Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Mining Alone Could Raise Global Temperatures Above Critical Limit By 2033 (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: Researchers have found that if Bitcoin is adopted at rates similar to technologies like credit cards, its energy consumption could increase global temperatures by 2C in just 16 years. This is well beyond the limit of catastrophic climate change proposed by the UN. Motherboard spoke to an expert on Bitcoin and energy about the study's implications.
Off the top of my head, cryptocurrencies that require proof of work seem to all suffer from this flaw. Work is energy, energy has the side effect of global warming with our current grid. Any proof-of-work system that doesn't require a large amount of energy is going to result in a massive influx of new coins being mined, causing a large amount of inflation.
A few possible solutions would be:
Any other thoughts?
And let's not forget that there is zero, zilch, no advantage to using cryptocurrencies for anything but crimes. Non-blockchain payment services are at least as good, sometimes much better for anything where you're OK with your payments being traceable and visible to law enforcement and financial regulators. Sometimes you can even enhance privacy with traditional payment systems using gift cards.
Cryptocurrencies could enhance privacy in a few legal purchases, but it's certainly not worth the environmental cost alone, to say nothing of how it empowers criminals. This is a technology that should and must be left to die.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They are assuming that The number of blocks mined in 2017 is efficient for the number of transactions and the Number of blocks to be mined is proportional to the number of transactions --- More transactions won't result in larger blocks
It's clear that these researchers don't understand Bitcoin at all if they think that there is any relationship between the number of transactions and the number of blocks mined. The difficulty is adjusted to ensure that one new block is mined every 10 minutes, on average. That figure is independent of both the number of transactions and the size of the block. Larger blocks and out-of-band systems like the Lightning Network increase the number of transactions which can be processed without altering the total energy used for mining.
The energy cost of mining is driven by competition over block rewards and transaction fees; of the two, fees are currently insignificant compared to the block rewards (<1% of mining revenues). The block rewards halve every four years. Right now the reward is at 12.5 BTC @ 6250 USD/BTC, so the breakeven point for mining is about $80k per block; any miner spending more than that amount per mined block on hardware and electricity is losing money. In 2020 the reward will drop to 6.25 BTC; in 2024 it will be reduced again, to $20k per block. The long-term trend is thus for the energy cost of (profitable) mining to decrease over time, at least until transaction fees start to exceed block rewards.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Solar and wind enthusiasts talk about numbers of windmills erected and numbers of solar panels installed. But they never talk about the actual CO2 reduction benefit. Look at Germany, the great leader of the industrialized world, installing shitloads of wind and solar with no CO2 reductions to show for it. What good is celebrating a wind generator installation when it is barely helping? Its all symbolism for the nimble minded.
Now look at France, decades ahead of Germany with half the CO2 emissions, simply because they were smart to go nuclear many years ago.
Anti nuke, wind and solar only idiots are as bad as climate change deniers. They deny the necessary role of nuclear.