The Fake Environmentalist Attack on Bitcoin(reason.com)
reason.com
The Fake Environmentalist Attack on Bitcoin
https://reason.com/video/2021/11/16/the-fake-environmentalist-attack-on-bitcoin/
6 comments
You'd think a journal calling itself "Reason" would know not to use a reductio ad absurdum argument when it gets to misrepresent the absurdity it's criticizing.
The actual Newsweek article from 2017 that they cite says "The bitcoin network's energy consumption has increased by 25 percent in the last month alone, according to Digiconomist. If such growth were to continue, this would see the network consume as much energy as the U.S. by 2019, and as much energy as the entire world by the end of 2020."
Notice that crucial key word "if". This is why oncologists say, "If left unchecked, your cancer will spread through the entire body." There's a lot of things (chemotherapy, radiation, death) that can interrupt the process. Pretending the article is actually claiming uninterrupted exponential growth is dishonest.
(While Newsweek's clickbait title sucks, Reason is doing the same here, so I'm considering that a tie.)
The actual Newsweek article from 2017 that they cite says "The bitcoin network's energy consumption has increased by 25 percent in the last month alone, according to Digiconomist. If such growth were to continue, this would see the network consume as much energy as the U.S. by 2019, and as much energy as the entire world by the end of 2020."
Notice that crucial key word "if". This is why oncologists say, "If left unchecked, your cancer will spread through the entire body." There's a lot of things (chemotherapy, radiation, death) that can interrupt the process. Pretending the article is actually claiming uninterrupted exponential growth is dishonest.
(While Newsweek's clickbait title sucks, Reason is doing the same here, so I'm considering that a tie.)
Title should be: "Real Environmentalist Attack on Fake Currency"
"The Fake Attack on Environmentalist Criticisms" is more like it.
>>"Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are terrible for the environment," declares Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.). "It's an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions," pronounces former Federal Reserve Chair and current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. "It's a way to both hide dirty money and destroy the environment at the same time," says Daily Show host Trevor Noah.
>>Such environmentalist attacks on bitcoin are best understood as a strategy by economic, media, and political elites to undermine a powerful new form of money that they can't control.
No, they are legitimate criticisms of a protocol that uses orders of magnitude more energy to accomplish the same task as other systems, and for which squandering energy is THE POINT OF THE PROTCOL - it is not called "Proof Of Work" for nothing - someone has to do the work.
It is a legit criticism that stands on it's own — no need to impute some fabricated ulterior motive as the article does. Occam's Razor says cut it out.
It does go on to criticize some of the more outlandish extrapolations of BTC power usage, but does so in quite hyperbolic fashion.
Strikes me as a fanboy article not even close to worthy of a publication named "Reason". Save your time
>>"Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are terrible for the environment," declares Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.). "It's an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions," pronounces former Federal Reserve Chair and current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. "It's a way to both hide dirty money and destroy the environment at the same time," says Daily Show host Trevor Noah.
>>Such environmentalist attacks on bitcoin are best understood as a strategy by economic, media, and political elites to undermine a powerful new form of money that they can't control.
No, they are legitimate criticisms of a protocol that uses orders of magnitude more energy to accomplish the same task as other systems, and for which squandering energy is THE POINT OF THE PROTCOL - it is not called "Proof Of Work" for nothing - someone has to do the work.
It is a legit criticism that stands on it's own — no need to impute some fabricated ulterior motive as the article does. Occam's Razor says cut it out.
It does go on to criticize some of the more outlandish extrapolations of BTC power usage, but does so in quite hyperbolic fashion.
Strikes me as a fanboy article not even close to worthy of a publication named "Reason". Save your time
[deleted]
[deleted]
There are interesting questions to explore and I would be curious to read a balanced objective take on the environmental cost of a Bitcoin centric economy - there’s a non trivial energy cost involved in running traditional banking, would the energy & environmental cost of Bitcoin exceed that? Does it already? What’s the estimated balance point where we expect Bitcoin to settle as a fraction of global energy use? What’s the acceptable fraction?
This article doesn’t explore these questions in a useful way