Is Bitcoin Mining Contributing to Climate Change?

[wolram]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029130951.htm

What do you think the advancement of technology is doing to the Earth?

 

[gleem]

The bitcoin mining usually takes place in areas of cheap electricity rates because they use so much power. Mining competes with other users of electricity This competition for power will raise the price of electricity and the cost of mining.reducing profit margins. New plants will be required. At least in the near term there seems to be factors that will decrease the rate of expansion of this technology unless more efficient computing hardware are invented.

 

[russ_watters]

I think the article is a silly extrapolation that tells us something different from what the article is about: it tells us the widespread adoption of Bitcoin at the rates the authors modeled isn't feasible.

 

[gleem]

Yes the study has problems for one it is hard to know for sure how much energy is being used since mining is widely distributed and often secretive. But there are factors for both increased and decreased bitcoin expansion. One factor that regulates the amount of energy that bitcoin mining will use is that about every four years the bitcoin reward is cut in half making it less profitable to mine the next cut being 2020. So by 2030 at current bitcoin value the reward for mining is 1/8 of what it is today making the profit margin smaller. So unless the bitcoin value increase significantly mining will slow. As time goes on it takes longer to mine a bitcoin driving up the energy per transaction. Currently it is about 770 kwhrs/transactioin compared to about 1.70 whr/ transactions for one Visa transaction. Already it is estimated that bitcoin transactions use as much power as some small countries like Poland. Bitcoin miners will go to wherever the electricity is cheapest which often is where the power plants are coal fired exacerbating the problem.

Clearly this is not what the world needs at this time. The latest IPCC report say that we must reduce the fossil fuel use by 45% by 2030 to keep global warming under control. That means reducing fossil fuel use by about 4.5% per year starting immediately and hat ain't gong to happen.