Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkachowski | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand where all these "cryptocurrency vs the environment" posts are coming from recently. The core problem is energy use, no? Things using electricity - of which bitcoin is a huge one - are powered by environmentally damaging supplies.

I don't care about BTC at all, but if it were to be wiped out of existence tomorrow it would prevent further damage to the environment in exactly the same way that getting rid of plastic straws stopped plastic polluting the ocean.

View on HN

I don't think you realize the scale of it. Bitcoin is primarily used for speculation, the value is only based on more and more people buying in, and the energy usage is overwhelming. We are in dire need of reducing overall energy usage, but Bitcoin works against this in a huge way. And even if the energy comes from "sustainable sources", solar cells still need to be manufactured, the hardware that does nothing but mine and ends up as e-waste needs to be produced. The environmental impact doesn't end with energy usage.

Overall, Bitcoin has an overall negative impact on society and environment, none of the claims that proponents made really hold up. There are many fundamental flaws that prevent Bitcoin from functioning as a practical currency, even is energy use wasn't an issue.

> overall negative impact on society and environment

is the description of almost everything in the developed world lifestyle, from animal meat to automobiles to overlarge houses.

Oh, so then it's ok to have a "currency" where one transaction uses 650kWh, 12000000 times more than a credit card transaction.

I get all the benefits of crypto, but there are also massive downsides, the biggest being the energy/hardware usage, which has to rise constantly by design.

That's only a downside for proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Proof-of-stake eliminates almost all the energy consumption.

I'd be excited about a widely adopted cryptocurrency that doesn't gobble up insane amounts of energy and needs an ever increasing amount of computing power to keep it from collapsing, but right now Bitcoin is using almost as much energy as Sweden, which isn't great.

I agree, and sadly they're unlikely to change. However, Ethereum has about as much usage (though lower market cap), has proof-of-stake running with 100K nodes and $5 billion staked, and plans to migrate the rest of the network and eliminate mining within a year or so.

there are people who are sending their ashes to space. And nobody care, just like nobody cars about btc being utility less.

There are countless bigger issues that HN doesn't talk about can we add btc's env impact to it?!

Huh? It would reduce a statistically significant amount of wasted energy. About as much as Ireland uses every year. Seems like a good goal to pursue, unless you’re a nihilist I guess

If the energy was previously excess energy being thrown out, is using it for bitcoin actually increasing the energy footprint?

Not saying all bitcoin mining is this way, but a portion of it is.

It would change economical pressures to push for things like building necessary transfer capacity, meanwhile you have BTC miners rescuing coal mine and coal power plant with new power purchase contract.

BTC is explicitly called out because people are essentially burning energy, Golgafrincham-style, solely to make money.

There is the resource cost of crypto but also an opportunity cost.

Given all the smart minds and money devoted to crypto research, could humanity not benefit from other projects?

That's a valid point, but that's an argument for "crypto is an expensive distraction from more worthy goals" rather than the original "computers used for a certain purpose are dangerous to the environment"

Talent invested in the crypto space pales in comparison to what we waste in finance. Our greatest minds are more likely to be arbitraging pork belly futures (PrIcE dIsCoVeRy!) than working on crypto.

I’m all for not wasting talent on wasteful projects, be it crypto or finance.

But wasting talent in finance isn’t a justification to waste talent in crypto.

Don't forget ads! There are way more people wasting time on that.

A long-term impact caused by money laundering may be more significant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com