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BX4096

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Cryptomining is probably the worst waste of energy in human history. It's like a virus, a worldwide epidemic that's worse than COVID, and all it does is show once again how dumb humanity can be.

Executing a single Bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy that the average American home consumes over a three-week period and has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching more than 50,000 hours of YouTube.

According to researchers, in 2018 "every $1 of Bitcoin value created was responsible for $.49 in health and climate damages in the US" from the pollutants generated from the burning of fossil fuels used to produce extra energy for the "miners".

Environmental cost of cryptocurrency mines
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113092600.htm
 
Cryptomining is probably the worst waste of energy in human history. It's like a virus, a worldwide epidemic that's worse than COVID, and all it does is show once again how dumb humanity can be.

Executing a single Bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy that the average American home consumes over a three-week period and has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching more than 50,000 hours of YouTube.

According to researchers, in 2018 "every $1 of Bitcoin value created was responsible for $.49 in health and climate damages in the US" from the pollutants generated from the burning of fossil fuels used to produce extra energy for the "miners".

Environmental cost of cryptocurrency mines
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113092600.htm
I don't know about "worst" -- look at any large city at 2am. What do you see? I see millions of lights still on in a lot of empty buildings. If you add up all of the power use by all of the empty businesses -- most empty for at least half the day -- I have to wonder what it would be. Humanity in general wastes a ton of energy and resources every day.

I'd bet that we could cut easlity global energy use in half if everyone, everywhere, shut off unnecessary power draws. I'm not talking about things like keeping a base level of heating, but lights in empty rooms, emergency lighting in empty buildings, plugged in computers and home entertainment devices, appliances, etc. It will never happen, but if it could we would see a dramatic drop in power and resource use.
 
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We could argue that this very forum is a waste of energy. But rather than try to figure out the numbers and see what utilitarian purpose it serves, I look at it from a point of view of "who's this really benefiting?"

So let's ask, who's crypto really benefiting? I see arguments that crypto is going to revolutionize the way currency works by democratizing it. Cool, but it also doesn't solve the problem of wealth disparity between people. I'd argue it makes it just as bad as I feel it favors people who have the initial capital to spend on the hardware to mine crypto.

Anyway, I don't want to get into a debate about this so I'll just leave it at that.
 
We could argue that this very forum is a waste of energy. But rather than try to figure out the numbers and see what utilitarian purpose it serves, I look at it from a point of view of "who's this really benefiting?"

So let's ask, who's crypto really benefiting? I see arguments that crypto is going to revolutionize the way currency works by democratizing it. Cool, but it also doesn't solve the problem of wealth disparity between people. I'd argue it makes it just as bad as I feel it favors people who have the initial capital to spend on the hardware to mine crypto.

Anyway, I don't want to get into a debate about this so I'll just leave it at that.
Very true. For all the talk of cryptocurrency revolutionizing the world, it feels like another take on the same old garbage that's currently going around. The haves get more, the have nots get less. I just think pointing at the power use and saying, "Look how bad it is! Crypto is the worst!" is disingenuous. It's an easy scapegoat. Yes, crypto uses and wastes a lot of power, but so does every corporation in existence. And let's be clear that 'governments' are basically synonymous with 'corporations' in this discussion -- governments are simply the biggest corporations with the ability to enact laws and exert more direct control over the population. It's often done "to help society," but you don't have to look far for examples of horribly wasteful government programs. And ultimately, the people using/benefitting are often to blame.
 

escksu

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I don't know about "worst" -- look at any large city at 2am. What do you see? I see millions of lights still on in a lot of empty buildings. If you add up all of the power use by all of the empty businesses -- most empty for at least half the day -- I have to wonder what it would be. Humanity in general wastes a ton of energy and resources every day.

I'd bet that we could cut easlity global energy use in half if everyone, everywhere, shut off unnecessary power draws. I'm not talking about things like keeping a base level of heating, but lights in empty rooms, emergency lighting in empty buildings, plugged in computers and home entertainment devices, appliances, etc. It will never happen, but if it could we would see a dramatic drop in power and resource use.

There is another even worse... Fuel guzzling vehicles.. USA is the worst....
 

daworstplaya

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Let's face it, Crypto is a fancy complicated ponzi scheme with a lot of buzz words. And to compare energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do vs energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money is disingenuous at best. Let's hope all the computers running Crypto on China get shut down, the sooner the better.
 
Let's face it, Crypto is a fancy complicated ponzi scheme with a lot of buzz words. And to compare energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do vs energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money is disingenuous at best. Let's hope all the computers running Crypto on China get shut down, the sooner the better.
So let me get this straight:

Mining = "energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money"
Empty buildings with lights on = "energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do"

Disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. As in, ignoring all the other waste to point the finger of shame at miners.

I'm not trying to say crypto mining is good, but it's a very skewed perspective to suggest it's the "worst waste of energy in human history" while turning a blind eye to pretty much every other waste of energy out there.

I'm saying that we, as humans, waste a TON of power, every single day. I suggested above that we probably waste at least half of all power consumed in the world in various ways. I'd actually say if we really wanted to, we could probalby cut global power use to about 25% of what it currently is -- I have no hard data to back that up, it's just a guesstimate based on my own power use. Like, I don't need TV, I don't need several PCs running at all hours, I don't need lights on in rooms that are empty, I don't need 72F house temperatures year round (they're just nice), etc. I could cut my monthly power costs to around $65 while still having a refrigerator, modest heating/cooling, lights, and the PC I'm actually using. That's less than a fourth of my normal power use.

Anyway, crypto mining is a chunk of the global power use, but it's currently something like 122 TWh for Bitcoin, let's call it 200 TWh for all cryptocurrencies. According to this page, global energy consumption is 113,009 TWh per year in 2017 -- that means crypto mining is 0.2% of the total global power consumed. Not only electricity, but all power, so the percentage is higher if you want to limit it to just electricity. (Somewhere around 25,000 TWh of electricity is used worldwide it seems, so crypto is nearly 1% of that.)

But again, considering all the ways we waste power as humans -- near-empty trains, buses, planes, cars, buildings, etc. are all great examples -- I think attacking those problems would be of more benefit than throwing up crypto mining as a red herring. There was an advertisement I saw once about "vampire power use" -- all those unused cell phone chargers and such left plugged in 24/7. If everyone in the world never left an unused power adapter sitting there sucking 0.2W of power, the global savings would be measurable! But if everyone in the world simply did a better job turning off lights when they're not needed (I tell my kids to do this ALL THE TIME!), we'd likely save 100 times as much power. Because a single light uses 10W for an LED, give or take, so that's the same as 50 vampire cell phone chargers -- and most light switches control anywhere from three to ten lights. Which means people focusing on vampire power use are distracted from the bigger issue.
 

escksu

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China has been the largest new car market in the world for over a decade.

China may have more cars, but their cars consume way less gasoline. Go google world gasoline consumption (not crude oil).

In 2017, USA uses over 9 million barrels of gasoline everyday. China is just around 1/3 of USA despite having more cars and way more people!! USA uses more gasoline than china + rank 3 to rank 10 combined... Madness...

 
China may have more cars, but their cars consume way less gasoline. Go google world gasoline consumption (not crude oil).

In 2017, USA uses over 9 million barrels of gasoline everyday. China is just around 1/3 of USA despite having more cars and way more people!! USA uses more gasoline than china + rank 3 to rank 10 combined... Madness...


We all are guilty.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxxxqwBQw
 
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spongiemaster

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China may have more cars, but their cars consume way less gasoline. Go google world gasoline consumption (not crude oil).

In 2017, USA uses over 9 million barrels of gasoline everyday. China is just around 1/3 of USA despite having more cars and way more people!! USA uses more gasoline than china + rank 3 to rank 10 combined... Madness...

Maybe, but China is still kicking our asses and everyone else's in overall CO2 emissions.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions

Most of the #1 ranking is due to China consuming more coal than the rest of the world combined. That's even more madness and dirtier than gasoline.
https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=coal&graph=consumption&display=rank

There are no winners here, we're all losers in the end.
 
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