Bitcoin Emission Intensity has a New All Time Low?

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Davidvictorson:
Hello there, so this person on Twitter, Daniel Batten 1 assertion that bitcoin mining has a new all time low. He went further to provide a historical chart and a source 2 for this assertion. According to him, Quote

For the first time ever, the Bitcoin network has dropped below 300 g/KWh emissions

* It's taken just over 3 years to half its emission intensity

* No other industry is reducing its emission intensity at such a rate.

For comparison, as of January 2020, the mining emission intensity was at 601g/kWh. Personally, I am thrilled about this, considering the backlash bitcoin mining has been facing. But what I find odd in all of this is that no other person or news/crypto sources are talking about this. Also, I have gone through the research article provided to support his claim, but I am finding it difficult to understand what is written. I'd appreciate if someone confirms the validity of his claim. -This is source article - http://batcoinz.com/BEEST/

Thank you very much.

1 https://twitter.com/DSBatten/status/1663005438303166475?t=LyYAzlJe89BwPvRegG4P-Q&s=08
2 http://batcoinz.com/BEEST/

Yamane_Keto:
All articles that talk about emissions, carbon and pollution and their relationship to Bitcoin are FUD. to mine Bitcoin, you need mining equipment, a power source, and a mechanism to reduce noise and heat. If there is a decrease in the percentage of carbon emissions from bitcoin, this is due to the government’s efforts in a region to provide cheap renewable energies, whether those efforts are developing the renewable energies industry, reducing legislation or zero taxes.

Miners are looking for cheap energy regardless of its source, and therefore we cannot say that Bitcoin is responsible for emissions and pollution, it is not like direct industries such as oil.

As for electronic waste, heat reduction, and noise reduction, they are problems that Bitcoin shares with almost all electronic devices.

There is nothing unique about Bitcoin that causes it to emit more carbon waste than any other industry, and all articles that defend or prove this are based on an inaccurate foundation.

I think mining boards is better for such discussions, although they are repeated many times.

d5000:
Thanks for sharing. I looked at the article, and in general what they write seems reasonable.

However, there's a tiny amount of doubt one could cite. Most of the increase in zero-emission share compared to the CCAF study, which greatly influences the "carbon intensity" figure, is due to off-grid mining operations. The figures are based on the hashrate share of some off-grid mining providers:

Quote

The Zero-emission off-grid portion included Cleanspark, DPO, Terawulf, Blockfusion, Aspen Creek, Bitfarms, Gryphon, Soluna, Hive, Cowa, Sato, Genesis, Iris, Hut8, Northern Data, DMG Blockchain, Cipher.

(Source: BEEST)

Are these figures trustworthy and how are they collected? Do they also take into account that perhaps some stats about ZE share in countries already take into account off-grid figures?

I would have to look deeper into the sources - as I wrote it's only a tiny amount of doubt. But in general, I approve the methodology.

The other point of criticism is that the figure "emission intensity" is of course not taking into account the hashrate itself. From January 2021 to today, this figure has been slightly more than doubled (from ~150 Eh/s to 300-350 Eh/s). This means that the total emissions of BTC are about the same than in early 2021, perhaps slightly more.

However, Bitcoin's price is also lower (currently a little bit, but hashrate generally recovers slower than the price due to inertia - mining operations have to know if their hashrate/reward equation is sustainable or not to finance operations), and the price influences hashrate. So if we see late 2021 prices again, hashrate could grow slowly but quite a lot.

The interesting take on all this is that to lower emissions we need to reach a point where extreme events like the China ban don't have such a large impact on emissions. For now the China ban explains most of the ZE share increase. However, in the graph the late 2022/early 2023 values look quite good.

In general I'm optimistic - ZE share is growing at a steady pace all over the world, so Bitcoin's emissions will eventually reach the desired tipping point and lower.

@Yamane_Keto: I absolutely don't agree with your first paragraph. The thread moving to Mining would however be an ok decision.

bitmover:
Quote from: Yamane_Keto on May 30, 2023, 07:43:33 AM

All articles that talk about emissions, carbon and pollution and their relationship to Bitcoin are FUD. to mine Bitcoin, you need mining equipment, a power source, and a mechanism to reduce noise and heat. If there is a decrease in the percentage of carbon emissions from bitcoin, this is due to the government’s efforts in a region to provide cheap renewable energies, whether those efforts are developing the renewable energies industry, reducing legislation or zero taxes.

Miners are looking for cheap energy regardless of its source, and therefore we cannot say that Bitcoin is responsible for emissions and pollution, it is not like direct industries such as oil.

As for electronic waste, heat reduction, and noise reduction, they are problems that Bitcoin shares with almost all electronic devices.

There is nothing unique about Bitcoin that causes it to emit more carbon waste than any other industry, and all articles that defend or prove this are based on an inaccurate foundation.

I think mining boards is better for such discussions, although they are repeated many times.

This is exactly the point.

Bitcoin needs to use energy to secure the network. As the world doesnt use renewable energy sources, bitcoin mining is just a consequence of that. Miners are not looking for clean energy, just like any other industry. They are looking for cheap energy.

PoS is not as secure, as you are using something from inside the system to protect it.

And energy is something valuable in the world we live in. So we are protecting the network with something valuable, energy.

BlackHatCoiner:
Quote from: Yamane_Keto on May 30, 2023, 07:43:33 AM

If there is a decrease in the percentage of carbon emissions from bitcoin, this is due to the government’s efforts in a region to provide cheap renewable energies
Or due to technological growth. Rather that. Government's efforts to provide renewables by force is questionably helping the situation.

Quote from: bitmover on May 30, 2023, 02:22:32 PM

PoS is not as secure, as you are using something from inside the system to protect it.
Actually, it's more than that. It is less secure, because it is not permissionless, can be manipulated much more easily (i.e., a hacker hacks an exchange and stakes the coins), and this.

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