Hacker News Reader

Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

There is no reason in my mind why bitcoin would crash. Gold has not (and no gold's price is not majorly driven by its industrial uses). If anything it is more like gold than ever before. Expensive, and difficult to find, transport, and spend.

View on HN

The fact that gold is "Expensive, and difficult to find, transport, and spend." is mostly a problem for the havers of gold. The biggest problem for PoW cryptocurrencies is the wasted electricity and corresponding wasting of carbon output which is a huge negative externality impacting all the non-cryptocurrency havers too.

I would think the mining of gold also has massive negative externalities, including carbon output.

Your argument does not hold water: Gold consumes vastly more energy and produces vastly more CO2 to produce and move it than Bitcoin does. Or does the pollution from gold somehow not matter?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'

What negative externalities does gold have that are worse than PoW cryptocurrencies? Gold mining is relatively miniscule. There is only something like 3,000 tons of gold mined per year and something like 200,000 tons mined in all human history. For comparison you can look at this[1]. We mine billions of tons of iron and steel every year.

Also the equipment used to mine cryptocurrencies doesn't magically appear. What percentage of the world's mining operations for copper, lithium, silver, etc. goes to building crypto-mining rigs? How does that total output compare to the 3k tons of gold?

[1] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/...

Worth noting that (the last time I looked into it), the cost of mining gold was $850/troy oz [based on the filings of the largest mining company].

I don't know how much of that $75B/year translates to CO2 emissions, etc, or how it compares to BTC or what have you, but you can buy a lot of externalities for $75B.

I mean, how many tons of rock are removed for each ounce ton of gold is a more relevant figure maybe

Worst case scenario is something like, every dollar spent mining gold goes into diesel for machines moving dirt to find the gold, which amounts to something like 27 billion gallons of diesel per year, which amounts to something like 275 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Which would, in fact, be something like 7.5x more CO2 per year than BTC.

I'd put my estimate at something like 30-150 megatons of CO2/year for gold, just because I'd be surprised if they spent less than 10% of the cost of mining gold on fuel, or more than 50%. So I'd be neither surprised if gold generated less CO2 / year than Bitcoin, or if it generated like 4x more.

Aside from its noble properties and industrial uses, gold is a terrifically lustrous metal that most every human being in history has admired and desired. Its ability to convey wealth, luxury, power, and beauty has not diminished for thousands of years.

Bitcoin is a ten year old project, written in mutable code, that's invisible, intangible, and essentially replicable by any number of competing crypto projects or forks. It may be useful, or it may not be. It may stick around, or it may disappear. Either way, it's not seriously comparable to gold.

On the other hand, for the last 40+ years, we've seen a massive proliferation of lustrous materials produced, so much they literally cover our kid's bedroom floors. Luster, once rare, is now cheap and gaudy.

Only the extremely wealthy could line their floor with gold. You were comparing Bitcoin to gold, not "all lustrous materials". It remains a poor comparison.

There is only one gold with gold's properties and that's gold.

The same cannot be said for BTC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com