Pollution, greenhouse gases, global warming, fossil fuels, meat consumption, hole in the ozone layer, so many! So many different factors and issues that Millenials have to deal with! So many things I and my generation need to concern ourselves with... and there isn't even a consensus of opinion about the topic because of so much misinformation, propaganda, no fact checking and lack of foresight to see that technology evolves and things get more efficient!
Some people don't believe in global warming, some people believe in it, some people think renewable energy sources are the fix, some people think renewable energy sources aren't the fix, some people get shitty statistics from the internet, some people don't... well, I'm not here to discuss any of this, people go crazy over this stuff! Just look at Bitcoin and all the other PoW coins we got out there... people go crazy over PoW energy consumption...
Bitcoin's Proof-of-work (PoW) is very energy dependent, miners consume large amounts of energy trying to solve complicated math problems trying to find the next block in the blockchain, the first that solves the problem gets to produce the block and mine it, getting Bitcoin in return. A large portion of that energy is "wasted" because only one out of all the miners gets to produce the block, so the rest of the miners wasted energy away for nothing... But is it for nothing?
PoW works in a way that the energy spent solving those complicated math problems keeps the chain secure, keeps the chain 51% proof, is this the best way? Well, I would say that it isn't the best way, but it sure prevents a 51% attack, the incentive structure prevents any attack from any bad actor...
A better way, in my opinion, and this is just an opinion, no one truly knows, would be with PoS, DPoS or a mix of PoW with PoS with chain-lock like Dash has. But no one truly knows, PoW should be given a chance!
We are talking about a whole financial system running on a blockchain, we are talking about owning our own money, we are talking about freedom from the government and financial liberty in the case anything goes wrong, of course, this system is going to spend lots of energy... it's a revolutionary system! A revolutionary system that not many understand, especially the "older generation"...
"It's to energy-wasting", "It's causing global warming", "It wastes lots of energy for nothing", "You guys are ruining the world!" "It wastes as much energy as Manhattan" "Ban it!" - These are the sort of things any cryptocurrency enthusiast hears from the the non enthusiasts, these are valid assumptions, but they are also wrong!
Studies say 70% of the mining is done through renewable energy sources, I'm not sure if it's 70% but I'm sure capitalism's competitiveness makes it so a large portion is done through renewable energy sources. If this is, in fact, true then Bitcoin mining is driving demand for renewable sources, making it so the renewable energy sources sector gets huge funding from Bitcoin miners, effectively having more money to spend on improving those techs to brake the Shockley-Queisser limit. And it's not like Bitcoin mining is the only thing spending lots of energy! There are far more energy spending things in this world...
Creating fiat money wastes lots of energy, maybe we should ban fiat... Mining gold from the ground spends lots of energy too! Maybe we should ban gold, oh wait, the US did that in the 30s stealing gold from every citizen (Try to do that with Bitcoin and you won't have any chance US, it's all digital and encrypted!) Cars spend lots of energy too, maybe we should ban them and start walking our sorry asses from city to city. Oh wait, computers spend lots of energy too, and the internet with their huge data centers also spend lots of energy! And it's only going to increase... China internet data sector is supposedly going to increase their power consumption by two-thirds by 2023, this will delay their plans to decrease smog and carbon emissions, maybe we should ban data centers from the world?
Turn off Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, Google? Go back to the stone age where we bash stones against each other? Or maybe the dark ages where the only light we had was candlelight! Or maybe not even that... candles are too environmentally damaging, let's go with moonlight... No? You don't want this? Me neither, I approve the expansion of data centers because it's something needed!
There is a huge difference between needing and wasting, and that's what the naysayers don't get, most naysayers don't understand why we need cryptocurrencies because they are mostly from developed countries with "more or less" stable economies! So, to them, this is wasting energy, because they don't understand what is like living in a country with extremely high inflation and an unending depression/recession, living without any alternative to their national fiat coin... they don't understand why we need cryptocurrencies, why we need an alternative system to our current financial system, and if they had their way we would be screwed if/when the whole world's economy goes under, because we wouldn't have any safe-haven to store our value!
Regardless of this, energy spending is only going to keep increasing world-wide with better techs and the expansion of technology, we don't need to stop technology, we need to embrace it and make our energy production and consumption more efficient!
Renewable and nuclear are both great energy sources that can shift the world into low CO2 consumption if done right. They might be a great investment for the next couple of decades. Uranium mining companies like Energy Fuels, Cameco, NexGen Energy, Uranium Participation for example.
Nuclear is the centralized energy production of the future, it's bigger, produces lots of energy, but it's also prone to attacks. It is very hazardous if good precautions aren't in place, but if everything goes smoothly (which normally does) it is the best and most efficient centralized energy production humans have. I've also seen some studies mentioning that if we rely on it too much it might cause desertification of the lands prompted by the increased water temperatures that run through the reactor, I think this is what is happening in France... and that's why we need to mix it up with renewable energy sources!
Renewable is the decentralized way of producing energy, it's smaller, produces less energy, but because everyone can do it it's a lot more decentralized and less prone to attacks. A combination of both is what, in my honest opinion, is the future...
A centralized and decentralized system where we get central nuclear energy production and a renewable energy production grid where everyone can be a producer, everyone can be a consumer, everyone can be a prosumer(consumer+producer), this is what cryptos like MWAT are trying to do...
MWAT is a cryptocurrency launched by RED one of the biggest and fastest-growing energy companies in Romania, MWAT aims to remove intermediaries from the energy industry effectively connecting producers and consumers directly and allowing energy trading, democratization and staking for energy rewards. The only thing producers need are small pieces of hardware to count their energy production, a combination of hardware and blockchain is always good! And this crypto might be a great buy for a long-term hodl. I'll talk about it in more detail in the future.
Images Free Source - 1, 2,3,4,5,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 - Tradingview snapshots too.
Question of the day: Do you think PoW will be around in the future? What about PoS? Maybe both having their own niches and working together in a interblockchain kind of way?
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