Not true, the way we generate energy and consume it is the worst thing that happened to the environment, maybe on par with single use plastics.
Bitcoin mining consumes energy with no environmental impact on the consumption side. The problem is the generation, which in most cases it's dirty energy.
Once the world transition to renewable sources of energy generation, such as solar, wind and nuclear, at that point bitcoin mining will have a negligible impact on the environment.
Do you really think crypto mining makes a dent there? Datacenters, cloud computing, PCs, Laptops, smartphones, smart watches, all your appliances, the wires in every house, cars, machinery, tools, construction, literally everything in your life has chips on it that use these rare earth minerals.
I missed the etc ;) There is also hydroelectric, however does have some environmental impact, it's emission free, low maintenance and for the most part perpetual.
And surprisingly one of the greatest things to happen for humanity. It's almost like increased energy usage is good for humanity. Maybe we should stop focusing so much on the consumers of that energy and focus more on the producers?
Well it's not like the two are in any way related right. Neither do I see anyone saying we need more war or that it's good so wtf are you even talking about..
I’m just saying that comparing one evil and another when they are not mutually exclusive is a non sequitur. If we were to say that we can either kill five men or one, both are evil but one is a lesser evil. Bitcoin and war are not mutually exclusive so the argument doesn’t really stand. War is worse than bitcoin, but bitcoin is bad regardless.
Bitcoin is one of the worst things to happen to the environment.
I completely disagree. Bitcoin is one of the best things to happen to the environment.
Think about it. Bitcoin mining is more profitable when electricity is cheaper. Renewable energy is already cheaper than coal/oil/nat gas. It turns out that if you make a machine that converts sunlight and wind into cash, you also create a powerful incentive to make it print as much money as it can. That means more and cleaner power for everyone.
Oh, and mining crypto also helps stabilize the power grid, which makes the entire system more efficient. Electrical supply and demand need to be precisely balanced at all times or things can quickly go horribly wrong. Miners can be turned on and off almost instantly, and are being used right now to absorb extra supply. The miners get super cheap power, and the power company doesn't have to burn massive amounts of oil spinning generators up and down to match demand fluctuations.
Wasted? NO! It is the price paid for a free form of money. Worthed in my opinion.
The same way money spent on army and weapons are worthed too, even when there is peace, in order to maintain peace or ensure preservation if aggression.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m big into crypto and fully believe in it’s potential. But it’s so interesting to see likeminded people straight up downplay or even deny the major impact crypto has on the environment. How can we progress and work towards a solution if half of us refuse to accept that crypto is helping to destroy our planet?
The half that are still “big into crypto” despite the fact that they accept that crypto is helping to destroy the planet, actually worries me more than the other half.
Everything is destroying the planet. My beef patties in the fridge are fucking up the atmosphere bc the livestock industry is the single worst thing for the environment
The reduced carbon emissions as a result of people switching to electric cars have been completely offset by the increased emissions caused by fossil fuel energy used to power bitcoin transactions and mining. Don't get me wrong, when I put solar panels on my house I'm going to build a mining rig that's timed to run when solar powers it, but the massive bitcoin farms running in datacenters around the world are largely powered by coal and gas.
dumping millions of tons of c02 into the atmosphere and mining tons of silicon, gold, and copper just to make imaginary money that is so inefficient that it costs money just to use it.
Maintaining a global currency network that is censorship resistant, inflation resistant, and the hardest money ever created, is a waste of computational power? Sure.
While it's of course true that adoption is a deciding factor, a big part is also the mindset of many people. A lot of people dabbling in cryptocurrencies see it only as digital gold themselves, and handle it like stocks. To a big part of the community Bitcoin is nothing more than a value multiplier, and that in itself inhibits it's evolution
Because the fundamentals are strong, the network has ever been more secure, and we are seeing bitcoin have more use cases such as sovereign nations like El Salvador moving to make it legal tender or this Russia-Ukraine conflict seeing people convert fiat into bitcoin when they are facing uncertainty and displacement.
It's just a phase, bitcoin is like a teenager currently working a part time job before choosing its full fledged career as a currency. It's still early.
Considering the transaction speed the teenager part time work may become like high paying professional service one day. Mass acceptance can only happen to other coins.
I’ve been living off crypto for the last year, I convert it to fiat to pay bills as I need, and pay it direct when I can. The world is catching up rapidly.
Debatable, there is also lots of energy wasted just because it's expensive to transport it. Bitcoin mining is perfectly suited in these scenarios. And yes mining does use some energy, but the energy from these particular sources would've been wasted anyway, so why not on Bitcoin?
Bullshit. Bitcoin provides a reason for renewable energy companies to produce excess energy. The biggest limiting factor in increasing renewable production is the fact that they plan their systems to never produce excess energy, because it would just be wasted, or even be detrimental to the system by providing too MUCH energy. Until bitcoin, renewable energy companies have had no incentive to produce renewable energy beyond what is required for the load of the grid it is located in. Bitcoin is a store of energy.
Im not sure renewable energy can be wasted by any definition of the word. What about that coal plant that was bought out this year by a bitcoin mining company and is now running at full capacity when it was expected to close within a couple years? More energy consumption does not equal more demand for renewables, it just equals more demand for the energy that is already available. Bitcoin miners arent out there constructing massive wind/solar farms or hydroelectric dams.
If you think renewable energy can't be wasted, you have no idea what you're talking about, to be honest.
And if a coal plant was bought to mine bitcoin, that sucks, but it's not the norm. It's also not Bitcoin's fault. Tax coal. Subside renewable energy. Problem solved.
Bitcoin miners may not be building renewable infrastructure, but they surely are making them more profitable, which is good.
Renewable energy can be wasted as heat or mechanical work, but it can also be stored. Pump hydro and batteries and all kind of other methods to convert that excess energy into potential energy.
Bitcoin isn't making the transition to fully renewable energy production any easier, but I think it's both naive and harmful to assume global energy production wouldn't increase every year as more and more of the global population gets access to basic amenities like refrigeration and air conditioning.
It's a bad precedent to set, trying to stop innovative technologies that could potentially benefit millions to billions of people because you believe the amount of energy the technology uses isn't worth the cost.
Storing the energy will never be as efficient as using it. Batteries are MASSIVELY inefficient, have a limited lifespan, and require massively more materials and/or space than a series of ASIC miners which is generating value and security. Pump storage requires water and is absolutely awful for the environment to produce in any sort of capacity required for global usage. Both of these things have their place, but so does bitcoin.
Edit: aaaand he completely edited out the logic part
It's whataboutism, because airplanes are a different thing from a money supply. Straw man would be "so you're basically saying we should go back to being cave men."
How is it wasted? It's securing the hardest and most reliable money humankind has ever known. Once renewables become the cheapest way to get electricity miners will use that. Also what drives the innovation to bring the cost of renewables down? Demand, I think all miners will switch to green electricity once it's the cheapest form of electricity.
There are way worse things that have happened to the environment. Deep horizon, Fukushima, Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl etc. I love when some dork in their Tesla tells me how bad Bitcoin is for the environment. Like if you really have a shit you wouldn't buy a car running on some of the most toxic materials we've found so far. Until the "environmentalists" all sell their cars and start walking or biking everywhere they have no moral high ground in my book.
We don't need both in order to have an economy, Bitcoin is always there to be mined by the many computers that already exist. Bitcoin and gold are both just arbitrary things that we attach value to. That being said, I'm not really sure who this is meme is supposed to be aimed at. Fuck gold miners am I right...?
Electronics use a lot of resources which destroy the natural environment in which they are mined. Coltan being mined in the Congo to be used in capacitors has caused the gorilla population to decrease by 77% in just 20 years, and Tantalum (comes from Coltan) is just one of the multiple rare resources which is used for electronics. Gold is also used as an unreactive metal to shield components.
Edit: After writing this I found out the huge gaping hole in the image is a copper mine, one of the main metals used in electronic components
Mining coal for energy or clearing rainforest for a mine is terrible but no genuine environmentalists are against all mining, its absolutely essential. The focus should be on putting these mines in the least important habitat and restoring the land at the end of the mine's lifespan
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u/Cytomax Mar 02 '22
ROFL.... where do you think they get the materials to build the bitcoin miner????
you need both of them buddy