NYC is getting its own city coin in line with the incoming mayor's crypto hub vision

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. If every city has a "coin", it's a mess. And a waste of electricity in greenhouse world

If Able Baker in New York orders sugar from Charlie Delta in Miami and it is trucked by Extra Foxtrot based in Austin Texas, how is to be paid?

If AB pays with NYCCoin but CD needs to pay staff with MiamiCoin and pay EF with AustinCoin and pay Jamaica with US dollars, who gets rich? The "coin" brokers.

How green is it for all the cities in the US to launch mining operations as heavy as BitCoin's weight on climate change mitigation efforts? If it costs, say, 100 coal power plants to mostly fully mine a currency, then if there are a thousand competing city "coins", then that's 100,000 coal power plants. And for what end? If there is use for, say, a Trillion bucks worth of "coins" circulating, then a thousand coins means each one is only 1/1000 as useful, and thus has only 1/1000 value if it were the only one. (Note, some will have more value than others, but the sum and averages hold up, making the point).

I used the phrase "to mostly fully mine" because it gets worse. The more of a coin is "mined", the harder it is to find the remaining ones, and the amount of electricity used and fossil fuel emissions goes up.

Hint: it's not green to proliferate "coins".

Bitcoin miners align with fossil fuel firms, alarming ...
https://www.nbcnews.com › tech › tech-news › bitcoin-...
Sep. 25, 2021 — Bitcoin mining is breathing life into aging fossil fuel power plants, creating a ... which currently permit subsidies to waste coal plants, ...

Powering bitcoin mining with waste coal isn't a green idea
https://qz.com › powering-bitcoin-mining-with-waste-c...
Jun. 24, 2021 — Stronghold Digital Mining has raised $105 million to mine bitcoin using ... But waste coal plants cause horrendous pollution of their own, ...

China's bitcoin miner exodus - CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com › 2021/06/15 › chinas-bitcoin-min...
China is in the process of kicking out all its bitcoin miners, and many of ... and Inner Mongolia are home to many of China's coal plants.
Jun. 15, 2021

Bitcoin's alarming carbon footprint - Nature
https://www.nature.com › correspondence
Feb. 7, 2018 — The 'mining' process for the cryptocurrency bitcoin is power hungry, and is increasing its environmental impact as its price and popularity ...