To be explicit, one problem with Bitcoin's energy use is that it has the potential to consume any excess energy-producing capacity that we free up by making technology more energy efficient. It could use any fossil fuel-powered energy production that otherwise might be obsoleted by green energy sources. Bitcoin and other PoW blockchains add a strong financial incentive to use all available energy production capacity to its limit. Certainly it is difficult to imagine the market encouraging e.g. carbon capture when the same unit of energy could be used to mine Bitcoin instead for more "profit". (Not that I think carbon capture is likely to make much of a difference, given that simply not releasing greenhouse gases in the first place is always more efficient.)
If energy efficiency and green energy sources will not suffice to reduce our burning of fossil fuels, due in part to Bitcoin and its ilk, then the only way to avoid climate catastrophe would be simply doing less, a.k.a. degrowth. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the typical cryptocurrency advocate thinks of degrowth. (But that would interfere with the numbers going up!)
In short, Bitcoin is a major roadblock to any response to the climate crisis, using any strategy.
Completely untrue. The amount of money miners spend on bitcoin mining per unit time will never be higher than the value of bitcoin block rewards per unit time.
The block reward gets cut in half every couple years. Right now it’s $18M/day, and at its peak it was $60 million per day. Assuming the price of btc doesn’t shoot back up, that puts an upper limit on the amount of money spent by miners on electricity at $60M/day. To put that number in perspective, the US alone spends $3B/day on energy.
And as a typical cryptocurrency advocate, I always find it amusing when HN programmers, probably in the richest 1% of the world globally, talk about how the line going up even more just isn’t really that important. It already went up for you, maybe we should ask people in brazil or in the philippines or in subsaharan africa if they want their line to go up.
> that we free up by making technology more energy efficient
This is 100% a fake problem that clearly does not exist if you understood anything about the energy market. Civilization is at an increasing rate consuming more electricity. Surely, someone who believes carbon emissions are destroying the planet would agree we need to electrify everything. Bitcoin consuming and therefore monetizing stranded and/or temporary excess amounts of energy make accelerated electrification of our society a much more realistic endeavor. Having an electricity dung-beetle, a buyer of last resort, is a revelation.
Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources. It encourages production/consumption of fossil fuels just as much as it encourages production/consumption of green energy sources. There's no particular reason to believe that Bitcoin will accelerate electrification.
> Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources.
BINGO!
If you have something that will buy any left over or unusable stock of product X, the production of X becomes less risky and easier to invest in. This isn't hard. Bitcoin incentivizes energy production and innovation. If you want that energy to be green, bitcoin is still more than willing to buy it from you. Lowering the risk of innovation in the space is obviously good for green energy.
No, this doesn't make sense. If your goal is to reduce fossil fuel usage, and Bitcoin also incentivizes fossil fuels, then there's no reason to expect that Bitcoin will help reduce the share of energy produced by fossil fuels. Worse yet, if it increases total energy consumption, and doesn't affect the percentage produced by fossil fuels, then that will increase the absolute amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
Your arguments work just as well for reducing risk for investing in "marginal" fossil fuel sources.
Bitcoin incentivizes cheap energy production. We need more cheap energy.
Bitcoin does nothing to alter or effect other incentives or disincentives on energy production.
Assuming prices are equivalent, it's net neutral on production mix. However, we've been told renewable energy is cheaper! Therefore it accelerates its adoption.
I subsidized a rather large solar installation on my farm by mining with the excess electricity. This installation drastically lowers my reliance on the grid.
Bitcoin miners flock to where the energy is cheapest, where it can't be used for anything else, namely stranded renewables. If the energy source can be used for anything else, it is probably too expensive for Bitcoin miners, who are a buyer of last resort. Bitcoin provides a financial incentive for infrastructure build out for these stranded energy sources.
You've made your arguement for "planet destroying", now why is it a "scam"?
One aspect I must mention is Bitcoin miners flock to where energy is cheapest for them, not taking into account negative externalities. This is why you see miners attacking CI services to try to use them for mining crypto: free energy is the best deal, even if it is costly to someone else: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas...
Of course, the climate crisis is caused in large part by capitalism failing to deal with negative externalities, so one could argue that Bitcoin is just another facet of our corrupt system privatizing benefits and making the public bear the costs. But nevertheless this is a fundamental flaw in arguments that Bitcoin miners only farm where energy is "cheapest".
Bitcoin is my and millions of others store of value, it is definately decentralized and is definitely private if used properly. I don't touch any "cryptos".
If energy efficiency and green energy sources will not suffice to reduce our burning of fossil fuels, due in part to Bitcoin and its ilk, then the only way to avoid climate catastrophe would be simply doing less, a.k.a. degrowth. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the typical cryptocurrency advocate thinks of degrowth. (But that would interfere with the numbers going up!)
In short, Bitcoin is a major roadblock to any response to the climate crisis, using any strategy.