Max

Rebuttal of New IMF report on Bitcoin mining emissions IMF report says "Carbon Emissions from AI and Cryto are surging" then goes on to a detailed report on how regulators should impose "cryptocarbon" tax. Rebuttal: Firstly, Bitcion advocates everywhere should pause to reflect on the significance of this moment. With the scientific consensus (9 of the last 10 peer reviewed articles) and mainstream journalism now concluding that Bitcoin mining has significant environmental benefits, those who stand to lose most from mainstream adoption of Bitcoin (IMF, Central Banks) are needing to resort to direct attack-pieces. Here's a breakdown of why the IMF report is at best poorly researched, at worst propoganda. imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/20… 1. Rhetorical technique: "guilt by association". Let's say you want to criticize Larry, but the problem is that Larry is a good citizen. No problem, you find that Ben, a person who has the same day job and is the same age as Larry, is a criminal. Now you don't have to prove that Larry is of unsound character, all you need to do is say "Ben is a criminal, and Larry is just like Ben" That's what the IMF report does. It's opening line even says "What do crypto assets and artificial intelligence have in common? Both are power-hungry". Straight out of the guilt-by-association playbook. There is no contemporary evidence in the report that Bitcoin mining produces a rising amount of carbon emissions, but plenty of evidence that AI datacenters' carbon emissions are rising. So AI datacenters serves a purpose, but as we will see later, they are really interested in attacking Larry. Ben is just the pawn in a bigger chess-game. So the article says "AI datacenter emissions are rising, and Bitcoin is just like AI" The technique is effective and will fool some people. But its also factually incorrect. BPI has already debunked the myth that AI datacenters and Bitcoin mining centers are comparable in a detailed report. 👇 cdn.prod.website-files.com/6… Further, Rhodes et al showed back in 2021 that flexible datacenters such as Bitcoin mining had a net decarbonizing impact on grids, whereas inflexible datacenters such as AI had a net carbonizing impact. 👇 da-ri.org/science-hub 2. Make apples for oranges comparison Today, data from a variety of independent sources including the Digital Assets Research Institute shows that as price and hashrate grows, Bitcoin mining emissions have not grown 👇 teapaw.org/dari_org/status/182310… The IMFs own data sources reveal the same thing. In fact, their data shows that by 2027, crypto's share of global electricity use, and its share of global CO2 emissions will have decreased, while for AI, both will increase. Hmmm, that was inconvenient! Doesn't really support the thesis they wanted to support which was that Bitcoin was bad for the environment, just like AI. So what did they do? They created another bar called "high" which indicated the maximum possible range of 2027 projections so that crypto's contribution looked visually higher than it's present-day share. Where did the "high" estimate come from? Cambridge's hypothetical model of "what would happen if every bitcoin mining operation used coal" (something no industry does, and something Bitcoin mining uses less of than any other industry, and a fuel source Bitcoin mining is moving away from faster than any industry) See their image from the report below. They then go on to ask the question in a full length report "Cryptocarbon: How much tax is the corrective tax" 👇 imf.org/en/Publications/WP/I… If the authors were seriously concerned for the environment, they would have looked at the data and written the paper. "AICarbon: How much tax is the corrective tax". Did they also write this paper? No. 3. Let's look at their detailed report. 11 mentions of the work of Alex de Vries, and a mention of Mora et al. Someone please tell the authors that not even GreenpeaceUSA cite Mora et al's work any more, which was triply-debunked within months of him writing it. Further, the work of de Vries has been widely discredited, including this peer review article by Sai and Vranken. 👇 sciencedirect.com/science/ar… The paper goes on to quote Cambridge's emissions and energy figures, despite the fact it is widely known (and stated on Cambridge's website) that theire model is no longer current, as it uses data from 2022. Until we get intellectual honesty from the IMF, apples-for-apples comparisons, eshewing of already-discredited research, use of contemporary datasets, and an acknowledgement that the scientific consensus shows predominantly positive environmental externalities from Bitcoin mining, any reports from this institute should be disregarded as being of a low research-standard; unusable to policymakers and regulators.