> Is there any more to discuss on the topic of Bitcoin being outrageously wasteful?
The carbon estimate seems very poor.
> Since we know the average emission factor of the Chinese grid (around 700 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour), this can be used for a very rough approximation of the carbon intensity of the power used for Bitcoin mining.
The reason many miners are in China is that they can access cheap off-grid renewable sources of energy there, such as excess hydroelectric, so using an on-grid CO2 estimate doesn't work.
I love when bitcoin promoters claim that bitcoins massive waste of energy is okay cause “it’s totally renewable”.
Setting aside the non-trivial ecological damage caused by dams.... all that renewable energy could have been used to power something that actually adds value to society. Instead it is getting flushed down the toilet solving useless math problems so that a relative handful of people can milk a larger set of rubes for all their money. Oh, and enable criminals to continue their criminal behavior....
I don't own any Bitcoin and never have, and am not especially fond of it.
> Setting aside the non-trivial ecological damage caused by dams..
I don't think anyone is claiming that the dams were built to mine Bitcoins. The power generation was provisioned to power towns, but it is generating more electricity than the towns can use or profitably transport away.
> all that renewable energy could have been used to power something that actually adds value to society.
There is a market to buy the energy. If anyone wanted it for basically any other purpose, the price would increase and the miners would presumably go anywhere else in the world with overprovisioned renewable energy, so that their profit can be preserved. Mining doesn't have many requirements: it doesn't even need to be on-grid. It's created an arbitrage market for cheap electricity, and people will search out the cheapest electricity in the world to use for it. By definition, the cheapest electricity will be the least wanted.
> all that renewable energy could have been used to power something that actually adds value to society.
If the miners are using excess production, then by definition, that power could not have been used for anything else; otherwise, some consumer in the grid would have used it!
It's written in the page that they're Carbon Emission Footprint are totally biased and flawed:
> The table below features a breakdown of the energy consumption of the mining facilities surveyed by Hileman and Rauchs. By applying the emission factors of the respective country’s grid
The carbon estimate seems very poor.
> Since we know the average emission factor of the Chinese grid (around 700 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour), this can be used for a very rough approximation of the carbon intensity of the power used for Bitcoin mining.
The reason many miners are in China is that they can access cheap off-grid renewable sources of energy there, such as excess hydroelectric, so using an on-grid CO2 estimate doesn't work.