A massive waste, or just a wasteful mass?

[Jarrod]

A massive waste, or just a wasteful mass?

- nuuuitsjdragon

In a recent statement by Ripple CEO, Brad Galirnghouse, Bitcoin & Ethereum mining have both been flagged as huge culprits in contributing towards global climate change.

Research done by PWC’s blockchain expert Alex de Vries supports this fact by establishing current levels of electricity consumption for (BTC) mining to have surpassed the entirety of Chile’s (with an 18-million population).

Correlated statistics for e-waste tell an even more troubling story - 98% of hardware from obsolete mining rigs ends up in landfills. As Bitcoin’s exponential difficulty curve works in tandem with the highly competitive market, it’s of no surprise that a combination of the two will cause e-waste numbers to increase at an alarming pace.

If mining is truly causing such harm to our environment, perhaps it’s no wonder that Bitcoin and Ethereum miners’ ethics, or lack thereof, is not sitting well with Galirnghouse.

After all, Ripple has been known to pre-mine ~ 60% of its entire supply - a move some purists define as “Centralised”, which in retrospect may turn out to be a better approach than initially thought.

While on the topic of Centralisation, it could be interesting to point out that VISA was recently put to the test against Bitcoin for the amount of CO2 released in their transactions. In a shocking reveal, VISA had effortlessly won by a mile, or in this case - 780,650 miles - since that was the number of transactions it took to produce the same amount of Carbon Dioxide for one single Bitcoin transaction.

 

 

[rdbase]

I dont and never will trust in the culprits who have created ripple.

They seem to scammy to be trusted with any money what so ever.

[GeorgeFeb]

1 hour ago, rdbase said:

I dont and never will trust in the culprits who have created ripple.

They seem to scammy to be trusted with any money what so ever.

All could be, but it's on Stake and can be played with, if one has an opportunity to get some Ripple without buying it and have some profit out of it, then I don't see any problem here!

The Sun is the main culprit if anything and it's has been quite cold recently, no joke!

Not a Bitcoin mining, everything will be alright with the Planet, as for the electricity, well, you either use stuff or you don't, plain and simple, hello Elon! 😀

[Ali saher]

Ohh very nice thanks to share this information jarrod

[Dp10011]

It's amazing how everything now causes climate change. There is no need to deny the fact that encrypted mining contributes to this, but these numbers are a little exaggerated.
As for Ripple, I never trusted your project. We have always been suspicious of xrp.

[Etude]

Oh what an interesting statement that relates cryptocurrency mining to global climate change that I did not know of beforehand reading this topic which is rather informative for me. Well, I hope there will be alternatives methods which can maintain the productivity aspects of cryptocurrency while having the process more environmental friendly in future probably.

[Bimfo]

Never knew crypto mining bring so much to climate change. Though the main culprit of Climate change are those that uses Fossil fuel for production.

It will be interesting to take a project and research about what amount of CO² is been produced with BTC and ETH mining compared to fossil fuel.  I feel it will be drastically different.

Another aspect is the dumping of all those obsolete machines at places that are not suitable. There should be a way to reuse and recycle those machines, at least it will solve the issue of dumping obsolete machines in undesirable place. 

Lastly, I don't trust Xrp creators. But we are not deviating from the real reason for crypto currency. Decentralization.

[wry]

Freedom is good.  If people want to spend their money to mine BTC and ETH good for them.  If this is bad for the environment, increase the price of electricity to compensate.

@Bimfo is exactly right, you want decentralization you gotta have incentives to contribute to the network.  Ripple is a total sell out of a coin.  I don't dismiss their success but ideally it is the opposite of Bitcoin and similar cryptos.  So frankly I'd tell Brad to STFU about what other crypto users should do or think about.