I'm still not really up-to-date on Lightning Network and its potential. But even without that, I think that Bitcoin will remain dominant in the cryptocurrency space due to network effects. It has the best name recognition, the most secure PoW blockchain, and the highest capitalization. Ethereum will likely stay quite relevant, but between its migration to the less-secure PoS system, and its constant inflation rate without any cap (vs. Bitcoin's decreasing one with the 21 million cap), I think that Bitcoin will continue to be prized as a store of value.
That doesn't matter really. It's just energy "wasted" with artificial challenges. The only purpose of digging for hashes is to blow energy... Bitcoin apologists ignore the fact that there are alternatives.
There is just no future in that. No energy source is carbon neutral, much less resource-neutral.
Western life is too wasteful, we all need to cut back. Bitcoin doesn't fit humanity's future.
ex. https://oilmanmagazine.com/how-and-why-natural-gas-flaring-i... find a similar source that you recognize and choose to respect
same is happening at hydro and wind plants. no energy that would have been sent to another purpose is being used for mining on these sites
everything else is a much smaller mining operation
for anyone passing by: make sure to post a reason when you disagree. A lot of people have spent a long time not considering the source of energy, and validating their existing negative thoughts on bitcoin, and this hurts their world view.
No wasting of energy is environmentally sustainable. We exhausted earth's capacity for hydroelectric dams and their "free" energy of the past will be gone, when they operate for their intended purpose of powering new settlements. And do you think bitcoin will thrive when it's all mined with iceland's geothermal monopoly?
Nuclear, solar and wind are resource intense "not carbon-based" / "sustainable" technologies, but blowing away their production in unnecessary heat generation is not environmentally sustainable.
1 TW would be 71,000 upcoming SGRE 14MW(!) offshore wind turbines running at max capacity (which of course is completely unrealistic). If you line them up, that would be a wind park of about 16,000 km length, or about twice the distance between Europe and the US. Apart from all the material wasted, maintenance efforts and lives lost, I am sure earth's capacity for wind energy is limited too, as obviously winds don't produce free energy either and over exploitation may, or may not be catastrophic for earth's local climates. E.g. there are ideas to kill American hurricanes with offshore windparks, afaik.
And really, the question is never, if your could operate bitcoin with "sustainable" energy production, but what else you could invest the energy in instead. Bitcoin has nothing to offer which justifies its energy demand, as there are (possible) alternatives which cost us less.
Bitcoin has no future, if humanity has one.
In some places that energy is burned off into the atmosphere instead, in other places plants are just operating underneath the capacity they already built.
Putting that towards bitcoin mining is by far the biggest impact, as in it is either positive impact (reducing burning) or no impact, and the heat concern and the hardware creation concern are comparatively much smaller. Much of the potential e-waste actually winds up at these sites and continue to be used because the power cost is so low.
The heat is often transferred to something else that needs heat. Ive seen proposals for use in fish farms near the site, which were already generating their own heat with an inefficient means.
I’m telling you the answer. Not arguing for anything at all. The answer is acknowledging that fracking wont stop here are ways to reduce its impact. The answer is that hardware production wont stop, here are how it is being used as a sustainability solution greater than its heat and future e-waste reality. You aren't going to get your reality, and the existing reality is providing an economic practicality that nobody like you has ever come up with, its simple as that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-09/tesla-s-b...
I am following bitcoin for 11 years now. The hype seems to have vanished, it's still not useful much apart from speculation and pump and dump... But now, we also really, really need to think about climate change and wasting energy no matter the source, doesn't appear sensible to me.
I think this bubble may go still a lot higher, but I am skeptical, if it will ever recover after the next crash. This is important, because it has implications for those buying in high(-ish). I think this crash could be very different. Different psychology, different positions exiting.
I think there is definitely a future for crypto, but surely there isn't for Bitcoin.