In a recent story I described Elon Musk as a promo girl for Bitcoin. If he actually was, you can be sure he’s now been fired. He upset the market big style when he tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin because of the environmental damage.
This tweet then led to Bitcoin losing over 20% and retracing to the 21 week moving average for the first time in the entire bull run. Not a bad thing, the market is still healthy, any savvy Bitcoin bull would recognise the opportunity. Nonetheless it’s ridiculous that Elon Musk is the person who sent us there. Especially when you consider the tweets he made just days before the bombshell.
Anyone else wondering what this guy is smoking? Perhaps he’s spent too much time with Joe Rogan.
Why would he promote using a shitcoin like Doge to buy a Tesla or fund a mission to the moon before declaring he will no longer except Bitcoin?
The mind boggles.
People have voiced their views on Elon’s tweet, including Michael Saylor who didn’t appear to agree.
The hypocrisy of the man is undeniable
It’s entirely ridiculous that a man who launches rockets with 28 engines, which burn over 400 metric tons of refined kerosene, is no longer accepting Bitcoin because he’s worried about the environment. Some may feel tempted to forgive him for this, after all, it’s for a good cause, right? He’s going to make humanity a multi-planetary species and massively reduce our risk of extension, isn’t he?
Have you looked at Mars recently? It’s a little chilly, and lacking in a few home comforts, you know things like OXYGEN and WATER.
Some say that they are going to terraform the red planet. I’m sure that it will be super easy, we will just do a bit of science and BAM Mars will have optimal conditions for life. Mars is 78 million miles further from the sun than the Earth, it will always be stupidly cold. They will create nothing that resembles anything close to the Caribbean, so I’m not interested.
I don’t like the idea of massively polluting our life-sustaining, beautiful planet in order to reach a planet that’s currently completely inhospitable.
Is space exploration worth it? Not if it comes at the cost of Earth.
What about Tesla? He makes electric cars, so this offsets his Co2 emissions. Not really. Sure, they are better than normal cars, but they’re by no means environmentally friendly.
They use lithium-ion batteries in electric cars. The mining and processing of the lithium-ion has contaminated rivers, killed fish and animals. It caused environmental havoc in Tibet when the dangerous substance leaked from the mine there. Lithium-ion contaminates soil and destroys crops too. It requires vast amounts of water to mine, 500,000 gallons of water is used for every tonne of lithium-ion produced.
The batteries are charged with electricity and this is more often than not produced by fossil fuels, currently only about 28% of the world’s electric is produced through renewable sources. Gas and coal produce 60% of global electric.
An electric car is only as emissions free as the electricity you charge the batteries with.
It’s not like he’s made a fully recyclable vehicle, on a hemp chassis, being powered by water and peace signs. It’s still made from metal, plastic, rubber and paint, all of which are not environmentally friendly, and powered more often than not from non-renewable sources.
Yes, electric cars are better than conventional cars, but they are not perfect. A bit like Bitcoin, it’s better than the current financial system, but it’s not perfect.
Instead of tweeting nonsense about not accepting Bitcoin, he could use his time better finding ways to further improve the efficiency of the network and introducing more ways for it to be powered by renewable energy sources. Although he does claim he will do this with Doge.
He’s wrong about Bitcoin too
Bitcoin requires vast amounts of energy to mine it effectively. No one disputes that.
Fiat currency is just worse.
Not only is it an easily abused system, which fails anyone who wants to save. It’s also bad for the environment.
Consider the production of fiat (coins and notes). The lifespan of a $5 bill is 4.7 years, because cash is relatively short-lived, they are always producing more (and always will be). It’s a constant effort to maintain the supply. This process demands significant amounts of resources and energy. They require the following to make ‘paper money’:
- 10 billion litres of water each year (worldwide)
- 18.4 million GJ of electric (worldwide)
- 3540 tonnes of ink (USA)
- Over 2300 tonnes of linen (USA)
- Over 7100 tonnes of cotton (USA)
Creating bank notes is complex and labour intensive. Consider the steps required:
- Agricultural production of cotton
- Polymer production
- Film production
- Cotton paper production
- Thread manufacturing
- Foil production
- Polymer conversion
- Bank note printing
- Distribution (armoured vehicles)
- Use
- End of life
Coins tell a similar story to bank notes, they are replaced every 25 years (on average). Over 13 billion coins were minted in the U.S in 2018.
For more than a decade, it has cost the US Mint more to produce the Lincoln Cent and the Jefferson Nickel than their face value is worth. The cent costs 1.99 cents to produce and the nickel 7.62 cents.
Coins are mostly made from copper, the mining of which is not beneficial to the environment.
Considering both coins and notes, the total CO2 produced is 6.7 million tonnes per year.
Then consider the current online financial systems and the energy they require. The exact numbers are hard to determine, there’s no official statistics for reference. Although Carlos Domingo calculated it by estimating there are 30,000 banks (he found estimates as low as 14,000 and as high as 60,000).
He then considered servers, ATM’s and branches in terms of energy expenditure. Domingo notes that there are more sources of energy usage, but recognised these three as the most significant. He estimated a bank has 100 servers (describing this as conservative) and determined they use 800 megawatt-hours.
He used data from the world bank to estimate the amount of branches in the world. Calculating there to be 665,000 branches worldwide. Each of these branches produces approximately 10 kWh per branch. This too is a conservative estimate based on them only being used 20 days a month and having only 12 computers. Take into account that the average American home uses 28.9 kWh per day.
Next he looked at ATM’s. He referenced the ATM Industry Association, who predicted in 2015 there would be three million ATM’s worldwide. Each of these machines using 5 watt-hours per day. Again, likely a conservative figure.
Domingo concludes with a conservative estimate of 100 terra watt-hours per year being used for the banking system. An analysis by Cambridge University suggests Bitcoin may use 121.36 terawatt-hours. Recognising that the estimate for the banking system is very conservative and including the usage and impact of cash production, Bitcoin is still likely to use less energy overall, and more of that energy comes from renewable sources. A Coinshare study determined that over 70% of the energy used in the network comes from renewable energy.
Nothing about our current financial system is optimised to protect the environment. What’s the alternative? Has anyone got a better idea? I haven’t heard of one yet.
Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://medium.com/illumination/elon-musk-is-wrong-about-bitcoin-a991c8bda3c?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency
