1-12-2023 (LONDON) In a recent revelation, long-standing Bitcoin (BTC) critic Alex De Vries has asserted that each transaction conducted on the Bitcoin network entails an extravagant use of over 16,000 liters of water, equivalent to the volume of a petite swimming pool.
De Vries unveiled his comprehensive research findings yesterday, positing that a combination of miner cooling systems and the water consumption associated with miner energy sources contributes significantly to this substantial water usage. This latest critique echoes De Vries’ prior objections to Bitcoin, primarily centred on the electricity consumption associated with Bitcoin mining. De Vries, the founder of the tech research site Digiconomist, maintains a meticulous log documenting the environmental footprint of each Bitcoin transaction, drawing parallels with “808,554 Visa transactions or 60,802 hours of watching YouTube.”
However, the validity of calculating the energy cost per Bitcoin transaction has faced criticism for lacking contextual relevance. The Center for Alternative Finance at Cambridge University, for instance, highlighted that “transaction throughput is independent of the network’s electricity consumption. Adding more mining equipment and thus increasing electricity consumption will have no impact on the number of processed transactions.”
Digiconomist’s reputation was previously staked on a 2017 prediction that Bitcoin would match the entire world’s power consumption by 2020—an estimate that ultimately fell into the same speculative realm as early 1990s predictions about internet traffic and electricity use.
De Vries’ latest contribution to the Bitcoin discourse drew criticism from Daniel Batten, the founder of CH4-Capital, a startup committed to removing methane from the atmosphere, a task he believes Bitcoin mining could aid. Batten posted on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “De Vries has a history of making predictions that have proven wildly inaccurate. Rather than acknowledge error and move on, De Vries has simply pivoted his attack into other areas. Now that it is clear Bitcoin’s major energy source is not coal (as De Vries had falsely claimed) but hydro, Bitcoin is suddenly bad for using too much water.”
Why the @BBCNews article on Bitcoin and Water is a monument to journalistic lazinesshttps://t.co/BRGRXzAeBW
The day after the Independent publish the results of a high quality independent study on Bitcoin, the BBC publish the junk-science of a known anti-Bitcoin lobbyist using…
— Daniel Batten (@DSBatten) November 29, 2023
