Re:Problem: Energy consumption by Bitcoins
by mchannon on Sunday March 31, 2013 @11:04AM
(#5468812)
A few observations:
Many of the bitcoin mining rigs out there are operating on either "borrowed" or idle equipment- at least part of the energy on these rigs would have been wasted anyway.
Creating any good, be it the next version of Warcraft, or mining real physical gold, has a natural resource consumption associated with it. Bitcoin comes out smelling like a rose compared to real gold mining- even a dirty Chinese coal power plant can't hold a candle to the scale of earth movers, decapitated mountains, and cyanide leach ponds, particularly per dollar equivalent of real gold generated.
(But mined gold has real-world physical uses besides stores of value, right? Well, not really. The amount of gold used to make jewelry (used in many cultures as a store of value) roughly equals the amount of gold mined in a given year. Everything else comes from existing stock, recycling and reuse.)
Many of the bitcoin mining rigs out there are operating on either "borrowed" or idle equipment- at least part of the energy on these rigs would have been wasted anyway.
Creating any good, be it the next version of Warcraft, or mining real physical gold, has a natural resource consumption associated with it. Bitcoin comes out smelling like a rose compared to real gold mining- even a dirty Chinese coal power plant can't hold a candle to the scale of earth movers, decapitated mountains, and cyanide leach ponds, particularly per dollar equivalent of real gold generated.
(But mined gold has real-world physical uses besides stores of value, right? Well, not really. The amount of gold used to make jewelry (used in many cultures as a store of value) roughly equals the amount of gold mined in a given year. Everything else comes from existing stock, recycling and reuse.)