[HN Gopher] Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO2 as buying an...
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Buying a Bitcoin emits 195x as much CO2 as buying an iPhone
Author : yanneves
Score : 71 points
Date : 2021-05-02 22:18 UTC (44 minutes ago)
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| Kreotiko wrote:
| The title should be 195x as much CO2 as producing an iPhone. In
| regards of buying and if you are drawing a comparison with fiat
| currencies you should take into consideration the environmental
| impact for producing, circulating and securing the money that is
| used for the transaction.
|
| Nobody ever talks about what is around fiat, ATMs, money counting
| machines, heavy armoured vehicles moving them around, etc.
| scientismer wrote:
| Actually the costs to mine a block on the blockchain are the
| same, no matter if somebody buys a Bitcoin or not. At most you
| could argue that driving up the price gives miners an incentive
| to mine more.
| ypeterholmes wrote:
| _"...with regards to NFTs we will see PoW take precedence since
| it reduces fraud. "_
|
| This is a massive assumption, and likely wrong. From Ethereum to
| Cardano and beyond, NFT's are almost exclusively being created on
| smart contract platforms that either already utilize PoS or are
| transitioning to it quickly. So the idea that PoW will take
| precedent in the NFT space.. how?
|
| Regarding fraud, is that to suggest PoS is not secure? Also a
| massive assumption and likely wrong.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The higher the price BTC go, the more miners will mine to get it
| near break even. Imagine 600k price where some pumpers are
| targeting, you are looking at potentially 10x the energy used to
| mine blocks. Is that a correct characterization of the problem at
| hand?
| barbegal wrote:
| This articles makes absolutely no sense. It uses market
| capitalisation of Apple and bitcoin to compare the CO2 emissions
| of an iPhone and a bitcoin transaction which is clearly nonsense.
| You could calculate the rough CO2 emissions of a 1 BTC
| transaction by dividing annual estimated CO2 emissions by bitcoin
| miners (35 million tonnes) by the number of annual transactions
| (100 million) which equates to about 350kg of CO2.
|
| An iPhone on the other hand produces around 100kg of CO2 to
| manufacture according to
| https://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk/blog/iphone-lifecycle-wh...
|
| So in summary it's actually only 3 to 4 times.
| victorbstan wrote:
| I'm trying to understand this. The value of the "emission" would
| fluctuate with the value of the coin? But the wording is weird.
| How is "buying a Bitcoin" generating 195x co2 compared to x? The
| mining of Bitcoin has already happened. That emission is over for
| that Bitcoin after it has been mined. And tying either Bitcoin
| emission values to capital values. Or iphone emission values to
| Apples capital value also doesn't seem very intuitive. What's the
| point?
| roenxi wrote:
| Apple operates at pretty comfortable profit margins. At one time
| it was the most profitable company in the world. I'm not sure
| this comparison is fair - Apple is famous for creating highly
| valuable outputs with relatively minimal inputs.
|
| This comparison is just for fun, but there seems to be some buzz
| about Bitcoin not being environmentally friendly I don't know why
| people are all grumpy about Bitcoin, there are a lot of things
| that we waste energy on.
|
| Maybe if the world governments were a bit more responsible with
| their currencies then there wouldn't be a need for Bitcoin. It
| was a direct response to the outrageous actions taken after the
| '07 crisis.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| I was a bit disappointed in the article given the headline. The
| analytical methodology used here is a bit odd to me, and there
| was no explanation as to why this methodology was used.
|
| I still don't know how much incremental CO2 is emitted from
| buying a Bitcoin or an iPhone after reading it. All I see is a
| weird CO2 divided by market cap calculation...
|
| Does anyone else have good data on the incremental CO2 emissions
| from either of these?
| mcfly1985 wrote:
| Another NPC attacking bitcoin. Gotta keep the sheep believing the
| devaluing of their savings and wages is a good thing.
| vmception wrote:
| > Does that mean cryptoassets are doomed technology? No, this
| spells the need for established institutions to adopt and support
| crypto. The demand is there. Meanwhile, we need to be more
| cautious of the actors we currently enable in crypto networks and
| the corners they're willing to cut in the pursuit of profit.
|
| Exactly. Everyone that matters is putting their energy towards
| creating incentives and software that allows for similar security
| and confidence of crypto networks, while using less energy.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| > The demand is there.
|
| Let's talk when covid is over. It wouldn't be the first time it
| drops 80%
| scientismer wrote:
| Why would Covid drive up the price of Bitcoin? Sure, the
| pandemic is being used for attempted government power grasps,
| but those won't go away with Covid.
| alwillis wrote:
| 1. COVID-19 isn't going to be "over" in any conventional
| sense any time soon. There are too many cases and too many
| variants.
|
| 2. With billions of institutional money and billions more
| waiting until ETFs in the US are approved, Bitcoin has
| something it didn't have back in the day: a floor.
|
| The days of 80% drops are over.
| gruez wrote:
| And it wouldn't be the first time it rebounded.
| thathndude wrote:
| This response doesn't make any sense. It's not pulling back
| right now.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| christopherwxyz wrote:
| Only if you buy one at a time. Trying buying in bulk.
| TJSomething wrote:
| I personally don't have the cash to buy more than one and I
| feel like a lot of the point of cryptocurrency is that
| individuals don't have to trust a financial institution.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| And unlike Bitcoin you use your iPhone everyday...
| tyingq wrote:
| _" the decision to buy one Bitcoin versus about 29 iPhone 12 Pros
| emits 195 times as much CO2"_
|
| The headline made it sound like 195x a single iPhone...
| maxerickson wrote:
| The Bitcoin CO2 is some made up measure anyway, mining interest
| for a year isn't really attributable to the market cap of
| Bitcoin (they feed back on each other and so on, but there's no
| direct relationship).
| yanneves wrote:
| you're right, I reworded that incorrectly - now updated, thanks
| for spotting it!
| social_quotient wrote:
| But one lasts forever and the other is wasted in 2-3 years?
| dhdc wrote:
| Forever sitting in your wallet, because its an "investment" and
| cannot be spent normally?
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| How can this be calculated? I mean, it's possible to use solar
| energy for running mining equipment.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Use the overall distribution of generation sources for the
| electric grid?
| scientismer wrote:
| It's probably all bullshit. There are papers by professors of
| music studies claiming listening to streaming services wastes a
| gigazillion of CO2. It's all just back of the napkin estimates.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Ha. Reminds me of the old warning message that used to come
| up in rn when you posted something to USENET:
|
| _This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout
| the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net
| hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere.
| Please be sure you know what you are doing._
| celticninja wrote:
| https://cbeci.org/
| kenniskrag wrote:
| Using solar energy "pollutes" also the environment.
|
| 1. Less energy is available for other demands. They have to be
| filled up with other energy sources. (Assuming, that they do
| not use their own panels for mining.)
|
| 2. Producing solar panels produces CO2
| 1976gian wrote:
| Nice
| wqsz7xn wrote:
| I feel like it's really easy to pin bitcoin on its energy usage
| just because it's so easily measurable. Is there any research
| that compares a traditional banking platform in terms of W/tx in
| comparison to bitcoin?
| Nursie wrote:
| Thought experiment - Bitcoin supports fewer transactions than
| are needed for a mid-sized town, yet uses more power than most
| small countries.
|
| The upper limit of the amount of the amount of power a
| country's financial system could use is the power footprint of
| that country. Likely the real usage is a small percentage of
| that, but that's the upper limit.
|
| Now, given Bitcoin uses more power than countries of millions,
| but supports the transaction load of a few hundred thousand, do
| you think it is the _slightest_ bit possible your comparison
| would come out favourable to Bitcoin?
| losteric wrote:
| Not bank transfers, but https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-
| energy-consumption says
|
| > 778,988 - The number of VISA transactions that could be
| powered by the energy consumed for a single Bitcoin transaction
| on average (1157.81 kWh).
|
| Obviously bank transactions would also come out way ahead,
| those are essentially a DB update built on trust and for speed,
| whereas proof-of-work is severely inefficient by design.
| sp332 wrote:
| It's not _that_ power intensive to do a BTC transaction
| (although the requirement for every full node to duplicate the
| work kinda limits its relative efficiency). What drives up the
| power usage is the way miners compete for new bitcoins. 25 new
| bitcoins are minted every ~10 minutes, and 1 BTC is worth
| 56,378.78 USD right now, so the miners can collectively spend
| up $1.4 million (in electricity, hardware depreciation, etc)
| every ten minutes and still break even.
| arebop wrote:
| It gets pretty thorny because you have to be careful about what
| aspects of traditional platforms correspond to the problems
| addressed by bitcoins. Some folks will try to compare the
| electricity usage of Visa to that of Bitcoin for example, even
| though Bitcoin doesn't provide low-latency payments and Visa
| doesn't provide distributed consensus.
|
| Another easy thing to measure about Bitcoin is its economic
| value. You can readily assess the market capitalization, and
| you can also examine the blockchain to see precisely how much
| it cost users to conduct the transactions in recent blocks. The
| bottom line for me is that the miners aren't working for
| charity; they are taking fees+reward >= their electricity cost,
| and this is paid for by the users of Bitcoin. So those who
| criticize Bitcoin as an environmental catastrophe might as well
| say the same thing about YouTube, Aluminum production, or
| modern industry more generally.
|
| It's just a particularly easy target because many people find
| the economic importance of Bitcoin and the recent development
| of the same mystifying.
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(page generated 2021-05-02 23:02 UTC)