You're quibbling over details: The point is that bitcoin is deliberately designed to waste as much energy as possible. It's a constant arms race where you have to keep escalating your hash rate, or you risk somebody else being able to execute a 51% attack.

It's an absolutely atrocious example of the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still") and I can't believe that technologists who in other contexts value elegance and efficiency can defend bitcoin with a straight face. I can only assume they have a lot of money tied up in bitcoin, because otherwise it makes no sense.

"You're quibbling over details"

CO2 emissions being wrong by a factor of a thousand is a "detail" to you? ;) My point is that the impact of proof-of-work, although real, is grossly exaggerated and appears to be more manageable than what eye-catching press titles suggest.

Another example: journalists like to claim Bitcoin emits as much CO2 as an entire country. But in fact current emissions are comparable to what a single city like Cape Town emits (28 MtCO2/yr.) Thus these sorts of statements are not so much a testament of how much Bitcoin emits, but more a testament of how little CO2 these countries emits.

"designed to waste as much energy as possible"

It is designed to use no more than what the revenues (fees+rewards) allow to purchase.

But instead of debating how big or how small Bitcoin's energy use is, I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society, and whether or not its utility justifies the costs.

Thanks for taking the time to point this out, especially since you're swimming upstream.

> I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society

Exactly.

I don't think it's at all useful to society conceived of as the best a society could be, but there's no doubt it's useful to capital. Either way, I'm not sure if merely being useful to society is sufficient to justify that level of energy usage.

Bitcoin is censorship-free, permissionless money. It is sound money (the single soundest money ever conceived) and this allows for an age of monetary freedom where citizens are no longer forced to fight an uphill battle against centrally planned 2% inflation that is gradually transforming the working class into a position reminiscent of indentured servant.

> I think a more intellectually interesting debate to have is whether or not Bitcoin is useful to society, and whether or not its utility justifies the costs.

I honestly don't think it's an interesting debate. It's been done to death, and neither side will ever make any headway in convincing the other.

Not sure anything regarding Bitcoin hasn't been discussed to death.

In this case, perhaps because there's no easy yes/no answer to it. I'm an opponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. I find the environment important. However, I can attest there are valid use cases for cryptocurrency. I don't think there are valid use cases for me (a European utilizing the EUR who's not interested in tax avoidance or buying illegal utilities) though. So for me cryptocurrencies are not only irrelevant, they're harmful.

Not sure if you are aware, but not all crypto is based on proof of work (mining). There are other algorithms that don't waste tons of energy and still provide the benefits of crypto. Also, they can be useful for things other than tax avoidance and illegal utilities.

Excluding the use cases of tax avoidance and illegal utilities how is it more useful than EUR? They're all more volatile / less stable than EUR.

You can’t generally send EUR anywhere in the world for free in seconds. You can’t pay for things in EUR with 0 fees. There are some crypto’s that can do all of those things.

> the Red Queen effect ("running just to stand still")

It would be good if it were actually and deliberately properly designed this way to create an arms race of "who can get more general-purpose computing power for less" because it would accelerate technology development with this Red Queen effect...

Unfortunately they've missed the "general purpose part" - most mining todays is done by special-purpose hardware made for mining only, and improving it is generally useless for CPU / GPU / TPU design.

I'd fully support a similar coin that would be mine-able on GPU / TPU / other-general-matrix-multiplication-hardware because it would lead to a race decreasing the price of hardware that can run large neural networks :)

Yeah, if it were designed in such a way as to incentivize general purpose computing, or to reward producing the results of some useful scientific or mathematical computation, then I would be less appalled by it.

As it stands, brute-forcing SHA256 on ASICs is just a travesty.

there are lots of coins with algorithms designed to resist ASICs. Bitcoin just isn't one of them.

There is a downside to designing a mining algorithm tuned for general purpose CPUs: anyone with access to a lot of general purpose CPUs (such as botnet operators, or government groups) can easily aim their existing resources to try to do 51% attacks against the cryptocurrency.

If the mining algorithm requires specialized hardware, then no group starts out with an existing advantage. If the NSA decided it wanted to 51% attack a cryptocurrency, they'd have to make a massive investment in their own hardware, and then that hardware can't be repurposed after the attack. A 51% attack is likely to devastate the value of a cryptocurrency, which also de-values any mining hardware built for it, which naturally discourages anyone who invested in mining hardware from attacking the cryptocurrency.

Though mining algorithms that require specialized hardware also come with their own downsides: the companies that invest in making the mining hardware early on could decide to keep the most advanced mining hardware for themselves and gain a lot of control over the network.

Well, you need to spend some sort of resource to ensure the integrity of your money supply.

The dollar is backed by a few million troops. Bitcoin is backed by a few million tons of coal.

And armies. Why doesn't some gang just march into a few of the big hydro-powered ASIC mining centres and take over control, thus enabling them to steal all the bitcoins. What prevents that? The armed power of nation-states to enforce a generally-agreed order on societies.

> thus enabling them to steal all the bitcoins

Just FYI, a 51% attack doesn't allow you to "steal all the bitcoins"

All that would accomplish is taking control of the revenue generated while they are in control. If the big mining centre is working with private keys that are unknown to the operators, then they would not be able to spend the coins previously mined. If they gain control of more than 51% of the hash rate in this way, they would be able to censor transactions or reorg the chain. That would still leave most of the blockchain in tact. A deep reorg might even get forked away from by the rest of the network, leaving them alone in a situation analogous to Ethereum Classic.

That's a pretty roundabout way of thinking. Plenty of countries have troops but an unstable currency (e.g. Venezuala). Plenty have a stable currency but no significant troops (e.g. Iceland).

Militarily robust sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of a fiat currency.

Governments such as Iceland borrow military power through international agreements.

Robust against what?

Threats to national sovereignty such as invasion.

I don't really see how protection against invasion helps you maintain a fiat currency. I don't think an army is either necessary or sufficient. These just seem like two different issues.

Do you have an example of a nation failing to repel an invasion yet maintaining the integrity of its currency?

You're shifting the goalposts. Lack of protection against invasion doesn't mean you're going to get invaded. Maintaining a standing army isn't protection against invasion either.

Do you agree that if a nation is successfully invaded its currency will lose its integrity?

Do you agree that defense against invasion requires an adequate military or agreements with nations with adequate militaries?

If we agree on those two claims, it seems we must agree that militarily robust sovereignty is necessary but not sufficient for the integrity of a fiat currency.

No thats actually the right way to think about this. Externalities are often misinterpreted to only include a few layers of abstraction when in reality its a much more complex and multilayered discussion and include both positive and negatives.

i thought one of the features of bitcoin was that mining would eventually become too computationally expensive -- because the total number of bitcoins is fixed. so at some point, mining does not produce coins and you're only mining to process transactions. so isn't there a plateau somewhere, relative to the throughput of the network? nb: non-expert here

Based on limited knowledge, once all the coins are mined, I think the miners then compete for transaction fees only.

>mining would eventually become too computationally expensive

I don't think that's true, the difficulty adjusts every two(?) weeks based on the hashrate.

It's not quibbling over details. Bitcoin miners often place their mining farms near power plants and consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise. A lot of it comes from renewable sources.

At the present moment network users are collectively paying about $700 000 a day in tx fees, so clearly the network itself creates value.

> consume electricity that would've been wasted otherwise

[citation needed]

But even if that were true, it would be disincentivizing the deployment of grid-scale storage technologies, so still hurting the battle against climate change.

It seems there are no grid-scale storage technologies that wouldn’t already be integrated into the current designs. Hydropower dams are ones for example. Engineers are not stupid.

I am really curious about the points you make in your post.

> This Nature article was debunked by other researchers.

Who are these other researcher? Care to link to their research on this?

> when in fact 60-70% of the mining power comes from a single row in this table: Antminer S9

How do we know that?

> It is not unrealistic to imagine the proportion of CO2 per kWh could be in a century 20% of what it is today.

Again, how do we know that?

> Who are these other researcher? Care to link to their research on this?

When a bitcoiner says something is "debunked", what they mean is that someone wrote a post on Medium. In this case, it's an investment banker who put some money into electricity companies before he put money into Bitcoin: https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-...

Digiconomist's response: "Verify, don't trust" - he shows his working. https://digiconomist.net/verify-dont-trust/

"Who are these other researcher? Care to link to their research on this?"

It takes months to write, peer-review, and publish research papers, so given that this Nature Climate Change article is quite recent at the moment there exists absolutely zero peer-reviewed studies or counterstudies following up on it. However here are some researchers who have criticized it in their own informal analysis or press interviews: see links in https://is.gd/ksyKyv — shortened URL for https://thinkprogress-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thinkprogre...

The researchers in question are:

Dr. Jon Koomey, who was a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) scientist for more than two decades.

Professor Eric Masanet, who leads the Energy and Resource Systems Analysis Lab at Northwestern University.

Arman Shehabi, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

And myself who has criticized it here on HN (my work's been cited in Nature Sustainability and the NYT: http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/ so I guess this makes me a researcher now)

"How do we know that?"

It's common knowledge to anyone in the industry that the Antminer S9 is by far the most popular Bitcoin mining machine. For some official reports on that, see market research reports and IPO filings from multiple mining hardware manufacturers. For example this has been neatly researched and presented by the team lead by Christian Stoll in https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3335781 Read their Supplementary Data, tab "3.4 IPO filing analysis"

"Again, how do we know that?"

As I said elsewhere in this thread, according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased -25% over 11 years. Therefore -80% in 100 years seems easily achievable (the trend only has to continue for 60 years, then there can be 40 years of technological stagnation.)

In fact we don't even need any technological breakthrough to achieve -80%. France already emits 90% less CO2 per kWh than the average country, thanks to nuclear power.

> It takes months to write, peer-review, and publish research papers

So, there are no peer-reviewed, published research on this? Good to know.

> It's common knowledge to anyone in the industry that the Antminer S9 is by far the most popular Bitcoin mining machine.

Most popular can mean 30% or even 70% of hash rate. How do we know it is 60-70% as you claim?

> As I said elsewhere in this thread, according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased -25% over 11 years. Therefore -80% in 100 years seems easily achievable (the trend only has to continue for 60 years, then there can be 40 years of technological stagnation.)

To actually do a comparison, what exactly was the efficiency achieved in last 100 years? Because it looks like you are drawing the same line assumption which the paper does regarding transaction fees and power growth.

> In fact we don't even need any technological breakthrough to achieve -80%. France already emits 90% less CO2 per kWh than the average country, thanks to nuclear power.

And how much of the hash rate does France generate? Or how much of China's energy in the future is going to come from nuclear power (assuming they remain the country with largest hashrate).

"So, there are no peer-reviewed, published research on this?"

They are coming. At least one counter-study should imminently be published (I am one of the reviewers.) I am sure more are coming. Patience :)

"How do we know it is 60-70% as you claim?"

As I already said: this has been neatly researched and presented by the team lead by Christian Stoll in https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3335781 Read their Supplementary Data, tab "3.4 IPO filing analysis" This dominance of the S9 is actually a point where all market researchers unanimously agree on. I am surprised you seem to think it's a contentious point.

"Because it looks like you are drawing the same line assumption which the paper does regarding transaction fees and power growth"

Not the same line. The researchers assumed tx fees represent as of today 100% of mining revenues when it's really 2% and they extrapolate from here (gross overestimation). Whereas I'm assuming the current CO₂/kWh trend slows down (underestimation).

"And how much of the hash rate does France generate? Or how much of China's energy in the future is going to come from nuclear power (assuming they remain the country with largest hashrate)."

My point was that all we need is for present-day nuclear technology to be adopted by a good proportion of electricity generators over the next 100 years, and this would easily reduce CO2 emissions per kWh by 80%.

You ask a lot of "how do we know that", but the same question applies to your position: "How do we know there will be zero CO2/kWh improvements over the next 100 years?" "How do we know the market share of the Antminer S9 is 1/62 = 1.6% (because there are 62 rows in https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moracamilo/Bitcoin/master/...)?" Neither you nor these Nature Climate Change researchers provide any justification, whereas I do.

> by assuming it grows linearly with the transaction rate

That’s a reasonable approximation. Over time mining is paid for by transaction fees in a competitive market. If you get 2x the fees and the cost to mine stays the same, you get 2x as much mining.

Granted that assumes transaction fees are ~1:1 with transaction count. However, protection from a 51% attack eventually requires 1:1 increase in mining as the value of a 51% attack increase, so the lower bound is there.

Mining would scale with the transaction fees, but there is no reason to assume that transaction fees alone would match the current block reward. We don't need the amount of mining we have now just to defend against 51% attacks.

That depends entirely upon how motivated an attacker is and how many blocks organizations wait for.

"That’s a reasonable approximation"

No, because the authors don't understand how miners gain revenue. For every dollar of miners revenues, currently $0.02 come from tx fees and $0.98 come from the block reward (12.5 BTC today.) Therefore with everything remaining equal (same average fee per tx, which is the authors' assumption), if the tx rate grew 50x it would increase miners revenues to $1.98, hence only doubling revenues and power consumption.

It’s got a fair amount of volatility. The Reward (last 24h) 1,688 + 115.2 BTC https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/ So, 115.2 / ( 1,688 + 115.2) = 6.4% not 2%.

However, looking at historical data the current fees are well below the cap. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

Now, currently Bitcoin can’t scale transactions so extrapolation is kind of up in the air. But, in practice if it’s going to survive it needs to create value to offset the cost of mining.

Like I said in my top post, 2% is calculated from the 60-day (not 24-hour) average.

True, we will never be able to extrapolate future fees. I'm merely pointing out the authors did it in a way that is completely bogus.

* They assume the proportion of CO2 emissions per kWh never improves over the next 100 years (great progress of renewables coming to a sudden stop?)

I mostly agreed with the first two bullet points, but please show me a significant country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions with renewables.

For instance, in China, where a lot of Bitcoin mining happens, the share of renewables increases in many countries, but not even as fast as the actual consumption by the population, leading them to open more coal power plants as well.

I'll wait until I see it.

The US led the world in overall reduction of CO2 emissions in 2017 mostly due to the deployment of cheap renewables with an overall reduction of 0.9%.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36953

No, it was mostly due to shale gas, not renewables.

I am not an expert on that field, but reading this I would say that Germany has reduced CO2 emissions:

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/klima/treibhausgas-emis...

Renewables are the biggest increase in new power supply in Germany.

They havent and they increased the cost of electricity. You need to factor in what they get from other countries too.

the increase of electricity cost was because of 20 years of high subsidy of renewables. The 20 years are ending soon (1-2 years) for the first who got those subsidies in the year 2000. Gradually electricity cost should become cheaper again, as the subsidy has become low enough (maybe in 10-15 years).

Improvments in renewable technology should make renewable energy cost effective even without subsidy (at least the newer ones).

I would love to see any evidence that renewable energy is cost-effective on any relevant scale. The true cost of solar and wind both with regards to externalities and actual cost is much higher than the current politically and marketing driven claims.

The number of misleading claims when it comes to the current state of batteries the cost-effectiveness of wind and solar etc is staggering.

Don't forget calculating the price and consequences of ex CO2 of wind and solar does not include things like true cost of production (the entire vertical stack), decommission, the fact that it makes other energy types more expensive (like coal used ex at night when the sun don't shine), doesn't include the cost of digging for rare-earth materials etc.

Don't forget that solar and wind require huge areas to work because the density of wind and solar is so low compared to nuclear, oil or coal.

Sun and wind combined cover less than 1% of the worlds energy needs. The high percentages some claim like when Denmark claim 40% comes from wind are misleading as they only compare to electricity, only talks about the energy that's produced in the country (an excludes energy imported for ex when there is no wind)

There is so much disingenuous information out there it's quite astounding.

France emits 90% less CO2/kWh than Germany (they didn't even need renewables to achieve that, just nuclear): http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-e...

And according to https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=801297 CO2 emissions per kWh have already decreased 2.58%/year between 2005 and 2016 (-25% over 11 years). That's already far better than the 1.60%/year I assumed (-80% over 100 years), further strengthening my point that these Nature authors' assumption that CO2/kWh will never improve in 100 years is utterly unrealistic.

In the US, that was mostly due to gas replacing coal. France is not using renewables. This is great, but not due to renewables as you initially claimed. Also, I don't think the share of bitcoin mining is significant in these examples.

I was asking for a country that managed to reduce their CO2 emissions significantly with renewables. It may happen in the future, and I'm certainly hoping for it, but we don't have a large-scale concrete example yet.

I initially mentioned renewables as just one way to achieve CO2 emissions reductions. Nuclear is another way that works just as well.

"we don't have a large-scale concrete example yet"

China single-handedly added 230 GW of hydropower in 10 years (2006-2016). This could power the entire country of Japan (5th biggest electricity consumer in the world). If this isn't "large-scale" enough for you, I don't know what is ;) China also added a ton of fossil fuel power plants in that same period, but still it shows at least hydro, as a renewable, can work at very large scales.

France who uses nuclear.

Nuclear is not generally seen as a renewable is it? It’s a really efficient extraction based source.

Its plentiful and its greener than both wind and solar. Furthermore i am assuming the point is reduction of co2, if thats the case then does it really matter in this context?

I think it matters only because there is a strong contingent of alternative energy supporters that do not see nuclear as part of the mix when talking about ‘renewables’ and for those folks the math is really hard. Conversely the math is easy with a strong nuclear mix.

Oh I get that but it also illuminates the shallowness of their position given that the reason they are against wind and solar and hate fossil is because of CO2.

Nuclear is literally the best combination of the best features from each of the other forms of energy.

Who cares if it's renewable when it's inexhaustible.

640K should be enough for anybody(tm).

is fission material inexhaustible?

It is inexhaustible in the sense that fuel is not the limiting factor on how many nuclear power plants we can build.

In this context yes. The sun also run out of juice sooner or later.

I have half a suspicion that it's the fact that it's burning through lots of fuel that is driving it's adoption. Processes in general seem to be driven by a kind of 'pressure' between low entropy and high entropy regions. This includes life itself. If life has a purpose it is to increase the flow across these low/high entropy regions. I don't think it's too outlandish to suppose some kind of hidden process that drives systems in general to optimise this flow. Bitcoin is just such a system, it's doing this transfer perfectly. Something tells me it's going to be extremely difficult to stamp out and I will be surprised if it does not continue to rise in value and energy consumption at an exponential rate, unless something systematic is done to disrupt it's progression. Buy bitcoin.

95% of transaction data is fake. We have no idea what adoption actually looks like. [1] The bitcoin price is "based on a true story" in true Hollywood fashion. Its design makes it impossible to stop the rampant and obvious manipulation. The game is rigged. No amount of technical analysis or philosophy is going to help you predict the outcome of a rigged game.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/03/22/95-of-repor...

What Forbes reports as mostly fakes are exchange trades, not on-chain transactions. These are two completely different things...

Yes and no. They’re not on-chain but so what? Exchanges are the sole fiat gateways, which in turn determines the exchange rate between BTC and fiat, which in turn determined the exchange rate between BTC and goods and services. These off-chain transactions determine how many apples a bitcoin gets you. The net is then settled onto the blockchain. They’re relevant. As relevant as any Lightning transaction, or is LN not “real bitcoin” either?

You tried to claim we knew nothing about Bitcoin's adoption because 95% of exchange trades are fake. I'm telling you this is irrelevant. Exchange trades tell us nothing about Bitcoin's adoption. They are just noise from wash traders, crooked exchanges, arbitragers, etc.

To gauge Bitcoin's adoption you need to look at on-chain transactions, not exchange trades. Makes sense?

We shouldn’t confuse trading for fiat money with on-chain transactions.

I'm curious why they should get a pass. They're a first-class part of the ecosystem, and pretending exchanges don't exist to goose the numbers feels dishonest. Further, it's the exchanges that set the "price" of bitcoin relative to fiat, which in turn sets the exchange rate for BTC to goods in on-chain transactions. Unless you're suggesting there's an "exchange" price for goods and a "black market" price for goods that each value Bitcoin differently?

Because as per your linked article 95% of it is fake. Supply of fiat money is also „fake“ in a sense that it’s arbitrary controlled by one entity per country at most.

Do you not think there's a meaningful difference between privately-run exchanges fraudulently manipulating the price to enrich themselves (to clear short or long positions off their books, pump the value of their assets, etc) -- and central banks who operate on behalf of the people of their respective countries to ensure a stable and reliable money supply?

I think in the long run there’s none. Look at devaluations in various countries. Or cut of paper money circulation in India. Or the $8Trln “printed” by the US to balance out Chinese foreign reserves (also $8Trln at the time by coincidence)

It appears you need to do some research on the role of central banks and the federal reserve, goals of the money supply, etc. That's not accurate, that's not how it works. The reason we create more money is two-fold.

(1) There are more people now. Not creating money disproportionately benefits the people who were alive before you. If you print no new money, the amount of wealth you have doubles as a proportion of the population when the population doubles. As economic activity increases and becomes more efficient you can do even more with that money. This pressure creates wealth inequality over time -- this is in part what the pilgrims sought to escape as they fled the old world of kings/queens/fiefs/lords.

(2) A predictable rate of inflation incentivizes the allocation of capital to productive endeavors. If your money just became more valuable over time, why on earth would you risk it by investing in something when you can just sit back, chill and be rich? That's why Bitcoin is a god-awful currency. Nobody wants to spend it because they think it will "mewn soon."

The federal reserve doesn't print money, the treasury does. They didn't create money to offset Chinese loans, they sold treasuries (debt obligations) to China, which in turn yielded money. You know what, I won't do as good a job as this article will explaining it to you [1], entitled "Understanding How the Federal Reserve Creates Money."

That all said none of this matters to you, a savvy investor with assets, because you shouldn't hold money. It's not intended to be held, it's meant to be circulated. Go buy things with it, that's what it's for. It can't depreciate in your hands if you've bought something with it. Salaries track inflation, housing tracks inflation, debts don't, so your principal goes down in real-world dollars over time. If you live paycheck-to-paycheck you're totally unaffected.

I'm starting to think the solution to Bitcoin is forcing everyone to attend civics and economics classes.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/under...

Replacing an oppressive apparatus that is relying on proof of military/police power to establish trust in banking with some form of an algorithm that is relying on proof of work/energy may be energy saving at the end. Just compare how much police/military has to be maintained and related resources spent to the naked energy for mining/transactions.

Both of those will remain. Even if we fully adopted Bitcoin there's no world in which we tell the army and the police to go home and thank them for their service. They do other things. It's not particularly effective to tell ISIS "you can't hurt me -- I've got Bitcoins!" You can't double-spend this energy budget.

It’s a big question to what extent the wars are/aren’t an extension of economics. My understanding it’s a direct relationship. ISIS got their money from selling oil or from sponsors selling oil for dollars or printing dollars. Police is another matter. But as much as crime has to do with cash money or centralized capitalism it may become moot when fiat money and related misuse potential is abolished.

A decentralized (except for China), un-regulated payment system currently being used primarily to break the law with the purchase of illicit narcotics, goods and services is going to prevent the funding of terrorism how exactly? My understanding is these groups are using it already. Here's a writeup on how North Korea is actively using Bitcoin to circumvent fiat sanctions [1] from a pro-crypto news source. Here's one on how Mexican cartels use it [2]. If anything this means we'll need a bigger army. How is abuse going to be abolished through a system literally designed to prevent any form of controls?

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/north-korea-increasingly-uses...

[2] https://www.ccn.com/how-mexican-cartels-use-chinese-crypto-b...

> Replacing an oppressive apparatus that is relying on proof of military/police power to establish trust in banking with some form of an algorithm that is relying on proof of work/energy may be energy saving at the end.

Bitcoin, 0.1% of all electricity: 7 tps

THE ENTIRE REST OF CIVILISATION, 99.9% of all electricity: a whole lot more than 6993 tps.

The best comparison is with the energy used for gold mining which far exceeds bitcoin energy costs. If you look at the giant trucks used in gold mines, you will are the energy savings.

one day someone will tell bitcoiners that (a) gold isn't the basis of the economy any more, and hasn't been for quite a while (b) yes, gold mining is also an ecological disaster that should be stopped

can you please cite your source? was the refutation also published in a peer reviewed journal?

The refutation (https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environm...) is a medium article.

Please try not to let that influence your opinion about the article though, because it does rightly point out the flaws in the original calculations, and the validity of the peer review of the original article.

didnt think so. hundreds of comments, some lengthy, and nobody knows whats really going on? also, i mean, maybe some cynicism ought to be tolerated if misinformation is? its hard work to do real, rigorous science, which is what journals like nature represent. but then we have this echo chamber in here where its been "refuted" by internet experts in their parents basements? (allegorical). i know there are/used to be educated people on hn, not just businesspersons. where did they go? hn is ostensibly about intellectual curiosity. but you cant actually satisfy intellectual curiosity with makebelieve. someone has to stand up for the truth, and for the blood and sweat that makes discovering truth possible: the scientific method. starting from doubt or skepticism, form a hypothesis, test it: observe and predict. theorize. replicate. repeat.

You're debating numbers you don't like by making up other numbers. Whatever. The point is that it's a massive waste of energy and emissions, and that's undeniable.