Well in this case the process of creating a Bitcoin is causing the harm that can kill us.
Yeah, by burning fossil fuels right? So as the make up of the energy market changes itâs less of a problem? But also the transactions around fiat currencies across digital spaces are more vast currently and therefore more energy and resources hungry as it also includes the manufacturing of plastic notes and metal coins, right?
If Bitcoin mining continues in the trajectory itâs headed, then it will be a significant user of energy globally. It is already burning more energy than the entire nation of Argentina.
This does two things. If itâs using green energy, it is preventing that energy from replacing carbon based energy. A coal power plant wonât be turned off because the solar farm is being 100% used to power a server farm.
It also provides an ongoing revenue source to carbon based energy producers. The world will start to move away from carbon for ethical, taxation, trade tariffs, or other reasons. This will drop the demand and therefore the price of carbon energy. Bitcoin miners will flood into this space and we will have coal power plants who are only kept alive by the Bitcoin miners.
Humans still need to eat, â â â â , house themselves. Ie consume energy and expend greenhouse.
Iâd argue that human effort is just as polluting as âenergyâ.
That makes sense.
And Iâm not being a smart â â â â I just find the whole thing really interesting.
So with that in mind, what happens if the reliance on fiat drops and that has a corresponding drop in energy input, parallel to the uptake of crypto?
As the energy mix changes, the cryptocurrency energy costs will get less environmentally destructive, this is true. But as of right now bitcoin especially consumes such a vast amount of energy that itâs significantly hampering climate change prevention measures. Basically, itâs like youâve added an extra mid-sized country worth of power consumption to the world - last I heard, bitcoin was consuming more power than Argentina, or Austria.
The resource consumption involved in creation/use of fiat currency are absolutely tiny in comparison. Bitcoin is fundamentally built around performing useless high-complexity and increasingly complex mathematical calculations every time you create a new coin or transact with one. Thatâs how the entire concept works. Fiat currency electronic transactions are simply a matter of adding $X to one account and subtracting it from another, plus a bit of verification stuff. And as for physical currency - once youâve made the note or coin once, itâs made for good and you never have to invest resources in it again. But physical currency is slowly going the way of the dodo anyway.
Vast, vast, vast increase in energy consumption overall.
The energy costs of more crypto transactions are thousands or millions of times higher than the savings youâd make on reducing transactions in fiat currency.
The software that mines bitcoin is designed so that it always will take 10 minutes for everyone on the network to solve the puzzle. It does that by scaling the difficulty of the puzzle depending on how many people are trying to solve it.
Regardless of the number of miners, it still takes 10 minutes to mine one Bitcoin. At 600 seconds (10 minutes), all else being equal it will take 72,000 GW (or 72 Terawatts) of power to mine a Bitcoin using the average power usage provided by ASIC miners.
So how are you solving this digital problem?
Aussie dollars are already stored âdigitallyâ. Just ask your bank.
The difference is in the ledger. Itâs not the coin itâs the ledger thatâs the big innovation.
I think cryptos are worthless and eventually they will be shown to be. Particularly when there is terrorism drugs or other unsavoury commerce to be tracked. People do realise that pedofiles would now be using crypto to trade their â â â â ?
The blockchain technology though is invaluable.
is a renewable energised Bitcoin worth more then a fossil fuel BitcoinâŚlol
Wow really? This is incredibly new information that has never been seen before. Thank you for imparting this incredibly fresh and new information.
Lol this is investment advice thread. Pretty much all of it is seen elsewhere and thereâs differing opinions
Everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Crypto systems will only be fully realised when they are integrated for their intended purpose, not as some pseudo stock option flavour of the week. They are hardly worthless
The coins over the technology. I think the technology is incredibly useful.
If no one is using the coins of course they will end up being worthless.
Otherwise what is their point.
Iâve been wondering if Jack Dorsey will allow it to be used for payments through square. Something like square take a fee for every transaction, thus banking a bunch of crypto and validating a particular coin by allowing people to spend it on small transactions like coffees etc.
What do you mean? They have inherent use outside of sitting in someoneâs wallet.
Youâre still thinking of them as a digital equivalent of real coins. They arenât, which is why they have intrinsic value. If they werenât trading at $75k per, they would still have a legitimate use.
Oh no doubt tech companies will solve problems with crypto that consumers have.
But some of the problems governments and regulators have need to be solved too.
And thatâs making transactions traceable.
For crypto to supplant normal cash from your bank account eh to buy a cuppa it has to be materially a better system for you to switch as to why bother?
I think that itâs just a matter of time before our dollar is purely digital and deals done in it may be done aided by a distributed ledger. Ie each dollar like a banknote is stamped as unique and counterfeiting goes away so a digitalâcash transactionâ is possible(what crypto solves, the digital cash transaction) but is also traceable.(the feature of many crypto currencies which will be undesirable for regulators)
I donât think we live in a world of anonymous transactions anymore. In fact everyone needs to be more accountable.
Where does Visa sit in all of this? They were trotting out the 1 world 1 currency statement years ago.
You could spend 0.000014 BTC to buy a Slurpie â theyâre infinitely divisible.
There are other reasons it is useless as a currency, and thatâs why Iâd be nervous that it will hang around long-term.
As the creator of this thread, do I get veto?
There is a crypto thread.