- electricity is the only part where Bitcoin produces emissions (emissions of mining hardware)
- wasting climate neutral energy does not matter (it does: it's harder, takes more time and resources to switch to climate neutral sources; iirc studies estimate Germany needs to cut 50% of energy consumption to achieve 1.5° conformity)
- Bitcoin miners don't bypass widely adopted regulations somehow
Even if BTC and every other POW cryptocurrency converted this afternoon to 100% renewable energy use (and we ignore the carbon cost of manufacturing the hardware), it is STILL a huge climate problem.
Why?
1) Because that ~1% of total energy consumption is being squandered on maintaining the cryptocurrency instead of any other use. Thus, it prevents those clean energy sources from displacing CO2-generating sources which would otherwise be taken offline.
2) Even if the BTC energy is entirely derived from some power source that could not be used by others, perhaps all geothermal generation on a remote volcanic island, it will still add net heat to the atmospheric system. and, of course, we still have the energy use and CO2 spewage of fabricating and moving the mining equipment into location.
So, no, this problem is NOT taking care of itself.
Obviously, if the mining is done off-earth anywhere, it will not contribute to the CO2 problem, =ASSUMING= that it does not require on-earth energy resources to put the power generation there.
Crypto mining also stops being a problem when 100% of on-Earth power generation is de-carbonized — in that situation, it is no longer diverting energy generation that could be used to displace/reduce remaining CO2-spewing energy generation.
The problem is: While CO2 power generation is still active, and especially when it dominates, every kW of electricity used for crypto mining either directly generates CO2, or it uses clean generation that could otherwise (but now does NOT) displace a kW of CO2-based generation capacity.
For example, if the Texas grid became ~100% wind and other clean-source-powered, then BTC mining in that grid would not in any practical sense consume clean power that could otherwise displace dirty power. The 100kW you use to feed your miners could in theory be used to reduce production from a nearby coal plan in Oklahoma, but in practice, since the grids are not connected, they aren't, so that is probably the right scale.
That said, if it gets big and the miners are consuming enough production of solar panels and wind turbines to slow clean energy buildout on other grids, that's the second order of the same problem.
So, maybe everyone with crypto should, instead of convening to buy the constitution or a basketball team, go fund the takeover and conversion of an entire grid to clean energy, and build all the miners there.
Agreed.
> That said, if it gets big and the miners are consuming enough production of solar panels and wind turbines to slow clean energy buildout on other grids, that's the second order of the same problem.
True, but even that's not zero-sum: demand drives investment in production which increases supply leading to commoditization. Commoditization, in turn, makes the solution (solar, wind components) more accessible to a broader range of the economy.
GPUs for machine learning wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for gamers creating a demand floor that subsidized the research into better hardware.
Even if 99% of the rest of the world is also running on renewables, Crypto is still diverting energy generation that could be decarbonized.
Once the world energy generation is fully de-carbonized, then it is a non-issue.
Bitcoin's electricity use (or the electricity use of any other single application) is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to addressing climate change. Proof:
• Too much of what we does depends on electricity and has no even remotely feasible substitutes for it to be plausible to give up on electricity. In fact, switching more things to electricity, such as transportation and heating, is a large part of what we will have to do to address climate change.
• Therefore to address climate change we are going to have to switch to sources of electricity that are climate neutral, which cleans up Bitcoin (and all the other uses of electricity) from a climate standpoint.
EDIT: to clarify, of course Bitcoin's electricity use now has a climate impact. My point is that this will eventually be taken care of by the necessary switch to clean electricity for all our electricity production.
Until that happens we of course should be trying to clean up current electricity uses, but there are currently bigger fish to fry on that end than Bitcoin. To dismiss taking climate change plans seriously because most conversation is about things with bigger impact is not sensible.
If we take too long on the supply side and Bitcoin continues to grow it may move up the list to where it is one of those uses that we will need to address before we clean up the electricity supply.