Greenpeace and other climate change activists have been baited with the propaganda that Bitcoin waste's energy, and have subsequently swallowed that bait: hook, line, and sinker. On a fundamental level, anyone who thinks that Bitcoin wastes energy does not understand the value proposition of Bitcoin. It's very easy to confirm this fact; just talk to them. Ask them what the value of Bitcoin is; they won't be able to tell you. Thus, all the energy it consumes must be a "waste" because intrinsically these people refuse to get the point, willfully or otherwise.
Yes, because that worked out so well for Ethereum.
Already we see that regulators have basically captured ETH instantly with the change to proof-of-stake, and it's going to get much much worse. I've already said this half a dozen times, but ETH is going to have a hostile takeover just like Steem did. Not going to be pretty. Or maybe the community will fold and allow themselves to be lorded over by the regulators. That would be an interesting development as well. Getting majority consensus to leave a community and start over fresh is no simple task.
If we're being honest it's actually a bit surprising that Hive was able to pull it off like we did. Our hostile takeover had the best outcome of a bad situation. ETH might not be so lucky... as it was much easier to rally behind the idea that Justin Sun was a bad fit. Not so much with what's going on with Ethereum, especially if the Ethereum Foundation is on board with the regulators moving in. Moon my bags, guvment.
When organizations like Greenpeace tell us we need to "change the code"... what are they really saying? The code is open source. Bitch, you change the code. What are you waiting for?
Change the community
Your community is not valid.
Change it!
Telling an entire community and culture they aren't allowed to operate the way they operate and need to follow a different set of rules dictated by a third party? Yeah, that's not very woke at all. In fact, we like to call that imperialism.
I know what's best for you.
Do what I say or you're being unreasonable.
Again, wildly cringe and completely not self-aware.
These people don't even understand what they are asking demanding.
Forget the banking sector.
Forget the military industrial complex.
Forget the thousands of aircraft spewing sludge into the atmosphere.
Nah, Bitcoin... let's focus on that.
Obvious propaganda is obvious.
The value proposition of Bitcoin is that the legacy economy is a complete and utter fail. If we could actually trust the institutions in charge of the legacy system, Bitcoin would be completely worthless and it would use very little energy. These are uncontestable facts. Bitcoin is a ledger that deals in trust; a highly inefficient one. It has no value unless the trust it mines more than makes up for all that inefficiency. 13 years and massive exponential adoption later, we see that hm yea, that trust is extremely valuable. Who would of thunk it.
If Greenpeace wants Bitcoin to use less energy, they should get the banking sector to stop being so corrupt. Oh, I'm sorry, is that an insurmountable task? Yeah, that's why Bitcoin exists. Duh. The chicken & the egg logic being employed here is a thing of legend. So many mental gymnastics. Or perhaps not enough? I'm sure for many it's just a thoughtless knee jerk reaction.
I see problem! You fix problem! Fix it! I have spoken.
There are two different articles I'd like to parse before finishing here.
This is the main propaganda page... so let's start there.
You've heard
Bitcoin
fuels the climate crisis,but did you know a software code change could clean it up?
Notice how they never actually give a solution or talk about how they will help with a solution. Not their problem. Fix it, Bitcoin people. Just do what Ethereum did. So simpo! Why haven't you done it yet!?!?!?!?!?!?
Sign the petition to tell big tech and finance corporations
to stop Bitcoin from polluting the planet.
Big Tech and finance corporations?
What power do they have over changing Bitcoin's code?
Again, these people are delusional.
Welcome to the Children's table of politics.
Recent estimates show Bitcoin uses more electricity than all of Sweden.
And it’s quickly surpassing more countries, according to the University of Cambridge. Unless its price is decoupled from its energy use, Bitcoin will drive devastating climate impacts.
Remember this for later... it's going to be important. They know that Bitcoin's price and energy usage are connected. See what happens next; it's hilarious. But also we need to once again acknowledge that the entire value proposition of Bitcoin is that the legacy system is completely broken. If the price of BTC goes up, this intrinsically implies on a fundamental level that society needs Bitcoin even more than it did before. Should be obvious, but again, these people are delusional and spouting propaganda, so wut-r-u-gonna-do?
Bitcoin is resurrecting fossil fuels.
Bitcoin requires so much power that its “miners” have started buying US coal plants. They’re using fracked gas and are striking deals with the oil industry in Texas to use flare gas to fuel their operations.
Hm yeah they are also taking a good hard look at sustainable energy and safely disposing of methane gas, but let's just ignore these facts because they don't mesh with the given narrative.
A software code change would reduce
Bitcoin’s energy use by 99.9%.
Switching to a low-energy protocol has proven effective and uses a fraction of the energy. Ethereum has changed its code. Many others use less energy. Why isn’t Bitcoin?
Because being "effective" isn't the goal.
The goal is security and trust.
Again, completely missing the point.
We know the problem. Bitcoin uses an outdated technology called proof-of-work to validate transactions. This proof-of-work method, at least as it currently operates, uses massive amounts of energy, and thus is a huge source of climate pollution. As Bitcoin's price surges, so, too does its energy use.
An "outdated" technology? It's a 13 year old technology that hasn't even had time to fully be tested in the field or get mainstream adoption. It solved the Byzantine General's problem, which was thought to be unsolvable for over 30 years... but they make the claim it's "outdated"? Seriously... the mental gymnastics. So much cringe.
We know Bitcoin stakeholders are incentivized not to change. Changing Bitcoin would render a whole lot of expensive infrastructure worthless, meaning Bitcoin stakeholders will need to walk away from sunk costs — or find other creative solutions.
We know this isn't going to work but here's why we'd like it to work anyway. I must say, I've never seen someone's argument openly imply that their position is delusional. That's an interesting strategy indeed.
All these Bitcoin miners need to do to mitigate their "sunk costs" is come up with a "creative solution". Bitch, POW mining was the creative solution. My dude.
We know crypto doesn’t need much energy to work. Many newer cryptocurrencies are low consumers of energy or carbon-neutral because they use a better model: proof-of-stake.
Better at energy consumption... not better at security and separating governance from the stake holders... which is the entire point of POW.
We know a basic software code change would reduce Bitcoin’s energy use by 99.9%. If only 30 people — the key miners, exchanges, and core developers who build and contribute to Bitcoin’s code — agreed to reinvent proof-of-work mining or move to a low-energy protocol, Bitcoin would stop polluting the planet. So why isn’t Bitcoin changing its code?
And again showcases just how delusional they are... You can get those 30 key people to run along and fork the chain to proof of stake. See what happens. Bitcoin will still be there. Why change the code when you can just tell people to buy Ethereum instead? Why make the claim that POS is a "basic software code change" when it took Ethereum literally YEARS to make the switch? Yeah... so basic. I just can't.
We know who wields influence over the crypto community, from big tech to big banks. Leaders like Elon Musk of Tesla, Jack Dorsey of Block, and Abby Johnson of Fidelity have vested interests in Bitcoin — and the power to affect change. BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, PayPal and many others have a responsibility to help Clean Up Bitcoin.
None of these organizations wield any influence over a change like this.
NEXT!
This one from Coindesk is a bit more interesting because Coindesk actually understands crypto.
Campaigners explain why they’re convinced all it takes is support from a few powerful firms and people to change the fundamentals of Bitcoin.
Right off the bat we see a little bit of shade thrown at the movement.
Campaigners are convinced.
We are not necessarily convinced.
The word 'convincing' was not used.
To old hands, this plan seems ignorant of Bitcoin’s history – specifically the block size wars of 2015-2017, including the debate over the Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade, in which one of two proposed alterations pushed by the biggest companies failed in the face of widespread user opposition.
If you can't even get the community to agree that the blocksize should be increased, then how in the world would you possibly get to them to agree to change the entire consensus algorithm? Absurd logic.
Ken Cook, founder and CEO of EWG, said that, based on his conversations with various insiders within the Bitcoin industry, he thinks Bitcoin’s governance has changed, such that there is now an “inexorable concentration of power and control.”
And yet, none of that consolidated power and control has leveraged that power and control to change the system in a way that benefits themselves, defying thousands of years of history to the contrary. Interesting how no one is talking about that world first. Probably because it's a fantasy.
But the key to changing Bitcoin is to convince “an overwhelming majority of economic activity on Bitcoin to use” the new code, Nick said. “You can always change the rules of chess, but you may have to play alone,” the developer said.
Good analogy for this situation.
Anyone can change the code.
Who's going to follow the new rules?
Hardly anyone.
Bailey thinks that this consensus is “extraordinarily unlikely because Bitcoin has this conservative development culture,” which makes changes slowly and only when the community is absolutely certain about their effects.
So a lot of this article was actually about segwit and increasing the blocksize (or lack thereof). Which is funny... because making Bitcoin more scalable has absolutely nothing to do with energy consumption. Bitcoin could easily 10x the blocksize after 13 years of operation. Modern technology would easily allow this. Solid state drives are cheaper than ever. Just the other day I saw a 64GB SSD on sale for $8. lol
So imagine that Bitcoin scaled up more than 10x. Let's say it scaled up to even as big as the entire legacy banking sector. Okay... so what? It's still going to use exactly the same amount of energy as it did before. In fact it will use a lot more energy because the value of it will have obviously gone up, incentivizing more miners to move in.
Someone knows something. It's so weird to see Bitcoin suppressed at $19k but hashrate just keep skyrocketing to new all time highs. Perhaps that's exactly what these new players want. Set up your mining operation, keep the price suppressed, then when Bitcoin rips you're sitting pretty while the competition has a much more difficult time entering the market. I don't know... sounds ridiculous, but something weird is definitely going down right now, of that much I am certain.
The same organization that says Nuclear power is the devil also says that Bitcoin "wastes energy". Nuff said. Interestingly enough, these two things are connected. Sustainable/renewable power creates a constant output of electricity. Anything that doesn't get used gets wasted. Bitcoin allows excess power from renewable sources to be converted directly into digital currency while at the same time ensuring that the network is secure and impossible to double-spend. POW mining makes sustainable energy exponentially more sustainable. It's a feature, not a bug.
No one is worried that we are going to run out of uranium. No one is worried that radiation is going to pollute the sky or the earth. I wish I could say the same about the oceans, but that's what happens when people get lazy about safety measures within a capitalistic system that financially incentivizes cutting corners.
If only there was some way to financially incentivize sustainability and balance here on Earth rather than an economy that only works via infinite cancerous growth. Oh wait, we have built the solution: it's called cryptocurrency. The powers that be want people to think that the solution is the problem. The problem is them being in charge. This becomes more and more obvious to the rabble after each passing day. Only matter of time now, but surely things will get worse before they get better.
