Bitcoin continues to take it on the nose, as NewScientist’s Matthew Sparkes (13 January 2024) reports:
The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. While other cryptocurrencies in the same position have made bold changes to cut their impact, bitcoin’s decentralised community of developers, miners and investors are showing little interest in changing course. If bitcoin cannot clean up its own house, should governments step in to shut it down?
It is the role of government to ensure society has an environment in which to function safely[1], even if that means that some activities are limited or banned. You’d expect that it would give a warning or guidelines, but this appears to be impractical because of the distributed nature of Bitcoin[2]: No one is in charge[3]. As it’s Internet-based, it’s difficult for, say, the American government to force it to change and stop consuming so much power.
There is little in the organic experience of Bitcoin to indicate its profligate energy and water usage, and, enhanced by its reputation as the first of the cryptocurrencies, this will blunt or eliminate any concerns by the ordinary user with regard to resource usage that is becoming more and more worrisome.
But artist/activist vonwong is aiming to change that with a found-object sculpture called the Skull of Satoshi, where the subject is a psuedonym for the person or persons who developed the original code of Bitcoin. vonwong has developed a video documenting how he and his team created this sculpture, which also painlessly disseminates information concerning the hidden costs of Bitcoin. Here’s the video:
All that said, and back to Sparkes’ article:
In 2022, another cryptocurrency, Ethereum, ditched this wasteful “proof-of-work” system altogether and replaced it with one where those who own currency control the network, rather than those who own and operate computing power. This slashed the network’s energy consumption overnight by more than 99.99 per cent. More than a year on, the experiment has proved successful, and Ethereum remains secure.
[Alex de Vries at VU Amsterdam] says the bitcoin community – a loose collection of miners, investors and companies – refuses to take the same step and remains wedded to proof of work despite its environmental impact.
I’m sympathetic to both sides. Bitcoin appears to be an unnecessary consumer of immense amounts of natural resources, BUT if it’s going to be around, the phrase where those who own currency control the network throws up red flags, at least to me. It’s a classic corruption scenario: how honest are the controllers? How can they be boosted out if they turn out to be corrupt?
Obviously, I’ve never used cryptocurrencies, and my studies are strictly casual. But, as an obsolete software engineer who has had to deal with the social aspects of computing projects before I even graduated college, these are the sort of things that catch my attention.
Having viewed vonwong’s video, which includes a description of the laser eyes phenomenon, I can’t help but wonder if paranoid conspiracy theories roam the Bitcoin user community, or if they’re blissfully unaware of how a government shutdown plays right into the creation mythos of Bitcoin.
Oh, now I’m wondering if there are any academic papers on the Creation Mythos of Bitcoin. Time to shut down this post.
1 In all the meanings that can be imputed to that sentence.
2 Yes, I’m aware that it should be bitcoin. It’s too damn cute for a computer project of dubious worth and serious resource usage.
3 Because Bitcoin was developed to be administratively distributed, at least in part and as a reaction to the high inflation rates possible through unrestrained production of fiat currency (paper money), as seen in pre-World War II Germany and various African companies saddled with excess debt, the description that no one is in charge makes sense.
