Google to ban cryptocurrency advertising from June

[HEXUS]

Move is part of a wider clampdown on (risk laden) financial services advertising.

Read more.

[Percy1983]

Step in the right direction.

Its worrying how much electricity crypto currency miners are now using.

The sooner they stop the better.

[Lanky123]

As far as I can tell most of the cryptocurrencies and related services that have been most aggressive with their marketing fall into the scam/ponzi category anyway. There were cases recently where cryptocurrency Youtubers were warning about various scam coins on their channels while youtube was serving ads for those coins before the videos.

[cheesemp]

I'm still amazed cryptocurrency hasn't collapsed. It all just seems to rely too much on the algorithms not being broken. At the rate traditional and quantum CPUs power is growing plus the chance the algorithm could be flawed, the whole thing feels like a tower of cards...

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm still amazed cryptocurrency hasn't collapsed. It all just seems to rely too much on the algorithms not being broken. At the rate traditional and quantum CPUs power is growing plus the chance the algorithm could be flawed, the whole thing feels like a tower of cards...

Quantum crypto could trash it, the other stuff is pretty much standard part of life in the crypto community. You can plot a graph of how computers have become more powerful over time, which makes the future pretty predictable there. Flaws in crypto systems tend to turn up as slight weaknesses rather than straight breaks, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Quantum computers will no doubt lead to quantum blockchains, then you won't be able to buy quantum gpus

[philehidiot]

Quantum crypto could trash it, the other stuff is pretty much standard part of life in the crypto community. You can plot a graph of how computers have become more powerful over time, which makes the future pretty predictable there. Flaws in crypto systems tend to turn up as slight weaknesses rather than straight breaks, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Quantum computers will no doubt lead to quantum blockchains, then you won't be able to buy quantum gpus

No problem, the Terminators will be able to crack these simple cryptocurrency equations whilst bopping you on the back of the head so hard that your eyes literally pop out of your head at all the money.

[Troopa]

I didn't think Qgpu's were a thing.

[Corky34]

Its worrying how much electricity crypto currency miners are now using.

To be fair normal currency probably isn't much better in terms of electricity usage and environmental impact.

[DanceswithUnix]

I didn't think Qgpu's were a thing.

They aren't but then quantum processors aren't really a thing. But then in the 80's you needed something the size of a large fridge freezer to do rubbish graphics, these days you need that to do rubbish quantum computing. I am just assuming gpus will go quantum at some point, in an attempt at "miners buy all the gpus" humour, but it could happen.

To be fair normal currency probably isn't much better in terms of electricity usage and environmental impact.

Can't see how. Crypto currency is deliberately designed to be not just energy wasteful, but as more capacity is added to the system it is designed to become more wasteful to get you back to square one creating a market-share grabbing arms race of wastefulness. I really can't think of a worse system in the face of global warming when people should be trying to reduce their carbon footprint. But hey, it's just the planet, I'm sure when everyone is millionaires thanks to the ponzi scheme that is bitcoin we can just buy a new one eh?

If I buy something with a real coin, I take it out my pocket and hand it over. Most of the energy expenditure is probably saying "thank you" and smiling to the shop keeper. Might take a bit of energy to mint the coin, but the inherent per transaction overhead is really cheap.

[Corky34]

Well it's what i read so I'm happy to have it debunked, having said that from what i gather it was along the lines of making all those coins and bank notes (remembering we're talking globally here) takes an awful lot of resources and energy, that's even before we get into the power needed to run all those computers involved in the financial markets.

[DanceswithUnix]

Well it's what i read so I'm happy to have it debunked, having said that from what i gather it was along the lines of making all those coins and bank notes (remembering we're talking globally here) takes an awful lot of resources and energy, that's even before we get into the power needed to run all those computers involved in the financial markets.

There are a *lot* of coins and notes out there, and yes there would have been an energy cost to making them. Beyond that I have a problem with comparisons; I can go to the corner shop and buy a lollipop with a bank note. If I try and buy one with bitcoin, it is going to cost me a transaction fee way higher than the cost of my lollipop and I will have to wait 20 minutes for the transaction to go through? It isn't scalable, easy, cheap and frankly as anonymous as hard cash. So bitcoins are rubbish as a replacement for real coins, are rubbish as a replacement to the contactless debit card. Really, I don't see any similarity to cash.

But lets pretend I can see a similarity. According to the tabloids you can buy £1000 worth of fake £1 coins for £250. I would guess that making them in bulk it costs the royal mint much less than that, but then a lot of the cost will be material which the mint will get back when the coin goes out of circulation decades later. Once made, the coin is just out there doing its job. With bitcoin people are complaining it is hard to make back your energy costs, I haven't been paying that close an attention but I presume the stupid $20 transaction fees at Christmas time are down to something more like the $0.30 from a year before, that still means that every bitcoin transaction is equivalent to minting an actual coin in cost and at the end of that you don't have the metal that makes up that coin.

That's why I just don't get it. I get that both money systems are basically held up by belief that the notes/coins are worth something even when the material worth of a coin is a fraction of its face value, but the energy expended on blockchain is just a horror and by design can only get worse.

Edit: and yes, I am sore that I can't afford a Vega 56 at the inflated prices. But if I thought all those GPUs were being used for cancer research I wouldn't mind, but this is peeing energy and earth resources up the wall.

[Xlucine]

We need a foldingcoin - you get the payout for simulating something useful, rather than busywork

[Corky34]

There are a *lot* of coins and notes out there, and yes there would have been an energy cost to making them.
<Snip>

Like i said I'm only going on what i read and the estimates for how much energy cryptocurrency mining uses vary wildly, i dug up a couple of articles this morning to confirm i wasn't going mad, this one on bloomberg says "Global production of cash and coins consumes an estimated 11 terawatt-hours per year", and this one on wired suggests "Visa's payment systems uses the energy equivalent of 50,000 US households to run 350 million transactions"

Like i initial said normal currency probably isn't much better in terms of electricity usage and environmental impact, how much of that probability you choose to believe is obviously anyone guess, however it doesn't seem as simple as saying cryptocurrency bad, normal currency good.

[badass]

Like i said I'm only going on what i read and the estimates for how much energy cryptocurrency mining uses vary wildly, i dug up a couple of articles this morning to confirm i wasn't going mad, this one on bloomberg says "Global production of cash and coins consumes an estimated 11 terawatt-hours per year", and this one on wired suggests "Visa's payment systems uses the energy equivalent of 50,000 US households to run 350 million transactions"

Like i initial said normal currency probably isn't much better in terms of electricity usage and environmental impact, how much of that probability you choose to believe is obviously anyone guess, however it doesn't seem as simple as saying cryptocurrency bad, normal currency good.

Bitcoin alone estimated to use 55 TWh for less than 5 transactions per second. Visa alone does close to 2000 transactions per second.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

https://www.google.co.uk/search?ei=w....0.bPmMWmMMGfQ


So bitcoin (or indeed any cryptocurrency) is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, worse than conventional money for energy consumption.

[Corky34]

As the wired article mentions "Digiconomist founder de Vries has a long list of criticisms regarding sustainability, so his number trends a bit higher."

Like i said it doesn't seem as simple as bitcoin (or indeed any cryptocurrency) is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, worse than conventional money for energy consumption.

[badass]

As the wired article mentions "Digiconomist founder de Vries has a long list of criticisms regarding sustainability, so his number trends a bit higher."

Like i said it doesn't seem as simple as bitcoin (or indeed any cryptocurrency) is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, worse than conventional money for energy consumption.

It is is you use an apples to apples comparison. You can't compare bitcoins energy consumption with all forms of cash transaction globally without considering volume.

Bitcoin when compares to a payment processor - one of the things its supposed to do - is thousands of times less efficient.

Or perhaps you could look at number of users of bitcoin vs cash and look at energy consumption per user. Once again, bitcoin is several orders of magnitude worse.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-ri...addresses.html around 10 million users globally vs over 7 billion people - i.e. 700 cash users for every bitcoin user.

Or you could look at total value - market cap if you like - it is still orders of magnitude out.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...art-2015-12-18

Bitcoin market cap - $138 billion

Cash - $36 trillion

Cash and cash in bank accounts - $90 trillion.

There is 260 times as much cash as bitcoin in value. Even using the lowest estimates of energy consumption for bitcoin from that wired article, 0.5GW (as opposed to the 3.4GW estimate from earlier) results in bitcoin using 4.4TWh of energy per year - compared to 11 TWh for global cash.

32 GWh per $billion for bitcoin (Best case. Other estimate puts it at 210 GWh)

0.3 GWh per $billion in cash (0.12 if you include bank accounts)

Best case for bitcoin: It uses 100 times as much energy. (cash market cap vs bitcoin market cap with lowest estimate of bitcoin energy consumption)
Worst case: over 2000 times as much energy. (Bitcoin users vs money users)

So maybe it's not way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way worse. Best case it's way, way worse. Worst case it's way, way, way worse.

It really is simple. Bitcoin is vastly worse than cash for energy consumption compared to any measure of usefulness you choose. There is no combination of numbers that can be cherry picked to make bitcoin look any where near cash in terms of energy consumption.