Essay by Eric Worrall
Which would you rather give up? Bitcoin or beef?
Bitcoin worse for the climate than beef, say economists
Researchers mince ‘digital gold’ claims with study showing cryptocurrency’s impact
Lindsay Clark
Fri 30 Sep 2022 // 15:30 UTCFar from being the “digital gold” some claim, Bitcoin’s relative climate change impact is greater than the beef industry, and over seven times more than actual gold mining.
Economic researchers compared the environmental impact of Bitcoin – created by using computing brute force to crack complex algorithmic puzzles – against three measures of environmental impact between January 2016 and December 2021.
Led by Benjamin Jones, associate professor in economics at the University of New Mexico, they looked at whether the estimated climate damages are increasing over time. They also looked at whether the market price of Bitcoin exceeds the economic cost of climate damages and how the climate damages per coin mined compare to climate damages of other sectors and commodities.
Astoundingly, they found that in 2020 Bitcoin mining used 75.4 terawatt hours per year (TWhyear-1) – higher energy usage than Austria (69.9 TWhyear-1) or Portugal (48.4 TWhyear-1).
…
Taking the relative damage of Bitcoin averaged between 2016 and 2021 of 35 percent of the market value, the economists went on to compare the cryptocurrency’s climate impact to that of other industries. While it was less than electricity produced by natural gas (46 percent) and gasoline produced from crude oil (41 percent), it was slightly greater than the relative damage of beef production (at 33 percent) and much more than gold mining (at 4 percent).
…
Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/30/bitcoin_climate_impact/
Obviously I realise it will be a tough call for all of you, whether to keep your steak and burgers and make the silicon valley liberal bitcoin fans cry.
Of course, the better option is to embrace liberty over climate hysteria, so people can keep both.
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Darn. I’ve been using BitCoin to buy carbon credits thinking that would solve everything!
Personally, I don’t like or want either – but just don’t try to take away my pork!
throw in the Eu/worldbank wanting to push ECBC into it to track trace n tax with no holds barred at the same time the minions are after all the other alt coins(seems Banksters fake coinage is carbon free by some miraculous process??)
funny in a twisted way
of course bit ether or ecbc when the eu powers off ALL that funny money will be useless as t*ts on the proverbial bull, that is still there and can be bred from or eaten
Rib roast and yorkshire puds, with horseradish….. hhmmmmmm! Bye bye Birtcoin!
Let’s hope quantum computing puts an end to that nonsense.