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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Last time I checked (2021) the CO2 emissions of one bitcoin transaction was equivalent to driving over 2000 km in an average middle european car from the same year (see: https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2021/11/19/bitco...)

Unless I made an error here, or that study is flawed this seems to me like a ridiculously huge amount?

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> What matters is the source of the electricity that is consumed. It is key to distinguish between renewable sources of electricity and fossil fuels. We do this by taking into account the total electricity mix of each country to convert Bitcoin’s electricity consumption into its carbon footprint.

Jumps out to me as being not particularly precise. In the US, for instance, you need to take a much more local view- bit coin mining tends to be clustered near hydro power. This pulls the opposite way with coal plants in the boonies of China.

Yeah but even if they are off by a magnitude and it would only be the equivalent of a 200km car drive it would be way to much.

This is a false comparison.

Please explain why, because I'd intuitively expect the comparison between kgCO2 of bitcoin transactions to gCO2 of car driving to be valid, assuming underlying numbers are true and not off by many magnitudes which I cannot judge (as stated).

To be fair, Bitcoin proponents don't even see this as critique, they say it's by design and everything more efficient would jeopardize their goals, lol.

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