The proposal to ban PoW protocols like #Bitcoin and in the #MiCa bill is more than just bad news. It is a thoughtless, uninspired proposal that does not reflect the realities and the future of the industry.
A long 🧵 (1/23) - All credits to our @CoinSharesCo research team.
A long 🧵 (1/23) - All credits to our @CoinSharesCo research team.
#ESG is the keyword and E is the letter. Literature around the topic is poor and uninformed. Hence, @CoinSharesCo developed a comprehensive model to estimate emissions and created our own data collection framework. Results are published in our last #Bitcoin mining report. (2/23)
At an annualized energy draw of 89 TWh (December 2021), the Bitcoin mining network uses approximately 0.05% of the total energy consumed globally, measured at 162,194 TWh (2019). (3/23) 
At an annualized emissions rate of 41 Million tonnes CO2, the global Bitcoin mining industry has a small environmental footprint relative to the Aviation Industry, Marine Transport Sector, Air Conditioners, Electric Fans, Data Centers, and Tumble Dryers. (4/23)
The potential for miners to reduce the carbon footprint of flared and vented natural gas is vast at 78 Mt CO2e in the United States alone. This is enough to completely offset all emissions or even have a positive net emissions impact. (5/23)
Due to significant and consistent increases in ASIC performance. We expect this trend to continue for as long as there are more efficient Bitcoin ASIC technologies to be discovered. (6/23)
This causes a persistent shift in the hardware pool from older inefficient units to newer more efficient ones. Moreover, the vast majority of the mining network’s carbon output has likely been generated in non-western countries. (7/23)
Currently, the worst carbon intensity is found in Kazakhstan, Montana, Kentucky, and Alberta where a large amount of electricity is generated using particularly carbon-intensive fossil fuels such as oil and coal. (8/23)
These four regions generate 43% of emissions while generating only 26% of hashrate
On the other end of the scale, regions such as Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Quebec and Manitoba produce almost no emissions at all despite generating an estimated 5.2% of the current hashrate. (9/23)
On the other end of the scale, regions such as Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Quebec and Manitoba produce almost no emissions at all despite generating an estimated 5.2% of the current hashrate. (9/23)
What these low-emission regions all have in common is an abundance of hydropower resources and a relatively large distance between large generation capacities and major demand centers. (10/23)
If western jurisdictions, who tend to have much higher penetrations of renewables in their generation mix, have a sincere interest in reducing the carbon impact of the Bitcoin mining network, (11/23)
they should do their utmost to incentivize miners to set up operations in western jurisdictions. Especially in Western Europe. (12/23)
The worst thing western governments can do with regards to limiting carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining is to force them out of their jurisdictions. (13/23)
Such initiatives will have the exact opposite of the desired effect by driving miners further into the jurisdictions where fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, thereby increasing emissions. (14/23)
The vast majority of this energy is used for minting new coins, but minting is programmatically preset to geometrically decay to zero over the next 100 years or so. Already by the decade of 2040, more than 99% of all bitcoins will have been minted. (15/23)
Once minting is effectively over, the vast majority of the energy requirement will have to result directly from market demand for bitcoin transaction settlement through transaction fees offered to miners by consumers. (16/23)
At 0.08 % of global CO2e emissions, removing the entire mining network from global demand—and thereby depriving hundreds of millions of people of their only hope for a fair and accessible form of money—would not amount to anything more than a rounding error. (17/23)
While it is clear that there currently are emissions created as a result of Bitcoin mining, these emissions are not only insignificant on a global scale, but they are in no way necessary in and of themselves. (18/23)
Bitcoin will be 100% renewable as soon as our electricity generation is 100% renewable. Our focus should be on building out renewable power generation, not on stifling the development of monetary technology. (19/23)
To end this thread I will quote Satoshi Nakomoto “The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used. Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be a net waste” (20/23)
The war in Ukraine and related events lead us to believe that Satoshi was right, Bitcoin and other cryptos have a benefit that far outweighs the amount of carbon emission generated. (21/23)
This in turn is opening a much more important debate for Europe's future, about microchips sovereignty and its components such as #NEON gas.
@Pierre_Person feel free to share our detailed report with any MEPs you know. It's worth the effort. tinyurl.com/2p8mdmwp (22/23)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
