If you're paying for the electricity fairly, why should someone have a say in how you are using it? Electricity companies could limit these people, but they choose not to.
I agree with your point in principle but there are numerous examples where this kind of approach reaches major roadblocks. If you have limited energy generating capacity and that energy is depended upon for life essentials (e.g. heat, light) then there comes a point that ramping up energy price due to people being able to make a profit off the back of it means cutting off other people's access to life essentials because they are priced out.
We see this elsewhere as well - For example, production of biofuel occupies productive farmland. If farmers can make more producing biofuel crops than food staples, they'll chase the money. This leads to a rise in food prices and pits the price and food against the price of fuel.
There are many things that are wasteful and yet not illegal.
Flying to Hawaii for vacation.
Recreational powerboats.
Keeping your thermostat at 72F in the winter and 68F in the summer.
Buying a house larger than 3,000 square feet.
Commuting to work in an SUV.
Having more than 3 children.
In general, we only make things illegal if they are harmful to others. Mere consumption of electricity is not harmful to others, except indirectly in the same way that the aforementioned activities are. Would you propose banning them too? If not, where do you draw the line, and who gets to interpret your prescription?
> If not, where do you draw the line, and who gets to interpret your prescription?
These are both things to iron out in law later, not now in some philosophical way.
Incandescent bulbs have been banned in countries around the world because of energy concerns. It's pretty clear that Bitcoin's energy usage is likewise a problem. Throwing our hands up and labeling calls for regulation around this a slippery slope doesn't help our climate criss.
It would be difficult to make it illegal in all jurisdictions in the world, so a 51% attack by a fed up nation state or states working together could shut it down. I am not an expert by any means, but it seems within the realm of possibily.
With a per-unit consumption of 3250 W, that would put the electricity capacity needed to power all those ASICs at ~4.4 GW of power. That limits the possible candidates to pull off such a huge endeavor to powerful nation states who would work in coordination with large energy producers. (Jan 2020)
The next economic collapse might come when the whole crypo mania ends. Until than I guess we will reach far more energy usage. This will not be sustainable. If it continues we might solve the fermi paradox.
People do things you might disagree about. It's called freedom, or live and let live.
If you disagree with this use of electricity, ask yourself why. The reason most often cited is externality, like pollution or CO2.
The solution is not banning, as they are many equally "wasteful" use of electricity, like gaming, and 1kW used for gaming will produce just as much pollution as 1kW used for mining.
So why differentiate between these uses? Who's to say gaming is better that mining? (even if I prefer the former, why I should impose my preferences on others?)
You can't legislate what people do on their own free time with things that they buy, like electricity.
If you are really worried about the environment, the only real solution is taxes applied to the price of electricity, because Aluminum smoldering is just as polluting.
How does this relate (even remotely) to my comment?
Killing is illegal. Buying electricity is legal. Aluminum smoldering and gaming and heating and everything else are equally polluting per kW used.
And FYI I haven't mined for a long time. And if I ever do it again, it would be to preserve my GPU, as the heatshocks between gaming and not gaming might reduce its lifespan, which would cause me to replace it and thus pollute more due to the amount of raw materials used when making electronics products.
>People do things you might disagree about. It's called freedom, or live and let live.
You have the freedom to do a lot of things. You can go and play in traffic if you really want. Everyone else has the freedom to call you an idiot and shout at you for how stupid and inconsiderate you're being.
Let's assume your comparison holds, and 1kw gaming== 1kw mining, atleast the gamer was happy for the hours of gaming he played, rather than the miner who basically just pushed more money into the slots machine.
>You can't legislate what people do on their own free time with things that they buy, like electricity.
You actually can. We actually do. Authoritarian regimes do it at the drop of a hat, but even free democracies ban activities they view as purely destructive.
It's important to remember, people need energy to heat their homes and not die, and we're not going to pretend that's an equally useful application of energy as bitcoin mining.
> You have the freedom to do a lot of things. You can go and play in traffic if you really want. Everyone else has the freedom to call you an idiot and shout at you for how stupid and inconsiderate you're being.
You can't go and play in traffic - that's jaywalking and it's illegal
> We actually do. Authoritarian regimes do it at the drop of a hat, but even free democracies ban activities they view as purely destructive.
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But using the banhammer for things you don't like is never good is the long run, because it creates an incentive for other people to use it against think you like but they don't.
> It's important to remember, people need energy to heat their homes and not die, and we're not going to pretend that's an equally useful application of energy as bitcoin mining
And people need food, which is why we have food banks.
In the end, heat is just heat. Unless you also legislate you can't heat your home above 80, let's not pretend heating is not wasteful. Then the next thing will be legislating you need good insulation, then you forbid to use oil like recently in Quebec or gas like recently in New York.
The only people really hurted by this are people who have different preferences (I like heat, so I'd like my house to be 80) and people who're poor (they can't buy electricity, but they can buy an oil furnace to warn their bedroom).
This is bad, but a lot of people fail to realize this, and commit the fallacy of composition by projecting their set of preferences or characteristics (ex: having the money to buy electricity, or living in a country where they can trust the central bank)
You know that building standards are a thing right? It is literally illegal to build a home with bad insulation for exactly that reason.
You're right the only people who are hurt by this are people who have different preferences or are poor. You are pricing poor people out of being able to heat their homes. Tha'ts not a defence ofyour position.
If your arugment is "this is bad" you're not defending your position, you're admitting your position is wrong, whilst doing it anyway.
For a bunch of us, living in 3rd world countries, Bitcoin provides more value than Google and Facebook.
So I think this is ok. I don’t know why the post has a derogatory connotation.
In countries like Venzuela and Turkey and numerous others where skyrocketing inflation and the devaluation of the country's currency is an ongoing concern, bitcoin even in spite of it's volatility provides a safehaven. Some countries ban the US dollar, some don't offer access to banking/loans. Bitcoin, Ethereum and others help solve that. It also allows them to receive monetary assistance from relatives outside the country when such transfers otherwise are not allowed.
I'm not an expert and may have a detail or two off, but for anyone willing to learn more, I'd recommend the podcast from Lex Friedman and Alex Gladstein for more eye opening details.
> For a bunch of us, living in 3rd world countries, Bitcoin provides more value than Google and Facebook. So I think this is ok. I don’t know why the post has a derogatory connotation.
I've heard this a lot, but I'm skeptical. It strikes me as yet another problem latched onto by Bitcoin enthusiasts so they can claim Bitcoin "solves" something (beyond providing yet another avenue for speculative investment), when the problem in question is much better solved by something else.
For instance: hyperinflation can be addressed by dollarization (either de-jure or de-facto), which is far more practical than bitcoin-ization.
Only elite few who can buy GPUs and do mining. Majority of 3rd world can't. Smoke from coal and leaded petrol provides more value than health for those living in 3rd world too. I also don't know why the insistent of going green when not doing so is so much cheaper for the poor.
> A single transaction requires an average of 1,173 kWh, enough to power a typical UK home for more than three months
This is somewhat misleading, as the vast majority of that energy expense
is competing for newly minted coins, i.e. the block subsidy. It will take a few more decades for transaction fees to overtake the exponentially decreasing block subsidy and become the dominant part of the block reward. At that point it becomes more accurate to attribute Bitcoin's energy costs to the processing of transactions.
Also note that if Bitcoin were actually used as a currency (like in early Silk Road days) rather than a speculation vehicle as it mostly is now, then its price would remain orders of magnitude lower, and few people would be complaining about its energy costs.
32 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 62.6 ms ] threadWe see this elsewhere as well - For example, production of biofuel occupies productive farmland. If farmers can make more producing biofuel crops than food staples, they'll chase the money. This leads to a rise in food prices and pits the price and food against the price of fuel.
Flying to Hawaii for vacation. Recreational powerboats. Keeping your thermostat at 72F in the winter and 68F in the summer. Buying a house larger than 3,000 square feet. Commuting to work in an SUV. Having more than 3 children.
In general, we only make things illegal if they are harmful to others. Mere consumption of electricity is not harmful to others, except indirectly in the same way that the aforementioned activities are. Would you propose banning them too? If not, where do you draw the line, and who gets to interpret your prescription?
These are both things to iron out in law later, not now in some philosophical way.
Incandescent bulbs have been banned in countries around the world because of energy concerns. It's pretty clear that Bitcoin's energy usage is likewise a problem. Throwing our hands up and labeling calls for regulation around this a slippery slope doesn't help our climate criss.
Don't single out something you don't like and ban it using the climate crisis as an excuse.
With a per-unit consumption of 3250 W, that would put the electricity capacity needed to power all those ASICs at ~4.4 GW of power. That limits the possible candidates to pull off such a huge endeavor to powerful nation states who would work in coordination with large energy producers. (Jan 2020)
https://braiins.com/blog/how-much-would-it-cost-to-51-attack...
Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29769892 - Jan 2022 (292 comments)
People do things you might disagree about. It's called freedom, or live and let live.
If you disagree with this use of electricity, ask yourself why. The reason most often cited is externality, like pollution or CO2.
The solution is not banning, as they are many equally "wasteful" use of electricity, like gaming, and 1kW used for gaming will produce just as much pollution as 1kW used for mining.
So why differentiate between these uses? Who's to say gaming is better that mining? (even if I prefer the former, why I should impose my preferences on others?)
You can't legislate what people do on their own free time with things that they buy, like electricity.
If you are really worried about the environment, the only real solution is taxes applied to the price of electricity, because Aluminum smoldering is just as polluting.
Killing is illegal. Buying electricity is legal. Aluminum smoldering and gaming and heating and everything else are equally polluting per kW used.
And FYI I haven't mined for a long time. And if I ever do it again, it would be to preserve my GPU, as the heatshocks between gaming and not gaming might reduce its lifespan, which would cause me to replace it and thus pollute more due to the amount of raw materials used when making electronics products.
You have the freedom to do a lot of things. You can go and play in traffic if you really want. Everyone else has the freedom to call you an idiot and shout at you for how stupid and inconsiderate you're being.
Let's assume your comparison holds, and 1kw gaming== 1kw mining, atleast the gamer was happy for the hours of gaming he played, rather than the miner who basically just pushed more money into the slots machine.
>You can't legislate what people do on their own free time with things that they buy, like electricity.
You actually can. We actually do. Authoritarian regimes do it at the drop of a hat, but even free democracies ban activities they view as purely destructive.
It's important to remember, people need energy to heat their homes and not die, and we're not going to pretend that's an equally useful application of energy as bitcoin mining.
You can't go and play in traffic - that's jaywalking and it's illegal
> We actually do. Authoritarian regimes do it at the drop of a hat, but even free democracies ban activities they view as purely destructive.
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But using the banhammer for things you don't like is never good is the long run, because it creates an incentive for other people to use it against think you like but they don't.
> It's important to remember, people need energy to heat their homes and not die, and we're not going to pretend that's an equally useful application of energy as bitcoin mining
And people need food, which is why we have food banks.
In the end, heat is just heat. Unless you also legislate you can't heat your home above 80, let's not pretend heating is not wasteful. Then the next thing will be legislating you need good insulation, then you forbid to use oil like recently in Quebec or gas like recently in New York.
The only people really hurted by this are people who have different preferences (I like heat, so I'd like my house to be 80) and people who're poor (they can't buy electricity, but they can buy an oil furnace to warn their bedroom).
This is bad, but a lot of people fail to realize this, and commit the fallacy of composition by projecting their set of preferences or characteristics (ex: having the money to buy electricity, or living in a country where they can trust the central bank)
You're right the only people who are hurt by this are people who have different preferences or are poor. You are pricing poor people out of being able to heat their homes. Tha'ts not a defence ofyour position.
If your arugment is "this is bad" you're not defending your position, you're admitting your position is wrong, whilst doing it anyway.
I'm not an expert and may have a detail or two off, but for anyone willing to learn more, I'd recommend the podcast from Lex Friedman and Alex Gladstein for more eye opening details.
I've heard this a lot, but I'm skeptical. It strikes me as yet another problem latched onto by Bitcoin enthusiasts so they can claim Bitcoin "solves" something (beyond providing yet another avenue for speculative investment), when the problem in question is much better solved by something else.
For instance: hyperinflation can be addressed by dollarization (either de-jure or de-facto), which is far more practical than bitcoin-ization.
This is somewhat misleading, as the vast majority of that energy expense is competing for newly minted coins, i.e. the block subsidy. It will take a few more decades for transaction fees to overtake the exponentially decreasing block subsidy and become the dominant part of the block reward. At that point it becomes more accurate to attribute Bitcoin's energy costs to the processing of transactions.
Also note that if Bitcoin were actually used as a currency (like in early Silk Road days) rather than a speculation vehicle as it mostly is now, then its price would remain orders of magnitude lower, and few people would be complaining about its energy costs.