Bitcoin-focused venture company Unbounded Capital has published an ebook, Green Bitcoin, looking at the need for a shift in thinking around sustainable digital currency that doesn’t leave a negative environmental footprint.
At the core of their thesis is the need for greater adoption of Bitcoin SV, an environmentally friendly and technologically superior implementation of Bitcoin that most closely resembles the original vision in the founding Satoshi whitepaper.
But why the need for a greener Bitcoin, and how is BSV solving this problem?
The claim that Bitcoin uses more energy than Argentina, Sweden, and Malaysia is often wheeled out by those that oppose mass adoption of digital currency, or an increased reliance on BTC. But this is only partly correct. In reality, BTC as it is commonly understood does indeed consume more energy than each of these countries, with its energy-intensive and inefficient mining process. But the BSV enterprise blockchain, the real implementation of the Bitcoin protocol as spelled out by Satoshi Nakamoto, tackles this problem effectively while bringing a whole host of other benefits and advantages over the legacy BTC.
On the other side of the same coin, Bitcoin is often seen as a key catalyst for a future driven by greener energy. Its unique properties allow for energy consumption to be increasingly powered by sustainable sources, with renewables like wind, hydroelectric and solar power more easily incentivized and monetized through Bitcoin systems.
Both of these claims, while correct in their own right, make the same fundamental error. They confuse Bitcoin with BTC and use the terms interchangeably, without acknowledging the foundational differences between BTC and BSV.
While not commonly acknowledged by those in the “crypto” media, Bitcoin SV is actually the most popular implementation of Bitcoin by transaction volume and transaction efficiency. And in the words of Unbounded Capital, this is the implementation most likely to still exist in a decade’s time – not BTC.
In a post on the Unbounded Capital blog, author Dave Mullen-Muhr said BSV is already vastly more efficient than the BTC network.
“BTC is, in many respects, the world’s most inefficient database. It can only process 5-7 transactions per second and at an enormous cost. Worse yet, it is on a roadmap to become much less efficient over time. BSV is currently among the most efficient transaction processing networks and is positioned to become the world’s most efficient over time,” Mullen-Muhr said.
The BSV network at peak has processed over 50,000, more than double Visa’s capacity of 22,000. BSV transaction processing capacity and efficiency today already rivals legacy networks like Visa and will leave these legacy giants in the dust by simply scaling through known methods with existing hardware. If BSV is able to augment or replace these legacy networks, it could have the effect of reducing the environmental costs of every other network used in our transaction dominated world.
But even beyond these raw advantages, the BSV enterprise blockchain is expected to widen the gap over time, becoming ever more efficient with scale, compared to the diminishing returns from BTC. The BSV blockchain is already the world’s largest public blockchain by all major utility metrics such as data storage and daily transaction volume, as well as scaling ability and average block size.
“Better yet, as the BSV implementation of Bitcoin scales, this efficiency will increase rather than decrease, and the applications that use this newfound efficiency will be able to help incentivize businesses and consumers to produce greener outcomes,” Mullen-Muhr wrote.
“Imagine never before possible B2B applications which could help optimize electricity provision and prevent disasters like the PG&E brownouts in California and assist in altering customer behavior to use a higher percentage of renewable energy through real time data reducing coal consumption during peak electricity consumption hours.”
“Or imagine B2C applications like efficient and transparent supply chain data which unlocks a new wave of consumer applications which help buyers make greener choices based on data they can be sure is accurate which at the same time rewards producers making use of sustainable practices.”
The idea of new green business models emerging from Bitcoin SV is also likely to have a positive impact on the environment, thanks to the ease with which microtransactions can be implemented on BSV. There’s also the ability to track energy from source to market, as well as smart contracts and other efficiency gaining processes that can streamline emerging renewables markets – all made possible by the emergence of Bitcoin SV.
Unbounded Capital acknowledges that it is challenging to effectively parse the arguments around the environmental impact of Bitcoin, particularly given the diversity of strong opinions on all sides of the argument.
However, it seems clear that Bitcoin’s unique abilities in incentivizing green energy will bring significant growth to the sector, which when combined with the increased energy efficiency of BSV will herald a net positive impact for Bitcoin in environmental terms.
The fact that BSV processes transactions with significantly greater efficiency, relying less on environmentally heavy mining workflows, means that it has a key role to play in the transition to a greener future. By being optimized for scale, BSV reduces the impact of Bitcoin on the environment, the only implementation of Bitcoin that solves these problems.
While BTC remains interchangeable with Bitcoin in common parlance, that link is slowly but surely breaking down. As more people, businesses, agencies, and governments switch on to the key distinctions between the two, and in particular, the ways Bitcoin SV can reduce the environmental and energy impact of blockchain technology, it is expected that BSV will play an ever more important role in shaping a new environmentally-sound future.
Watch: CoinGeek Zurich panel, BSV is Green Bitcoin: Energy Consumption & Environmental Sustainability
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