[Cryptography] Energy Consumption: Standards Trolls (was: disaster)

[Karl]

I'm not in a good state of mind to post to the cryptography list, but
I saw these two bogus arguments and here is my reply, below, sent to
the wrong list.

On 1/5/21, Alex Flanagan <alex.flanagan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Bitcoin mining consumes energy, measured by the unit we call a Watt.  A
>> watt is defined in the ISU as one joule per second.  The unit we call
>> joule is a unit of work.
>>
>
> For the argument "bitcoin consumes too much energy", assuming emissions are
> the concern, my response has typically been:
>
> Energy *production* causes emissions not *consumption*.
>
> The emissions attributable to bitcoin mined in Iceland are zero. The energy
> *consumed* to mine them was *produced* by a zero-emissions source.

Bitcoin operates on incentivisation.  So the current system is
incentivising people to produce more energy than the earth is able to.
So is everything else we're doing, of course, not just cryptography.

But here's the real reason all this energy is getting burned up for
bitcoin: everyone involved is arguing about it, instead of improving
the algorithm.  This situation has been going on ever since mtgox.
There are unnumerable solutions to this problem, but none are
introduced into the codebase yet.

The hard part is not technically solving this problem: it is engaging
the bureaucratic diplomacy of getting a solution implemented, and then
paying for a security team once you are targeted during the process.