction than them all.

My hope for now is that miners should be able to switch to looking for energy at a lower cost by utilizing the environmental resources around them, be it sun, water and air/wind, because of course the sustainability of bitcoin's life is in the hands of the miners, 

Currently much research has been ongoing on the effective use of renewable energy source for mining and secondly in the case of another solution coming from Exxon Mobil which plan to use waste energy from petroleum resources for use in bitcoin mining is another development that bitcoin has come to solve part of the created problems on energy waste and it hazards on the environment.

[fillippone]

Currently much research has been ongoing on the effective use of renewable energy source for mining and secondly in the case of another solution coming from Exxon Mobil which plan to use waste energy from petroleum resources for use in bitcoin mining is another development that bitcoin has come to solve part of the created problems on energy waste and it hazards on the environment.

The announcement during the Bitcoin Conference of the agreement between Blocks, Blockstream and Tesla, I think, goes in this direction:

BLOCKSTREAM, BLOCK TO LEVERAGE TESLA EQUIPMENT FOR RENEWABLE BITCOIN MINING OPERATION

Taking the dedicated mining stage at Bitcoin 2022, Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.

“The Tesla Solar PV array and Tesla Megapack will power Blockstream and Block’s open-source, solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mining facility,” according to a slide shared by Back during the presentation. “[The facility is] projected [to produce] 3.8 MW solar renewable power, 30 PH/s hashrate.”

Using solar arrays to power a Mining farm looks like an absolute novelty and maybe an overkill, something more like a marketing stunt than a real, economic oriented project.
Time will tell.

[JohnBitCo]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

Government have tried to ban crypto currencies but everytime they have failed to do so. Now they have come up with a new excuse that bitcoin is polluting the enviroment because bitcoin is based on proof of work which consumes a lot of energy for generating bitcoins.

This narrative is going to fail to as this is totally a lame excuse. The factories and industries produces much more waste and consume much more energy as compare to this bitcoin.

[stompix]

Taking the dedicated mining stage at Bitcoin 2022, Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.

“The Tesla Solar PV array and Tesla Megapack will power Blockstream and Block’s open-source, solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mining facility,” according to a slide shared by Back during the presentation. “[The facility is] projected [to produce] 3.8 MW solar renewable power, 30 PH/s hashrate.”

Using solar arrays to power a Mining farm looks like an absolute novelty and maybe an overkill, something more like a marketing stunt than a real, economic oriented project.
Time will tell.

Of course it's a marketing stunt, if they would be going full solar and batteries they would be bankrupt the next day without government subsidies. Just look at the numbers, 3.8 MW and 30PH/s and a 12 megawatt-hours (MWh) Tesla Megapack.
That's enough storage capacity to power 150 S19 for 24hours and a hashrate equivalent of 300 S19.

Meanwhile:
https://blog.blockstream.com/en-blockstream-purchase-25m-usd-of-bitcoin-mining-hardware-from-microbt/
They've bought 2000 if not (3000 with a discount) miners at least in one single batch and are having a capacity of 300MW in total, now they have 1% ..solar!  

This is just like those companies claiming to be carbon neutral because they've donated enough money for 100 000 trees.

I can't wait to see how Mara will spin around the story since they claim they will magically close their coal power plants and how in the name of god when they were signing those things for the Bitcoin Mining council they've forgotten 10% of the hash rate int he US at that time was coming from their own dirty but damn cheap coal.

The whole green stuff should be put on pause right now, especially since everyone with a brain can see what's happening in Europe when you don't have enough fossil fuel and you're simply too stupid to allow nuclear energy. But no, let's let the madness continue till we're all going to have 30 minutes of light a day from on our bio-hamsters generators. Of course, feeding them will be quite the task since we're going to have to cut grass without hurting the grass also and only with a study on the number of insects and their species per square cm affected by this.

[Artemis3]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

Government have tried to ban crypto currencies but every-time they have failed to do so. Now they have come up with a new excuse that bitcoin is polluting the environment because bitcoin is based on proof of work which consumes a lot of energy for generating bitcoins.

This narrative is going to fail to as this is totally a lame excuse. The factories and industries produces much more waste and consume much more energy as compare to this bitcoin.

There is a private entity behind this recent FUD campaign, that guy from Ripple tossing 5 million USD which "magically" purchased the likes of Greenpeace, Wikimedia and Mozilla into their lies campaign... Of course they have interests to bad mouth the only competitor they can't buy out of the market... But what else could you expect from people heavily associated with banksters?

Of course Bitcoin will carry on, there is nothing those over-funded losers can do to stop it. But their actions are hostile to this community. If someone doesn't talk about Bitcoin but goes with words like "blockchain" or "crypto", you know what side they are in, and probably under who's wallet...

[LUCKMCFLY]

Sometimes the sentence that Bitcoin is an environmental disaster, is something that alarms and attracts attention, but come on, we cannot forget that the environmental disaster has been taking place throughout the history of humanity, bombs, nuclear disasters, malpractice in many things it is something that we cannot forget, since 2009 when all this so beautiful of the BTC era began, some began with the problems, now that the clean energy, that the dirty energy, please, the BTC, Miners do not have the blame for the world disaster that has been left in our hands, what we have inherited is a number of environmental problems thanks to government decisions, and in fact for me the whole problem comes from there of geo-political problems and senseless wars, but for BTC or for the miners, please... it's like something almost unacceptable, it's like saying that the biggest crimes in the world are now more thanks to btc.

[zaesvlas]

For some reason, it seems to me that those who simply cannot realize themselves in this industry think so. So, you shouldn't do anything about it at all.

[fillippone]

Bitcoin Mining Council has released their latest presentation:



I admit I have read it diagonally.
But it is always a good resource to dismiss Bitcoin as a polluting technology, when instead is actively pushing for a more efficient use of clean energy.

[hd49728]

I admit I have read it diagonally.
But it is always a good resource to dismiss Bitcoin as a polluting technology, when instead is actively pushing for a more efficient use of clean energy.

Bitcoin mining industry contributes to carbon emission and global warming but it is unfair and untrue to say that it is one of most polluting and environmental harmful industries.

I think in furture, in order to get better energy consumption cost as well as to adapt to stricter governmental regulations, Bitcoin mining farms will switch to more renewable resources. It will make the industry becoming more environmental friendly, less polluting.

Currently it is not a biggest industry and does not consume bigger energy. In addition, their proportion if renewable energy resources is better than many nations and industries.

[ninis45]

For some reason, it seems to me that those who simply cannot realize themselves in this industry think so. So, you shouldn't do anything about it at all.

on the other hand we have a positive attitude even though we cannot change most of them but at least we have tried to do rather than do nothing....
even though we know this is a waste without super power interfering to change it, namely the government while we may only be talking

[Carlton Banks]

didn't read the thread, but in case anyone didn't say this already...


....isn't the actual climate chang-ists argument that:

all energy use is bad, and so it must all be monitored, and adjudicated? (essentially, politicizing it, as there is no objective way to determine which uses are deserving)


and cynical old me, I would guess that we're also supposed to sit around in freezing cold/scorching hot apartments, in Metaverse, where we fight back the tears experiencing what we imagine even a normal life would be by 2010's standards. Then when some high level toady in the hierarchy gets ratted out by rivals for.. i dunno, smoking a cigarette, we're also supposed to be shocked and disappointed, then we have to diligently do some extra pedaling on our humanoid hamster wheels to pay for the carbon credits needed to annul 1 cigarette of CO₂?

if Black Mirror producers are reading, then, yes, I am available for creative development roles

[Dunamisx]

But it is always a good resource to dismiss Bitcoin as a polluting technology, when instead is actively pushing for a more efficient use of clean energy.

If i may ask who are this Bitcoin Mining Council? what is their identity, are they centralized or decentralized? because BMC have been making some certain claim about bitcoin mining and the energy involved as of recent and this has spike high lot of controversial views about the approach they are bringing up, and i see no reason why much attention should be given on them if what they talk about is the environmental impact of bitcoin mining activities and i see they may constitute to anti bitcoin menace.

[rmhuntley]

there are so many people who say that bitcoin is a disaster for the environment when in fact that is not true at all even though it has a very large impact received by bitcoin where by saying that bitcoin is a disaster for the environment it indirectly makes the price of bitcoin not so stable on the stock market by the existence of these discourses.even though there is no energy generated that can cause pollution so that there is pollution to the environment and we have seen that in the last few years

[stompix]

I admit I have read it diagonally.
But it is always a good resource to dismiss Bitcoin as a polluting technology, when instead is actively pushing for a more efficient use of clean energy.

You can read it in the reflection of a mirror with your eyes closed it won't make a difference  
So they tossed some numbers there and claimed that now instead of 51% they have 57%.
And we have to trust those numbers because, well, they say so!

Don't you agree it could have been done far easier and without anyone complaining by just filling a small table?
Argo  x Ph/s , x MW datacenter, x coming from hydro z from gas
Bitfarms  x Ph/s , x MW datacenter, x coming from coal z from solar

Why don't they do it? Because they are in the same boat with every industry out there, I'm only seeing industries claiming to be green, eco-friendly, using only renewables, damn, I actually want to see a company with an ad saying we only burn coal! I would definitely buy their products even if they only make frog leashes or raccoon-scented shower gel.

The hashrate is going to grow 10% from month to month if the current epoch keeps going like this, are they telling me that suddenly they've just installed 600MW of wind turbines just now? I understand some of the things, I understand that you can play with numbers for your own interest but right now they are just bullshiting.

Bitcoin Mining Is Technology Intensive, 58x+ In Efficiency In 8 Years

Nice, but how about we look at it from a different point of view.
First, the S19XP was announced in 2021, and the first batch just got delivered early this month, now if we add the fact that the S9 was launched and sold in 2016, we have an increase of 5x in 6 Years. Both numbers are current, but doesn't it scream manipulation?
Also, I love their comparison with other industries, construction, gold, and freight, but something is missing from there, the obvious one, but we can't use that anymore because it won't look as nice as it did 4 years ago.  

Just build two nuclear power plants and let's be done with this.
Of course, when it comes to money-making the big names in crypto have found 700 millions for a stadium name, 160 million for some virtual land, 1.3 million for the jpg of a rock, but no way we're going to invest in something that is actually useful.

[Carlton Banks]

The hashrate is going to grow 10% from month to month if the current epoch keeps going like this, are they telling me that suddenly they've just installed 600MW of wind turbines just now? I understand some of the things, I understand that you can play with numbers for your own interest but right now they are just bullshiting.

Bitcoin Mining Is Technology Intensive, 58x+ In Efficiency In 8 Years

First, the S19XP was announced in 2021, and the first batch just got delivered early this month, now if we add the fact that the S9 was launched and sold in 2016, we have an increase of 5x in 6 Years. Both numbers are current, but doesn't it scream manipulation?
Also, I love their comparison with other industries, construction, gold, and freight, but something is missing from there, the obvious one, but we can't use that anymore because it won't look as nice as it did 4 years ago.  

right, this is the gift that keeps on giving for the policymakers


it's essentially impossible to balance the interaction of ALL externalities from industry with the natural world. And so it's nothing but a stick to beat the serfdom with in perpetuity.

meanwhile, if you are one of the aforesaid serfs, and would like other natural things as a part of your life:

• trees in your locale or 'property'
• clean water on your 'property'
• grow or eat unprocessed food
• rearing children without constant pressure to subject them to endless unnatural influences or substances

...you're somehow the worst person in the whole world. Better keep buying all those 'green' energy and products, made with vast (and increasing) amounts of plastics, metals and other mining products that ravage microhabitats and poison the air, ground and water, right?


I somehow don't believe the oil/mining billionaires and European Royal families that push the climate panic are ok with changing into Amish people living in trees to stop the world setting on fire, call me cynical if you will

[Sebas.tian]

there are so many people who say that bitcoin is a disaster for the environment when in fact that is not true at all even though it has a very large impact received by bitcoin where by saying that bitcoin is a disaster for the environment it indirectly makes the price of bitcoin not so stable on the stock market by the existence of these discourses.even though there is no energy generated that can cause pollution so that there is pollution to the environment and we have seen that in the last few years

I think, those people said bitcoin is a disaster in their environment are people which bitcoin is not fully legalized in their countries. Many countries that adopted bitcoin some years ago are really doing well in terms of economy and others things in the countries. During the pandemic that took over some years in the world economy, made many countries to believed that bitcoin is not a disaster than to help every countries to eliminate errors from their transaction and to reduce unemployment from their environment, so that their citizens will be part of the wonders bitcoin is doing in the world economy.

[fillippone]

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their 22Q2 Mining Data.




They updated their data on the global Bitcoin Mining Consumption:


And the energy Mix supporting the network:




Click here for the Press release


Video of the Bitcoin Mining Council 22Q1 Briefing:

The Bitcoin Mining Council is a voluntary and open forum of Bitcoin miners committed to the network and its core principles. We promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

Presenters -
Michael Saylor: @saylor // hope.com
Taras Kulyk: @tmskulyk // @PowerValidus
Jason Les: @JasonLes_ // @RiotBlockchain
Peter Wall: @PeterGWall // @ArgoBlockchain
Fred Thiel: @fgthiel // @MarathonDH
Aydin Kilic: linkedin.com/in/aydinkilic/ // @HiveBlockchain
Ben Gagnon: @hashoveride // @Bitfarms_io

To see the slides from the presentation, visit the BMC website—https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/—or follow @saylor on Twitter.

0:00 - Introduction: Michael Saylor
4:06 - Data Aggregation/Explanation: Taras Kulyk
5:22 - Full BMC Q2 2022 Results: Micahel Saylor
18:03 - Power Situation in Texas: Peter Wall & Jason Les
29:23 - The Effects of Bitcoin Price and Network Efficiency: Fred Thiel
36:09 - Variance of Energy Economics in Bitcoin Mining: Aydin Kilic
46:00 - Analyzing and Debunking the FUD: Ben Gagnon
57:45 - Q & A

[LegendaryK]

Texas has been under warnings of rolling blackouts most of the year,
which coincides with China kicking the miners out last year.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23206795/bitcoin-crypto-mining-electricity-texas-grid-energy-bills-emissions

Higher electricity bills and even more carbon dioxide emissions could be on the way for Texans, despite crypto mining industry claims that it can spur the growth of affordable renewable energy.
The problem is the Bitcoin network’s enormous demand for electricity, which is spiking faster than the grid can reasonably keep up with.

Texas’ energy system is already bracing for the Bitcoin mining industry to keep growing at breakneck speed. The amount of electrical load crypto miners are expected to add to the Texas grid over just the next four years represents nearly a third of the grid’s current maximum capacity. Crypto mining is set to increase demand on the grid by a whopping 27 gigawatts by 2026

Let’s break down why 27 gigawatts is such a big deal.
The first thing to know is that a single megawatt (MW) can power about 200 homes during times of high demand in Texas.
A gigawatt is one thousand megawatts.

On July 12th, during the heatwave, the state hit a record.
More than 78 gigawatts of electricity were needed to meet peak demand, according to ERCOT.
The power grid in Texas can currently supply a maximum of about 92 gigawatts of electricity — and that’s only if every source of power generation is working perfectly, which usually isn’t the case.
That leaves limited breathing room for most of the state during periods of high demand.

All of that brings us back to the crypto boom in Texas.
 “There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto load that is working on interconnecting over the next four years,” the unnamed ERCOT spokesperson said.

That’s an “astronomically impossible” load to add to the grid in that short timeframe,
according to Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There’s no way we could do 27 gigawatts of crypto [in four years]
... that would put too much stress on the system too fast,” says Rhodes.
“We barely have the power plants to cover today,

For instance, in upstate New York — another major crypto mining hub — electricity bills have increased by about $8 monthly for individual customers and $12 monthly for small businesses, according to an analysis last year by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

“Large amounts of new demand are never helpful for your electricity bill,” says ​​Eric Hittinger, an associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology with a background in electricity system policy.
“The more crypto mining that comes into the state, the higher the residents should expect the electricity prices to become.”

Realize when the miners say the entire world generates this much energy,
that the locations these miners set up in , are only a small fraction of that total ,
which is why they overload their grids and cause their own banning.

What would be funny, if every utility regulated btc miners down to .15% of their actual total energy generation, then they would not threaten the grids.

BTC miner hash rate efficiently has grown every year since 2010, and the total energy consumed has never gone down.
The only way to make Proof of Waste energy efficient is to turn it off.  
 

[yhiaali3]

A great defense article about Bitcoin, it is undeniable that Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy and participates in polluting the environment but it is not the only one that does this, there are many industries that pollute the environment and the atmosphere more than Bitcoin but Bitcoin is deliberately targeted, the main reason is known to all Bitcoin is attacked Because it is a symbol of decentralization and privacy.
I especially liked the “Bitcoin to a battery” analogy, but is this really true? Is there really amounts of energy needed by those who consume it? All countries always complain about the need for energy and are looking for alternative or additional solutions, so I do not know how true this is?

[tadamichi]

Texas has been under warnings of rolling blackouts most of the year,
which coincides with China kicking the miners out last year.

It’s simple supply&demand as has been explained to you many times. Miners build energy infrastructure and when there’s high demand in the grid, it will be more profitable to give power to the grid than to mine Bitcoin. So miners just turn off their machines and help the power infrastructure out. Over 1000 megawatts can already be put into the texan grid like this dynamically, simply when needed. 1000 megawatts gives us 1.000.000 kW, this are 24.000.000 kWh in a day, the average texan household uses 39.2 kWh in a day¹. So it can power an additional 612.244 households when needed, doesn’t sound like something negative to me. We could actually need more of this. Even if the electricity usage is much higher in summer for the average household, there’s still a lot of people helped out trough Bitcoin mining infrastructure, even if it was just half of that in summer. No need to develop energy phobias and to become hysterical. Extension of energy infrastructure is actually what will help the grid out, and Bitcoins incentives is what makes this possible in an uncomplicated way.

[1] https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/blog/what-is-the-average-daily-kwh-usage-per-household-in-texas/

Bitcoin Miners Successfully Stabilize the Texas Grid

for a heat wave that is expected to push the power grid near its breaking point.

Texas has become one of the largest hubs by computing power in the world. Hosting companies like Riot Blockchain Inc, Argo Blockchain Plc, and Core Scientific Inc operate millions of energy-intensive computers specifically made to secure the Bitcoin network.

Over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining turned off their machines in response to ERCOTs energy conservation request. Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council responded to Bloomberg in an email. "This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use."

Bitcoin miners are expected to see a drop in profitability since the heat wave will send energy prices soaring. Miners are reportedly already struggling to repay debt and raise additional capital from the recent Bitcoin price decline.

Core Scientific CEO Mike Levitt said, “In troubled situations including the current Texas heat event, we have been curtailing power and will continue to curtail power as needed.” The company operates in six states, with less than 15% of its production located in Texas, he said.

Marathon Digital Holdings commented in a Tweet that Bitcoin miners are a non-rival buyer of energy that can modulate demand as needed which helps stabilize the grid.

And as you can see here, that’s exactly what’s happening.

[LegendaryK]

Texas has been under warnings of rolling blackouts most of the year,
which coincides with China kicking the miners out last year.

It’s simple supply&demand as has been explained to you many times. Miners build energy infrastructure and when there’s high demand in the grid, it will be more profitable to give power to the grid than to mine Bitcoin. So miners just turn off their machines and help the power infrastructure out. Over 1000 megawatts can already be put into the texan grid like this dynamically, simply when needed. 1000 megawatts gives us 1.000.000 kW, this are 24.000.000 kWh in a day, the average texan household uses 39.2 kWh in a day¹. So it can power an additional 612.244 households when needed, doesn’t sound like something negative to me. We could actually need more of this. Even if the electricity usage is much higher in summer for the average household, there’s still a lot of people helped out trough Bitcoin mining infrastructure, even if it was just half of that in summer. No need to develop energy phobias and to become hysterical. Extension of energy infrastructure is actually what will help the grid out, and Bitcoins incentives is what makes this possible in an uncomplicated way.

[1] https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/blog/what-is-the-average-daily-kwh-usage-per-household-in-texas/

Bitcoin Miners Successfully Stabilize the Texas Grid

for a heat wave that is expected to push the power grid near its breaking point.

Texas has become one of the largest hubs by computing power in the world. Hosting companies like Riot Blockchain Inc, Argo Blockchain Plc, and Core Scientific Inc operate millions of energy-intensive computers specifically made to secure the Bitcoin network.

Over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining turned off their machines in response to ERCOTs energy conservation request. Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council responded to Bloomberg in an email. "This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use."

Bitcoin miners are expected to see a drop in profitability since the heat wave will send energy prices soaring. Miners are reportedly already struggling to repay debt and raise additional capital from the recent Bitcoin price decline.

Core Scientific CEO Mike Levitt said, “In troubled situations including the current Texas heat event, we have been curtailing power and will continue to curtail power as needed.” The company operates in six states, with less than 15% of its production located in Texas, he said.

Marathon Digital Holdings commented in a Tweet that Bitcoin miners are a non-rival buyer of energy that can modulate demand as needed which helps stabilize the grid.

And as you can see here, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Do you have the ability to reason?
If so you realize the reason the miners stabilized the power grid was they turned off their miners,
which means the action of keeping them on, destabilized the power grid.

You are giving them credit for momentarily stopping their overuse of the grid power,
Which they have already restarted, draining the grid.

If your miners actually built power plants, as you claim, why are they needing to hook up to the grid.
If they did not suck the power from the grid, but remained isolated , they would be of little concern.

Like I said earlier.
The only way to make Proof of Waste energy efficient is to turn it off.
The mistake is letting the miners turn it back on.  

Funny how you totally missed the following:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23206795/bitcoin-crypto-mining-electricity-texas-grid-energy-bills-emissions

All of that brings us back to the crypto boom in Texas.
 “There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto load that is working on interconnecting over the next four years,” the unnamed ERCOT spokesperson said.

That’s an “astronomically impossible” load to add to the grid in that short timeframe,
according to Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There’s no way we could do 27 gigawatts of crypto [in four years]
... that would put too much stress on the system too fast,” says Rhodes.
“We barely have the power plants to cover today,

But you being a btc cultist, I can see why reality escapes you.  

What people need to get through their heads,
It is not PoW vs PoS,
PoS won years ago, as one can easily tell from the lack of new PoW coin designs and the numerous new PoS designs.

It is PoW vs People right to use affordable energy.
PoW vs Having an Air Conditioner
PoW vs Having electric Heat
PoW vs Having Lights
PoW vs Having Hot Water/Cook Food
PoW vs Playing Video Games
PoW vs Having Freezer/Refrigerator
PoW vs Basically anything else using electricity

Which is why PoW is a dead end, because eventually it prevents people from using energy for anything else.
How are the btc cultist going to spin it , when the BTC PoW miners cause a grid collapse,
and a multitude of people die in Texas because of pure PoW miner's greed.
It will be good if the PoW ban happens before that scenario happens, but odds are currently 50/50,
that Texans die needlessly for PoW miners greed.  

FYI:   https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-019-0199-y

In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population [1].

FYI2:  https://www.change.org/p/no-to-riot-bitcoin-mine-in-navarro-county

Navarro County/ Corsicana TX is looking to allow an industrial Bitcoin Mining operation to move here & use our resources.

We do NOT want this enormous burden on our already fragile infrastructure.

We do not want the increase in water and electricity bills.

We do not want the increase in environmental temperature in the immediate vicinity of the factory-that-produces-nothing.

We do not want the noise pollution that 500,000 computers running 24-7 will produce.

We do not want our county to facilitate in the illegal activity Bitcoin is used for, such as money laundering, child, human and sex trafficking, tax evasion and drug trafficking.

WE. DO. NOT. WANT. THIS. FACILITY. IN. NAVARRO. COUNTY.

This is NOT a done deal.

We have the power & authority to deny access to our municipal water supply.
We're in a drought and already experience brown-outs during the summer months.

This factory-that-produces-nothing will affect every single citizen of Navarro County and MUST BE STOPPED!

Like I said , it is PoW vs People.
Which is why the banning of PoW is a future guarantee.  

[Doan9269]

it is undeniable that Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy and participates in polluting the environment

Permit me to say that this is wrong, look at the statistics placed right before you from @fillippone, at least you should be able to read them clearly to understand what its coming out from there and what government and other source of pollutant contributed, another way is for yiu to check through previous discussions on this same subject matter and see more better, if they are saying it doesn't mean its actually it.

[tadamichi]

Do you have the ability to reason?
If so you realize the reason the miners stabilized the power grid was they turned off their miners,
which means the action of keeping them on, destabilized the power grid.

They’re on when there’s not enough stress on the grid, so it’s not destabilising. It’s simply using whats built to be used, when it’s not used as much by people. Load profiles vary by season, time of day etc. Peak demand usually occurs in the morning and evening, when people are at home. So you will have a lot of hours during the day/night where this electricity usage isn’t „destabilising“ anything, as energy demand is low during these hours. If miners actually increase demand during these time, they’re helping financing the entire infrastructure for everyone. Also many miners are adding more capacity, that can actually be used in the grid when needed. Regular people are also the highest paying customers, we see them get prioritised every time. Miners are not taking anything from anyone.

You are giving them credit for momentarily stopping their overuse of the grid power,
Which they have already restarted, draining the grid.

If your miners actually built power plants, as you claim, why are they needing to hook up to the grid.
If they did not suck the power from the grid, but remained isolated , they would be of little concern.

They probably need to hook up to the grid, because renewables don’t work 24/7 and so they can give energy to the grid when needed. But if they only use energy during non-peak hours it’s no problem for the grid. It’s already handled trough price, because Bitcoin mining won’t be profitable when people need this energy, so we don’t see them using the energy people need. Miners that completely rely on the grid will probably go bankrupt sooner or later, as they don’t have additional income trough the grid and won’t be able to compete in the future, when lower energy prices are needed for mining to stay profitable. This is all already handled trough Bitcoins incentives.

Like I said earlier.
The only way to make Proof of Waste energy efficient is to turn it off.
The mistake is letting the miners turn it back on.  

Nah man if we wanna fix this energy mess we should acknowledge truth. Mining load is flexible, it can be turnt back on when this energy isn’t needed otherwise. And this works perfectly in a decentralised worldwide network.

Funny how you totally missed the following:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23206795/bitcoin-crypto-mining-electricity-texas-grid-energy-bills-emissions

All of that brings us back to the crypto boom in Texas.
 “There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto load that is working on interconnecting over the next four years,” the unnamed ERCOT spokesperson said.

That’s an “astronomically impossible” load to add to the grid in that short timeframe,
according to Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There’s no way we could do 27 gigawatts of crypto [in four years]
... that would put too much stress on the system too fast,” says Rhodes.
“We barely have the power plants to cover today,

But you being a btc cultist, I can see why reality escapes you.  

It’s simple, if the grid can’t handle it they simply won’t get the electricity. So miners actually need to increase the capacity to not go bankrupt with that much competition. Relying solely on the grid won’t work for them, so relax. People will always be prioritised, not miners.

What people need to get through their heads,
It is not PoW vs PoS,
PoS won years ago, as one can easily tell from the lack of new PoW coin designs and the numerous new PoS designs.

It is PoW vs People right to use affordable energy.
PoW vs Having an Air Conditioner
PoW vs Having electric Heat
PoW vs Having Lights
PoW vs Having Hot Water/Cook Food
PoW vs Playing Video Games
PoW vs Having Freezer/Refrigerator
PoW vs Basically anything else using electricity

Which is why PoW is a dead end, because eventually it prevents people from using energy for anything else.
How are the btc cultist going to spin it , when the BTC PoW miners cause a grid collapse,
and a multitude of people die in Texas because of pure PoW miner's greed.
It will be good if the PoW ban happens before that scenario happens, but odds are currently 50/50,
that Texans die needlessly for PoW miners greed.  

Thanks for the laughs, did you consider working for current governments? You might be a good fit. If this doesn’t work out, i can enlist you in some psychological studies, as this special case deserves some serious studying.

FYI:   https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-019-0199-y

In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 0% of the American population [1].

I feel bad for the US, i thought propaganda was already bad where im at.

FYI2:  https://www.change.org/p/no-to-riot-bitcoin-mine-in-navarro-county

Navarro County/ Corsicana TX is looking to allow an industrial Bitcoin Mining operation to move here & use our resources.

We do NOT want this enormous burden on our already fragile infrastructure.

We do not want the increase in water and electricity bills.

We do not want the increase in environmental temperature in the immediate vicinity of the factory-that-produces-nothing.

We do not want the noise pollution that 500,000 computers running 24-7 will produce.

We do not want our county to facilitate in the illegal activity Bitcoin is used for, such as money laundering, child, human and sex trafficking, tax evasion and drug trafficking.

WE. DO. NOT. WANT. THIS. FACILITY. IN. NAVARRO. COUNTY.

This is NOT a done deal.

We have the power & authority to deny access to our municipal water supply.
We're in a drought and already experience brown-outs during the summer months.

This factory-that-produces-nothing will affect every single citizen of Navarro County and MUST BE STOPPED!

A cringe mob of hysterical people that doesn’t understand what they’re shouting about, what should someone take from this? It only reflects bad on them. Makes you question how many people in the population can actually use their brain.

[LegendaryK]

@tadamichi,

Maybe you should move to Texas, you know to show your support of PoW miners.
Since you want to pretend like you know more than the people living there.

You don't need electricity , so you should enjoy 120 degrees real feel temps with no AC because of rolling blackouts.  

At the very least you should go to one of their town hall meetings,
to let them know how stupid they are for complaining about rolling blackouts and energy bills that doubled.
Go ahead , let them know that it is all fud and how smart you think you are.  

Oh , and why did China Ban BTC PoW mining again?
According to you , it can't be energy waste so what was it?  


Want to pretend BTC miners did not cause energy problems in Kazakhstan.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/kazakhstan-crypto-mining-clampdown-uncovers-113333906.html

Since 2021, Central Asian Electric Power Corp. has reportedly faced electricity shortages.
The government attributed some of the shortages to the arrival of crypto miners following China’s blanket ban on crypto mining.

The government may not have anticipated the chairman of Central Asian Electric Power Corp. to be involved, particularly when considering the current energy crisis.

This month’s clampdown follows failed attempts to drive away miners by other means.

In February, the Kazakhstan government considered imposing a 500% tax on Bitcoin miners.
The government plan was to target unregistered miners known as “Gray Miners.”

February’s threat followed a reported power outage that left southern Kazakhstan in a blackout.

Funny , how everywhere BTC miners start mining has energy blackouts.
Must really just be bad luck.
or
dare we say the miners are causing the problems.

Ask your Unicorn and see what he thinks, he has to be smarter than you tadamichi.     

[tadamichi]

@tadamichi,

Maybe you should move to Texas, you know to show your support of PoW miners.
Since you want to pretend like you know more than the people living there.

You don't need electricity , so you should enjoy 120 degrees real feel temps with no AC because of rolling blackouts.  

I should, i love hot weather. And i stayed in this kind of weather without AC many times. Im not saying others should, so maybe show your politicians that you actually understand these problems, so they can’t blame it on others easily and keep fooling you.

At the very least you should go to one of their town hall meetings,
to let them know how stupid they are for complaining about rolling blackouts and energy bills that doubled.
Go ahead , let them know that it is all fud and how smart you think you are.  

There’s no Bitcoin mining around here and yet we have the same problems. Maybe because energy prices have nothing to do with Bitcoin and availability of electricity neither? Where i live we probably already paid 3x as much as texans and it’s still rising, so ik better what it’s like. Just don’t confuse something other people are responsible for with Bitcoin, just because it sounds like an easy solution. So stop confusing the two or prove it.

Oh , and why did China Ban BTC PoW mining again?
According to you , it can't be energy waste so what was it?  

A communist party that sees their monetary monopoly threatened cares about the environment first, or maybe it could be something else? If you look at their track record you must be naive to think that any of their decisions have any of these considerations.

It secures the network so it’s not wasted, it extends energy infrastructure so it’s not wasted, it’s what allows money to be decentralized so it’s not wasted, it’s a buyer for electricity 24/7 which is needed so it’s not wasted, it triggers PoS shills, politicians and other cringe people so it couldn’t be more worth it.

Want to pretend BTC miners did not cause energy problems in Kazakhstan.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/kazakhstan-crypto-mining-clampdown-uncovers-113333906.html

Since 2021, Central Asian Electric Power Corp. has reportedly faced electricity shortages.
The government attributed some of the shortages to the arrival of crypto miners following China’s blanket ban on crypto mining.

The government may not have anticipated the chairman of Central Asian Electric Power Corp. to be involved, particularly when considering the current energy crisis.

This month’s clampdown follows failed attempts to drive away miners by other means.

In February, the Kazakhstan government considered imposing a 500% tax on Bitcoin miners.
The government plan was to target unregistered miners known as “Gray Miners.”

February’s threat followed a reported power outage that left southern Kazakhstan in a blackout.

Lazy to read?

February’s threat followed a reported power outage that left southern Kazakhstan in a blackout. It is worth noting that the blackouts are not reportedly a result of miners but due to the archaic Soviet-era power infrastructure.

So let’s conclude, let me just build the most outdated grid that can’t even serve the demand of the market and instead of using this investment opportunity to better things, I’ll just use this topic politically and blame people that are not responsible for the grid that it doesn’t work? So let’s not actually better things and use the money i taxed people to do exactly this, but just find a scapegoat that distracts from actual failures. Sounds like they know what they’re doing and serving the people.

[ABCbits]

Video of the Bitcoin Mining Council 22Q1 Briefing:

The video title of link you shared is "Bitcoin Mining Council Q4 2021 Briefing", the correct link for 22Q1 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uotDxbKJmlo. Their video also state the slides available on their website, but i couldn't find any relevant page/file. Fortunately @saylor on Twitter share the link, so here's the direct link for those who want to see 22Q2 slides https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022.07.19-BMC-Presentation-Q2-22-Presentation.pdf.

[fillippone]

Video of the Bitcoin Mining Council 22Q1 Briefing:

The video title of link you shared is "Bitcoin Mining Council Q4 2021 Briefing", the correct link for 22Q1 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uotDxbKJmlo.

Thanks, I fixed the bad link.

Their video also state the slides available on their website, but i couldn't find any relevant page/file.

You should be able to access the full slides deck clicking any of the slides I posted here, as the link is the same.

It is actually in the website: go to their website, scroll to “ BMC Press Releases and Resources” and then click on “Global Bitcoin Mining Data Review - Q2 2022”

[franky1]

gotta love the Q2 report.. pretending its over 250TW usage
https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022.07.19-BMC-Presentation-Q2-22-Presentation.pdf

253 TWh ENERGY CONSUMED BY BITCOIN MINING ON THE WORLD'S ELECTRIC GRID<sup>2

2</sup>BMC ESTIMATED BITCOIN MINING ENERGY USE (June 30, 2022).

the report says it is sourcing its data from the BMC "estimates"
gotta love a BMC report using itself as its source.....

however.. the BMC "estimates" of said source page.. is saying
https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-mix-increased-to-59-5-sustainable-in-q2-2022/

Additionally, year-on-year it is estimated that the global Bitcoin Network’s technological efficiency grew by 46%, from 14.4 EH per gigawatt (GW) in Q2 2021 to 21.1 EH per GW in Q2 2022.

well we know the hashrate for the YEAR was below 210EH average.. but lets extreme the numbers purely for easy math and pretend the year was actually 210EH average all year, just for giggles

210EH all year would be= 10GW an hour
=240 GW a day = 87.6TW a year

yep at most extreme. 87.6TW a year.. not 253

..
heck.. lets run some more math..
at 52.5k blocks per year 328125btc a year
and lets say a 4cent per kw electric
is about $10678.86 in just electric per btc at the giggly extreme rate i mathed

and wait for it.. drum roll....  $30841.90 per BTC at the BMC Q2 reports usage of 253TW .. just for electricity cost

so yea.. their math is wrong on MANY levels.
because if their math was right. and you then add in the hardware cost of mining(asic equipment cost ontop)
it means that the world is all mining at a loss even if they all everywhere mined for 4cents/kw..

..
further math.
so the source of bmc source says its doing 21.1eh per 1GW
so lets work out how they found that 'efficiency'

21.1EH for 1GW
=21,100,000thash for 1,000,000kw
=21,100thash for 1000kw
=21.1thash for 1kw
=95th for 4.5kw

again looks like they are using bad efficiency for 2022
after all we have 140th for 3.01kw in 2022
after all we have 110th for 3.25kw in 2021
after all we have 95th for 3.25kw in 2020
after all we have 56Th for 2.52kw (s17 in apr2019)
after all we have 28Th for 1.59kw (s15 in dec2018)

seems they are average 'estimating' the efficiency that is roughly the s17 from april 2019 batch/time period, but using that as the 2022 efficiency number

[fillippone]

Thanks for the info, i made wrong assumed it's only sorted by latest date. But actually they short by category where it's sorted by category (Press Release followed by Resource), then sub-sorted by latest date.

Indeed, took me a while to realise that.
Fillippone only has an opposable thumb.

Just kidding: it's not that clients are to be blamed for bad UX.

[Stella Mese]

in my opinion bitcoin will not make the environment a disaster, on the contrary bitcoin will be a boon to everyone who needs bitcoin. because so many in this world are helped by bitcoin. including myself. moreover, the world economy is currently unstable or down. so the existence of bitcoin helps a lot for those who are interested in investing in bitcoin. especially now that there are unemployment everywhere, and I see finally because they are no longer working in companies because the world economy is down, and by being forced to leave the company, many of them finally choose to invest in bitcoin. long term or short term investment. and many of them are now successful. and when it comes to electricity, in my opinion, don't blame bitcoin too much. because those who use electricity are a lot and those who use electricity for bitcoin are only a small part of the number of electricity users in the world.

[Bushdark]

Sometimes I just close my eyes and open it to see if my Bitcoin is still there...The attack is too much and I think these people need to leave us alone and allow us enjoy what we are holding. I keep asking myself if it is a crime for us to love what others hate? It is very clear that the government of some regions do not want to see us smile again or keep holding our Bitcoin.

I can see so many agitations and attack against Bitcoin being a bad substance to our ecosystem when their are lots of dangerous gases being generated by industries, motor cars and others that had been causing climate change for ages.
I like to seat down and watch those Bitcoin antagonists...they are really missing from buying the dip 😂

[Daltonik]

At a time when the pressure on bitcoin from the point of view of energy use for its extraction is growing, the Ethereum network has switched to a PoS algorithm and in support of bitcoin as a hard currency, Michael Saylor criticized opponents of bitcoin hiding behind, according to him, misinformation about the harmful impact on the environment of the energy used for bitcoin mining. Posting seven of his "high-level thoughts” about BTC mining and its impact on the environment.

https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1570090411246370816



In short:

1.Bitcoin Energy Utilization: The energy powering the Bitcoin network is the least valuable, cheapest energy reserve left after 99.85% of the world's energy is allocated for other purposes.
2.Bitcoin vs. Other Industries: Energy efficiency of mining ~ 59.5% of energy comes from sustainable sources, and energy efficiency increased by 46% year-on-year.
3.Bitcoin Value Creation & Energy Intensity: Bitcoin has the lowest energy consumption since the cost of production (BTC) is 100 times higher than the cost of energy consumed.
4.Bitcoin vs. Other Cryptos: Comparison of the PoS network with Bitcoin.it doesn't make sense because creating a digital product without an issuer that serves as “digital gold” is an innovation.
5.Bitcoin & Carbon Emissions: 99.92% of the world's carbon emissions are related to industrial energy use, and are not related to bitcoin mining.
6.Bitcoin & Environmental Benefits: Rather, bitcoin is very useful for the environment, since it can be used to monetize natural gas or methane energy sources.
7.Bitcoin & Global Energy: Bitcoin is an egalitarian financial asset offering financial accessibility to everyone, and Bitcoin mining is an egalitarian technology industry offering commercial accessibility to anyone.

More details can be found here: https://www.michael.com/en/resources/bitcoin-mining-and-the-environment

[zander1983]

I think Saylor leaves out the strongest argument for Bitcoin and its benefits to the environment. Fiat money is a claim on energy and materials. These claims are increasing exponentially (they must because of the embedded growth obligations of the modern economy). However, energy and materials are not increasing exponentially, and their growth is actually decreasing (the energy crisis started a decade ago).

Human progress is currently measured in GDP - the amount of stuff we make. GDP and energy are tied 1-1 - GDP can only go up when energy goes up. The fiat claims on energy and materials drive up the incentive to create "stuff", no matter how trivial, because thats currently how human progress is measured, exponentially increasing the cost to the environment (every product starts with a fire burning fossil fuels somewhere).

As the delta between these claims and the underlying physical reality increases further and further, driving more pollution, a reset is inevitable (and has begun). Bitcoin is the ideal candidate as the landing spot for that reset. A bitcoin based claim on energy and materials is much closer to the underlying physical reality of our biosphere, since these claims cannot be exponential(limited amount of bitcoin). We're headed towards the collapse of embedded growth obligation, and a cleaner future based on bitcoin, with much more considered product development, a reduction in the amount of nonsense trinkets produced, and a cleaner environment.

[LegendaryK]

While Bitcoin PoW continues to be an insanely stupid waste of energy resources.

Ethereum has evolved leaving behind the dead-end technology know as Proof of work/Waste.

https://decrypt.co/109848/ethereum-energy-carbon-footprint-down-99-percent-merge

Ethereum’s merge, which transitioned to an eco-friendly consensus model, was successfully completed overnight.
A report from the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute says that
the network has cut its energy usage and carbon footprint by approximately 99.99% each.

When Btc is banned for refusing to evolve, BTC PoW supporters have no one to blame but themselves.
https://flipboard.com/topic/pollution/limit-or-eliminate-biden-executive-order-triggers-shock-u-s-bitcoin-ban-propos/a-lp2GunLlQ8i1iscosrxElQ%3Aa%3A23460606-dd306aba00%2Fforbes.com

‘Limit Or Eliminate’—Biden Executive Order Triggers Shock U.S. Bitcoin Ban Proposal

BTC, using the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism, could be banned in the U.S. under a proposal made by the White House Office of Science and Technology.

[NotATether]

While Bitcoin PoW continues to be an insanely stupid waste of energy resources.

Ethereum has evolved leaving behind the dead-end technology know as Proof of work/Waste.

Once again you arrive with your antics of proof of work being an energy monster that on the verge of being banned, when even Ethereum's own (former) miners disagree with you.

The truth is, banning Proof of Work will immediately kill the following cryptocurrencies:

- Bitcoin
- Litecoin
- Dogecoin
- Monero
- Dash
- Zcash
- The dozens of cyptocurrencies listed here

Do you really think all these guys are going to stand idly or rush to cripple their networks with the market-manipulation-capable PoS while Congress hurriedly wants to put a bullet through their chests?

You'd have to be looney to believe that governmental attempts to kill decentalized mining are going to succeed, since by its very nature it operates worldwide. Better start wearing your Elmer Fudd hunting cap now...

Ethereum chose to shoot itself in the foot. They have freedom to do that if they want.

[LegendaryK]

While Bitcoin PoW continues to be an insanely stupid waste of energy resources.

Ethereum has evolved leaving behind the dead-end technology know as Proof of work/Waste.

The truth is, banning Proof of Work will immediately kill the following cryptocurrencies:

- Bitcoin - DOA
- Litecoin- DOA Considering how ltc price has sucked, it will probably die before it is banned.  

- Dogecoin -Will Live :In the process of converting to Proof of Stake
https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/crypto/heres-why-dogecoin-is-migrating-to-proof-of-stake-consensus-mechanism-7756973/

Here’s why Dogecoin is migrating to Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism
Buterin confirmed that he was involved in this project, saying that virtually all cryptocurrencies will follow the same steps.  

US has already taken care of privacy coins with FATF.
And the exchanges that want US investment dumped privacy coins already.
https://cryptoslate.com/crypto-money-laundering-rules-to-be-in-place-by-june-says-fatf/
https://cryptoslate.com/bittrex-us-to-remove-the-markets-for-top-privacy-coins-including-monero-zcash-and-dash/

I know you are not a US citizen, so I will explain.
In the US , the sitting President can issue a little thing called executive order.
https://www.phe.gov/s3/law/Pages/ExecOrders.aspx

Executive Orders state mandatory requirements for the Executive Branch, and have the effect of law.
They are issued in relation to a law passed by Congress or based on powers granted to the President in the Constitution

One of the responsibilities of a sitting US president is to Protect the American People and American Infrastructure.
The Loss of a single US power grid caused by PoW mining crashing any of the grids,
could potentially kill millions upon millions of Americans.
Which is why not banning PoW would be dereliction of Presidential responsibility.
https://flipboard.com/topic/pollution/limit-or-eliminate-biden-executive-order-triggers-shock-u-s-bitcoin-ban-propos/a-lp2GunLlQ8i1iscosrxElQ%3Aa%3A23460606-dd306aba00%2Fforbes.com
The White House Office of Science and Technology is recommending to the US President that PoW be Eliminated from the US.
And 1 executive order and btc PoW mining in the US is dead overnight.

Even if the dangers to the power grids were not real, which the danger of grid collapse is real,
the facts that 1 man has the power with a pen and piece of paper to utterly destroy btc , is the largest security risk to btc,
and btc PoW supporters want to hide their heads in the sand and pretend it can't happen,
Not only is PoW going to be banned , the ban is coming sooner than any of us expect.
 

[BlackHatCoiner]

While Bitcoin PoW continues to be an insanely stupid waste of energy resources.

Proof-of-Work is the, yet, unique solution to Byzantine generals' problem. If you, a whining livable little bullshit, don't value this, it doesn't mean others don't. You're the only person who doesn't recognize the disadvantages of Proof-of-Stake, while they have been repeatedly told to you. I'm not going to repeat any; that'd be an actual waste of energy. Stop misinforming newbies. Dialogue isn't for you, we all know it already.

Alright. Back to ignore.

[LegendaryK]

Alright. Back to ignoring reality.

Once PoW mining is banned , coming soon.
BlackHatCoiner will do exactly what he doing now, pretending it did not happen.

But for people that live in this reality,  
well any coin unable to transact is worth zero.
In BTC and Game of Thrones, being a hodler does not end well.  

Let me repeat this, since some people can't grasp it's meaning.
The White House Office of Science and Technology is recommending to the US President that PoW be Eliminated from the US.
And 1 executive order and btc PoW mining in the US is dead overnight.
*That means your btc becomes worthless, literally overnight with just the stroke of a pen.*

FYI: What does Vitalik Buterin think about Proof of Stake?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/pos-will-make-ethereum-more-secure-than-bitcoin-says-vitalik-buterin

PoS Will Make Ethereum More Secure Than Bitcoin, Says Vitalik Buterin

What does Charles Hoskinson think about Proof of Stake?
https://forkast.news/video-audio/iohk-charles-hoskinson-proof-of-stake-better-than-proof-of-work/

IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson says proof of stake is much better than proof of work

What does White House Office of Science and Technology think about Proof of Stake?
https://blockworks.co/white-house-criticizes-proof-of-work-crypto-mining/

According to the authors, the estimated global electricity usage of cryptoasset mining as of August 2022 exceeds the annual electricity usage of countries including Argentina and Australia, sitting roughly between 120 billion and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year.

High energy consumption will likely lead to disastrous consequences for daily Americans, the White House says, not only exacerbating “climate-driven weather extremes,” but also threatening the stability of electricity grids as it could “push up power prices for local consumers.”

Specifically, the report criticizes the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism — which currently represents more than 60% of the total cryptoasset market capitalization, stating that “given the electricity usage estimates, most discussions about crypto-asset electricity usage has focused on PoW applications, particularly Bitcoin.”

It reasons that responsible development of digital assets must include solutions to drastically reduce its energy consumption and suggests the “less energy-intensive consensus mechanism, called Proof of Stake (PoS), estimated to consume up to 0.28 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 2021, less than 0.001% of global electricity usage,” could be a viable alternative. 

“There have been growing calls for PoW blockchains to adopt less energy-intensive consensus mechanisms,” the report said. “The most prominent reaction has been Ethereum’s promised launch of “Ethereum 2.0,” which uses a PoS consensus mechanism.”

[cryptosize]

They cannot ban PoW, it's impossible. You cannot ban TCP/IP.

But I guess they can discourage it with crazy high energy prices (€1/kWh).

That's why Bitcoin can shift to other sources of energy:

https://finbold.com/bitcoin-projected-to-become-first-monetary-system-to-hit-net-zero-emissions-by-2024/

Unless the state confiscates private solar panels/wind turbines for the "common good" due to (artificial) "shortage/crisis" of energy? That would be like communism.

[LegendaryK]

They cannot ban PoW, it's impossible. You cannot ban TCP/IP.

But I guess they can discourage it with crazy high energy prices (€1/kWh).

That's why Bitcoin can shift to other sources of energy:

https://finbold.com/bitcoin-projected-to-become-first-monetary-system-to-hit-net-zero-emissions-by-2024/

Unless the state confiscates private solar panels/wind turbines for the "common good" due to (artificial) "shortage/crisis" of energy? That would be like communism.

No one has to ban TCP/IP,  however the 15 Tier 1 companies that control the internet backbone, would block anyone that the world government requested.
US president signs executive order banning PoW, miners are given 30 days to leave the US,
at the end of 30 days, the guys sitting at the power company turn off the power thru the smart meter system to the ASIC warehouses.
PoW in the US is now dead.
China already banned PoW mining , Europe can't keep the lights on now, so their PoW ban is coming.
Literally no other country in the world can supply enough power , so PoW coins will die, as the US bans PoW.

If PoW could survive off of renewables, no one would care, but PoW draws more power 24x7, than any renewable can offer.
So renewables that are not even keeping the normal grid operational, can't keep PoW mining operational.
If renewables were worth a damn,
then the German people would not have to worry about freezing to death this winter because Russia natural gas is not getting to them.

And if you think , you can run an ASIC in your home to keep the network running,
the network difficulty has to be matched, which requires near the same amount of power, your transformer to your house will fry and it still won't be enough to prevent a death spiral , so no new transactions for ~9 months, while the difficulty drops.
And after the 9 months , anyone with access to industrial power can doublespend on the network daily, and their is nothing you can do to stop it.
However exchanges will all drop btc within the 1st 2 weeks of no transactions.

Which if you read the above and understand it, you would realize the biggest threat to btc survival is Proof of Waste.


So any btc supporters that want btc to live,
better start pushing those lazy btc developers to evolve to a New system that does not waste the resources of entire countries ,
otherwise your btc investment will be as dead as Proof of Waste mining.

[cryptosize]

I have a different way of thinking. I don't believe there's a shortage of energy.

BTC will lead us to this eventually. The entire humanity will be grateful to PoW proponents.

[LegendaryK]

I have a different way of thinking. I don't believe there's a shortage of energy.

BTC will lead us to this eventually. The entire humanity will be grateful to PoW proponents.

Dyson_sphere would work,

do you have one?                  Nope!
can we currently build one?    Nope!

Can we ban PoW mining?       Yep!

Guess which option is going to happen.  


FYI:
While a theoretical Dyson_sphere would solve all of our energy needs,
PoW shortage would switch from energy to metals needed to build a never ending supply of ASICS,
meaning their would be no metals left for the people to use. So PoW would still be banned for wasting a different resource.  
*This is why Proof of Waste is a dead tech, it wants to use everything and leave nothing for anyone else.*

[cryptosize]

"will lead us to this eventually"

Guess you have some reading comprehension issues...

I do NOT support cutting down on electricity usage, because it's akin to reducing the population:



Humanity needs higher amounts of energy to progress further. I support progress, not regression back to the Medieval Ages.

I do not support depopulation, but I guess it might happen thanks to useful idiots biting the "muh ecology/save the planet" bait.

I have an abundance mindset when it comes to energy, while you have a scarcity mindset.

The only scarce thing here is the BTC supply cap, definitely not energy!

[cryptosize]

FYI:
While a theoretical Dyson_sphere would solve all of our energy needs,
PoW shortage would switch from energy to metals needed to build a never ending supply of ASICS,
meaning their would be no metals left for the people to use. So PoW would still be banned for wasting a different resource. 
*This is why Proof of Waste is a dead tech, it wants to use everything and leave nothing for anyone else.*

Not really. The universe is abundant with metals, including Gold:

https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/rare-psyche-asteroid-worth-way-more-than-the-global-economy-1234577976/

Your problem is called "scarcity mindset", but you can always fix it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2020/07/12/5-ways-to-go-from-a-scarcity-to-abundance-mindset/

[cryptosize]

To me, this is another clear example of the huge historical error China made exiting from the mining industry a while ago, and from the whole bitcoin industry recently (apparently)

Calling themselves out of an industry with so many "branches" in such different sectors, and anyway all at the cutting edge of technology, is something that no country can afford. They are leaving huge advantages to the US in this field of development.

China has made a huge blunder before:

https://twitter.com/Duncan19Sard1/status/1458160064347328516

It's ther loss.

[cryptosize]

Humanity needs higher amounts of energy to progress further. I support progress, not regression back to the Medieval Ages.

I do not support depopulation, but I guess it might happen thanks to useful idiots biting the "muh ecology/save the planet" bait.

I have an abundance mindset when it comes to energy, while you have a scarcity mindset.

The only scarce thing here is the BTC supply cap, definitely not energy!

Talking to you , is like talking to a child, you have not yet developed the ability to reason.

Depopulation is already happening due to the majority of the human race being past child bearing age.

You have a fantasy mindset of a child,
if you are unable to comprehend the numerous articles showing their is an energy supply problem currently through out the world.
Well , it will be all the rougher for you once you finally grow up.

Good Luck , you're going to need it.  

FYI:
Be sure and think about abundance, when your lights go out this winter from the rolling blackouts. 

You were in your dad's testicles when I was programming computers, kiddo.

You're the useful idiot I was talking about... endorsing an artificial energy crisis.

We could have had cheap nuclear energy by now, but no, useful "green" idiots like you have to protest.

Why? Because the elites want to slow down human population growth (see the chart above). More energy = more population growth. Facts are facts.

Bye kiddo!

[LegendaryK]

Re-posting this:

Alright. Back to ignoring reality.

Once PoW mining is banned , coming soon.
BlackHatCoiner will do exactly what he doing now, pretending it did not happen.

But for people that live in this reality,  
well any coin unable to transact is worth zero.
In BTC and Game of Thrones, being a hodler does not end well.  

Let me repeat this, since some people can't grasp it's meaning.
The White House Office of Science and Technology is recommending to the US President that PoW be Eliminated from the US.
And 1 executive order and btc PoW mining in the US is dead overnight.
*That means your btc becomes worthless, literally overnight with just the stroke of a pen.*

FYI: What does Vitalik Buterin think about Proof of Stake?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/pos-will-make-ethereum-more-secure-than-bitcoin-says-vitalik-buterin

PoS Will Make Ethereum More Secure Than Bitcoin, Says Vitalik Buterin

What does Charles Hoskinson think about Proof of Stake?
https://forkast.news/video-audio/iohk-charles-hoskinson-proof-of-stake-better-than-proof-of-work/

IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson says proof of stake is much better than proof of work

What does White House Office of Science and Technology think about Proof of Stake?
https://blockworks.co/white-house-criticizes-proof-of-work-crypto-mining/

According to the authors, the estimated global electricity usage of cryptoasset mining as of August 2022 exceeds the annual electricity usage of countries including Argentina and Australia, sitting roughly between 120 billion and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year.

High energy consumption will likely lead to disastrous consequences for daily Americans, the White House says, not only exacerbating “climate-driven weather extremes,” but also threatening the stability of electricity grids as it could “push up power prices for local consumers.”

Specifically, the report criticizes the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism — which currently represents more than 60% of the total cryptoasset market capitalization, stating that “given the electricity usage estimates, most discussions about crypto-asset electricity usage has focused on PoW applications, particularly Bitcoin.”

It reasons that responsible development of digital assets must include solutions to drastically reduce its energy consumption and suggests the “less energy-intensive consensus mechanism, called Proof of Stake (PoS), estimated to consume up to 0.28 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 2021, less than 0.001% of global electricity usage,” could be a viable alternative. 

“There have been growing calls for PoW blockchains to adopt less energy-intensive consensus mechanisms,” the report said. “The most prominent reaction has been Ethereum’s promised launch of “Ethereum 2.0,” which uses a PoS consensus mechanism.”

[shogun47]

While Bitcoin PoW continues to be an insanely stupid waste of energy resources.

Ethereum has evolved leaving behind the dead-end technology know as Proof of work/Waste.

Once again you arrive with your antics of proof of work being an energy monster that on the verge of being banned, when even Ethereum's own (former) miners disagree with you.

The truth is, banning Proof of Work will immediately kill the following cryptocurrencies:

- Bitcoin
- Litecoin
- Dogecoin
- Monero
- Dash
- Zcash
- The dozens of cyptocurrencies listed here

Do you really think all these guys are going to stand idly or rush to cripple their networks with the market-manipulation-capable PoS while Congress hurriedly wants to put a bullet through their chests?

You'd have to be looney to believe that governmental attempts to kill decentalized mining are going to succeed, since by its very nature it operates worldwide. Better start wearing your Elmer Fudd hunting cap now...

Ethereum chose to shoot itself in the foot. They have freedom to do that if they want.

This is certainly correct considering all the recent news that came especially from the US. They are way more active and up to date with crypto things these days and this Cointelegraph article among several others perfectly underpins what you have just said.

Exactly because the US government is making progress in all things crypto, they've decided against a PoW ban I think just recently. What they do want though is that it needs to be frequently checked whether PoW stays in line with the carbon footprint goals. Those are pretty soft words, almost sounds like they actively advocate mining. What they do ask for in a more compelling way these days is for mining facilities to successively invest more resources into renewable energies. That wording and tone is as far away from a ban as it can get. It does clearly sound like the intention to cooperate rather than putting PoW out of business.

The Cointelegraph article has a nice quote:

“We didn’t ban it at the beginning because we didn’t realize it was important, and we didn’t ban it now because there’s too much money and power behind it.”

That is exactly how everything enfolded. Many smart people in congress are invested themselves for sure.

Will there always be voices threatening that there is a ban around the corner? Of course! It is much more likely that AML regulations are going to be stricter and stricter over time and make things more complicated for people who value privacy. But can it get any worse than the NSA scandal?

[LegendaryK]

Exactly because the US government is making progress in all things crypto, they've decided against a PoW ban I think just recently.

Nope,
recommendations to the US President from the White House Office of Science and Technology is that PoW mining be banned.

White House Office of Science and Technology is in favor of Proof of Stake and critical of Proof of Work/waste:
https://blockworks.co/white-house-criticizes-proof-of-work-crypto-mining/

According to the authors, the estimated global electricity usage of cryptoasset mining as of August 2022 exceeds the annual electricity usage of countries including Argentina and Australia, sitting roughly between 120 billion and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year.

High energy consumption will likely lead to disastrous consequences for daily Americans, the White House says, not only exacerbating “climate-driven weather extremes,” but also threatening the stability of electricity grids as it could “push up power prices for local consumers.”

Specifically, the report criticizes the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism — which currently represents more than 60% of the total cryptoasset market capitalization, stating that “given the electricity usage estimates, most discussions about crypto-asset electricity usage has focused on PoW applications, particularly Bitcoin.”

It reasons that responsible development of digital assets must include solutions to drastically reduce its energy consumption and suggests the “less energy-intensive consensus mechanism, called Proof of Stake (PoS), estimated to consume up to 0.28 billion kilowatt-hours per year in 2021, less than 0.001% of global electricity usage,” could be a viable alternative.  

“There have been growing calls for PoW blockchains to adopt less energy-intensive consensus mechanisms,” the report said.
“The most prominent reaction has been Ethereum’s promised launch of “Ethereum 2.0,” which uses a PoS consensus mechanism.”

[philipma1957]

THE us is attacking all of crypto at the moment via Usa Savings bonds in particular the I bond.

As I type the I bond pays 9.62% for the first six moneys you purchased it.

Eth a wild card meaning not pegged to usd pays 3-4% staked

Most stable coins pegged to the USD pay 3-8%

there are 330 million us citizens that can buy 10000 in bonds each and every year.

so 3.3 trillion a year can be purchased

the entire crypto can in under 1.5 billion.

So basically all coins pos = piece of shit or pow


btw pow in the worst case scenario would help to melt all the ice and kill off 2-3 billion people.

Which is why Trump was looking to buy Greenland.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cosmetics-billionaire-convinced-trump-u-121218552.html?


banning pow is not happening.

Not when the US is clearly attacking pos and stable coins with I bonds.

come back on Oct 2 when new I bond rates are given  they will be close to 9% and all of crypto especially stable coins and ETH will be attacked for 6 more months.

[LegendaryK]

THE us is attacking all of crypto at the moment via Usa Savings bonds in particular the I bond.

As I type the I bond pays 9.62% for the first six moneys you purchased it.

Eth a wild card meaning not pegged to usd pays 3-4% staked

Most stable coins pegged to the USD pay 3-8%

Not when the US is clearly attacking pos and stable coins with I bonds.

come back on Oct 2 when new I bond rates are given  they will be close to 9% and all of crypto especially stable coins and ETH will be attacked for 6 more months.

I can accept the US is offering a higher interest rate,
to gain an influx into the US $.

But as you said,
IBOND over 9%,

BTC PoW coins are zero % for their holders.

And when rising energy costs, miners are begging for venture capital just to maintain PoW mining.
Putting the entire network at risk, however a PoW ban is coming, it is a foregone conclusion to all of these rolling blackouts in the US,
energy resources are stretched too thin, and PoW has to be removed to protect the grid's safety margin.
Bitcoin reward model does not become deflationary until 2140.
And that weak deflation is only from lost coins.
It's PoW tech will be banned worldwide by 2024.

Ethereum ~4%, but with the change to PoS,
Ethereum becomes deflationary,  
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-08/ethereum-upgrade-s-perks-include-crypto-deflation

The upgrade will effectively shift the blockchain from using miners to much more energy-efficient validators for ordering transactions and in doing so, will slash the amount of new Ether issued to reward various key entities involved in the process by about 90%.
At the same time, the network will continue to burn Ether.
That should bring Ether’s net coin supply inflation to zero or less, according to calculations by the Ethereum Foundation.
Crypto tracker Ultra Sound Money predicts Ether supply could peak right around the time of the Merge before beginning to decline.

With Ether’s supply stable, or even decreasing, that could potentially make every existing coin more valuable,

The US $ is seeing a massive assault from inflation in Energy and Food Costs.
While the Ibond hold over 9%, the falsy reported low inflation rate of 8.6% (We all know it is much higher),
means that Ibond is only earning .4% and since inflation is higher that IBond is really at a negative rate.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-prices-up-8-6-percent-over-year-ended-may-2022.htm

Ethereum and PoS coins are the only real games in town ,
as the US $ continues on the path to hyper inflation, their network can continue, and earnings verse fiat will increase.

BTC PoW will be banned by 2024, or be crushed before then by the rising energy costs from Utilities as Miners close shop to avoid bankruptcy.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/01/bitcoin-mining-middleman-compass-georgia-facilities-to-close-as-energy-prices-soar/

Two Georgia facilities used by Compass Mining, a middleman that allows retail investors to participate in bitcoin production, are closing as power costs in the U.S. state soar.
The owner of the sites is shutting down because the local utility provider has increased prices, a major cost for bitcoin mining, by more than 50%

FYI:
It won't matter if IBONDS give 100% interest in US$ , if Inflation goes to 101%,
you are still in the negative %.   

[Dunamisx]

bitcoin can transform energy industry and there is much explanation to how this can be achieved, well it already in progress despite the fact that there have been many reports on it hight cost of electricity demand but there's fairness in it impact on the environment because as it has no detrimental cause or loss incurred during the process, time without number it has been said that bitcoin has no effect on environmental hazard, it rather give a solution in solving the already accumulated challenges through bitcoin carbon footprint lot need to be taught on this regarding the bitcoin mining and the corresponding impact on the environment which has been the course of discussion since the beginning of this thread and yet the argument of PoW from PoS shouldn't be a thing of contention because nothing can be changed from bitcoin using PoW because in doing this, miners get their rewards also.


source

[fillippone]

<...>

Great news, and, curiously, I got to the same Twitter Bubble a few days after you.

Yes, Bitcoin Mining can actually help oil producers to turn their waste methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas, into a precious resource used to mine bitcoins.

Upstream, as we saw in the thread, is building Power Generators running on the methane vended from oilfields, powering ASICS:




This can help bitcoin becoming carbon neutral, or even carbon negative!




Even legacy institutions, not exactly favorable of Bitcoin, are starting to realize how important it is.







I guess those are very good point, while discussing this topics with uninformed people!

[fillippone]

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their Latest Update:



They pushed the rhetoric of Bitcoin as a clean energy usage accelerator:

Bitcoin mining, in Q3 2022:
1. Uses an inconsequential amount of global energy (16bps) and generates negligible carbon emissions (10bps)
2. Bitcoin mining hashrate is up 73% YoY while energy usage is up 41% YoY, due to an increase in efficiency of 23%
3. Bitcoin is the industry leader in sustainability with a 59.4% sustainable energy mix
4. Bitcoin is the most secure crypto network, 100x more
powerful than all competing networks combined.

Read more here

[Zanab247]

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their Latest Update:



They pushed the rhetoric of Bitcoin as a clean energy usage accelerator:

Bitcoin mining, in Q3 2022:
1. Uses an inconsequential amount of global energy (16bps) and generates negligible carbon emissions (10bps)
2. Bitcoin mining hashrate is up 73% YoY while energy usage is up 41% YoY, due to an increase in efficiency of 23%
3. Bitcoin is the industry leader in sustainability with a 59.4% sustainable energy mix
4. Bitcoin is the most secure crypto network, 100x more
powerful than all competing networks combined.

Read more here

I think, this is a sign that Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster to the community than to contribute positive things in the community by helping the youths to have access to the most secure crypto network in the community. This latest update will really make people to believe that Bitcoin is not an environmental disaster to the world economy than to create more opportunities for the users or miners to have access to sustainable network to improve their development in the community.

[$anounimus$]

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their Latest Update:



They pushed the rhetoric of Bitcoin as a clean energy usage accelerator:

Bitcoin mining, in Q3 2022:
1. Uses an inconsequential amount of global energy (16bps) and generates negligible carbon emissions (10bps)
2. Bitcoin mining hashrate is up 73% YoY while energy usage is up 41% YoY, due to an increase in efficiency of 23%
3. Bitcoin is the industry leader in sustainability with a 59.4% sustainable energy mix
4. Bitcoin is the most secure crypto network, 100x more
powerful than all competing networks combined.

Read more here

Yes, very comprehensive, testing awareness about cryptocurrencies. The public focus is clearly on business development and investment. Addressing these challenges will require further ingenuity and innovation in increasingly constrained carbon (energy) and this is an opportunity for those in the sector.

[stompix]

They pushed the rhetoric of Bitcoin as a clean energy usage accelerator:

Because the others don't work anymore, so that's where they need to concentrate PR efforts.
Anyhow, another of those "researches"  show how unreliable this whole stuff is

let's put together two of their reports:
Q3 2021
https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021.10.19-Q3-BMC-Presentation-Materials-Final.pdf
Q3 2022
https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2022.10.13-BMC-Presentation-Q3-22-Presentation.pdf

Now, spot the differences:



Oh wait, there aren't that many because they are recycling the data form other industries over and over for almost two years!

Anyhow:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/banking-system-consumes-two-times-more-energy-than-bitcoin-research

Banking system consumes two times more energy than Bitcoin: Research
According to Galaxy’s estimates, the annual energy usage of Bitcoin stands at 114 TWh, while the banking industry consumes over 260 TWh each year.

RIP! 

Christmas Lights Use More Power than Bitcoin Mining
RIP!

Bitcoin Mining Consumes Less Energy Than Gaming, Reveals Report
RIP!

Let's see if BTC reaches 100k before the halving what more of those from the list we can strart to scratch.

As I said previously:

It is what it is and that's the end of it, comparisons are just waiting around the corner to bite you in the ass

Seems it's that time already!

[fillippone]

Lyn Alden just updated a great article she wrote  back in April 2021 with new data and contents.
It is a compulsory read for everyone falling for the “bitcoin consumes too much energy fallacy”.

Bitcoin’s Energy Usage Isn’t a Problem. Here’s Why.

A lot of material in this thread covered already these topics. But here they are cleverly summarised and exposed.

[franky1]

the foolish utilisation of "the cambridge report" is where many lies lay

everyone know these facts:
network hashrate is peaking at 272exa this week. does not mean that miners hashed at 272exa every day for the previous year. (thus energy report estimates are already too high)

s9's, s11, s15 and s17's asics are not profitable in reality. no one is still mining using outdated hardware. (thus energy report estimates are already too high)

when asic farms set up within xx miles of a green renewable power generator. they are using green energy physically. (although reports sets them as generalised in a wider region/area to set them in the report as using a 'mix energy source')

when asic farms form 6month-2 year contracts with power generation companies. they are rightfully buying an allotment that the power company would else waste, as that allotment is outside of the residential retail 'demand' thus usually goes unpaid for if it were not for the asic farm

the power usage is more so near the 50TWH per year.. not 150
the green % is more then 60%

my feeling is these 'cambridge report' numbers have been fabricated as worse case fudged numbers, so that given a few years politicians can ask cambridge to supply real numbers so politicians can say they fixed the problem. even when there was none..

for those wanting the most basic paper/brain maths that doesnt need a calculator
the average network hashrate for the year 220exa
the average terrahash/watt for asics 0.025

the average 100terrahash/kw for asics 2.5
the average 100petahash/mw for asics 2.5
the average 100exahash/gw for asics 2.5
the average 200exahash/gw for asics 5
the average 220exahash/gw for asics 5.5
5.5*24*365=43800gwh/year
=48.18twh/year

[fillippone]

The bitcoin mining Council released their quarterly presentation:



A lot of numbers inside. Of course always questionable metrics, but at least they are improving.

Curtailment results seems also very promising.

[fillippone]

Today there was news about a Bitcoin mining data centre being powered by nuclear power plant:

America’s first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining center to open in Pennsylvania

The 48-megawatt, 300,000-square-foot data center is directly connected to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in northeast Pennsylvania, and its 1,200-acre campus is expected to host Bitcoin mining and cloud computing services – the first of its kind in the U.S.

The data centre is separated from the Nuclear Plan, so there is no synergy for the electrical producer. The data centre is plugged right away from the center is a good news, but actually not a major development.

The real game changer would be the data centre inside the power plant, with the miner revenue directly competing with electricity sold elsewhere.

So it is a little bit of a marketing stunt, but positive as it helps the narrative of a “clean bitcoin mining”.

Now with the interesting part and what I like the most: back-of-the-envelope calculations.

48 Megawatt are sufficient to power roughly 15,500 Bitmain
Antminer S19j Pro (104Th), one of the most energy efficient miner around.

Those nice army of beasts can churn roughly 1,610,400 Th/s, or roughly 0.6% of the total hash power.
This means the total bitcoin mining network can be visually represented as 170 of those datacenters!

[stompix]

The data centre is separated from the Nuclear Plan, so there is no synergy for the electrical producer. The data centre is plugged right away from the center is a good news, but actually not a major development.

The real game changer would be the data centre inside the power plant, with the miner revenue directly competing with electricity sold elsewhere.

Not sure what you mean by that.
For the owner of the nuclear power plant being the owner of the datacenter also and having it fed first to the miner and balancing the need to the actual grid with the demand from the data center or the actual physical thing being inside, cause the second one is not going to happen. A nuclear power plant can choose to have electricity sent directly to a close consumer without the need to raise the voltage for long-distance purposes but the IAEA will never allow a major consumer with cooling needs and fire hazard to settle anywhere near the facility, never!

The deal is as good as it could ever get, is a partnership between a reliable 24/7 electricity producer and a mining company, built in an area nobody can complain about heat and noise, and with minimal loss, it doesn't affect anything locally as a town grid and it can still function as a grid load balancing if emergencies arise.

Finally, we have some true reliable no carbon mining done that is not hydro at a large scale, not the jokes like solar and wind.

[cryptosize]

I wonder if TSMC would be interested to build ASICs themselves... they have the edge in microchip wafers.

[Carlton Banks]

I saw an interesting thread on reddit the other day

OP claimed that as more and more energy production/extraction facilities begin to mine bitcoin with their 'slack', that this will begin to both affect the dynamics of bitcoin's market price, and also that bitcoin mining and the BTC price will begin to affect energy prices too.

If you owned an energy production/extraction facility, and you could (momentarily) make more money mining BTC than selling energy, you'd do it, right? That's pushing energy prices up (and correspondingly down again when mining profits return to parity with the BTC market price)

So bitcoin's status as a reserve currency, possibly even as the currency hydro-carbons are traded for, from now on is a mere formality. Big political interests (big gangsters, really) are now openly in the market, because it's a perfect complement to their operation. Bitcoin and energy are (and always have been) inextricably linked.


I'm pretty sure someone said something along these lines years ago (here on bitcointalk). Cue environment cultists crying into their Starbucks frapaccinos

[franky1]

If you owned an energy production/extraction facility, and you could (momentarily) make more money mining BTC than selling energy, you'd do it, right? That's pushing energy prices up (and correspondingly down again when mining profits return to parity with the BTC market price)

power plants may be private businesses but they have government contracts and grant/finance deals to provide a sustainable service to residents/retail. where by they cant just stop servicing residential customers and just put all that energy into industry customers

that said
when NEW power plants start up. they are not making just capacity to meet current need. they are building a 50 year plan to meet future demand.

this mean in the first couple decades they may have 50 users of a 100 user capacity meaning they are charging the 50 customers 2x the 100customer cost because there are only 50 customers

so by allowing industry to jump in and buy up the excess 50. it means the existing 50 customers pay less over all

[fillippone]

If you owned an energy production/extraction facility, and you could (momentarily) make more money mining BTC than selling energy, you'd do it, right? That's pushing energy prices up (and correspondingly down again when mining profits return to parity with the BTC market price)

The real game changer is when you set up energy producing facilities only to mine bitcoins. Gas flaring and mining from geothermal energy are perfect examples of this: those plants are usually too far from consumption sites that transporting energy is far from being profitable.
Bitcoin is opening a new use case for that wasted energy to be instead used to secure the network.

[Carlton Banks]

The real game changer is when you set up energy producing facilities only to mine bitcoins. Gas flaring and mining from geothermal energy are perfect examples of this: those plants are usually too far from consumption sites that transporting energy is far from being profitable.

that may be a significant test of this line of reasoning: would someone employ the massive resources to dam a river only for the purposes of bitcoin mining? Such a facility wouldn't need any kind of connection to infrastructure, as even modern satellite internet connections might have sufficiently low enough network latency to mine with (they would for sure still lose block races). Depends on the specific locale, FTTP would be better, of course.

that would be a real moment for sure, and of course, why not turn it into a military base also I can assure you, this is not the first time someone somewhere has been thinking along these lines...

[fillippone]

that would be a real moment for sure, and of course, why not turn it into a military base also I can assure you, this is not the first time someone somewhere has been thinking along these lines...

Of the many fantasy adventures announced by Bukele during the infamous Miami Conference, there was the announcement of mining operations using the geothermal energy of a Vulcano (Vulcanode. I am sure I powered a  link to a video on this thread).

This is the perfect example of what you are referring to: a completely new Power plant built in a secluded area,  just because of cheap electricity to be used for mining operations.

[Wiwo]

that would be a real moment for sure, and of course, why not turn it into a military base also I can assure you, this is not the first time someone somewhere has been thinking along these lines...

Of the many fantasy adventures announced by Bukele during the infamous Miami Conference, there was the announcement of mining operations using the geothermal energy of a Vulcano (Vulcanode. I am sure I powered a  link to a video on this thread).

This is the perfect example of what you are referring to a completely new Power plant built in a secluded area,  just because of cheap electricity to be used for mining operations.

The El Salvador volcano energy project is one of its kind and if the project is fully operational or will open up a lot of opportunities for other development such as energy conversion and usage of waste to produce another thing, hydroelectricity has opened up quite a good number of possibilities aside from providing an alternative energy source to bitcoin miners, I read some were that the heat generation and conversation of other subtanceufrom the energy plants are converted to provide artificial heat to plants to replace sunlight and the experiment was successful but recently I have not had any progress in that regards, but the sure thing is that El Salvador volcano project will provide a blues print to what we should expect in greenhouse energy to kick against the Bitcoin environmental disaster slogans that have blinded so many bitcoin pos critic from seeing the opportunity that Bitcoin energy demand can open us up to.

[Carlton Banks]

El Salvador volcano project will provide a blues print to what we should expect in greenhouse energy to kick against the Bitcoin environmental disaster slogans that have blinded so many bitcoin pos critic from seeing the opportunity that Bitcoin energy demand can open us up to.

I don't think it will help. I mentioned earlier, playing the game of "look how green this project is" will never work with environmental doomsday-ers, the game works like this:

1. you: "is this much ok?"
2. Doomsday-er "NO. THATS EQUAL TO 5000 NUCLEAR WEAPPONS EXPLODING IN A RAINFOREST YOU ARE STILL TEH WORST PERSON EVA AND MUST IMPROVE"
3. go back to 1.

and you don't mean "greenhouse", greenhouse is now a bad word (these people are insane, but cult members usually are slightly)

Of the many fantasy adventures announced by Bukele during the infamous Miami Conference, there was the announcement of mining operations using the geothermal energy of a Vulcano (Vulcanode. I am sure I powered a  link to a video on this thread).

This is the perfect example of what you are referring to: a completely new Power plant built in a secluded area,  just because of cheap electricity to be used for mining operations.

hmmm, we will see then. will Bukele get coup-ed before his secret volcano of Bitcoins goes live? Will Saudi Arabia start doing camel racing with Bitcoin prize money? Will Greenpeace change their name to OrangeWar and challenge Satoshi to a sumo match to the death? we live in strange times

[fillippone]

Willy Woo tweeted about a series of new graph tonight:



The concept is interesting, holding a bitcoin, from an act of selfishness contributing to planet Earth pollutions, turns out being an altruistic-crbon negative act!
Power of marketing.

Hodling a bitcoin is neutral, for what environment is concerned.
 

[thecodebear]

Honestly its really easy to show why Bitcoin is not only NOT bad for the environment but is great for the environment and why Bitcoin mining is great for society.


Even getting beyond the whole it uses lots of renewables and stranded energy argument and stuff, which are good arguments, there is something much more powerful at work.



Power plants waste enormous amounts of energy by design to keep plenty of energy available for society whenever spikes in energy use occur so blackouts or brownouts don't happen. Bitcoin mining companies have already started to mine off this 100% wasted energy for a few years now. This is the future of bitcoin mining - entirely wasted energy. Not only does this mean Bitcoin won't use 'extra' energy, but it will stop the huge electrical waste in the energy infrastructure, greatly strengthen the energy infrastructure which is great for society, and hopefully this will mostly be done at renewable energy sources thereby bitcoin making renewable energy production for cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuels which will help steer the world to renewable energy and end our reliance on fossil fuels, which obviously is great for the environment.

Bitcoin mining is not only not a bad thing, its a fantastic thing! It provides benefits that literally nothing else provides, makes PoS consensus blockchains look hopelessly unhelpful to society in comparison, and is coming at just the right time when humanity needs it to push the world to renewable energy and stop all the electrical waste.


Granted Bitcoin isn't there yet, but this has already started and has been going on for a few years now. I don't know of a single other technology that can benefit society as much in the area of energy infrastructure and clean energy.

Honestly its comical when people talk about Bitcoin being bad for the environment and wasteful, because the truth is the exact opposite. If the people that hated Bitcoin because they think its an environmental disaster actually understood how it works they be doing everything they could to help Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining spread.

[Macadonian]

Honestly its really easy to show why Bitcoin is not only bad for the environment but is great for the environment and why Bitcoin mining is great for society.

I agree that Bitcoin is not bad for the environment like everyone claims but you cannot claim that it is good for the environment. It does produce co2 and that does make the environment worse and that is provable but so does every computer that stores information that every industry relies on so it is not a big problem. Bitcoin converting to renewable energy will take a long time and we will rely on the grid for many years to come.

[thecodebear]

Honestly its really easy to show why Bitcoin is not only bad for the environment but is great for the environment and why Bitcoin mining is great for society.

I agree that Bitcoin is not bad for the environment like everyone claims but you cannot claim that it is good for the environment. It does produce co2 and that does make the environment worse and that is provable but so does every computer that stores information that every industry relies on so it is not a big problem. Bitcoin converting to renewable energy will take a long time and we will rely on the grid for many years to come.

No. Bitcoin is absolutely great for the environment. You're not seeing the big picture. If you just say using energy is bad for the environment then everything that uses energy is bad for the environment so we should go back to the pre-electrical age!


Yes Bitcoin uses energy like everything in modern life, and yes much of the world's power comes from fossil fuels which means Bitcoin uses fossil fuels for some of its mining. But that is just surface level analysis.


Bitcoin mining is now starting to be done directly at power plants, using the excess energy 100% wasted energy the power plant already produces in order to be able to meet changing levels of electricity demand of society. In these cases Bitcoin mining is not the cause of ANY co2 production because it is using already produced but 100% wasted energy. And this is the natural future of Bitcoin mining. In the future every single power plant should have miners set up at it to use their wasted energy. Any power plant that tries to hold out on doing this while other power plants are doing this will simply be put out of business due to competition with plants that have bitcoin miners at it, and the power plant would be bought by companies that allow bitcoin miners at the plant. It's just basic economics.

So now only would this stop the ENORMOUS waste that is built into the energy production industry, but it would also mean Bitcoin is completely zero waste no matter what power plant (fossil fuel or clean) they are operating at. But this will REALLY help solar and wind farms because those sources of energy are intermittent so you have to vastly overbuild the power production in order to get a more reliable production, and as shown above, it is precisely where there is a lot of wasted energy that Bitcoin mining becomes most helpful. This means renewable energy and bitcoin mining go hand in hand and bitcoin mining can play a huge role in making the world go greener quicker. Final point is, there is literally no other technology on the planet that can accomplish this. So this incredibly impactful ability to help grow renewable energy production can only come from Bitcoin.

If you understand what I just wrote it should be clear that not only is bitcoin mining not bad for the environment, but it is incredibly good for the environment because it has a unique and incredibly important role to play in ending the massive power waste of the energy production industry while at the same time benefitting renewable resources more than fossil fuels and therefore being a prime driver to making the world adopt green energy more quickly. This is only just starting the past few years as companies have started mining directly at power plants, so obviously this huge beneficial impact Bitcoin will have on the environment is still mostly in the future, but it is happening and it is the inevitable course bitcoin mining will take simply due to the economics of energy production and the economics of bitcoin mining.

So yes, when I say Bitcoin mining is GREAT for the environment I really mean it. Not just is it great but it is UNIQUELY great in that no other technology can provide this benefit to society and the environment. Bitcoin is on the path of going from being an end user of electricity on the grid to being a service that strengthens the global electrical grid and promotes the economics of green energy. Once you understand this it's like a lightbulb goes off in your head. I too used to think it's unfortunate Bitcoin is able to use so much energy, until I realized the obvious path bitcoin mining is heading and once you realize this bitcoin mining using energy goes from being an unfortunate necessary thing to secure the world's best money to being a huge side benefit to society and the environment irregardless of even the benefit mining has on Bitcoin itself.


If politicians and environmentalists understood this is how bitcoin mining works and is the direction bitcoin mining is going they would do a total 180 and be doing everything they can to promote this future for bitcoin mining.

I've posted this explanation of mining a few times on bitcointalk now yet it seems hardly anyone who is into Bitcoin understands this. I only know this because I heard a podcast or two from people who run companies in the bitcoin mining industry and this is what they are doing. If people understood this it would clear up so much of the bad public optics and misinformation around bitcoin.

[Dunamisx]

Bitcoin mining is now starting to be done directly at power plants, using the excess energy 100% wasted energy the power plant already produces in order to be able to meet changing levels of electricity demand of society.

Well said, we have many occasions that bitcoin mining energy requirements has been a threat from the conventional electrical power supply, this has created more rooms for people miners and other researchers to persist work on the use of an alternative either renewable energy source, the world of bitcoin mining is gradually going green, we are getting less dependent on the electrical power supply.

What we use now is to engage the waste energies from human activities and convert them to a finished end product by serving the purpose of inefficient energy utilization for bitcoin mining thereby creating a more friendly environment for living through bitcoin mining by clearing the messes from degraded human activities released to the environment serving a toxic.

[fillippone]

Power plants waste enormous amounts of energy by design to keep plenty of energy available for society whenever spikes in energy use occur so blackouts or brownouts don't happen. Bitcoin mining companies have already started to mine off this 100% wasted energy for a few years now. This is the future of bitcoin mining - entirely wasted energy.

You might be not technically correct here, power plants don't waste energy, but you are correct on the sense of this comment.
Just think about the synergies of a nuclear plant coupled with a bitcoin mining operation. Enormous amount of energy with a very low marginal cost amortised with a bitcoin mining operation.

[thecodebear]

Power plants waste enormous amounts of energy by design to keep plenty of energy available for society whenever spikes in energy use occur so blackouts or brownouts don't happen. Bitcoin mining companies have already started to mine off this 100% wasted energy for a few years now. This is the future of bitcoin mining - entirely wasted energy.

You might be not technically correct here, power plants don't waste energy, but you are correct on the sense of this comment.
Just think about the synergies of a nuclear plant coupled with a bitcoin mining operation. Enormous amount of energy with a very low marginal cost amortised with a bitcoin mining operation.

But they do indeed waste enormous amounts of energy. Something like 30%+ of all energy produced is wasted simply to maintain energy margins against demand so that brownouts/blackouts don't happen. Demand is variable, production is not so variable, so to make sure demand doesn't suddenly outstrip production at certain times of the day or during certain events (usually probably weather events) power plants have to produce way more energy than the consumers of that energy need. I believe it is actually written into law in the US at least and I assume most places that have reliable power, that they have to overproduce energy by some certain amount. So yeah, power plants do waste huge amounts of energy, which is where these Bitcoin mining companies are starting to come in to turn that enormous wasted energy into actual economic value.

Same sort of thing with flare gas. Where gas created by the industrial processing of oil doesn't have a means to be put to productive economic use so the gas is just burned off. There is at least one company in the US that is turning that wasted gas (again, totally wasted energy) into economic value by using it to run Bitcoin miners. Wasted for a different reason than power plant waste but the same concept of entirely wasted energy being given economic value thanks to Bitcoin mining, and this is something unique to Bitcoin (well PoW in general but Bitcoin is the only PoW that matters) as there is nothing other process in the world taking this wasted energy as input and created economic value as output.

If politicians, especially environmentalist types who are the ones who actually give a damn about the world, understood bitcoin mining to this degree, rather than just the "it wastes tons of energy and contributes to greenhouse gases" propaganda, they'd be the strongest proponents of Bitcoin mining and we'd be having every power plant in the country taking advantage of this. Govt could even regulate this stuff and be like based on how much money power plants save thanks to Bitcoin mining operating at their plant they have to pass on some of those savings to consumers, thus reducing the price of electricity for consumers.


Eventually, most of Bitcoin mining is gonna be renewables and or consuming entirely wasted power plant energy at the source. Only thing that could stand in the way of this natural movement to economic efficiency is if bitcoin-uneducated politicians make rules to stop bitcoin mining.

[DoverDoane]

Currently there are about 900 bitcoins generated each day by mining worth about $50 million dollars.

Miners must be spending at least half of that on electric so say 25 million a day.

Back of the envelope calculations but I bet I'm pretty close.

Since the world isn't 100% powered by green energy, any cut in mining will be pretty much a cut in hydro-carbons.

I bet you disagree with this though

Because mining requires a large source of electricity, it's not strange to spend tens of millions each month, but seeing the potential results from mining is worth it, and the electricity is so large that it can reach 70,000 megawatts which can cause heat waves that can disrupt parts of the country, such as happening in Texas, but do they think much about the environmental impact? I think so, while being able to get a lot of profit from them no matter what.

[fillippone]

Bitcoin Energy Mix is far better than the one used by EV's, yet they want to ban Bitcoin mining, even if it doesn't emit a single gram of CO2.




I suggest you to check the whole analysis:
BITCOIN BY ENERGY SOURCE

[fillippone]

Just to let you know this thread has been translated into Romanian by my friend Gazetabitcoin:

• Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument
  
  • Romanian Translation by Gazetabitcoin: Demitizarea argumentului “Bitcoin este un dezastru pentru mediu
  
  

[Dunamisx]

Another big discovery of an environmentally friendly bitcoin mining has been identified, information coming from Bhutan whereby it uses the Himalayan hydroelectric power supply to source for it renewable bitcoin mining energy needed, the more interesting aspects of this does not end with the use of a renewable energy source which is environmentally friendly but the mining plant had been long in existence some years ago when bitcoin prize was as low as $5,000 and people don't know about this achievement with Bhutan.

Bitcoin mining is the world’s cleanest industry, with more than 50% of its energy sources being renewable or clean energy. Bitcoin mining advocates, such as MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor, explain that “99.92% of carbon emissions in the world are due to industrial uses of energy other than Bitcoin mining.“ Due to cheap, abundant hydroelectric power, DHI reported that Bhutan is an ideal destination for mining Bitcoin. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bhutan-bitcoin-mining-with-hydropower-since-btc-price-was-5-000

source

Bitcoin mining is environmentally friendly, it does not pollute the environment, it rather provides solution to the already dilapidating one caused due to other human activities, the best way to mine bitcoin is to go through a renewable energy as such discovered in Bhutan hydroelectric power for mining bitcoin.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

Another plan by Bhutan renewable bitcoin hydroelectric power plan is to boost it's operations in other to increase the mining activities thereby putting in the sum of about $500 million to move it mining operations to the next level.
https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1654093859322834946?t=eRC9bRHD4fOHj2K7gEAW9Q&s=19 we could see that after the discovery of this new mining activities from Bhutan after some years of being silence and unknown, they seems to be fully prepared for the task ahead towards mining bitcoin after understanding that role of financial capacity in this and hopefully Bhutan is going to be one the the most recognized bitcoin renewable mining facility in the world if they remain unstoppable in this.

[Dunamisx]

The more we keep saying why bitcoin mining is more environmentally friendly has brought about the decision for the use of a Natural Volcanic Energy for Bitcoin Mining in El-Savador, this is one of the best ways to adopt the use of a renewable energy source for bitcoin mining without having the power challenge from centralized authorities and governments across the world concerning the energy demands for this same bitcoin mining.

El-Savador is now getting more and more global attraction ever since it bitcoin adoption as legal tender, moreso, we have a number of miners considering El-Savador and it's new discovery of the use of volcanic thamal energy for their bitcoin mining after leaving the US due to the unceasant government demands on regulations, Tether is making this first move to create a bitcoin mining rig under a volcanic renewable energy source in El-Savador, bitcoin is environmentally friendly.

Source:
https://tether.to/en/tether-participates-in-1-billion-investment-to-build-the-worlds-largest-bitcoin-mining-farm-in-el-salvador/

[Carlton Banks]

bitcoin mining rig under a volcanic renewable energy source in El-Savador, bitcoin is environmentally friendly.

disagree (not sure if this is the linked article verbatim, didn't check)


this is yet another (and there are soooo many ) example of IPCC driven corporate drivel.

most renewable energy products destroy or disrupt pretty large natural habitats and the (former) ecosystem that depended on it. Hydro dams are perhaps the worst, and I was surprised to see recently that experts on desert ecology claim that solar farms ravage the extensive underground system of plant roots that represents a significant part of the livable portion of that type of habitat (who knew?). but this is a case-by-case thing if ever there was, perhaps volcanoes don't house much wildlife to speak of (after the revelations about the desert though, I wouldn't be surprised if that's wrong)

I understand that going back to the stone age is the only realistic way to genuinely protect wildlife from human encroachment. But please, let's call it like it is: renewable energy projects invariably fuck the natural world up, and so the proven false arguments about anthropogenic climate change are in fact hiding the reality that industrial landscapes (which renewable energy plants are) are being extended even further into nature in the name of preserving or protecting it.

quelle surprise: UN agency tells extraordinarily humongous lies that destroy the very thing they claim to seek preservation of, and generate further money (for their friends) and power (for themselves) in the process.

[fillippone]

Bitcoin is actually good for the environment, and more and more institutions understand that:



Here is a direct link to the paper:

Climate Impacts of Bitcoin Mining in the U.S.

Abstract

Opinions regarding the climate impacts of Bitcoin mining deviate fundamentally between scholars and Bitcoin proponents. We validate arguments from both sides and provide empirical evidence for the extent and energy sources of Bitcoin mining in the U.S. We provide empirical evidence that at least 38% of all Bitcoin mining activity has migrated to the U.S. and Canada as of the end of 2022 and show that the carbon emissions caused by the 13 analyzed publicly listed miners in the U.S. alone add up to 7.2 MtCO2 per annum. At the same time, the financial incentives of the Bitcoin network may, for instance, subsidize the sealing of orphaned wells and thereby reduce methane emissions at scale. The growing transparency on locations and energy sources of large publicly listed Bitcoin miners highlights the value of disclosure obligations and may help dismantle unsupported industry claims, improve assumption- based academic models, and point regulators to areas where Bitcoin mining may bring climate benefits.

So while it recognises the importance of the role played by Bitcoin miners in carbon curtailment via the recovery of methane in "dead wells", as well as the rebalancing benefit in a network, they reject the claim that Bitcoin miners are distinguished users of renewable energy, butting their non-fossil usage absolutely on par with other industries.

[Makus]

Bitcoin is actually good for the environment, and more and more institutions understand that

So while it recognises the importance of the role played by Bitcoin miners in carbon curtailment via the recovery of methane in "dead wells", as well as the rebalancing benefit in a network, they reject the claim that Bitcoin miners are distinguished users of renewable energy, butting their non-fossil usage absolutely on par with other industries.

Wow this is an amazing PDF, an added advantage to Bitcoin mining, miners are not to profit from the process alone but the environment included in its own form, Bitcoin is not just proving to be the best cypto currency but also beneficial to the environment, I see this as an opportunity for Bitcoin to be accepted by nations all over the world as the year proceeds,
Thanks for the post sir.

[fillippone]

A great paper was published today by KPMG:

The rise of bitcoin

Despite 2022 being a tumultuous year for Bitcoin, it continues to dominate the headlines. Its maturity into a traditional asset class is evident simply by seeing its ticker symbol “BTC” displayed on popular morning finance shows and news sites. However, despite Bitcoin’s continued adoption, it continues to be a misunderstood technology and asset class. In this paper, we’ll evaluate the environmental, social, and governance impact, as well as dispel some of the misconceptions that still thrive today, and consider how Bitcoin stacks up against an ESG framework.

Everything it is written in this paper is well known to you, avid readers of this forum and thread, but the fact that it is coming from KPMG is astounding.
Not because the things written in the paper are now more true, but because it demonstrates times are slowly changing.

[Agbe]

A great paper was published today by KPMG:

The rise of bitcoin

Despite 2022 being a tumultuous year for Bitcoin, it continues to dominate the headlines. Its maturity into a traditional asset class is evident simply by seeing its ticker symbol “BTC” displayed on popular morning finance shows and news sites. However, despite Bitcoin’s continued adoption, it continues to be a misunderstood technology and asset class. In this paper, we’ll evaluate the environmental, social, and governance impact, as well as dispel some of the misconceptions that still thrive today, and consider how Bitcoin stacks up against an ESG framework.

Everything it is written in this paper is well known to you, avid readers of this forum and thread, but the fact that it is coming from KPMG is astounding.
Not because the things written in the paper are now more true, but because it demonstrates times are slowly changing.

The abstract shows that bitcoin dominating the cryptocurrency Ecosystem space day by day. In 2022 people were really saying that bitcoin would collapsed because of it downward in the year. The bear market of bitcoin in the 2022 made many people to be scared of the technology because many companies collapsed base on it bearish market at that time.

[fillippone]

The abstract shows that bitcoin dominating

We already knew that, we don’t need KPMG to state that! But it’s nice to know they know that as well!

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

And so we are asking one more time again that when will you resume bitcoin payment Elon Musk? this was traced according to his last porported feed on bitcoin mining and sustainability, he made mentioned that when bitcoin remains 50% mining energy sustainable, he will resume payment with bitcoin, now the bitcoin mining of 59.9% energy sustainable as information from the bitcoin mining council, bitcoin is environmentally  friendly, energy efficient and sustainable for utilization in mining compared to other kinds of mining.

Reference links:

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1689397387670794240?t=8f2WpWPLma40-GaAdgrYlw&s=19

https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-mix-increased-to-59-5-sustainable-in-q2-2022/

[cryptosize]

And so we are asking one more time again that when will you resume bitcoin payment Elon Musk? this was traced according to his last porported feed on bitcoin mining and sustainability, he made mentioned that when bitcoin remains 50% mining energy sustainable, he will resume payment with bitcoin, now the bitcoin mining of 59.9% energy sustainable as information from the bitcoin mining council, bitcoin is environmentally  friendly, energy efficient and sustainable for utilization in mining compared to other kinds of mining.

Reference links:

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1689397387670794240?t=8f2WpWPLma40-GaAdgrYlw&s=19

https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-mix-increased-to-59-5-sustainable-in-q2-2022/

Hint: not before 2025.

[fillippone]

Cambridge University just updated its methodology to compute the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), an index aimed at estimating the network Power Usage.

Bitcoin electricity consumption: an improved assessment

Examining the underlying assumptions behind the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) has led to its first significant revision since its launch in 2019 – a response to evidence indicating a periodic overestimation of electricity consumption.

They discovered that the Power estimate was constantly overrated as they underestimated the substitution rate of older miners. Newer miners have increased efficiency: either they churn more hash per J or consume less J to churn the identical hashes.
If a more significant part of the mining hardware than previously thought is new, then the average power consumption per hash is lower than previously thought.

	Over the last 10 years miner became almost 10x more efficient.	The increased efficiency estimate led to a sharp reduction in the CBECI index

The comment is the following:

There are also less pronounced but still noteworthy differences in 2022 and 2023. The 2022 estimate was adjusted downward by 9.8 TWh, from 105.3 TWh to 95.5 TWh. To put this in perspective, the revised figure is comparable to the electricity consumption of countries like Belgium (83 TWh) or the Netherlands (113 TWh), [31] the energy use of tumble dryers in the US (108 TWh), [32] and renewable curtailment in China (105 TWh) [33]. In terms of global electricity consumption, it represented about 0.38%.[34] As for 2023, the year-to-date electricity consumption estimate has been revised from 75.7 TWh to 70.4 TWh.[/i]

I guess tumble-drying industry didn't show the same increase in efficiency.

[fillippone]

Semi-serious post.

The idea is not new. There are loads of projects to use miners to heat something: from hot tubs to houses.
Here miner's heat is used to heat tulips bulbs, a clear reference to the 1637 Dutch Tulips bubble



Bitcoin allows to use every form of energy more efficiently.

[fillippone]

A very interesting research resulting from a collaboration between Marathon Mining and Bitcoin Magazine:

Cashing on trash

TLDR

Landfills are a significant contributor to global methane emissions, which, if mitigated, could have a greater environmental impact than managing carbon dioxide emissions.
Conventional methane management methods, such as venting and flaring, are inefficient and environmentally damaging, while waste-to-energy solutions, like selling electricity to the grid or distributing renewable natural gas (RNG) via pipelines, often prove economically infeasible for smaller or remote landfills.
Bitcoin mining offers a market-based approach to reducing methane emissions from landfills by converting otherwise wasted potential energy into economic value. Bitcoin mining requires minimal investments in infrastructure, and it is geographically flexible, modular, and scalable. In theory, Bitcoin mining can therefore help any landfill, regardless of its size and geographic location, reduce its emissions while benefiting from an additional stream of income.

The idea is sort of "greenwashing" the Bitcoin industry, turning it from an energy waste producer to an energy optimising one. The Bitcoin mining industry wants to become the first carbon-negative industry.
Provided that you can demonstrate to me how an industry relying on electric power can directly emit GHG.

[cygan]

yesterday, Greenpeace published a detailed report that allegedly establishes the links between Bitcoin miners, corporate interest groups and climate deniers. as was to be expected, Greenpeace's latest comments also contain numerous false and refutable statements.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/mining-for-power/
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Bitcoin-Mining-for-Power.pdf

the way Greenpeace criticizes - often through demonstrably false claims presented as incontrovertible 'facts' - is increasingly undermining the group's reputation. instead of making a constructive contribution to the discourse on the environmental impact of BTCitcoin, the organization is falling into a pattern of disinformation and exaggeration. this not only damages the credibility of Greenpeace itself, but also the wider environmental cause by raising doubts about the reliability and objectivity of the information presented by the scene.

[cryptosize]

yesterday, Greenpeace published a detailed report that allegedly establishes the links between Bitcoin miners, corporate interest groups and climate deniers. as was to be expected, Greenpeace's latest comments also contain numerous false and refutable statements.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/mining-for-power/
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Bitcoin-Mining-for-Power.pdf

the way Greenpeace criticizes - often through demonstrably false claims presented as incontrovertible 'facts' - is increasingly undermining the group's reputation. instead of making a constructive contribution to the discourse on the environmental impact of BTCitcoin, the organization is falling into a pattern of disinformation and exaggeration. this not only damages the credibility of Greenpeace itself, but also the wider environmental cause by raising doubts about the reliability and objectivity of the information presented by the scene.

WEF has entered the chat:

https://www.instagram.com/worldeconomicforum/reel/C35FfRytPtJ/
https://www.weforum.org/videos/bitcoin-mine-power/

Told ya: renewable energy + Bitcoin mining will be the best combo ever invented!

Habitual contrarians didn't believe me.