New research estimates that the 34 largest Bitcoin mining operations in the United States consumed more electricity in 2022 than all of Los Angeles combined. 85% of the electricity came from fossil fuels and exposed 1.9 million Americans to more than 0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution.

[u/shiruken]

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58287-3

[u/VVynn]

What a colossal waste of time and energy with a brutally damaging impact on the environment. All for some invisible bits that some people pretend is money.

[u/shawnisboring → u/VVynn]

They don't even pretend it's money anymore.

• It was a white paper that got spun up for real without exploring the concept fully
• Then it was a side project some nerds did as proof of concept
• Then it was a 'currency', except it turns out nobody wants to spend 'money' that is worth $1 one day and $35,000 the next
• Now it's a commodity propped up entirely by... itself? There's nothing behind it, it's just a paper tiger. Except people have decided that this paper tiger is valuable for some reason.
• It's mostly used now to legitimize upstart coins that people can still grift others with.

From the drop it's been a solution in search of a problem that has entirely failed to materialize and now we're just kinda stuck with this wasteful, resource intensive, useless thing that people keep holding out hope for.

[u/JPHero16 → u/shawnisboring]

At the risk of sounding like a complete cryptovro but since this is a r/science comment I feel like I should at least try to address your comment:

A white paper that got spun up for real without exploring fully

The original paper as posted by Satoshi Nakamoto is 9 pages long and can be found here.

I won’t pretend to be a bitcoin or banking expert, but to me it seems that the goals and structures as described in the white paper have been explored fully and expanded upon. I’d like if you could point out in what way the white paper is not realized exactly. My best guess is the intended use as electronic cash is mostly not how it’s used today, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible to use it as electronic cash.

A side project some nerds did as proof of concept Besides calling people who are advancing technology just because they hate the economic system (reminder this was post-2008) “some nerds” I would say that this is pretty accurate description of what usually happens when a good idea is implemented.

Then it was a ‘currency’ It was always a currency from the moment the first pizza was bought using bitcoin in 2010. Furthermore, it possesses the same principles that give fiat worth: acceptability, divisibility, durability, fungibility (interchangeability), portability, and scarcity.

The argument that people don’t want to spend money that is fluctuating in value doesn’t make sense to me. Since you can divide Bitcoin in parts, you can simply buy anything you need by using a fraction of a Bitcoin, nobody is forced to spend whole coins on anything. You still spend fiat for groceries even though you’re spending more fiat every month due to price fluctuations.

It costing 1$ one day and 35000$ is a gross exaggeration. Bitcoin hasn’t been worth less than 1$ since 2011, and has consistently been worth more than 35000$ since late 2023.

commodity propped up by itself

What defines a commodity is in fact that the market decides to treat instances of this good as equivalent. So in a more literal sense of the word, every commodity is propped up by itself. I would even argue that Bitcoin has more worth as a currency than Dollars/Euro’s, because it isn’t dependent on governments or banks to declare it be worth anything. You can make the same arguments you’re making against fiat money, and you would be more right than by making them against Bitcoin.

It’s used to legitimize upstart coins that people use to grift others with

This is just wrong. Bitcoin has nothing to do with memecoins and the like. Bitcoin has legitimate uses (electronic money, store of value). Either you’re misinformed and you believe that Bitcoin is in some way connected to alternative cryptocurrencies, or you’re actively trying to misinform people by saying that it is. Either way, you’re in the wrong. Bitcoin is bigger than every other cryptocurrency combined for a good reason, and its use case is not “providing legitimacy for coins to scam people with”.

from the drop it’s been a solution in search of a problem

This is incorrect, as Bitcoin was created in part as a solution to a very specific problem; “We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network.” Quoted from the bitcoin whitepaper. There are other problems it addresses, such as:

• the system (referring to financial institutions being used to process electronic payments) suffers from the inherent weakness of the trust based model.
• completely non-reversible transactions were not really possible
• A certain percentage of fraud being deemed unavoidable in their system
• no mechanism existing to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party
• etc.

[u/MissionCreeper → u/JPHero16]

I still dont understand it fully.  But isnt electricity the commodity here?  It's literally electricity being organized into money?

[u/terqui → u/MissionCreeper]

Bitcoin gets its value from being money that is outside the control of governments.

[u/MissionCreeper → u/terqui]

Yes, and, can't exist without electricity

[u/ceiuJ → u/MissionCreeper]

Every currency is (or should be) monetized energy. Energy is expended to mine gold, energy is expended to mine bitcoin, even you expend energy to earn dollars, etc. Money represents energy expended.

Where fiat goes wrong is that it can be created without expending energy, but can’t be earned without expending energy. This is why fiat valuations aren’t tied to reality because it’s created without energy expenditure but can only be earned via energy expenditure.

You are on the right path of thinking!