Tesla's not trying to reduce the number of cars, it's trying to replace the existing fleet with electric. This will likely increase consumption of electricity.
Wider adoption of bitcoin will likewise increase the consumption of electricity.
Electricity production (not consumption) is what causes emissions. More consumption will increase the demand for production, which will increase investment in production.
Given that we're in the middle of a green energy transition, increasing investment in production will likely accelerate that transition -- the stated goal of Tesla.
A key difference: replacing gas-powered cars with electric takes a carbon-emitting engine off the road, opting instead to potentially emit carbon at a centralized power plant (which is typically more efficient and emits less carbon per joule). Bitcoin increases electricity consumption without offsetting any carbon emissions elsewhere.
The issue is whether there's any real competitive value to Bitcoin et al - or if it's simply driven by its financial incentive structure, MLM scheme - and if there's a better option, where it isn't financial gain that leads to alignment/consensus, but instead actual consensus - arguably a blockchain structured and decided by democratically elected governments, designing in whatever failsafes are necessary, save regulatory capture for those who want to unnecessarily and unreasonably transfer wealth to themselves from the greater society they're currently attempting to lead into adopting the status quo incumbent(s); the energy consumption is a arguably moot point and a distraction from the important conversation(s) to be having.
>Tesla's not trying to reduce the number of cars, it's trying to replace the existing fleet with electric.
This isn't completely accurate. A big motivator for self-driving cars is to increase the efficiency of their usage. Currently cars sit unused some 90-95% of the day. Once cars are driverless, they can be delivered quickly and automatically to users on demand. This removes a big motivator for individual ownership and can help usher in an era in which most cars are centrally owned. This is exactly what Tesla is planning to do with a fleet of self-driving vehicles. I have no idea when or even if they will get there, but it is a goal that is closely aligned with reducing the number of cars.
> This will likely increase consumption of electricity.
But when you point out that primary energy consumption will decrease people laugh at you.
When you have a 50% efficient thermal power plant it generates 1 kWh worth of electricity for 2 kWh worth of thermal energy in coal or gas. Solar panels are roughly 20% efficient but nobody is counting that 5kWh solar energy hitting the solar panel as primary energy when the solar panel is feeding in 1kWH of energy.
The end result is that you have a meaningless statistic that doesn't tell you anything but makes some people smug that renewables can't ever work and makes others feel helpless when they are posed with the problem of replacing all that waste heat with renewables.
I'm not saying that the way primary energy is counted should be changed. Instead, we should stop looking at primary energy as interchangeable.
And fundamentally commuting by car, often with a single person in a single car, is a woefully resource intensive and inefficient way of transporting people.
Versus other forms of transportation cars are bad for the environment whether they're electric or ICE period.
You can apply this logic for any wasteful activity. Lets boil the ocean with coal-fired plants, because something something production vs. consumption.
Reposting my perennial comment about solving global warming:
"""
Hence why the real solution has always been:
1. Electrify everything possible
2. Shift all electricity production to renewables, massively increase power output with nuclear nuclear nuclear.
3. Carbon capture.
"""
Bitcoin can be included in "electrify everything", as there are a number of problems with our current financial systems which are very hard to electrify as easily, whereas BTC is electricity-native.
The link between Bitcoin and carbon emissions is absolutely crystal clear. The USD and American hegemony has a massive tangle of indirect dependencies through governments and bureaucracies, spy agencies, militaries, etc, none of which you can disavow yourself from.
Yet you can divest from Bitcoin by simply not buying it.
It's the absolute perfect expression of our greed as a species. Ruining the planet for ephemeral bits. Bitcoin might as well be rebranded the "anti carbon offset". You're literally doing nothing but buying into a speculation market that is backed by only bits, and those bits are obtained at the cost of a supremely inefficient cryptographic process which has attracted massive electricity investment simply to make money. It has zero indirect benefit to society.
It's shocking how many people don't even both to consider this when attacking Bitcoin. They will eventually capitulate but the FOMO regret of not having bought in really has people campaigning against Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is leading a bloodless revolution against the financial and state oligarchs. War is devastating to the environment, we should be thankful that Bitcoin is making the world a more equitable place in a relatively eco friendly way (and definitely more humanitarian).
The alternative to Bitcoin isn't Visa, it's bombs and guillotines. We all have a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed.
Hacker News is pushing the "bitcoin is bad" narrative a bit too hard recently. I am not sure I have seen anything like it on this site before. It feels completely unnatural. I normally see more nuanced discussions about things here.
I might be wrong, but I think it comes down to a lot of tech people on here being aware of Bitcoin early on, yet they didn't research it more or invested in it, wrote it off and now it's value is constantly increasing. I suspect they resent others who have invested and are much better off because of it.
This is just personal opinion and I'm sure there are other people who disagree with the electricity consumption or some other things as well.
My opinion is that many missed out and take a moral stance as a compensation mechanism, and some live in privileged situations and just don't see the need for it. No wonder you don't see the benefits if you live in a superpower with a currency that is used as a global reserve. One of the news today here is that gas stations are preparing price signs to have an extra digit, come talk here about the volatility of Bitcoin.
If you want to argue from a purely tech perspective as "Hacker" news, then Bitcoin by any measure of tech in the blockchain space is indeed already an outdated technology.
The very premise of this article ignores the very point of moving toward 100% clean power. If all power is clean, then why does it matter how much power Bitcoin uses?
That is: Bitcoin's "dirty baggage" ain't Bitcoin's. Rather, the dirty baggage is that of electricity production as a whole, and that baggage gets a heck of a lot cleaner once we've moved away from carbon-emitting electricity production. Bitcoin doesn't give the slightest iota of a rat's behind whether a miner's running entirely off solar power or entirely off the dirtiest coal money can buy.
Kinda disappointed in Reuters for putting their name on an article that is outright antithetical to factual reasoning. This is the precise opposite of good journalism; it's a hit piece, and for asinine reasons.
I think most people are confused about Bitcoin's environmental impact, in particular when compared to gold. I wrote a blog post [0] about it, if you want to dive deeper.
I think Tesla buying Bitcoin is simply reflecting the fact that Bitcoin is looking more and more entrenched - sort of it's here-to-stay realization. Gold probably had similar transition from being a shiny fad to a more entrenched store of value at some point in its history.
Personally, my problem with Bitcoin has been that some of the early adopters cornered large portions of it early on and that governments would never accept that reality. However, cat seems to be out of the bag. It seems to be playing out more like gold rush - whoever cornered, great. At some point governments will catch up and start hoarding it. And then it becomes regularized.
As for no intrinsic value, the high difficulty of mining and high difficulty of faking it, appears to make it a pretty reliable store of value.
Is it? I get that from the perspective of people holding BTC it must be the network effect that gives it value. Otherwise what differentiates it from any of the multitudes of other cryptocurrencies that have been created?
It still looks an awful lot like a big casino to me. A popular one, sure, but still a casino. Not a currency.
I recently bought some Bitcoin with a bit of disgust but I'm not a fan.
It has effectively no utility except "volatile store of value". Most people actually buy it because they expect more than a store of value, they see it as an "investment" which will gain value over time.
But at some point an equilibrium will be reached where x % of world wealth will be allocated in Bitcoin and this x will remain stable over time and Bitcoin growth will slow down to global GDP growth (just thinking aloud, maybe this is wrong).
At that point, people may start to think, why the hell should I have my wealth in something that is expected to have similar returns to long-term government bonds but is also much more volatile and can go down to zero because unlike gold, there's no floor, it has no intrinsic value, it's all based on what people believe.
This will actually be the strategy for Tesla on long term - supplying clean energy for mining!
Interesting that the article totally misses out on that, it's a pretty big opportunity for Tesla and green energy (just have the banks print more money and use aluminum for coins isnt that clean either).
If anyone thinks goverments would let an alternate asset class, which they don't have any control over or visibility into (however much I personally disagree that government should not be regulating this), grow into infinity then they are being delusional. Its just common sense but it's hard for people to think rational during a hype cycle.
All it takes is one bad actor(s) to fund something nefarious using btc and the governments will make all this illegal in a few hours.
I love the concept of crypto and I think it will be used for lot of use cases in the future, no doubt about that
And that doesn't even take into account the devastating environmental and humanitarian impact of war (which the US government is in a constant state of). The true cost of state backed dollars far exceeds that of Bitcoin.
And Elon Musk has been on the record saying "We can coup whoever we want" in regards to our military's bloated international influence, so let's just admit he doesn't care about "saving the planet".
This article is just bad. Bitcoin's dirty baggage is magnitudes less than anything else companies and countries do to this world through not just air pollution but environment destruction, water pollution etc.
I'll keep arguing about this continuously. Bitcoin will never reach the severity that some other industries did.
Sure... /s That's why the solar roofs are very slow to materialize and the rockets/cars/bitcoins get all the focus.
Musk wants to make money. I seriously expect the whole solar-roof brand-bundling of Tesla was a clever PR trick, just like the Mars mission is for SpaceX.
[+] [-] alfl|5 years ago|reply
Wider adoption of bitcoin will likewise increase the consumption of electricity.
Electricity production (not consumption) is what causes emissions. More consumption will increase the demand for production, which will increase investment in production.
Given that we're in the middle of a green energy transition, increasing investment in production will likely accelerate that transition -- the stated goal of Tesla.
[+] [-] betterunix2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slg|5 years ago|reply
This isn't completely accurate. A big motivator for self-driving cars is to increase the efficiency of their usage. Currently cars sit unused some 90-95% of the day. Once cars are driverless, they can be delivered quickly and automatically to users on demand. This removes a big motivator for individual ownership and can help usher in an era in which most cars are centrally owned. This is exactly what Tesla is planning to do with a fleet of self-driving vehicles. I have no idea when or even if they will get there, but it is a goal that is closely aligned with reducing the number of cars.
[+] [-] imtringued|5 years ago|reply
But when you point out that primary energy consumption will decrease people laugh at you.
When you have a 50% efficient thermal power plant it generates 1 kWh worth of electricity for 2 kWh worth of thermal energy in coal or gas. Solar panels are roughly 20% efficient but nobody is counting that 5kWh solar energy hitting the solar panel as primary energy when the solar panel is feeding in 1kWH of energy.
The end result is that you have a meaningless statistic that doesn't tell you anything but makes some people smug that renewables can't ever work and makes others feel helpless when they are posed with the problem of replacing all that waste heat with renewables.
I'm not saying that the way primary energy is counted should be changed. Instead, we should stop looking at primary energy as interchangeable.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|5 years ago|reply
Versus other forms of transportation cars are bad for the environment whether they're electric or ICE period.
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|5 years ago|reply
Electricity consumption (as well as other energy sources) causes plenty of heat release in the atmosphere.
With the ongoing climate catastrophe, this is a problem.
[+] [-] kraemate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Consultant32452|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fastball|5 years ago|reply
"""
Hence why the real solution has always been:
1. Electrify everything possible
2. Shift all electricity production to renewables, massively increase power output with nuclear nuclear nuclear.
3. Carbon capture.
"""
Bitcoin can be included in "electrify everything", as there are a number of problems with our current financial systems which are very hard to electrify as easily, whereas BTC is electricity-native.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] superbcarrot|5 years ago|reply
- to make money
- for the memes
Anyone trying to justify it with the merit of the technology is either delusional or trying to sell you something.
[+] [-] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
I don’t really think so, so I’m not sure how Bitcoin is functionally any different.
[+] [-] tboyd47|5 years ago|reply
How many wars started, how many countries destroyed, and how many livelihoods and families ruined for the USD?
No one wants to talk about that, yet we are supposed to wring our hands in grief over some extra computers left running. Give me a break.
[+] [-] titzer|5 years ago|reply
Yet you can divest from Bitcoin by simply not buying it.
It's the absolute perfect expression of our greed as a species. Ruining the planet for ephemeral bits. Bitcoin might as well be rebranded the "anti carbon offset". You're literally doing nothing but buying into a speculation market that is backed by only bits, and those bits are obtained at the cost of a supremely inefficient cryptographic process which has attracted massive electricity investment simply to make money. It has zero indirect benefit to society.
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|5 years ago|reply
Not everyone that buys a stolen phone is complicit of theft... but many are.
Responsibility comes with deliberate, informed choices.
[+] [-] solosoyokaze|5 years ago|reply
The alternative to Bitcoin isn't Visa, it's bombs and guillotines. We all have a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed.
[+] [-] eecks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rawtxapp|5 years ago|reply
I might be wrong, but I think it comes down to a lot of tech people on here being aware of Bitcoin early on, yet they didn't research it more or invested in it, wrote it off and now it's value is constantly increasing. I suspect they resent others who have invested and are much better off because of it.
This is just personal opinion and I'm sure there are other people who disagree with the electricity consumption or some other things as well.
[+] [-] kobalsky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motoboi|5 years ago|reply
When the price is down, the opposite is very much true.
[+] [-] christiansakai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowapple|5 years ago|reply
That is: Bitcoin's "dirty baggage" ain't Bitcoin's. Rather, the dirty baggage is that of electricity production as a whole, and that baggage gets a heck of a lot cleaner once we've moved away from carbon-emitting electricity production. Bitcoin doesn't give the slightest iota of a rat's behind whether a miner's running entirely off solar power or entirely off the dirtiest coal money can buy.
Kinda disappointed in Reuters for putting their name on an article that is outright antithetical to factual reasoning. This is the precise opposite of good journalism; it's a hit piece, and for asinine reasons.
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|5 years ago|reply
[0]: https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...
[+] [-] vgchh|5 years ago|reply
Personally, my problem with Bitcoin has been that some of the early adopters cornered large portions of it early on and that governments would never accept that reality. However, cat seems to be out of the bag. It seems to be playing out more like gold rush - whoever cornered, great. At some point governments will catch up and start hoarding it. And then it becomes regularized.
As for no intrinsic value, the high difficulty of mining and high difficulty of faking it, appears to make it a pretty reliable store of value.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|5 years ago|reply
Is it? I get that from the perspective of people holding BTC it must be the network effect that gives it value. Otherwise what differentiates it from any of the multitudes of other cryptocurrencies that have been created?
It still looks an awful lot like a big casino to me. A popular one, sure, but still a casino. Not a currency.
[+] [-] RivieraKid|5 years ago|reply
It has effectively no utility except "volatile store of value". Most people actually buy it because they expect more than a store of value, they see it as an "investment" which will gain value over time.
But at some point an equilibrium will be reached where x % of world wealth will be allocated in Bitcoin and this x will remain stable over time and Bitcoin growth will slow down to global GDP growth (just thinking aloud, maybe this is wrong).
At that point, people may start to think, why the hell should I have my wealth in something that is expected to have similar returns to long-term government bonds but is also much more volatile and can go down to zero because unlike gold, there's no floor, it has no intrinsic value, it's all based on what people believe.
[+] [-] kerng|5 years ago|reply
Interesting that the article totally misses out on that, it's a pretty big opportunity for Tesla and green energy (just have the banks print more money and use aluminum for coins isnt that clean either).
[+] [-] victor106|5 years ago|reply
All it takes is one bad actor(s) to fund something nefarious using btc and the governments will make all this illegal in a few hours.
I love the concept of crypto and I think it will be used for lot of use cases in the future, no doubt about that
[+] [-] m1117|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gher-shyu3i|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Capira|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solosoyokaze|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryder9|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RIMR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] m1117|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antattack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knuthsat|5 years ago|reply
I'll keep arguing about this continuously. Bitcoin will never reach the severity that some other industries did.
Bitcoin is a non-issue.
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jack_pp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cies|5 years ago|reply
Sure... /s That's why the solar roofs are very slow to materialize and the rockets/cars/bitcoins get all the focus.
Musk wants to make money. I seriously expect the whole solar-roof brand-bundling of Tesla was a clever PR trick, just like the Mars mission is for SpaceX.
[+] [-] notjes|5 years ago|reply