Is BTC environmentally friendly? – CoinGeek

Yes. According to Jackson Laskey, a partner at Unbounded Capital, it is.

“Is BTC the most eco-friendly technology ever? I think the answer might be yes, but let me make my case,” says Laskey in the first few minutes of Unbounded Capital’s webinar, titled “Is BTC one of the Most Eco-Friendly Technologies?”

BTC and the environment

The amount of energy that BTC, especially BTC mining operations, consume has been a hot-button issue since the inception of BTC. Many environmentalists argue that something needs to be done about the amount of energy that BTC consumes, and often bring up statistics that show that BTC consumes more energy than small countries on a yearly basis.

However, a majority of these arguments only look at BTC’s energy consumption through the lens of “this is how much energy the BTC network consumes in a year,” and they fail to look at the fruits of the labor, the benefits that BTC provides to society.

“I truly believe that BTC has immense potential to benefit the environment,” said Laskey.

“Environmental questions [are] always going to have some subjectivity. The question, ‘is activity X worth having environmental cost Y,’ is really hard to answer objectively.

But [throughout this webinar] we are working within a framework that considers the following statements to be our axioms. The first is that with all else being equal, reducing total energy usage is good, and the other statement is that [with] all else equal, reducing carbon emissions is good–and we are going to accept both of these as true for the context of our presentation.”

Laskey goes on to make a case for BTC (BSV) that shows that it can disrupt a variety of industries in a way that will benefit the environment, such as by reducing the total amount of energy used and reducing carbon emissions. This is because BTC can optimize a variety of industries in a way that will save energy compared to the alternative systems being used in BTC’s place.

“If BTC transactions are a net energy saver vs. its alternatives, as BTC is used more and more, it becomes more and more eco-friendly,” said Laskey. 

Laskey goes on to explain the benefits that BTC can have on the environment at scale, the value in a proof-of-work consensus mechanism and why it cannot be replaced by proof-of-stake, and why the most efficient version of BTC serves the environment in a way that the other versions of BTC cannot. 

Laskey makes a compelling argument for why—contrary to popular belief—BTC is environmental-friendly rather than harmful to the environment, and he also brings up the concern(s) he has for BTC’s environmentally friendly future. To find out why BTC’s energy consumption can be justified and why BTC is an energy saver compared to its alternatives, you are going to want to watch Unbounded Capital’s “Is BTC one of the Most Eco-Friendly Technologies?” webinar.

New to BTC? Check out CoinGeek’s BTC for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about BTC—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.