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Bitcoin is the product of climate change denialism and greed. Its supporters are continuously repeating the same line of broken arguments to justify the fact that it's a system built on requirement to waste resources. As much as they try, the genie won't go back into the bottle. https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587
Bitcoin mining doesn't generate anything even remotely useful. The closest this comes to having a purpose is comparable to flying empty planes for the sake of keeping your flight slots. https://www.berkshirepublishing.com/2020/10/09/bitcoin-and-other-blockchains-advance-article/
But "the majority is done with excess renewables" so it's not much of an issue is it? Let's first establish there is no independent research that actually confirms that. Cambridge annually surveys miners, and most recently these miners indicated only 39% of energy used is "green"
Yes, the same survey notes that a majority of miners has some level of renewables in the mix, but that holds true even if I put a single solar panel on my coal-based power plant. 39% of the energy being obtained from renewable energy sources is not a majority.
Let's ignore any self-selection bias for now, and examine how miners even get to 39%. Notice how the "green" part isn't exactly evenly distributed? Cheap excessess of hydropower can only be obtained during the wet season in China. The rest of the time they run on fossil-fuels.
For the sake of convenience, let's also ignore that there's a lot of controversy around hydropower by itself http://mizzima.com/article/chinas-demolition-land-tibet Regardless, the average carbon intensity of the energy used for Bitcoin mining is still comparable to that of natural gas https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7
Miners may make use of more renewable energy sources in the future? Sure, though the intermittent nature hasn't been the best match to date. Recent trends actually include increased use of sanctioned Iranian oil (now 8% of the network) https://www.arabnews.com/node/1794836/middle-east
But even if this was running on 100% renewable energy sources (let's also ignore any displacement there), the use of highly specialized equipment with short lifetimes ensures that each Bitcoin transaction is equivalent to throwing away an iPhone 12 mini. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-electronic-waste-monitor/
This sustainability problem has been known since the first few weeks of Bitcoin's existence, but sadly over a decade was lost on making up poor excuses. https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1153096538?s=20
