> With pressure building to clean up the crypto industry, Bitcoin is now an outlier when it comes to its environmental impact. Its closest rival, Ethereum, recently completed a major software update to drastically reduce its energy consumption in a highly anticipated event called The Merge. Goodkind points to that as an example of potential solutions to make cryptocurrencies more sustainable. If Bitcoin were to make a similar update, “its climate damages estimated in this work, would likely become negligible,” the study says.
It's a "solution" to the extent that you think proof-of-stake has comparable security to proof-of-work. And the jury is very much out on that one.
For example, proof-of-stake is quite vulnerable to regulatory capture. Exchanges stake users'f funds. Exchanges are regulated at the federal level. Therefore, regulator pressure can lead to protocol changes that directly harm users. There are already strong hints that this dynamic will become a big factor.
The same dynamic does not exist in proof-of-work, where exchanges and miners are decoupled.
From the research article:
> ... POW-based cryptocurrencies are on an unsustainable path. If the industry doesn’t shift its production path away from POW, or move towards POS, then this class of digitally scarce goods may need to be regulated, and delay will likely lead to increasing global climate damages.
"Regulate" what exactly? Miners? Great, what's a "miner"? Even if you can thread that needle, all the regulation will do is to force miners into different jurisdictions or to downsize their operations. Neither of these outcomes will necessarily reduce the network's hash rate, jeopardize security, or convince Bitcoin users to stop using bitcoin.
It's a "solution" to the extent that you think proof-of-stake has comparable security to proof-of-work. And the jury is very much out on that one.
For example, proof-of-stake is quite vulnerable to regulatory capture. Exchanges stake users'f funds. Exchanges are regulated at the federal level. Therefore, regulator pressure can lead to protocol changes that directly harm users. There are already strong hints that this dynamic will become a big factor.
The same dynamic does not exist in proof-of-work, where exchanges and miners are decoupled.
From the research article:
> ... POW-based cryptocurrencies are on an unsustainable path. If the industry doesn’t shift its production path away from POW, or move towards POS, then this class of digitally scarce goods may need to be regulated, and delay will likely lead to increasing global climate damages.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18686-8
"Regulate" what exactly? Miners? Great, what's a "miner"? Even if you can thread that needle, all the regulation will do is to force miners into different jurisdictions or to downsize their operations. Neither of these outcomes will necessarily reduce the network's hash rate, jeopardize security, or convince Bitcoin users to stop using bitcoin.