Luckily Bitcoin mining is utterly centralized. In fact turning off a single mine in Xinjiang cut power consumption by 1/4-1/2.
> Isn't that a way more obvious low hanging fruit?
No. Is idle device power in the US rising? Some data shows one of the biggest sources of idle power is halogen bulbs being left on which are being replaced with LEDs over time - unlike the exponential rise in BTC power consumption. Not to mention, it requires 400,000,000 people to each act. Killing Bitcoin requires a few people to act. Much easier. And of course, both should be done.
> Human activity uses energy, that's unavoidable.
Yes, much more when we choose intentionally 400,000X less efficient technologies because of idealism or because they're "neat." Living in a society requires we make compromises to ensure our shared survival. Our consumption is the sum of our choices. Time to start making some better ones.
This whataboutism and nihilism is pretty much a guarantee of inaction on all fronts. Step up and do the right thing!
> when we choose intentionally 400,000X less efficient technologies because of idealism or because they're "neat."
Like I mentioned already there's no reasonable way to compare its efficiency to technologies like Visa which solve a totally different problem. So this is a useless and misleading metric aside from the obvious strawman that cryptocurrencies are only useful because they are "neat".
Not talking about Bitcoin, just PoW. The implication is clear: it uses a ton of energy and achieves almost nothing with it relative to competitive technologies.
> Like I mentioned already there's no reasonable way to compare its efficiency to technologies like Visa which solve a totally different problem.
Yes there is, it's by dividing into kWh per transaction. You can't pretend this away because you don't like the landslide loss.
[edit] I'm sure you well know those counterarguments are meaningless because they fly in the face of math. Look this is typical of crypto folks, who know well they're melting the ice caps to enrich themselves. It's shameful, and you should feel bad for participating in this. The comparison in the domain is against, for instance proof of stake coins.
- The power consumption of Bitcoin has almost nothing to do with the transaction rate limit. Increasing it would have basically no impact on the power consumption. So it doesn't make sense to look at the energy usage on a per transaction basis.
- It's debatable whether there is actually a need to increase the transaction rate limit yet, whereas it's obviously necessary for Visa to process a high transaction rate right now and so it makes sense that Visa would have optimized for that already. I think even the "small blockers", who prefer the current low rate, can agree that the rate will need to be increased eventually.
I'm not bringing this up to dispute anything you just said, more that if you're looking to crusade against industries that generate a huge amount of waste to benefit a relative few, I think there's a strong argument for also killing junk mail along with PoW cryptocurrencies.
> Control over the supply of money gives central bankers the ability to steal money from the people and funnel it into paying off politicians and doing other country destroying bs.
Central banks don't print money and funnel it off to politicians lol. They control the money supply by deciding how much credit should be extended and at what interest rates and from time to time provide stability through buffering via purchase and sale of treasuries.
> Once you understand how bitcoin will eliminate a major source of corruption in our world you'll finally understand it's value.
It has created a whole slew of new kinds of corruption and crime, and all the existing corruption and crime remain. It's been a net add of corruption and crime.
No. The market does that. I'm not sure why you think this is different than how the value of, say, a dollar represents.
> Central banks don't print money and funnel it off to politicians lol.
You misunderstand. Its not that direct. Central banks print money used to fund things like government loans (ie bonds), among other things. Member banks buy the government bonds and sells them at a profit to the central bank. The owners of those member banks in turn pocket that money and use some of it to fund the legalized corruption known as lobbying. This is not the only funnel that looks like this that comes out of the financial industry. There's a reason that Goldman Sachs "alums" trawl DC like cockroches.
So.. very much not lol. Not lol at all.
> They control the money supply by deciding how much credit should be extended and at what interest rate
I think you've missed the last 15 years where they started buying whatever they want in "open market operations". Where were you in 2008... or like the last year and a half?
>It has created a whole slew of new kinds of corruption and crime
You're misinformed. Show me one way that bitcoin has lead to new kinds of corruption. I would be very surprised if you could name a single thing and have some credible information about it.
Well most markets aren’t made up of 95% fictional trades, according to an ETF that attempted to list two years ago.
> You misunderstand. Its not that direct. Central banks print money used to fund things like government loans (ie bonds), among other things.
You misunderstand. Central banks don’t print money, they set reserve rates, interest rates and they occasionally purchase and sell bonds. Nothing more.
> You're misinformed. Show me one way that bitcoin has lead to new kinds of corruption. I would be very surprised if you could name a single thing and have some credible information about it.
Ransomware and tether (unless you count the liberty reserve and even that was nowhere close).