"5. Finally, as is well known, much of the power used to mine Bitcoin is drawn from renewable resources, with "mining towns" often popping up in areas like China and Washington state that use hydroelectric power."
No it's not. The most recent and complete study on the miners and their energy usage is 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study/
It concludes to less that 40% of renewables usage overall.
Bitcoin mining also enables ancient coal units to stay profitable and last longer :
Also, renewables are not "green". There is NO green energy. Even if they show less (but not null) carbon footprint, they use (a lot) of metals (which is limited and very polluting to extract) and land (limited also).
Even hydro has an impact : If you think drowning square kilometers of valleys is ecological, then you don't know what ecology is.
Climate change is not the only global threat to the planet / humanity : we also have triggered the 6th mass extinction of species. Mostly by destroying their habitat.
Also, in some areas, dams generate enormous amount of methane (which is a greenhouse gas far wrose than CO2) and can show impact on climate change worse that coal itself !
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/tropical-dams-methane-18019
If we want this planet to be still barely livable in 50 years, we need to *drastically* recude our net impact. It's not about developping renewable per se : If you double energy demand and power 80% of this with low carbon energies, you will certainly augment the global share of renewable, but the net impact will increase : bad move !
There is no transition of energy when the demand rises : energy sources just add :
We need an urgent degrowth : extract, produce, consume and throw less useless stuff.
In that context, the resources and energy consumed by Bitcoin is criminal : all this for pure speculation, with not even practical usage as a currency. It cannot be a good thing to waste that much energy.
About the business / jobs : I couldn't care less. So does the industry of tobacco, of fossil fuel, or child exploitation in Thailand ...
You have an ancient mindset : the economy cannot drive our global decisions anymore. This system pushes us to invent, promote and sell shitload of useless stuff to maintain itself and allow people to get some income : this is a nonsense.
People should rather be paid for NOT producing and buying stuff. We need to build an economy where the revenues are not linked to the jobs, and where consumption is penalized rather than being rewarded.
But this is for the long term. On the short term, bitcoin is a complete disaster and should be taken down by any mean.
