Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy. I agree. It is basically a mechanism to turn energy into something analogous to money.
However, people do not generally live where there is a lot of potential to generate green energy. Wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear all generally work best far away from heavily populated areas (this is not always the case). Additionally, wind + solar are highly variable.
Per unit of energy renewable energy will always be more cost effective than fossil fuels in the long run, but there is a high fixed cost at present.
The more sources that can consume energy in remote areas the more incentives there are to build renewable energy sources.
Thus cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a net positive for building green energy sources in the long term.
#TheyDidntDoTheMath
Did you?
Burden of proof is on you, bro.
I provided my thoughts in unpopular opinions. There’s no burden here at all.
Furthermore, I made an asymptotic limiting behavior argument (e.g., the variable cost is lowest for renewable sources), which quite literally is math https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_analysis
The variable cost effect of renewable is quite well known, thus there is no real need to cite things, but here is a recent article https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/22/green-power-now-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-un-reports-show
I am trying to discuss a clearly unpopular opinion in the fediverse; and am opening to changing my views. Your comments have clearly been well liked by the community but do you think they serve to create a positive community atmosphere? Or should we all strive to live in our own echo chambers?
If you make a claim about something then the burden of proof is on you to support it.
You make several assumptions here with zero supporting data, e.g. “people do not generally live where there is a lot of potential to generate green energy”, “The more sources that can consume energy in remote areas the more incentives there are to build renewable energy sources.”.
Building in remote areas destroys the environment during the build and changes it while it’s in use.
Plenty of solar in the desert kills off the local fauna and diverts rainstorm water in such a way that it causes problems.
This is a good point. Do you think wind power has these same externalities? I agree a solar farm can create a large footprint
Yeah wind farms are massive construction projects that reengineer the area.
It creates demand for energy, but it doesn’t actually produce anything. It’s just proof of work math problems.
I don’t think it’s a net positive by itself. Maybe if you combine it with something else
Alright, I’ll skip right past the energy consumption issue of crypto and AI and the like…
Riddle me this…
If the future is supposed to be an entirely digital world, where only adults can have accounts (18 or 21 years old or whatever), then 5 year olds won’t even have the right to go buy a simple candy bar, and high school students won’t have any financial experience to even get started in life after they graduate.
So what future is there in crypto?
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
Personal opinion, crypto is nothing but scammer garbage.
crypto is nothing but scammer garbage.
Damn, homie just tossed the blank meme image, and it totally fits without words!
👍
where only adults can have accounts (18 or 21 years old or whatever), then 5 year olds won’t even have the right to go buy a simple candy bar, and high school students won’t have any financial experience to even get started in life after they graduate.
That’s like saying only adults are allowed to use money. In a world with digital money, of course children will have to be able to use digital money.
Show me evidence that children are allowed to use crypto, or that they can even remember enough of the alphabet to remember their password…
evidence children are allowed to use crypto? They can use phones and tablets, the UI on crypto is just an app. Therefore they can use crypto.
Even seen a kid with a few coins buy candy? Ever see a kid use a tap to pay?
I’m not sure where your ideas of “allowed” are coming from, but in reality everybody participates in the economy however its transacted.
I know Iceland’s geothermal is a hot spot for mining crypto-currency because it costs absolutely next to nothing. When you’re running massive mining centers off of the earth’s burps there is opportunity to turn a massive profit.
Now, do I think it’s incentivizing a large shift in the production of energy? I’m not sure. Are crypto-bros reinvesting their earnings into renewables research and infrastructure? Or are they buying gas guzzling sports cars and jet setting to all the best parties?
At this point in time, a lot of the “green crypto” feels more like greenwashing than actual ethical development. But who knows, maybe someday that will change?
The energy used by mining Bitcoin is the energy required to hold back human corruption and fraud. In other words, it’s so costly because humanity is so shit. Fiat, by comparison, is cheap, but it is also inadequate at holding people back from corrupting their money.
It also provides the ability for the grid to instantly shed load effectively bringing new capacity online instantly. It effectively operates as a battery making unreliable renewables more viable on the grid.
Well that was an interesting word salad. Care to elaborate?
Producing electricity is difficult, turning on and off generators is slow, if demand dips rapidly then that energy has to go SOMEWHERE. Sometimes this is called load shedding.
So if you have a low priority bitcoin farm that can consume lots of load - you can use it to keep the generation / demand curve flat. This makes it easier to turn off and on generators. This also creates a greater economic incentive to make more stable green energy since there is consistent demand.
Not just this but if supply dips or demand goes up rapidly then the miners can stop mining making more energy available to the grid. Funny enough in the us (with how their minute by minute energy auctions) most crypto miners make more money off selling the energy they bought at a low preorder rate at the start of the day back to the grid in the minute by minute rate.
I did the math the other day in some cases being a battery on the grid is actually more profitable than being a crypto miner. That’s assuming u are optimising for roi and don’t already have mining resources.
Yeah I worked with a energy trader, and you have to be really well positioned to do this, but when you can its like magic free money. Basically getting paid for infrastructure risk
Wow that’s cool. I looked into it but where I’m at it wasn’t viable unfortunately.
So, your logic is that generating more energy demand will create more incentive for green energy…?
Have you ever worked for an oil company, even as a simple oil change pit worker?
Them oil companies couldn’t give a flying fuck less about the environment, and they actively fight against green energy.
Disclaimer: I only worked for an oil company for about 5 months, back in 2005, and I do not approve of big oil trying to smother green energy technology.
Regardless, that’s unfortunately how shit still works.
Not my logic, I was explaining what the phrase meant, which was your question.
