LOL billions of tons of carbon has been released since the start of the industrial revolution and now global warming will be "hastened" by bitcoin. Gotcha. All the while we continue to spew millions of tons more each year with or without Bitcoin.
Real mining typically has an end product. Bitcoin on the other hand, technically they could just release coins randomly, in practice it would have no difference.
So the damage by real mining is okay by you because ... it has an "end product". In other words you don't believe in bitcoin but do believe in gold. Fair enough.
Most of it for a good reason. I consider food and basic necessities a good reason. A number on your screen is hardly the same. Bitcoin is contributing to the problem and the numbers tell the story. Simply put, the numbers would be significantly smaller without the Bitcoin "mining" nonsense.
Gold has industrial uses and even jewelry is useful to some extent. I think gold mining should be reduced globally but it's not nearly as senseless as mining to get a number on the screen.
True, gold has some industrial uses but come on jewelry is useful pffft. The destruction of the earth since the first shiny rock was dug up is way beyond kw's burned so far.
I dig crypto, actively mine it, but am no apologist about the waste and carbon foot print of proof of work coins. It's awesome to see technology advances in efficiency in the space but these are quickly overshadowed as the hashrate/competition makes said advances moot. It's possible proof of stake will likely replace these wasteful ventures but they've been around for a while and mining continues. I'm not entirely opposed to the waste as there's great things coming out as a result. I see the space in and draw analogies to other incredibly wasteful ventures like the Manhattan project from which many lessons were learned.
If there would be no gold, there would be almost no electronics in general, there would even be no cryptos as we would not have internet nor computers, nor mobile phones, nor electronics in any machine or car.
Absolutely. BTC mining is wasteful. Like so many others actions. As EV's are until solar or other renewables make a dominant portion of the energy they consume. But we will get there at some point. Meanwhile naysayers use the look rabbit routine ignoring current wasteful industrial energy consumers and say bad, bad BTC. Or yea but EV's consume electricity created by coal or gas, while traditional ICE vehicles have a much bigger carbon footprint.