Cryptocurrencies operate as their own universe, which is only loosely tied to the real world's "good news" and "bad news". In either direction. Which makes it risky to bet against. At least Balaji paid out on his ridiculous hyperinflation bet.
> the cost of sustaining Bitcoin's energy burn look like the cheap option
No, this needs to have the plug pulled on it if we're to keep global warming to 2C.
> No, this needs to have the plug pulled on it if we're to keep global warming to 2C.
Bitcoin accounts for <0.1% of global CO2e and has one of the highest shares of renewables in any industry (since it competes globally for the cheapest energy).
It incentivises renewables (by being a location agnostic buyer of first and last resort which buys all excess energy 24/7), reduces CO2e (by making it profitable to combust CH4 instead of venting it), stabilises energy grids (by providing flexible demand response, i.e. can be turned on and off at moment's notice), provides banking services for the global unbanked and financially discriminated, shields from gambling bankers and inflation of the money supply, ...
In comparison to all these use cases and benefits, mere "luxury" energy uses such as air-conditioning, tumble drying, video games, porn, ... all consume more energy and produce more CO2e (e.g. A/C ~100x more). Yet nobody calls to have the plug pulled on them.
Regulate the production of energy, not the consumption.
Computers, data centers and networks consume about 10% of all the world energy. [1] 4 percent of websites are estimated to be porn [2] a single gaming computer costs about up to 1400 kWh annually. [3]
So the porn websites are about 3X bitcoin and BTC represents around 8.7m gaming computers.
I would like the source too. I would be very surprised if Bitcoin energy consumption passed even half of what is consumed for porn and video games. I expect the amount of energy being used to maintain Bitcoin to be a rounding error in comparison.
>No, this needs to have the plug pulled on it if we're to keep global warming to 2C.
Sure thing buddy. One of the ways the "little guy" can push back against big banks and big government needs to have its plug pulled because of some imaginary 2 degrees panic. What the hell happened to "Hacker" in "Hacker News", this place is a cesspool of the mainstream rhetoric. Note: I have $0 invested in crypto, but I don't deny its usefulness in "keeping the bastards honest".
I wonder if all the banks in the world consume more energy vs Bitcoin network? What if we didn't have these big institutions that employ hundreds of thousands of people to basically increment and decrement a counter in a computer. Imagine all costs that we wouldn't have to incur (e.g transport to work, operating buildings, etc). Today's banks seem very archaic.
The banks are also serving several orders of magnitude more people than the bitcoin network. The energy usage per transation isn't even close to being comparable.
Even with all of the inefficiencies of modern banking, by comparison cryptocurrency is like lighting oil wells on fire.
Purpose of any modern bank is to make money for its shareholders. It does so by taking money on one side and lending it on the other. Lending is inherently a risky business and that risk must be managed. It's unfortunate that in this process people who deposit money can lose it. Essentially, those people take risk of losing money for <1%.
There is also another aspect to banks which is to provide ability to exchange money. That part of banking doesn't generate a lot of revenue compared to loans so it receives a lot less attention.
> the cost of sustaining Bitcoin's energy burn look like the cheap option
No, this needs to have the plug pulled on it if we're to keep global warming to 2C.