No, Bitcoin Mining isn't going to destroy the Planet...

in GEMS4 years ago

Be ready for the next major attack against Bitcoin, it's coming...

There is one area that is likely to keep coming up with the new administration in the United States.

The current administration seems to be more clear regarding bitcoin and crypto regulations thus far, or at least they say they intend to be, but there is still something that's a bit concerning...

And that has to do with their affinity to combat climate change (or global warming).

There is no denying that bitcoin is energy intensive.

It requires a tremendous amount of computational resources in order to produce new coins and keep the bitcoin network running and secure.

Ironically the more secure the network becomes, and higher the hashrate climbs, the larger its carbon footprint likely becomes.

This is likely to put a major bullseye on the bitcoin by the current administration here in the United States.

However, getting beyond that scare mongering headlines, the truth isn't nearly as bad as it sounds...

Our good friends at ArkInvest, and yes they are our good friends as they recently put out a $400k price target on bitcoin if 10% of S&P cash flows into bitcoin (https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@jrcornel/if-10-of-the-cash-on-corporate-balance-sheets-moves-to-bitcoin-the-price-would-increase-by-more-than-usd400k), put out a very interesting and illuminating piece of research...

Specifically, it's a graph of the energy expenditure as it relates to bitcoin mining, gold mining, and the legacy banking system...

Here's their graph:

image.png

(Source: https://twitter.com/coinbureau/status/1360655486161453060/photo/1)

A great big nothing burger...

While there's no denying that bitcoin uses a lot of electricity, when you compare it with the industries it is attempting to replace, it suddenly doesn't look all that concerning.

As you can say from the graph above, it's quite clear that the energy expenditure of bitcoin mining is a drop in the bucket compared with gold mining and the banking system.

No one really likes to talk about that though.

In fact, one could make the argument that if bitcoin were to fully replace gold as a store of value and take a big chunk of the current banking industry, the amount of total energy expenditure would be significantly less than it is today.

Not only would bitcoin not add to the current energy expenditures, but might actually end up being a net reduction in total energy expenditure.

But wait, there's more...

One of the research analysts at Ark had put out a great Twitter thread talking about all the other reasons this is a big nothing burger, which can be see here:

https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587

If you don't have time to scroll through the thread, or simply don't feel like leaving this post, here's a couple of the bullet points:

image.png

(Source: https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343401627979778/photo/1)

We are very likely going to experience a ton of push-back in the media and with the current administration on this topic over the coming years.

We need to be prepared to defend the truth and make sure reality doesn't get overrun by rhetoric and the popular narrative of the time...

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc

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Thanks for that. Was looking for something like that, as some mediocre educated people wanted to tell me, that BTC will burn the planet.

Cheers, and HODL! :-D

It's unfair to compare Bitcoin to whole banking system... For accurate comparison, people should compare against total carbon footprint or energy consumption of whole cryptocurrency industry.

Probably so, considering that BTC is far and away the biggest user, the whole industry would probably only increase that total number marginally.

Until Ethereum switches to PoS, it still needs quite a lot of hashing power to keep the network running.

There is also ASICs for CryptoNote coins of which some are definitely still ASIC friendly.