> rapidly becoming a net carbon negative industry

In spite of the mining industry’s half-hearted attempts at greenwashing what they do, the largest mining operations are coal and natural gas.

Those other industries do useful things. If the world stopped having aluminum or steel, the effects would be catastrophic.

If Bitcoin stopped tomorrow, nobody other than speculators would notice it except as a funny story in the news.

It would destroy a nascent financial system that would empower billions of people in the world. You are basically saying: a baby dying in their cradle wouldn't generate as much impact as a harvard professor dying. Well, it wouldn't, but if that child would have been the next Newton or Einstein, the world is still significantly poorer for it.

I’m familiar with the sales literature, yes. Going on a decade and a half of those claims falling flat, however, I think it’s far more likely that Bitcoin’s future is El Salvador rather than the golden vision of the advertisements.

What makes you say those claims are falling flat? Nigerians are heavily using Bitcoin and the LN for financial privileges. Check some of Alex Gladstein's (CSO at Human Rights Foundation) articles.

Oh bullshit.

The methane emission thing is still largely theoretical. In the real world, Bitcoin is mined using particularly filthy coal in Kazakhstan, as well as natural gas in the USA - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/26/investing/bitcoin-mining-...

There's always an excuse or a "well just around the corner it'll be better", but the fact is it's actually terrible and this is pure distraction.

Yes, I know, if you can mine bitcoin and release CO2 instead of releasing methane directly, that's a small win in climate terms, roughly equivalent to just flaring the gas, but with a profit motive. Let me know when that accounts for even a handful of percentage points of the total hashrate, let alone the majority.

Methane is 10x as powerful as a greenhouse gas, and reducing methane is far more relevant to combatting climate change than fighting CO2 emissions.

The research you referenced is sourced eventually to Alex de Vries, a person that has for years built his entire career image after "exposing Bitcoin's energy use". That fact that he works for the Dutch central bank should ring an alarm bell honestly.

Note that practically all research critical of Bitcoin's emissions are directly sourced to Alex de Vries's digiconomist website.

Ad hominem attacks then, rather than any actual rebuttal. What I'm hearing is "Alex De Vries is mean about Bitcoin so you shouldn't listen to him". Someone working for a central bank to me is someone who might know a thing or two about finance, rather than an enemy, but hey...

The thing is, I don't need to listen to him - there's tons of info out there about Bitcoin's presence in Kazakhstan from all sorts of sources. For instance here in New Scientist:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2284222-coal-powered-bi...

Reuters reporting on energy problems in Kazakhstan due to mining there -

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/crypto-boom-strains-...

About 20% of BTC hashrate seems to be there, and the energy there is 90% coal and gas. Then we have things like fossil fuel plants being brought out of retirement for Bitcoin mining in the US - https://www.voanews.com/a/bitcoin-mining-power-plant/6273552...

Yes, I know that stopping methane escapes is definitely a good thing. There's no indication that this is happening on any scale, and the stories all talk about "enormous potential", and possibilities and projections. I hope it does become carbon neutral, that would be one less problem with it, but it's not there yet and handwaving away problems because you have a potential solution is disingenuous.

I'm not attacking Alex de Vries as a person; just showing how his position makes him suspect of bias.

https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/

"For those reasons, whether Bitcoin continues to be successful or fails in terms of broader adoption, there’s no risk of the network using too much energy in the grand scheme of things. By any metric, it’s a rounding error as far as global consumption energy is concerned, with a sizeable chunk of its energy usage consisting of sustainable or otherwise wasted energy.

People focusing heavily on the environmental “E” side of ESG as it relates to Bitcoin often overlook the “SG” component- social and governance. At the end of the day, I consider Bitcoin to be one of the most ESG assets around, just not in the corporate sanitised conception that the term ESG is often used in."

Except that's more wishful thinking nonsense - we know it's not a rounding error, because it uses around half a percent of world electricity generation (which your source tries to obscure by looking at all energy, not just power), and we know that that's not all sourced from clean sources - see all the links above.

You have to be kidding about SG - it's the most toxic community on the planet, its governance is absent, and the whole ecosystem is rife with fraud and crime. That's hi-fucking-larious.

> I'm not attacking Alex de Vries as a person; just showing how his position makes him suspect of bias.

That's the very definition of an ad-hominem attack, attacking the standing of the speaker, not the speech.

Bitcoin is not an 'industry' so it's not comparable on those terms, moreover, it provides nothing of value to anyone.