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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum
GLD 396.28-0.7%Dec 31 4:00 PM EST
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To: TobagoJack who wrote (168534)2/14/2021 4:28:02 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu1 Recommendation

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marcher

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The environmental idiocy of Tesla’s bitcoin bet
Tech companies should avoid pushing pointless power hungry applications
ft.com

Earlier this month, Elon Musk offered $100m to fund a competition to find new ways of removing carbon dioxide from the air or water. To win a slice of the cash on offer, competitors have “to create and demonstrate a solution that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and lock it away permanently in an environmentally benign way”. The move helped burnish Musk’s green credentials, doubtless appealing to all those buyers of his Tesla electric cars who pride themselves on doing their bit for the environment. Yet before swallowing this green image, both they and Tesla’s shareholders might be wise to take a closer look at how the company is actually spending their cash.

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Nor is this especially clean power. As de Vries points out, bitcoin miners are not interested in intermittent renewable energy. Needing to run their machines 24/7, many site their operations in places with cheap coal-fired electricity, such as Iran, Xinjiang province in China and Kazakhstan. In one case last autumn, a US bitcoin mining group even struck a deal to rescue a closing coal-fired station in Montana. This fossil-fuel fixation leads to a humongous carbon footprint. According to a 2019 paper, the bitcoin network was estimated to have a carbon intensity of 480-500g of CO2 per kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity. A comparable figure for the UK power network would be around 250g CO2/KWh.

Tesla’s intervention is likely to make those numbers worse. Higher bitcoin prices encourage more miners to hook up to the network. Cambridge University’s Judge Business School tracks bitcoin energy usage. In recent days, this has risen to levels equivalent to annual consumption of 121TWh — or roughly the size of the entire Dutch economy.
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