The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!"
Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.
Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.
Do you feel the same way about causes of death?
Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!"
Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.
You're completely missing the point here: we have finite time and resources to deal with problems. We must dedicate these finite time and resources in the most efficient way to possible to achieve the most desired outcome.
If by "worse" you mean "heart disease causes more deaths and drives higher social costs" then yes there is a strong argument to be made on addressing the root causes driving heart disease with more resources and time then cystic fibrosis. But, again, your analogy is contrived-and-forced-apples-to-oranges with the topic at hand.
It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.
Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Read it.
"As an alternative to intervening in emergent cryptocurrency markets through prices (e.g., taxation) or outright restricting their development, there may be a role for government investment into R&D that focuses on designing mining puzzles that greatly reduce energy consumption (and thus production costs) while still allowing for secure validation of anonymous transactions. Fully vetting and encouraging such currency alternatives might retain the libertarian social benefits of the blockchain [35] while making “the last Bitcoin” irrelevant. Although there will still be private benefits captured from mining under possible low-energy design alternatives, as illustrated here there would be significant public good benefits (reduced cryptodamages) to justify such government investments into R&D. Importantly, such investments in R&D are not mutually exclusive with taxing to internalize cryptodamages, and may also come with the potential to generate spin-off benefits from blockchain technology more generally."
Papers discuss the implications and applications of their work. That discussion is not the work itself; it is meant to give a starting point for fitting the work with other research or doing new research that builds on the work. Thus, the authors "close by sharing our brief thoughts on policy implications of recognizing cryptodamages." That section mentions a wide range of policy implications—several paragraphs that you didn't bother quoting—without advocating for anything in particular beyond reducing harm.
Frankly, that leaves it sounding like what you're really bothered by is that the paper points out that there is harm, and advocates for reducing it. And if that's the real problem—that you don't like it when someone speaks up and says hey, this has quantifiable downsides—just be honest about it.
Yes but that is still propagating the unsubstantiated view that cryptocurrency mining is an important cause of societal harm worthy of mitigation/regulation. There is no comparison to other similar or bigger economic activities, no mention of the fact that the pollution happens at power plants and is under direct control of the power plant owners, not miners. It is inordinately focused on societal harms of cryptocurrency mining, it ignores the benefits beyond mining profit(which is uncertain but non-zero and hard to quantify in dollars). Limitation of the paper narrative to such a narrow topic shows bias.
It's a single paper. One piece of information that's small enough to be digested and connected with other work. And frankly, if the result had been that each $1 created 1¢ of costs, you'd be celebrating it. Your only real criticism here is that you don't like the result.
If you're so concerned about the root cause of power generation, go focus on solving that problem.
So ignore the root cause altogether, lol. And when we've banned crypto mining and accrued even worse social costs as a result, we'll rinse and repeat this process with the next ".*damage" power consumer. Totally sane!
> There is considerable evidence of concentration of mining operations in particular locations, typically where reliable electricity is cheaply available, though, precise data are lacking (e.g., [15], [6]). In the US, perhaps the most well-known concentration is the Mid-Columbia Basin area in central and eastern Washington State, where cheap electricity is produced by hydropower along the Columbia River [4], [6], however, mining in other US locations also occurs (see [11] and news references in [23], [24], and [25]).
> emissions rates per kWh will differ substantially given underlying differences in how power is produced—i.e., China relies extensively on coal power (>60% of electricity generation) while the US is more balanced (32% natural gas, 30% coal, 20% nuclear, etc.).
Saying they ignore this is just a lie. Criticize the paper, by all means, but this simply isn't a hit piece. It's careful in stating exactly what it can commit to, and it reasonably tries to explain how that fits into the bigger picture.
Could you describe what social costs we'll have by banning crypto mining?
The planet is burning, the cost of enforcement will be worth it.
Yes? Polluting power plants kill many more people than the whole bitcoin mining operation.
> Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.
Okay, we agree on something here. I fully support assessing Bitcoin mining and operation costs and comparing those costs to other consumer classes to get perspective. When we do this, it is easy to see bitcoin mining is a non-issue climate-wise (for now). The main issue is pollution done by Big Polluters such as naval transport and coal/gas power plants.
These bogus calls for regulation/shutdowns of minor electricity consumers just spoil the climate discussion, distract us from the real polluters.
Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark.
The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply?
It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.
Discussing things with people on hacker news is frustrating because people like you extend the argument to way way way past the point at hand. All of a sudden we are talking about clean energy deployment, not that BitCoin mining is using a lot of power and resources.