Mining

Bitcoin Mining ’50 Times More Useful’ – Barry Silbert Rebuts Energy Cost vs. Gold

Wilma Woo | Nov 07, 2018 | 18:00

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Cryptocurrency industry figures continue to hit back at negative stories about Bitcoin mining in mainstream media, Barry Silbert claiming mining Bitcoin was “50 times more useful” than gold.

What’s In A Number?

In a tweet November 6, the Digital Currency Group founder and CEO rebutted claims over Bitcoin mining which originally surfaced in the Nature International Journal of Science.

In it, researchers allege mining Bitcoin 00 is three times more expensive than gold, while the total emissions for mining the four largest cryptocurrencies by market cap between January 2016 and June 2018 lay anywhere between 3 and 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The findings were widely reported by mainstream media publications, including MarketWatch, which led with a headline focusing on the financial costs of Bitcoin mining.

Silbert, who like many social media commentators appeared irked by the report, retaliated, saying that the usefulness of minting new cryptocurrency outweighed that of new gold fifty times over.

And 50x more useful https://t.co/ffYHcZ13qp

— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) November 6, 2018

The Scourge Of ‘Research’ on Bitcoin Mining

While his argument received critiques of its own, the episode underlines to continuing battle the cryptocurrency industry faces regarding both research and media coverage of its growth.

At the end of last month, a separate report into Bitcoin’s purported impact on climate change also received widespread coverage.

Investigating, Bitcoin Core developer Nic Carter soon unearthed what he described as “naive assumptions” about Bitcoin’s energy usage which he then extrapolated to demonstrate the ‘Bitcoin network’ the report analyzed does not exist.

Among the characteristics of Bitcoin which researchers claimed would contribute to 2-degree rises in global warming are 3.2 gigabyte block sizes, fixed (not decreasing) issuance and the complete absence of all level-two technology such as the Lightning Network.

“That major mainstream media organizations are reporting on this is a scathing indictment of the MSM. It’s simply fake news; to publish is either incompetence or fraud,” he commented.

What do you think about the latest research into Bitcoin mining costs? Let us know in the comments below!

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