[HN Gopher] Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin th... ___________________________________________________________________ Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin the filthiest asset imaginable Author : ForHackernews Score : 47 points Date : 2021-02-08 21:57 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (amycastor.com) (TXT) w3m dump (amycastor.com) | nickgrosvenor wrote: | I always wondered what will happen when the environmentalists | find out about the energy consumption requirements of Bitcoin. | 1996 wrote: | They will be super angry and look at all the details, including | the past profits, then calmly decide to look the other way | because they need a retirement account after all :) | bpodgursky wrote: | Hopefully everyone with move to Ethereum and other Proof of | Stake coins. | | (Both for the environment, and my wallet since I'm already deep | in Eth) | freerobby wrote: | They'll complain and then we'll show them the energy | consumption of the finance industry. | p1necone wrote: | Controlling for transaction volume the energy consumption of | bitcoin is _orders of magnitude_ higher than the rest of the | finance industry. | blhack wrote: | How much energy does the rest of the finance industry use? | floor2 wrote: | Bit of an aside, but it's so wild that we label people as | "environmentalists" and that anyone would place themselves NOT | in that group. | | It seems like 100% of people should want air which is non- | toxic, water which is non-toxic and food which is non-toxic. | | But of course, being an "abolitionist" was a political group in | the 1800s but now it's just assumed that 100% of people are | anti-slavery, so maybe the optimistic take is that | "environmentalist" will undergo the same transformation as | "abolitionist". | JoeAltmaier wrote: | This black-and-white thinking ignores the spectrum of what | constitutes non-toxic. There are those that accept nothing | short of perfect purity in air, water and food, a condition | which has never existed in a million years of human history. | Others are less concerned about humans and more about | ecology. Still others value the morals of human-animal | relations above issues of nature. | | So no, we are not all 'ecologists', not in the same sense | anyway. And not to the same degree. | Craighead wrote: | I'm curious why you would post such a blatant lie about the | air quality post industrial revolution by framing the | scenario as "million years of human history" | | Why are you posting in bad faith? | pasabagi wrote: | There's as wide a gulf between our enviroment[1] and | 'complete purity' as there is between slavery and 'complete | freedom'. | | [1](complete ecosystem collapse, widespread poisoning of | populations worldwide, etc) | nickgrosvenor wrote: | So true. | friedman23 wrote: | >It seems like 100% of people should want air which is non- | toxic, water which is non-toxic and food which is non-toxic. | | This is a really low bar for what it means to be an | environmentalist. | sky_rw wrote: | The spectrum lies in what the proposed solution to any man- | made ecological problem should be. Typically solutions to | these proposed problems require increased cost burden on | either individuals or businesses, sacrifices in lifestyle, | increased regulation, etc. With anything like this politics | comes into play almost immediately. | | The way I see it, your 'environmentalist' label generally | applies to those who thing we should spend/sacrifice a lot. | And the 'climate denier'/'anti-environmentalist' label | applies to those at the opposite end of the spectrum who | don't think we should sacrifice or spend anything. | | Also re: slavery, more people are enslaved now in the world | than at any point in history. More black men are enslaved by | the prison system in the USA than there were at the height of | North American slavery. So things are never so boolean. | loceng wrote: | The counterargument is always that at some point in future the | energy consumption problem will be solved, but isn't the rate | of computation a or the main factor against 50%+ attacks? Else | the solutions proposed seemed to relay on centralized services | that don't actually play on the blockchain to reduce the actual | amount of transactions and load, also then avoiding the delays | - but then re-adding the supposed main issue of having a | "trustless" blockchain. | ece wrote: | Or PoS Ethereum or other PoS crypto currencies can take the | place of exponentially energy-hungry PoW. They explicitly | deal with the 50%+ attacks in their governance too. | loceng wrote: | How so - by central authority changes? | ForHackernews wrote: | You can't "solve" the energy consumption of Bitcoin - | deliberate waste is built into the Proof-of-work protocol by | design. | ghego1 wrote: | Genuine question: what's the end game here for Musk? He's been | tweeting about dogecoin, and then Tesla invests a non | insignificant amount of money in BTC. I smell something fishy. | marcinjachymiak wrote: | Counterpoint: https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins- | energy-co... | ForHackernews wrote: | "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his | salary depends on his not understanding it." | polote wrote: | This article is a joke written by the co-founder of Coin | Metrics, a blockchain analytics startup. How he is not biased? | | Explaining that we are lucky to have bitcoin because China is | wasting unused electricity... | kneel wrote: | https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit... | falcolas wrote: | I'm sorry, I had to stop reading at "Second, metrics like the | "per-transaction energy cost" are misleading because | transactions themselves do not cost energy". | | Yes, this is technically 100% accurate. However it's also 100% | missing the point, since for the transaction to be globally | accepted, a hash needs to be mined. | | To paraphrase a few memes, "they're technically right, but | they're being an asshole about it." | tanseydavid wrote: | https://ark-invest.com/analyst-research/bitcoin-myths/ | | <TL;DR> | | Claim: Bitcoin wastes too much energy. | | Counter-Claim: Bitcoin's energy consumption is more efficient | than that of gold and traditional banks. | dhnajsjdnd wrote: | Counter-counter-claim: The existence of Bitcoin doesn't reduce | the energy use of traditional banks - in fact, it increases it. | Bitcoin is not just responsible for the energy used in mining, | but also the energy used in its voluminous interactions with | traditional finance. | jlawer wrote: | There is no effort to bring these to the same base. The global | banking system is massive. The article is factoring retail | banking, stock & bonds, finance, derivatives, payment | processing and a lot more in to "Global Banking". Even if | bitcoin was to replace the dollar and gold all at once, much of | that infrastructure would still be needed. | | Add to this bitcoin does an infinitesimally small number of | transactions compared to the global financial system and I am | doubtful that on a per value or per transaction basis that it | would be within an order of magnitude. A lot of this is | inherent to the design, and while it may be able to be evolved | or an alternative crypto may not have the caveats, Bitcoin as | it stands now is VERY power inefficient. | gargara wrote: | When Starlink is going to be fully deployed the internet would be | impossible to censor and the bitcoin will be way more valuable. | api wrote: | The Internet is already damn hard to censor if you're tech- | savvy, and Bitcoin isn't really censored very many places. | gargara wrote: | you mean in China ? | jude- wrote: | Point of clarity: | | Bitcoin transactions take negligible energy to produce and | validate. It's block production that's energy-intensive, and it's | the same regardless of how big or full blocks are. | | Like any energy-intensive industry that could operate profitably | via fossil fuel consumption, mining should be regulated to only | use green energy. No different than power production and | consumption today. | ForHackernews wrote: | What would it mean for a bitcoin transaction to exist without | ever being included in a block? | anm89 wrote: | Yeah this narrative is played out. Yes bitcoin uses a lot of | energy. Almost certainly less than the things it is competing | against. And over time it has the potential to decrease that | consumption drastically with other protocols, an option | traditional banking doesn't possess. | | Bitcoin is already the greenest form of finance and will get much | cleaner in the future. | kd913 wrote: | Bitcoin is the greenest form of finance that gets greener over | time? | | What nonsense is this? | | Already ONE transaction consumes as much power as an entire | American household uses for a week.That is 215 kwh of energy | for one transaction. | | It's using the equivalent of 2.26 million American homes worth | of energy for just 330k transactions. | | A significant chunk of that is wash trading, ie people buying | and selling to themselves to manipulate the price. Is that | worth it? | | A simple visa or mastercard transaction produces several orders | of magnitude less CO2. | | For 330k transact ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-08 23:00 UTC)