How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble - BBC

[Pekelo]

c) why are they concentrating on Bitcoin's excess energy use

Because it is incredibly imbecile and worthless and inefficient? The whole thing was invented to better our lives, instead of that it is just a huge energy waste...

And not even that, but it is growing (for no good reason) without any slowing down in sight?

 

[terr]

I don't buy this analysis. Dryers run 5-6kw for an hr once a week. A single bitcoin miner is at least 1kw/hr/24/7

Well yeah but there are a lot more dryers than there are bitcoin miners. At least I presume so. Who knows what vast warehouses of miles and miles of bitcoin miners there are in China.

 

[Overnight]

Well yeah but there are a lot more dryers than there are bitcoin miners. At least I presume so. Who knows what vast warehouses of miles and miles of bitcoin miners there are in China.

Go long coal mining companies. Bitcoin...The sensible alternative to gold.

End of line.

 

[johnarb]

Flared gas that is uneconomic to move to market is being converted into electricity for bitcoin mining. That must be an environmental benefit.

It seems bitcoin mining energy usage comes up from time to time. I shared this video on a different thread. 6 minutes from the point of this video for anyone who cares about this topic

"Highly profitable use of energy that is location-independent"

 

[longshort]

How much energy is used in gold mining? How much energy is used by banks running the fractional reserve? Money is energy.

Comparisons with gold are futile. Gold is used in industry, aerospace, electronics, computers, dentistry, medicine, jewelry. What gives gold (or any metal) its value are exactly these real-world uses. With silver its industrial use is half of its global production.

A connector can be plated today or in ten years. By investing in metal, one is storing the value of the metal's future use. Just like storing oil in a tank.

Resources going into Bit"coin" are always wasted. Energy going into cryptos is gone. It can't ever be retrieved, which means no value is stored in that way. And the end "product", a made-up digital token, is useless.

 

[virtusa]

Stop producing gold and in no time there will be huge problems as a lot of products cannot be build anymore.

Remove bitcoin and for 99.99999% of the world population nothing will change.

 

[AbbotAle]

Remove bitcoin and for 99.99999% of the world population nothing will change.

Massive change is coming to the world due to digitisation. In fact, few if any can comprehend just how big the change is going to be.

Massive change is coming to the world due to the building out of the new virtual/digital economy.

How can anyone not see this?

Marc Andreesson said over a decade ago that 'software is eating the world'. A truly famous 5 words if ever there was. And now, whole businesses and in some case people, are being swallowed up into the online world and economy. That's starting to be a real tenacious trend.

Yet many are calling Bitcoin and the new DAE (Digital Asset Ecosystem) a scam with no use and no future. It's all worthless according to them even after growing by hundreds of % per year (not talking about Bitcoin, rather the DAE).

A question I'd like them to answer is just how much time and research they've done into the matter? If they bothered to do the work (takes 3-6 months and even then it's always ongoing), they'd shoot themselves for not doing it earlier which is probably why they subconsciously don't want to do the work - they'd be showing themselves up.

You can lead a horse to water, you cannot force it to drink...

 

[AbbotAle]

So for those with an open mind that want to learn more.

For those that feel they might have got Bitcoin/DAE wrong. (Nothing wrong with being wrong and making a mistake in this business - EVERYTHING wrong with not doing something about it).

Here's probably the best primer on both Bitcoin and the new digital economy -

Parker Lewis's excellent series of Bitcoin essays.

Start at the first, read them all, then re-read.

https://unchained-capital.com/blog/author/plewis/page/3/

PS. For people that have done the work, this one blew me away. The author has THE best take on the DAE that I've seen.

https://metaversed.net/Into-The-Voi...he-Metaverse-263f1ff8c13c455ea472f5689e01acaa

 

[AbbotAle]

As I've long said to the Bitcoin bears, the mistake you're all making is looking at just Bitcoin and its price.

However, what you should be doing is looking 'above' Bitcoin and into the new virtual/digital economy/DAE.

Once you (sort of) understand that, then bring Bitcoin and some of the other crypto currencies into play. And if you do that, 90% chance you'll add some Bitcoin to your portfolio and then keep stacking, high and low prices.

 

[Pekelo]

So let's go back to the title of this thread and instead of "but other things are also wasteful" shit, let's discuss the issues:

1. Do you think this huge energy usage is normal? (and technologically perfectly OK and acceptable)

2. Can this be sustained for years or decades? (specially that it is supposed to increase)

3. Is it a systematic risk to the existence of the network? (due to mining ban, economical unsustainability, etc.)

These are the real issues, not driers... And let me answer them objectively:

1. No, it wasn't intended like that and it is not normal. Technology should be improving all the time, not going backwards.
2. No it can not, something has to give eventually.
3. Yes. It is a huge risk as the title of the thread suggest it.