Proof-of-work works fine with clean energy. You should direct your concerns at polluting forms of energy sources.
For every solar panel, there's a pile of toxic garbage that must be dealt with after ~20 years. It's unquestionably better than the billions of tonnes of CO2 that would be produced by the equivalent coal plant, but it's still a problem.
There is no "ethical consumption" of cryptocurrency.
No one.
Don't use a strawman argument.
And independent of this issue: there are of course things which are objectively better for that person in Afghanistan and objectively better for everyone.
Your poor Afghanistan person might like to have less heat waves than Bitcoin because he might not have enough money anyway to save it away as Bitcoin.
Normally those countries use dollar or euro anyway. It's much easier for them than being able to remember a Bitcoin wallet
While I'm not an expert in Afghanistan politics, I follow the Russian war and don't think we should support them by providing bitcoins
What about using it to support democracy in Russia? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/navalny-ally-urges-dono...
Therefore it's not my place to break sanctions my country opposes onto another.
unfortunately as its supply is limited... it being consumed for useless work means it can't be used for useful work, and as a result dirty energy is being generated for that instead
none of which require burning hundreds of barrels of oil a day calculating quadrillions of sha1 hashes to keep their value from collapsing
and if you don't want to physically hold them then there's ETFs for that
Bitcoin would still compete for other things which are much more critical toost people on our planet.
Things like a storage battery. Or melting aluminum or other ors.
Or melting aluminum or other ors - this doesn't work because the load is extremely fickle. You have to be able to turn on/off easily and frequently.
other things can certainly come along and compete for the power. Its not like bitcoin mining isn't price bound. It always seeks the cheapest energy regardless of location
We are in such a bad place from a co2 point of view, if my examples don't work, we need to incentive to find better things.
Bitcoin is not better. It probably still consumes more wasted than just keep burning it.
After all the mining itself needs cooling (ac), Asics miners and local infrastructure (a gas engine)
Until then there are countless better ways to use it. And yes, Crypto isn't the only wasteful use of energy, but it sure is the most obnoxious.
If you have already mined coal burning in a field and instead take that coal and put it through a generator and mine bitcoin with it you are using more energy and cleaning up emissions. https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2022-01-31/how-waste-...
In a lot of places in the midwest up to 25% of wind or solar energy is priced at a negative level, this means they are paying to produce energy. Setting up a bitcoin miner is perfect because it can be quickly turned on/off and doesn't require consistent power like most manufacturing or other energy intense activities. This makes renewables more economical.
This goes into all of this as well. https://niccarter.info/wp-content/uploads/txsummit_nc_oct08....
Burned methane/negative priced reproducible energy/excess energy in general would be better spent on more valuable energy intensive pursuits such as desalinization, metal smelting, direct air carbon capture....
But on other uses of the energy you can't really do these things,
desalinization - in the middle of the country with no salt water plus inconsistent energy
metal smelting - doesn't work with rapid turning on/off
direct air carbon capture - doesn't work with rapid turning on/off
Bitcoin miners can be turned on/off quickly and don't require much infrastructure except an internet connection. How would you ever run a big plant with unpredictable times/days that it could actually run?
Instead of putting a Powerline there or building a smelter or something else, Bitcoin is easier and makes more money quicker.
This is not a good thing right now this is still bad. And as soon as you have Bitcoin mining there, no one wants to underutilize it because it is inefficient. Now your miner is motivated to run even more and get more money
Do you really believe a Bitcoin miner would accept being shut down for most of the day? Nope.
Instead of putting a Powerline there or building a smelter or something else, Bitcoin is easier and makes more money quicker. - I assume there is already a powerline to any wind/solar farm. The issue is the negative priced electricity. If you can't compete with a bitcoin miner that is always seeking the cheapest electricity regardless of location then maybe your project isn't economically viable. Its not like miners have a monopoly, just agree to pay more than they are willing to pay
Bitcoin is not the solution it's part of this problem because it's decoupled from that market.
It pushes into a market which is bound by different rules.