
The Environmental Case Against Bitcoin - jbernardo95
https://newrepublic.com/article/146099/environmental-case-bitcoin
======
kerpele
They mention in the article that as there is a limited amount of coins that
can be mined the mining activity will eventually die down, but as I understand
it the verification and validation of transactions happens along with mining.

How will verification work if mining stops? Or will the mining just stop
producing new coins but continue being profitable with just the transaction
fees?

~~~
Jenya_
Yes, it is assumed that mining will continue based just on transaction fees.
In fact Bitcoin Core almost reached this goal recently due to their hard limit
on block size, the percentage of fees in the total Bitcoin Core block reward
reached as high as 40% according to the statistics:
[https://fork.lol/reward/feepct](https://fork.lol/reward/feepct)

~~~
kerpele
So with the hard limit there's a set amount of transactions that fit into a
block? And whoever wants to get their transaction validated faster can bid a
higher fee?

~~~
wereHamster
Yes, that is why the transaction fee for BTC has increased in the past (see
[https://fork.lol/tx/fee](https://fork.lol/tx/fee)), which some people didn't
like and argued for a larger block size.

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libeclipse
It's astounding how much concern there is about the _relatively_ (!) small
impact of bitcoin mining on the environment while we have immense adverse
effects on the global environment from things like cargo ships without so much
as a peep from anyone.

How do you expect to solve the bitcoin problem? Stop mining?

~~~
zokier
Congratulations, you've found the fallacy of relative privation.

At least the utility of cargo ships is pretty tangible, whereas the utility of
bitcoin has yet to manifest itself.

~~~
al_chemist
> At least the utility of cargo ships is pretty tangible

Is it? I've heard that cargo ships are a bubble. They are used only by drug
dealers and money launderers. There is no utility of a cargo ship and people
who invest in cargo ships are doing that because they believe they will be
millionaires. Lol, like moving stuff between places could be worth money!

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polkovnikov-ph
Dollars require infrastructure too. Thousands of banks and other institutions
are required to operate it. They have offices (that take energy) and employees
(that take energy and also have households that take energy). Most of that
energy comes from fossil fuel. I'm pretty sure operation of dollar costs much
more than operation of Bitcoin. Let's ban dollar.

High price of bitcoin resulted in surge of "bitcoin is a fraud" kind of
articles to HN. Who wants to play bears on Bitcoin market that much?

~~~
KnightOfWords
That's a strawman I'm afraid, the real question is the relative energy per-
transaction costs between Bitcoin and traditional currencies. Bitcoin just
doesn't scale.

~~~
pycal
I actually think this is a really interesting argument. Here's some quick
napkin math that shows a large enough difference that, I think, you can't just
shut this down as a strawman:

17.7M barrels of oil annually by bitcoin mining operations

8.16B barrels of oil by US banking sector employees

These numbers don't count the physical infrastructure, servers, and other
plant that these businesses own, operate, heat, keep the lights on in.

Here are my sources:

One stat I just read says that the top 20 North American banks employ 1.2
million people. That's 1.2M people eating and commuting 5 days a week for the
purpose of supporting fiat.

With a quick investigation:

-US per capita annual barrels of oil: 6800 (1)

-Bitcoin annual Terrawatt hours: 30.1 (2)

-6800 * 1.2M = 8.16B barrels of oil by US banking sector employees (3)

1: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/250220/ranking-of-
united...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/250220/ranking-of-united-
states-banks-by-number-of-employees-in-2012/)

2: [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-
bitcoin-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-
mining-really-use)

3: [http://www.kylesconverter.com/energy,-work,-and-
heat/terawat...](http://www.kylesconverter.com/energy,-work,-and-
heat/terawatt-hours-to-barrels-of-oil-equivalent)

~~~
UncleEntity
> That's 1.2M people eating and commuting 5 days a week for the purpose of
> supporting fiat.

They aren't really "supporting fiat" as you say, they do things that
(presumably) have value like storing money, making loans and...whatever else
it is that banks do.

If all the world's central banks decided tomorrow to stop the printing presses
banks would still have a function in society independent of "supporting fiat"
as they have had for a long time.

------
thisisit
Similar article discussed couple of hours ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15858487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15858487)

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jacobr
Are there any reasonable alternatives to Bitcoin which are more
environmentally friendly and therefore more long term viable? While still
being serious contenders. I know Ethereum is working on Proof of Stake but it
still sounds far off and uncertain.

~~~
davidwitt415
Bram Cohen just announced Chia, which is a solution based on proofs of space.
Good summary here:

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/08/chia-network-
cryptocurrenc...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/08/chia-network-
cryptocurrency/)

------
ape4
The electricity to mine can be made by environmentally friendly means.

~~~
jefflombardjr
Even if it is clean energy (and assuming this is mining without any valuable
processing like verifying transactions):

1\. Waste is waste and there's only a finite amount of clean energy that can
be used. The sun only outputs so much usable energy per day and daming rivers
does not happen without consequence.

2\. This generates alot of heat. People aren't mining in their house so this
is concentrated areas of heat pollution. It may be negligible but
environmental hotspots wreak havoc on local ecosystems, especially when
dispersed in aquatic ecosystems.

~~~
polkovnikov-ph
When electricity is generated by burning fossil fuel or garbage, waste heat is
fed to centralized heating systems. In this way efficiency of over 90% is
achieved. Probably it's time for the next stage of this idea: electricity
should be immediately fed to mining facility, which preheats water that goes
to the furnace. In the end all computers are just hi-tech heaters.

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zencash
People fly all the time, that's also bad for the environment. Don't do it...

~~~
jacobr
Does flying somehow reduce the energy consumption of Bitcoin, or how is that
relevant?

But you are correct, we should not be flying as much, and many people advocate
reduced subsidies and increased taxes on flying. Maybe a mining tax would be a
good idea.

~~~
cwkoss
If goal is reducing energy consumption, why not a direct tax on energy?

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Zuulfy
By this article's logic, developing and deploying more electric cars will put
a strain on the enviornment as well, as most energy still comes from fossil
fuels.

~~~
polkovnikov-ph
But the truth is that it really will.

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asdfghjkqwerty
"Mining the cryptocurrency requires a staggering amount of energy—contributing
to global warming and providing little public benefit."

Completely misses the entire point of why bitcoin was created.

