This seems as unlikely to be true, as it does sensationalist. Hate on Bitcoin all ya like, but don’t make off the cuff “calculations” and report it as news.
You know what else uses as much water as a swimming pool? Swimming pools.
And don’t get me started on golf courses.
Don’t get me started on humans either. Not only do those thirsty shits require shitloads of water to function, it also needs to be clean! Not relatively clean either, but clean clean!
Do you have any idea how many bitcoin farms I could run if there weren’t any humans? Me neither, but it’s probably zero.
Crypto is entirely an extremely expensive gambling system. It serves no actual explainable purpose for the vast majority of people. It’s trivially provable to be worse than existing alternatives in every way that isn’t scams and or money laundering.
I mean, yeah, it’s bad. We shouldn’t be ignoring how bad bitcoin is for the environment.
But are you really gonna tell me that all the computers and CPU time that Wall Street uses for trading somehow takes less?
It doesn’t matter what financial system you use, you’re still burning energy to make it work.
As far as transactions, yes, something like Visa takes way less than Bitcoin. For HFT compared to crypto, who knows, but one thing they’re not doing is something intentionally wasteful like proof of work.
Wasteful but not as bad as golf.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/3/22/22988989/an-illogical-oasis-golf-course-water-usage-st-george-golf
The U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent water use data for Utah shows the state uses about 38 million gallons of water on golf courses per day.
Eth consistently seems to be the better technology. I really don’t see why Bitcoin doesn’t see more transition from mining to just validation as it sunsets.
Mining is validation through POW. Eth is almost pointless from the point of view of bitcoin as proof of stake is “who has the gold makes the rules”.
PoW is inherently unavailable while also a system of dimmishing returns. PoS is bad IMHO too, but from a sociopolitical aspect and not from tech standpoint.
Doesn’t the lightning network which is millions of times faster than btc alone solve this?
Just another reason to add to the already massive pile of hating crypto.
