[Cryptography] Energy Consumption: Standards Trolls (was: disaster)

[Stephan Kinsella]

On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 2:20 PM Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 01:48:11PM -0500, Alex Flanagan wrote:
> > >
> > > Bitcoin mining consumes energy, measured by the unit we call a Watt.
> > > A watt is defined in the ISU as one joule per second.  The unit we
> > > call joule is a unit of work.
> > >
> >
> > For the argument "bitcoin consumes too much energy", assuming
> > emissions are the concern, my response has typically been:
> >
> > Energy *production* causes emissions not *consumption*.
> >
> > The emissions attributable to bitcoin mined in Iceland are zero. The
> > energy *consumed* to mine them was *produced* by a zero-emissions
> > source.
>
> I don't care to stake out a position on this matter right now but, just
> for fun, another possible objection to energy consumption might be
> economic side effects such as increases in energy demand which, in turn,
> creates an increase in energy prices, thus perhaps starving other
> enterprises of access to energy at sustainable prices.
>

IIRC, Antonopolis has a different take, in this recent talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suk1YNRmuxQ -- I think he says that the
miners tend to move to where power is cheaper, e.g., in colder areas or new
power plants where there is not yet enough demand to take all the
electricity, so they in effect provide a subsidy to those power stations,
something like that.

>
> I suspect you're right, though -- that most people objecting on grounds
> of power consumption are objecting to emissions.  Note that the
> objection to the power consumption incentives in Bitcoin mining aren't
> really alleviated by the Iceland example because, regardless of how
> Iceland does it, energy consumption in China likely depends
> overwhelmingly on high-emissions power generation in China.  That might
> be worth keeping in mind when examining the pros and cons of Bitcoin's
> "proof of work" mining.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin
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-- 

Stephan Kinsella
nskinsella at gmail.com
(+1) 713-416-0006 (mobile)
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