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A comment on Bitcoin Is Time. Parent comment

Re:Bitcoin Is Time by leppr on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @11:00AM (#26316664)
There's nothing about Bitcoin that incentives mining with green energy sources more than dirty one. If coal electricity is cheaper, then bitcoin incentives burning coal. The only somewhat valid rebutals to the energy consumption arguments I know of are:

- a lot of it is spare power that would be wasted otherwise (only partially true).

- it uses less energy overall than governments spend protecting their fiat money's value (not that comparable since fiat can also be used as currency).

- the gold industry uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold, it will probably just add up).

EDIT: completed gold mining point following comment

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Re:Bitcoin Is Time by Mikester on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @11:53AM (#26317316)
> gold mining uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold mining, it will probably just add up

Why do people keep making the comparison to gold mining? It's inappropriate.

Gold mining is bad for the value of gold, because it increases the amount of gold in the world. Eventually, the gold coffers on Earth will deplete and there will be no more gold mining.

Bitcoin mining is necessary for the value of bitcoin, otherwise there can be no certainty of the blockchain. After most of the bitcoins get minted, the mining will still have to continue out of transaction fees.

The cost of mining bitcoin needs to be compared to the cost of gold storage and handling of gold transactions, not gold mining.

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Re:Bitcoin Is Time by leppr on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @12:28PM (#26317799)
You're right, amended my comment. Doesn't change the argument though.
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Re:Bitcoin Is Time by Mikester on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @08:01AM (#26327748)
It doesn't change your argument indeed, it helps it.
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Re:Bitcoin Is Time by cousin_it on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @11:09AM (#26316771)
> gold mining uses a lot of energy too (but I doubt Bitcoin will reduce the energy spent on gold mining, it will probably just add up).

I'm not sure it will add up. It seems to me that different stores of value compete directly with each other, because you can store value one way or the other way.

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