Thursday, May 21, 2020

Bitcoin is destroying the world

When I first heard of Bitcoin (two? three years ago? a decade?), I tried to figure out what it was. Mainly what I figured out was that I didn’t care. Cryptocurrency? Blockchain? I don’t know. After awhile it just became one of those tech buzzwords that I didn’t need to understand because it wasn’t going to have any material impact on my life. 

Now I learn that Bitcoin is destroying the world. Literally.

Bitcoin … consumes more electricity than is generated by all the world’s solar panels combined. … Bitcoin … produces as much CO2 each year as a million transatlantic flights.
Really? 

When we make any progress toward creating a greener world, somebody wipes out all that progress. Easily. Indifferently. 

source: The Uninhabitable Earth: life after warming
by David Wallace-Wells
2019. Tim Duggan Books / Crown / Random House, New York

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