> So shall we stop inventing technology that draws power because it’s bad for the environment?
That wasn't my argument. My argument was that Bitcoin etc. are bad because of the power they consume when as far as I can tell almost all of what happens on these blockchains can be done far more efficiently and faster on existing technology, or in the case of transactions, existing banking infrastructure.
> People use Bitcoin and that’s why it consumes power.
I don't doubt it, it would be nice if they owned their externalities so I could stop being angry with them for it.
> Like people using air conditioning, fridges, washing machines and cars.
Things that we (realistically in modern society) need. The alternative to, for instance, washing machines would be to hand-wash clothes.
We don't need Bitcoin. It hasn't enabled anything that couldn't be done already using the banking system, or with existing non-power abusive technology.
> Furthermore, the raw KWh figure the Bitcoin network is consuming (which AFAIK currently is unknown because miners moved all around the globe in the last couple of years) is not a useful measure of its green house gas emissions as we don’t know how it’s energy is created. It could well be on renewables by large percentage as they are cheaper in some countries (e.g. hydroelectricity in Norway) and mining is expensive.
Worldwide power generation is a zero-sum game. There is limited power generation available each day. Right now even though we're trying to move to renewable or green energy, there is not enough of that to power what we need through renewables alone so we use fossil fuel.
If you removed the blockchain load from that system you could reduce the fossil fuel burn by approximately one whole country per day of load.
It doesn't matter where the generation comes from, using any of it to power what is effectively a pointless distrubuted heater is removing our ability to shift away from fossil fuels.
> I was referring to parent‘s blame of the Ukrainian war on cryptos.
Once again, that's not what I wrote. Ukraine is at war with Russia. Much of the rest of the world is at war with Russia by proxy, because most of the rest of the world is sick of Putin's bullshit.
Putin is making shit loads of money from selling Gas to Europe, especially Germany.
If we instead of running PoW blockchains, and used the far more efficient existing banking infrastructure, we could almost completely shut off all of Germany's gas from Russia (at least that portion used to generate electricity), significantly weakening his position.
It's a zero sum game. We're using renewable electricity to power bitcoin so we have to use fossil fuel for other stuff.
Plus, the whole "bitcoin runs on renewables" thing isn't entirely true https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
> Government regulations to support the transition to renewable energy sources have been pushing prices up for electricity and gasoline already for years, at least in Europe.
I'm pretty sure renewables are actually cheaper to produce than fossil fuels.
