Bitcoin is Green Energy

While humans seem to have an unlimited demand for energy, a fairly nominal investment in Solar and Nuclear should be able to create abundant power for the world’s reasonable demands. Everything else, until we make that investment, requires Bitcoin. 

There is plenty of criticism about Bitcoin’s energy use. While those who are sensitive to sustainability and focused on ecological conservation have a noble goal in their heart, their immediate distaste for Bitcoin is often only superficial. 

Human kind’s ability to manipulate and “consume” energy has lead to the greatest advancements in our civilization. I add quotes to Consume, as energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can it be wasted? I argue that using the term waste is applying a moral judgment to an activity where the accuser is often just as guilty. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, or, people who live in glass houses and all that. Do you use a clothes dryer, refrigerate more food than you need, have Christmas lights, or drive a car?

We’d need to really compare the alternatives, what else can we do with the energy? When its generated overnight by renewables like hydroelectric or wind, but there is no demand, it can store this monetary energy as Bitcoin. When waste natural gas is flared at oil wells, we can burn it to power Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin not only provides a direct electro-computational use for spare energy, but it can change the entire incentive structure for saving and conservation. 

With a Fiat standard and a credit-based money system, we encourage overconsumption with the future risk of inflation acting as a sufficient threat to bring forward consumption ahead in time. If financial conservation is actively discouraged, environmental conservation is impossible.

Bitcoin, as disinflationary money, can add a real incentive to saving up your energy and limiting your personal consumption for brighter days ahead.