Bitcoin is Unsustainable?

Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by chaostheory on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:28AM (#9803326)

Someone I know covered his roof in solar panels. Instead of buying a big battery, he just runs a BC server farm. It's not unsustainable.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by cryptoz on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:34AM (#9803345)

That only works if it becomes part of the BTC protocol that you can only mine if the electricity comes from renewable, non-polluting sources. Otherwise, due to solar not being the cheapest, most accessible source of energy everywhere that people want to mine BTC, you'd have lots of people choosing to increase greenhouse gas emissions in order to fill their own pockets.

It would be interesting to see estimates of the cost of those greenhouse gasses, in terms of extinct species, effort to clean up the atmosphere, or other expensive/bad things that can happen when you claim that increasingly using energy in non-efficient ways is just fine. Are these costs higher or lower than the value of the money created?

Perhaps BTC is sustainable, but your argument certainly does not refute the article's claim - at least, until we've already solved our energy & pollution problems.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by prostoalex on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:56AM (#9803421)

There are some markets out there where solar prices turn negative http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-f...

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by chaostheory on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:44AM (#9803370)

If bitcoin does become even more mainstream, given its energy requirements and the potential strain it may put on existing traditional infrastructures; will solar and other alternative power sources always be more expensive?

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by lmm on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @03:53AM (#9803631)

There's no economy of scale for solar - just more and more panels, in contrast to more traditional power sources where running one big boiler / set of turbines can be more efficient. So I think solar gets worse off as electricity demand increases.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by eru on Friday July 03, 2015 @03:09AM (#9823997)

There's an economy of scale in producing solar panels. And there can be economies of scale in installing them.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by ars on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @03:42AM (#9803587)

That doesn't make any sense. Energy is fungible. Just sell your power back to the grid if it's worth more than BC. If it's worth less that BC then buy from the grid.

"Assigning" your solar cells to BC is meaningless.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by dagw on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:07PM (#9819786)

Just sell your power back to the grid if it's worth more than BC.

Many (most?) power companies around the world don't simply buy power from solar cells at the same price they sell. Also you may very well be taxed on your income from selling electricity back to the grid, so it's not that simple.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by ars on Thursday July 02, 2015 @08:47PM (#9822710)

You are taxed on your bitcoin earnings as well.

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Re:Bitcoin is Unsustainable? by bernardlunn on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:35AM (#9803350)

Local solar works well. It is the transport to central electricity generating stations that killed initiatives such as the one to power Europe from North African deserts. Bitcoin mining can use local solar (on small scale) or large scale. Mining will move to hot climates.

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