this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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This seems as unlikely to be true, as it does sensationalist. Hate on Bitcoin all ya like, but don’t make off the cuff “calculations” and report it as news.
It's not accurate but it's not completely made up either.
There is a calculable power cost to each transaction. The work isn't just happening on one computer and God knows how many ledgers are out there right? To be able to pay somebody some fractional amount of Bitcoin to buy a pizza, The cost to have generated the Bitcoin the cost to check the transaction the cost to update the transaction and all the different places. We don't see the usage as a problem because it's tons and tons and tons of people paying for it.
But their calculating the water usage as evaporation for the power plants and evaporation from hydroelectric. Like the freshwater isn't returning to the system in large.
I wonder how much water was lost to make the pizza?
I can get behind "uses a lot of water". But where the headline loses me (to the point where I won't be reading the article) is "potentially cause freshwater shortages".
If someone is using water to mine bitcoins... that's because they can't think of anything more useful to do with that water and likely means they are operating somewhere that has an abundance of water.
And if they're wasting a resource that is needed to grow food, well that's something the local government can easily stop.
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