Can someone who has listened to the podcast summarise how he thinks bitcoin can incentivise the building of renewable power generation without also consuming all of it?
> Usage of renewable power for Bitcoin mining is portrayed as being wasteful as though energy use is a zero-sum game, instead of Bitcoin being a flexible load facilitating increased investment and energy production.
What a pile of garbage. Bitcoin &co will rather destroy the environment.
With the introduction of cryptocurrencies, energy has become essentially the raw material to manufacture money without making products and/or services. Using the cleanest possible energy wouldn't change much as we would pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere anyway. And all that to produce money, not products or knowledge that would advance our civilization. In this scenario, the incentive to build more mining farms and produce more energy to keep them working 24/7 is just too high, for sure it'll be a lot more tempting than the natural risks when investing in real farms with real employees making real products, failing then learning and improving them, that is, generating knowledge.
We're also (not so) slowly approaching the day in which energy prices will be dictated by the richest bidder among those who invest in cryptocurrency mining, that is, making it even harder to afford for common people. I can't see anything even remotely positive about that.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 25.7 ms ] threadWhat a pile of garbage. Bitcoin &co will rather destroy the environment. With the introduction of cryptocurrencies, energy has become essentially the raw material to manufacture money without making products and/or services. Using the cleanest possible energy wouldn't change much as we would pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere anyway. And all that to produce money, not products or knowledge that would advance our civilization. In this scenario, the incentive to build more mining farms and produce more energy to keep them working 24/7 is just too high, for sure it'll be a lot more tempting than the natural risks when investing in real farms with real employees making real products, failing then learning and improving them, that is, generating knowledge. We're also (not so) slowly approaching the day in which energy prices will be dictated by the richest bidder among those who invest in cryptocurrency mining, that is, making it even harder to afford for common people. I can't see anything even remotely positive about that.