Since bitcoin have started to be on everyone's mind again, it may be a good time to elaborate on the possibility of bitcoin actually saving the world. Many cite bitcoin's power hungriness as it's achilles heel which will eventually bring it to it's knees. Wishfull thinking. It may be true in the case of bitcoin, but certainly isn't true for crypto overall. But the argument I want to elaborate on actually, is that bitcoin will simply accelerate our transition in energy production methods. This is a good thing. Our energy mix is attrocious and could be 100% "green". If we decided it was worth it. That is where bitcoin comes in. However, I am getting ahead of myself. Let's quickly have a look at solar.

Solar power is the cheapest method of producing electricity. Imagine we had a fusion reactor, so big it had to be a couple of million km away, but the distance is irrelevant because we just wirelessly transmit the energy produced down to earth. And since our fusion reactor is self sustaining, and produces such an overabundance, we might as well just distribute it evenly across the globe. Well that's solar. So, we have quite a few methods of using this energy, we can dig up storage created million years ago, we can store it chemically in different containers and burn/eat it, we can wait for it to heat up the air and use pressure differences in the atmosphere, we can evaporate water and let it fall on a mountain top, or we can just get a solar panel and convert light into electricity. From a physical entropy perspective that is pretty damn efficient. Of course, solar panels are actually pretty poor when we calculate their efficiency but they have virtually zero maintenance costs. So once we have invested in them, they will continue to convert light to electricity as long as the owner sees fit. That means an extreemly low price over the lifetime of such a panel. Now, these are some generalizations and there are a few nuances that we've glossed over. For example the inital investement costs (monetary and environmental) could be astronomical and there is the problem that in some places solar produces the least amount of electricity when we need energy the most. These are mostly red herings in the long term. There are more forms of storing energy than there are ways to create it, the capacity we could build in those places would greatly outstrip our current need. If there was a willingness to accept that environmental costs are real costs, and if the financial price of solar more accurately reflected the total lifetime and cost of ownership of the product. This is where bitcoin and more generally crypto currencies come in.

Bitcoins provide a means of directly converting electrical energy into a measure of worth for us humans. And there is no way to distort this cost. Mining crypto is the most direct form at putting a price on electricity. Governments cannot tax it, Individuals can't exploit their local environment for short term energy output, since all other methods of electricity (except for solar) generation are inferior. These individuals would just be creating an environment no one would want to live in. The majority of Bitcoin can, are and will be mined wherever the cost of producing energy is the lowest. However, it is in everyone's interested to keep the mining as distributed as possible. Otherwise Bitcoin itself will fail. If there is even a hint that one party controls more than 50% of computational mining power bitcoin will cease to exist. Another crypto currency will take over, maybe one that is more energy efficient. However, energy efficiency has only been a concern when the energy mix was unbalanced. This is where bitcoin also come in: assume I am a solarpower plant that mines bitcoin on the side. I can produce bitcoin when no other use for that energy becomes more valuable. In fact, I would only do so. If I want to power my sauna instead of mining bitcoin that's what I'll do, because when I really want a sauna nothing in the world is more valuable to me in that moment. Bitcoin accelerates the adoption of decentralized electricity generation which in the form of an energy mix dominated by solar can be a boon for our emissions. Market forces at work.

Of course this is an optimistic view that may gloss over a few details. But taking a step back, thinking of the big picture, crypto could prove to be more efficient than the money making institutions and governments of today, to form more egalitarian societies of the future.