Technology: University of New Mexico researchers find Bitcoin mining is environmentally unsustainable
www.eurekalert.org
Taken as a share of the market price, the climate change impacts of mining the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold, according to an analysis published in Scientific Reports by researchers at The University of New Mexico. The authors suggest that rather than being considered akin to ‘digital gold’, Bitcoin should instead be compared to much more energy-intensive products such as beef, natural gas, and crude oil.

Each coin mined in 2021 caused $11,314 of climate damage, adding to the total global damages that exceeded $12 billion between 2016 and 2021.

  • pingveno@lemmy.ml
    11·
    2 years ago

    Okay, but under the good money/bad money hypothesis, good money maintains its worth from what it is made of, usually commodity metals. Crypto isn’t made of anything but an entry on the blockchain, so how can it be good money?

    • jorgesumle@lemmy.pt
      1·
      2 years ago

      good

      Crypto is a network of computers working together to support a network, transactions, electricity, Internet connections, it’s not simply an entry on a blockchain. Rare metals are mostly valuable because they are scarce. Same with crypto. Of course, if the crypto doesn’t provide any value, it’s useless, many cryptos are useless speculative shit, a little part of them provide something valuable. Gold and silver also have some industry uses, but mostly they are and were valuable because they were scarce.

      Gold’s value is ultimately a social construction: it is valuable because we all agree it has been and will be in the future. The same with crypto.