Some Industry Views On Bitcoin Sustainability

Here are some views on bitcoin sustainability by people in the game:

"We should absolutely be concerned about the energy use. In my opinion, PoW (Proof of Work) is not the future of cryptocurrency. If it's at all possible to have an equally secure and decentralized system using for example PoS (Proof of Stake) and modern PoS implementations does seem to accomplish this, then it would be incredibly wasteful not to do that instead," wrote iwakan on Reddit. 

He adds that comparing the energy consumption of bitcoin with gold mining and banking isn't relevant because these industries are currently more productive than bitcoin, possibly alluding to the number of people employed in these industries, without providing data.

The total share of energy consumed by crypto mining, which is renewable, is estimated at 39% of which more than 62% is hydro-electric, not wind or solar, according to this study at Cambridge University. https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study/

According to Shrenegdrano on Reddit there are two factors to consider: 

"The first is that PoW was not chosen because of a lack of alternatives. PoS was a simpler approach both conceptually and technically. But PoW is a fundamental piece of the cryptocurrency puzzle. This is clear re-reading the Bitcoin white paper today, even if it was less clear back in the day. Less clear to me but obviously not for Satoshi Nakamoto." 

"PoS blockchain have their place, especially for smart contract platforms and/or high-throughput chains. But IMHO these PoS chains would not have value if the market hasn't a central PoW crypto. In this regard, the power consuption of BTC should be considered as energy expenditure for a large part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, not just for BTC."

"The second factor is: for what do we want to spend energy? Freedom and censorship-resistance have a price, and I am happy to spend resources for freedom, as we do for many other things. Please mind that this same power consumption concern was raised for the internet itself, back in the day. Would you say that the internet is a waste of resources? To me it's not, nor is Bitcoin and the blockchain technology."

The reply by Cheeseisakindof is equally illuminating. 

"You're assuming that a secure blockchain has to be as expensive as it is with PoW; you said it "has a price". This isn't true though, blockchains don't have to be so atrociously expensive. If you build a PoS blockchain, it will function similarly but use astronomically less energy. It isn't an opinion whether PoW is good or not."

The debate is clearly running high on Reddit, and appears to be about core philosophy, says Cham at Learn Crypto. 

Learn Crypto will keep you updated.