This seems as unlikely to be true, as it does sensationalist. Hate on Bitcoin all ya like, but don’t make off the cuff “calculations” and report it as news.
It’s not accurate but it’s not completely made up either.
There is a calculable power cost to each transaction. The work isn’t just happening on one computer and God knows how many ledgers are out there right? To be able to pay somebody some fractional amount of Bitcoin to buy a pizza, The cost to have generated the Bitcoin the cost to check the transaction the cost to update the transaction and all the different places. We don’t see the usage as a problem because it’s tons and tons and tons of people paying for it.
But their calculating the water usage as evaporation for the power plants and evaporation from hydroelectric. Like the freshwater isn’t returning to the system in large.
I wonder how much water was lost to make the pizza?
I can get behind “uses a lot of water”. But where the headline loses me (to the point where I won’t be reading the article) is “potentially cause freshwater shortages”.
If someone is using water to mine bitcoins… that’s because they can’t think of anything more useful to do with that water and likely means they are operating somewhere that has an abundance of water.
And if they’re wasting a resource that is needed to grow food, well that’s something the local government can easily stop.
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You know what else uses as much water as a swimming pool? Swimming pools.
And don’t get me started on golf courses.
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Yeah, whataboutism is essentially telling on one’s self; an implicit recognition that one has no better arguments than to try to distract.
Don’t get me started on humans either. Not only do those thirsty shits require shitloads of water to function, it also needs to be clean! Not relatively clean either, but clean clean!
Do you have any idea how many bitcoin farms I could run if there weren’t any humans? Me neither, but it’s probably zero.
Are swimming pools using one swimming pool or water per swim? Per year? 5 years? 10 years?
I think you missed the ‘per transaction’ part. Which is kind of important.
Wasteful but not as bad as golf.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/3/22/22988989/an-illogical-oasis-golf-course-water-usage-st-george-golf
The U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent water use data for Utah shows the state uses about 38 million gallons of water on golf courses per day.
Uh, it’s far worse. That’s a mere 9k transactions. According to https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_transactions_per_day 12/3/23 had about 71k transactions. So bitcoin is using 7x the water that all the golf courses in Utah use. So in one day Bitcoin used as much water as Utah golf courses use in a week. Low point for this year was around 19k transactions. So still 2 days worth of Utah golf courses.
let’s stop it all.
Do you mean 3/12/2023?
No
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I’d prefer they both stopped.
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LOL get fucked.
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I mean, yeah, it’s bad. We shouldn’t be ignoring how bad bitcoin is for the environment.
But are you really gonna tell me that all the computers and CPU time that Wall Street uses for trading somehow takes less?
It doesn’t matter what financial system you use, you’re still burning energy to make it work.
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I dont think server rooms are often going to need humidifying, electronics like pretty low humidity. and water usage for cooling isnt generally consumed, the same water is used over and over again.
You want a certain amount of humidity to prevent static buildup and increase the cooling ability of air. Water used in cooling is only reused so many times before it’s discarded to prevent scale buildup. The article also mentions it includes the water used in power generation.
Yeah it counts water that flows into streams that makes no sense
Yeah that part did seem disingenuous. Water cooling systems for data centers are almost always closed loop systems, at least all the ones I’ve seen and I’ve been in IT for over 30 years. It’s a very scaled up version of water cooled PCs. Basically a heat transfer medium not a consumable resource. So yeah a bit clickbaity in my opinion.
Water cooling towers have been common in my DC experience, but admittedly it’s limited.
Crypto is entirely an extremely expensive gambling system. It serves no actual explainable purpose for the vast majority of people. It’s trivially provable to be worse than existing alternatives in every way that isn’t scams and or money laundering.
It frustrates me how it strayed from its original course. It was supposed to be a payment system independent of banks and thus not capable of screwing people over. Sanctions would have made it hard for me to pay for some things, but Monero offers a way. People who need to make sensitive payments can do so without their bank having a record of that. It is just cash for the digital world. A tool, not a stock.
That is - I wish the people that want to get rich from it just quit. Leave the system for people who really need it.
Provable to be worse than existing alternatives? Which alternatives there are? The only one that comes to mind is cash by mail, which is not doable in some places.
Sorry, I meant than using Zelle, a credit or debit card, Paypal, etc. Last time I looked, most crypto is completely traceable because of the public ledger (monero does built in illegal in the US money laundering style transaction mixing to try and make it less traceable, not sure how well that works, but the rest apply to it), and the distributed public ledgers are the only way it works. I’d argue the way most people can get crypto requires a bank account tied to something like Coinbase, so that’s a link from your bank, to your crypto wallet, then the rest is even more public.
However, for most people, crypto doesn’t work like cash, and does work like a stock. You need a special broker, you need to move money with fees into the crypto account, then pay fees to buy the crypto. This is way more analogous to stocks, so that’s how people think of it, than cash or bank transfers.
Assuming you can figure out the right crypto to buy, now every time you spend it or try and send it to a different wallet, there’s stupid high fees for the common Bitcoin and Etherium networks (I haven’t actually tried to use the other ones as they get very obscure). We tried to move $30 dollars in Etherium to a different wallet (granted this was 4 years ago) and it cost $15 in “gas fees”. This makes me long for the 3% credit card processing fee.
After the fee, it takes quite a while to transfer, I recall Bitcoin took over an hour, and it was like several minutes or more for Etherium. Paypal, Zelle, Card are all instant, or maybe seconds.
Basically if you’re not buying something highly illegal, there’s 0 benefit to a normal person and masses of costs, complexity, opportunities to get hacked and all your crypto stolen, and exchanges to either collapse or also steal whatever money you had in there. It doesn’t solve a problem, and so normal people are right to not use it. I’d suggest after 13 years it’s only been used by speculators and scammers “successfully”.
most crypto is completely traceable because of the public ledger
True, but it is possible to purchase anonymously. KYC exchanges are just the most convenient option. Or exchange with Monero, which is what a lot of people do as well. Although if there were actual stakes, I wouldn’t depend just on what Monero provides, just because you shouldn’t have just one layer of safety anyway.
However, for most people, crypto doesn’t work like cash, and does work like a stock.
Not exactly the tool’s fault that it was used not for its initial purpose. It is quite literally hammering in nails with a microscope, lol.
there’s stupid high fees for the common Bitcoin and Etherium networks
I myself have only used Monero, and the fees there are negligeable. But yea, transactions do still take a while. Never dealt with BTC yet, but it is a bit frustrating that it’s so much more widely accepted despite higher fees.
Basically if you’re not buying something highly illegal, there’s 0 benefit to a normal person
First - there might be things as simple as sanctions. My own purchases are completely innocent, but crypto turned out to be the simplest and safest way to pay in such a situation. Second - this argument kind of steps into the “I have nothing to hide” territory. Normal things might turn into “highly illegal” overnight - first thing that comes to mind is what happened with abortion laws. There are always vulnerable people who aren’t criminals, and saying they shouldn’t have such a payment option is kind of close to “only criminals would need end-to-end encryption”.
Normal things might turn into “highly illegal” overnight - first thing that comes to mind is what happened with abortion laws. There are always vulnerable people who aren’t criminals, and saying they shouldn’t have such a payment option is kind of close to “only criminals would need end-to-end encryption”.
I’m not saying people have nothing to hide, or making that case. I’m saying the ask is so high that people who don’t feel like they must use crypto don’t, and this is one of the hills it would have to conquer to be taken seriously. There are obvious negatives like the environmental impact, the PITA complicated tech that is hard to understand, the slow transactions, and the difficulty of getting usable money into and out of crypto. And the vast majority of purchases, the mass adoption, aren’t stuff that people care to hide or they would already be only using cash.
I’d love to pay for my VPN with crypto, but I’m not willing to spend the hours it would take to figure it out in the current form, not to mention actually make it at all actually anonymous, plus pay roughly 2x in payment fees.
Now think of people who don’t even care about privacy to use a VPN…
Yeah, I don’t deny there are significant negatives. But this is the closest we got to mass-adopted digital cash YET. Buying it can indeed be tricky, I did get lucky with that.
And the vast majority of purchases, the mass adoption, aren’t stuff that people care to hide or they would already be only using cash.
I don’t think crypto is even supposed to be for the “vast majority of purchases”. It does and always will exist alongside traditional payment options, which are, indeed, preferrable for many things.
But when it comes to learning the tech… Isn’t it the same for proper privacy, anonymity and safety in general? Instead of proclaiming it as a “lost cause”, I think we should lend a hand to someone who needs protection but has trouble figuring it out.
Also paying with card might just become impossible even for people who don’t mind it (like me). Sure, I could go through a middleman, but their commission would far exceed Monero fees and there’s a bigger chance of being scammed.
opportunities to get hacked and all your crypto stolen
Oh, forgot to reply to that one. In some cases the individual responsibility is actually preferrable to the nonzero chance that a bank or government would freeze your bank account.
But when it comes to learning the tech… Isn’t it the same for proper privacy, anonymity and safety in general? Instead of proclaiming it as a “lost cause”, I think we should lend a hand to someone who needs protection but has trouble figuring it out.
I’ve gotten cynical over trying to lend a hand to people around using Linux. Masses don’t want to be taught things. Heck, look at the lemmy adoption issues. Yes, idealistically maybe “digital cash” has a use, but practically people don’t see it. At this point, it’s not a lack of knowledge - there were super bowl commercials. It’s a lack of interest. It’s like the laser keyboards “of the future” circa 2010. They didn’t solve an actual problem enough people had to be worth learning how to use them and deal with the clunky parts.
Its original purpose was always Gold Standard 2: The Digitalisation for Austrian School-influenced ancap wankers.
Will no one think of the scammers?
Please do.
Eth consistently seems to be the better technology. I really don’t see why Bitcoin doesn’t see more transition from mining to just validation as it sunsets.
Mining is validation through POW. Eth is almost pointless from the point of view of bitcoin as proof of stake is “who has the gold makes the rules”.
PoW is inherently unavailable while also a system of dimmishing returns. PoS is bad IMHO too, but from a sociopolitical aspect and not from tech standpoint.
it makes sense that we’ll doom ourselves mining something absolutely worthless
Source: Uncle Musk’s wet dreams.
[Alex De Vries] calculated that the computational process behind the Bitcoin network uses 8.6 to 35.1 billion liters of water annually in the United States or roughly one swimming pool’s worth of water per transaction.
This is simply untrue. I know a large BTC mining operation and they don’t use water. They use the gases coming off from oil mining that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. BTC mining takes advantage of surplus energy so it’s creation doesn’t go to waste. The mining is good for our environment. I’ve also read about solar panels sitting above crops to power BTC miners. These panels covering the crops help conserve water while helping the plants grow better.
Edit: • Agrivoltaic farming • Mining with gas flaring • Mining with nuclear and hydro power
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People can talk all day and say things could have been used for something else or something better. Most of the time people can think of an idea but nobody does it. Don’t be hateful towards BTC miners because they actually did it. Like someone else mentioned in another comment, water would be much better utilized by not going into thousands of pools and golf courses or watering lawns. You would probably need investors to have a large operation but it doesn’t make these people elite or whatever whales are. The people I know who mine using oil exhaust are wholesome good people just making it by like everyone else is and trying to live their dream. The difference is BTC (not other cryptos) using renewable energy puts it in a unique position to be a good product for everyone as it’s a money that is equal for everyone to use, unlike traditional fiat currencies.
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Explain to me how crops of any appreciable size are being grown in the shade and harvested around solar panels? This sounds like feel good baloney to me, but what do I know. I only spent several years as a teen while growing up on a farm and currently homestead.
It’s called “agrivoltaic” farming. Be sure to checkout the hyperlinks in this article too: https://theconversation.com/how-shading-crops-with-solar-panels-can-improve-farming-lower-food-costs-and-reduce-emissions-202094
Fake news
Just another reason to add to the already massive pile of hating crypto.
Bitcoin ≠ Cryptocurrencies
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How did you manage to twist a truism into a fallacy? You shouldn’t make these claims, because if anything arguably you used a hasty generalization or fallacy of composition.
Not all cryptocurrencies are bitcoin nor do they work the same at all. For example, many don’t even use “mining”, which is the source of bitcoin’s outlandish energy waste. I really have no interest in discussing cryptocurrencies, but at least don’t do so in defiance of common sense.
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That’s not my point, I haven’t tried to convince anyone to trust anything nor have I minimized anything. I don’t know if you’re a troll or just want to argue in bad faith, but I’m out.
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Bitcoin is the ur-cryptocurrency, the Original Sin from which all of the other flaws from cryptocurrency arise.
Bitcoin is the first in a huge series of crap for speculation, but it’s not the whole thing. A good example is several central banks that are creating their own cryptocurrencies, centralized and generally fundamentally opposed to that.
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You were a troll after all. Blocked.
Can you block me too please?
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