Reaction
11:45
Why use renewables and wasted energy to power Ponzi schemes?
by Greg Barker
Bitcoin mining has made it out as far as the Arctic circle
If your primary goal as a publication is to uncover “the unintended consequences of digital trends,” then Digiconomist hit the jackpot when cryptocurrency entered the mainstream. Starting 2022 with a bang, the tech blog shared on Twitter last year’s results of its “widely cited” indices that have been tracking the mammoth energy wastage of Bitcoin:
Some statistics to start the year:
During 2021 Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Argentina.
Related CO2 emissions were ~64 Mt; enough to negate the entire global net savings from deploying EVs.
— Digiconomist (@DigiEconomist) January 1, 2022
This will damage Bitcoin’s status in the public eye, especially given that it was once considered by enthusiasts as the “gold standard” of cryptocurrency. Now, it is now losing favour, with anyone failing to convert to “Bitcoin maximalism” adopting other tokens.
These tokens, of course, still have limited functionality. It’s difficult to buy or sell anything other than links to JPEG images, virtual land, game characters, and other cryptocurrencies — which also have zero real-world application, but at least these have more “utility” than…
