iam-peekay / criticisms-of-web3 Goto Github PK

First, the article is written by Nic Carter (same as #1) which is clearly very invested in blochain technology and if I have to guess holds a bunch of crypto, I feel that his bias should be acknowledged in the text of this repo . Honestly, we need a more reputable source for this claim, a study a paper, something, anything more than one biased columnist's opinion.

In this case, I agree with the statement: "Bitcoin mining is a net benefit to the energy sector" but I don't share the enthusiasm, if anything this should be a negative for bitcoin at least from what I gather.

"Behind the meter": Traditionally, the energy sector makes money by selling the energy (I hope I didn't loose anyone there) that puts on to the grid. Allow me to give my own interpretation of the facts here: "Just let us mine some bitcoin instead of making the energy available to the grid, we swear that consuming energy in this way fills our pockets with more money than just putting it in the grid and yeah also it actually makes us consume less energy".
To me this strikes as a clear conflict of interest between private energy sector and the public that needs the energy.

Sorry for the lack of source here but I am trying to provide a more critical view of some of the points and also would prefer sources that aren't so clearly biased.

First, the article is written by Nic Carter which is clearly very invested in blochain technology and if I have to guess holds a bunch of crypto, I feel that his bias should be acknowledged in the text of this repo.

Besides that the counter-argument: "Bitcoin uses energy that otherwise would go to waste" is a blanket statement that cannot be derived from the source.

• How many TWh is consumed in this Sichuan case mentioned that would go to waste? It seems to go unmentioned in the article.
• How much does that represent of the current annual estimate of 138.31TWh?
• Also notice how bitcoin electricity consumption keeps growing and growing. Is the electricity output of that Sichuan plant growing at the same rate?

With this points I think it is clear that "Bitcoin uses energy that otherwise would go to waste" could be at least changed to "Some of the energy used to mine Bitcoin would otherwise would go to waste" but that really begs the question of How much of the energy mined by bitcoin would go to waste.

Source: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

First, the video features Nic Carter (same as #1 and #2) who is clearly very invested in blockchain technology and if I have to guess holds a bunch of crypto, I feel that his bias should be acknowledged in the text of this repo . Honestly, we need a more reputable source for this claim, a study a paper, something, anything more than one biased columnist's opinion.

1. "We are 88% done with the Bitcoin mining process" That's in number of bitcoins due to the limit sure, but what does that mean energy wise? We know from Cambridge's Index that the energy consumption keeps growing year over year and the reward keeps halving. That's why I think this statement is very misleading, sounds like "hang on we just have to spend 1/4 of the energy we already consumed and we are mostly done here" (This counter argument is listed under the energy concerns contra-arguments) but in reality we have a lot more energy to spend to get there. How much energy? how many years? I would argue that's the relevant data and not how many bitcoins.

2. This is mentioned in the video attached to "88% done" and also by the article attached to "Bitcoin’s energy consumption is more efficient than gold and traditional banks " still I want to address it. He claims that bitcoin should be compared with the whole dollar system and dismiss the energy consumption as if it was to replace it. Bitcoin does not provide all the services or convenience and the banking industry and has issues such as expensive transactions: https://blog.invity.io/cryptocurrency-transaction-fees-the-changing-cost-of-sending-bitcoin/ which would hardly make it appealing as a replacement for cash of or credit cards, etc. source: https://blog.invity.io/cryptocurrency-transaction-fees-the-changing-cost-of-sending-bitcoin/