Please note that Bitcoin's energy consumption is nothing compared to other industries, and that it is rapidly becoming a net carbon negative industry because of the use of miners to prevent methane emissions.
In spite of the mining industry’s half-hearted attempts at greenwashing what they do, the largest mining operations are coal and natural gas.
If Bitcoin stopped tomorrow, nobody other than speculators would notice it except as a funny story in the news.
The methane emission thing is still largely theoretical. In the real world, Bitcoin is mined using particularly filthy coal in Kazakhstan, as well as natural gas in the USA - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/26/investing/bitcoin-mining-...
There's always an excuse or a "well just around the corner it'll be better", but the fact is it's actually terrible and this is pure distraction.
Yes, I know, if you can mine bitcoin and release CO2 instead of releasing methane directly, that's a small win in climate terms, roughly equivalent to just flaring the gas, but with a profit motive. Let me know when that accounts for even a handful of percentage points of the total hashrate, let alone the majority.
The research you referenced is sourced eventually to Alex de Vries, a person that has for years built his entire career image after "exposing Bitcoin's energy use". That fact that he works for the Dutch central bank should ring an alarm bell honestly.
Note that practically all research critical of Bitcoin's emissions are directly sourced to Alex de Vries's digiconomist website.
The thing is, I don't need to listen to him - there's tons of info out there about Bitcoin's presence in Kazakhstan from all sorts of sources. For instance here in New Scientist:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2284222-coal-powered-bi...
Reuters reporting on energy problems in Kazakhstan due to mining there -
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/crypto-boom-strains-...
About 20% of BTC hashrate seems to be there, and the energy there is 90% coal and gas. Then we have things like fossil fuel plants being brought out of retirement for Bitcoin mining in the US - https://www.voanews.com/a/bitcoin-mining-power-plant/6273552...
Yes, I know that stopping methane escapes is definitely a good thing. There's no indication that this is happening on any scale, and the stories all talk about "enormous potential", and possibilities and projections. I hope it does become carbon neutral, that would be one less problem with it, but it's not there yet and handwaving away problems because you have a potential solution is disingenuous.
https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/
"For those reasons, whether Bitcoin continues to be successful or fails in terms of broader adoption, there’s no risk of the network using too much energy in the grand scheme of things. By any metric, it’s a rounding error as far as global consumption energy is concerned, with a sizeable chunk of its energy usage consisting of sustainable or otherwise wasted energy.
People focusing heavily on the environmental “E” side of ESG as it relates to Bitcoin often overlook the “SG” component- social and governance. At the end of the day, I consider Bitcoin to be one of the most ESG assets around, just not in the corporate sanitised conception that the term ESG is often used in."
You have to be kidding about SG - it's the most toxic community on the planet, its governance is absent, and the whole ecosystem is rife with fraud and crime. That's hi-fucking-larious.
> I'm not attacking Alex de Vries as a person; just showing how his position makes him suspect of bias.
That's the very definition of an ad-hominem attack, attacking the standing of the speaker, not the speech.