Super interesting details in this thread. Also in light of some people feeling depressed about climate change a very simple thing you can do is don’t invest in crypto due to the incredibly irresponsible waste of energy to mine it.
That observation could be out of date later this month. "The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%."
https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
I sincerely hope that this works out for Ethereum. The current approach of massive environmental damage for crypto is extremely damaging to everyone on the planet.
The planet might be better off if it doesn’t work out. If crypto gets more efficient, its transaction costs might go down, which could lead to exponentially more transactions, which could cause it to consume even more resources.
Your assumption that post-Merge Ethereum uses more electricity than other financial transactions is probably right. But the difference may not matter much, given that ETH expects to use 2,000x less energy. Post merge, I'd like to see this measured.
Yea, my theory is that lower transaction costs will lead to exponentially more day trading volume, just like it did when brokerages started offering free trades. But then again the mad rush to get one's hands on cryptocoins out of FOMO might get boring as the trading becomes more routine.
I staked ETH2 about a year ago and can't get it back until the merge completes, so let's call the post merge ETH2.
I don't know how much energy brokerages use to process each trade. Nor how much banks use to process transfers. If ETH2 uses 10% more energy, I doubt anyone will care. But if it uses double or 10x ... will it matter? That, to me, is the key question.
Years ago a majority of Bitcoin miners were in China. BTC, ETH and ETH2 will likely still be concentrated to some extent. But it also matters to what extent ETH2 displaces BTC, and if that pressure causes BTC to consider proof of stake.
