Your opinion on whether or not the energy used to secure bitcoin is a total waste is a subjective one.
If you believe that bitcoin is the financial future and will eventually form the bedrock of worldwide transactions and stores of value, then the energy use is a feature, not a bug. It is important that the effort expended to earn value is reflected in the amount of value that you receive in return. This is best achieved by using energy, and showing proof that you have expended work for the value that you earn. More energy use in bitcoin is beneficial, and it should continue to increase as bitcoin proliferates. This is protection of the value network, and provides the proof that you have earned what you have received.
More importantly it's far far less energy intensive than the energy used to support the current fiat system, which is essentially the military industrial complex. You must assess the full structure that supports the fiat system and the energy, death and misery that entails, in order to measure it against the energy input into bitcoin.
If you are going to measure the total energy used and determine that 100% of that is a waste in your opinion, then you must assess all things that use energy and make the same assessment.
For example, I do not play computer games. I am not interested in it and see it as a time-wasting exercise. The energy used to support the gaming industry and everything around it far outweighs the energy use of bitcoin. Is that not a problem if we are making the correct comparisons here?
I do not own a clothes dryer. I prefer to dry the old-fashioned way. The total energy used for clothes drying throughout the world far outweighs that to support the bitcoin network. Why should I be tolerant of the energy these lazy people are wasting, drying their clothes with machines?
Etherium has now moved to a vastly more centralised system that favours the wealthiest. The minting of new currency is now based on how much of that currency you own, instead of how much effort you put into creating it. This is a neat reflection of the current fiat system and a key problem with it - the rich get richer, and have increasingly more control over the money supply. It is a fatal error and now aligns Etherium with the existing power structures in the fiat world.
Having said all of this, the latest studies and evidence coming out of bitcoin are very exciting when it comes to energy. Bitcoin is now being seen as eventually becoming carbon-negative. The latest US govt study out of the Whitehouse is in agreement with many other studies already seen, which have identified bitcoin mining as the number one way to mitigate methane emissions.
Bitcoin mining is most profitable when using stranded or wasted energy sources. Mining using coal and oil based energy is the least profitable way to do it. So it is actually incentivised to use the least impactful energy sources, rather than needing subsidies or moral actors to do this, unlike every other industry e.g. electric cars. This is why bitcoin is the cleanest industry (or very near to it) when it comes to the percentage of energy that is coming from renewable, stranded, or wasted energy sources - most estimates now are upwards of 70% of bitcoin mining coming from these sources.
The methane research however is the most exciting. Bitcoin is starting to move from renewable energy sources to sources that actually reduce impacts on the environment i.e. carbon negative. Methane emissions are vastly worse than CO2 emissions for the environment, and bitcoin mining is now seen as the no.1 way to prevent these emissions, by mining with power generated from these emissions, and thus preventing their damaging release into the atmosphere. This is the latest wave of this type of behaviour in bitcoin - bitcoin has already basically secured the flaring of natural gas in the US as the number one use of that energy source, which is preventing the emissions of flared (wasted) gas energy into the atmosphere. Bitcoin mining is the number one way to create a business case to take wasted, stranded, and atmospheric-damaging energy, and prevent it's loss, or releasing it into our atmosphere.
I realise you may find some of this stuff hard to believe, but it is cutting edge research and you will start to see it come out over the next few years.
If you believe that bitcoin is the financial future and will eventually form the bedrock of worldwide transactions and stores of value, then the energy use is a feature, not a bug. It is important that the effort expended to earn value is reflected in the amount of value that you receive in return. This is best achieved by using energy, and showing proof that you have expended work for the value that you earn. More energy use in bitcoin is beneficial, and it should continue to increase as bitcoin proliferates. This is protection of the value network, and provides the proof that you have earned what you have received.
More importantly it's far far less energy intensive than the energy used to support the current fiat system, which is essentially the military industrial complex. You must assess the full structure that supports the fiat system and the energy, death and misery that entails, in order to measure it against the energy input into bitcoin.
If you are going to measure the total energy used and determine that 100% of that is a waste in your opinion, then you must assess all things that use energy and make the same assessment.
For example, I do not play computer games. I am not interested in it and see it as a time-wasting exercise. The energy used to support the gaming industry and everything around it far outweighs the energy use of bitcoin. Is that not a problem if we are making the correct comparisons here?
I do not own a clothes dryer. I prefer to dry the old-fashioned way. The total energy used for clothes drying throughout the world far outweighs that to support the bitcoin network. Why should I be tolerant of the energy these lazy people are wasting, drying their clothes with machines?
Etherium has now moved to a vastly more centralised system that favours the wealthiest. The minting of new currency is now based on how much of that currency you own, instead of how much effort you put into creating it. This is a neat reflection of the current fiat system and a key problem with it - the rich get richer, and have increasingly more control over the money supply. It is a fatal error and now aligns Etherium with the existing power structures in the fiat world.
Having said all of this, the latest studies and evidence coming out of bitcoin are very exciting when it comes to energy. Bitcoin is now being seen as eventually becoming carbon-negative. The latest US govt study out of the Whitehouse is in agreement with many other studies already seen, which have identified bitcoin mining as the number one way to mitigate methane emissions.
Bitcoin mining is most profitable when using stranded or wasted energy sources. Mining using coal and oil based energy is the least profitable way to do it. So it is actually incentivised to use the least impactful energy sources, rather than needing subsidies or moral actors to do this, unlike every other industry e.g. electric cars. This is why bitcoin is the cleanest industry (or very near to it) when it comes to the percentage of energy that is coming from renewable, stranded, or wasted energy sources - most estimates now are upwards of 70% of bitcoin mining coming from these sources.
The methane research however is the most exciting. Bitcoin is starting to move from renewable energy sources to sources that actually reduce impacts on the environment i.e. carbon negative. Methane emissions are vastly worse than CO2 emissions for the environment, and bitcoin mining is now seen as the no.1 way to prevent these emissions, by mining with power generated from these emissions, and thus preventing their damaging release into the atmosphere. This is the latest wave of this type of behaviour in bitcoin - bitcoin has already basically secured the flaring of natural gas in the US as the number one use of that energy source, which is preventing the emissions of flared (wasted) gas energy into the atmosphere. Bitcoin mining is the number one way to create a business case to take wasted, stranded, and atmospheric-damaging energy, and prevent it's loss, or releasing it into our atmosphere.
I realise you may find some of this stuff hard to believe, but it is cutting edge research and you will start to see it come out over the next few years.