What if you could substitute a renewable battery powered motor for the internal combustion engine just twelve years after its invention? At minimum, we would not be faced with the challenge of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. For all of the benefits the internal combustion engine has brought humanity, its environmental consequences are not among them.
An equally consequential technology—Bitcoin (BTC) —in its twelfth year of existence, is being adopted at an unprecedented pace.[1] The position of current Bitcoin thought leaders is that Bitcoin’s energy use “is not a problem.”[2] However, despite its rapid adoption, Bitcoin still operates at the periphery for most people. As it matures, its energy use, among other things, will only receive greater scrutiny. Operating the Bitcoin network globally uses as much energy as Washington State, which amount to less than one half of one percent of total global energy use. However, Bitcoin’s energy use can be framed in ways that could undermine its promise, as has been done many times before.[3] Because of the positive impact it is positioned to provide society, Bitcoin mining should involve clean energy and waste energy streams so that its progress is not unnecessarily halted. It is all the more essential because with effort, Bitcoin mining can be done with clean energy sources and by relying on waste energy streams. But to facilitate a movement toward more climate-friendly Bitcoin mining, more people must appreciate why Bitcoin is consequential.
Why Bitcoin Matters
It is critical to understand that Bitcoin is a technological innovation: as the “native currency of the internet,” Bitcoin for the first time enables the transfer of value anywhere on the planet without using a third party. Over 2 billion of the world’s population is “unbanked,” meaning they cannot access the financial system that we take for granted. Bitcoin enables these people to maintain and control their hard-earned value. Imagine how many refugees throughout history would have benefitted from this capability. When the Afghan government fell, Western Union ceased offering its services. If you were an Afghan fleeing and your wealth was in a bank, it’s gone now. Bitcoin fixes this, which is just one of many things that makes it disruptive.[4]
Additionally, what may be Bitcoin’s most important feature, is that it’s a completely deflationary medium: only 21 million Bitcoin will ever exist. It is programmed (Bitcoin is software) to be the scarcest resource available to every human. No matter how much demand for Bitcoin there is, the supply will increase at a fixed but diminishing rate (the amount produced by each block halves every 4 years), which means saving your wealth in Bitcoin will be rewarded over time as its adoption and value increases. With 40% of all the U.S. dollars that have ever existed printed in the last 18 months, other countries are taking notice of the impact a world flooded with U.S….
Read more:The Argument For Mining Bitcoin From Clean Energy And Waste Energy Streams | JD Supra
