The bitesize videos are a great idea, please keep up the great work mate. Could you send a link to that article you mentioned please?

Thanks for talking about this topic Louis. Ultimately, the energy consumption is going to be what causes Bitcoins fall. There are better technologies out there and this becomes glaringly obvious in light of this massive waste of energy. 

One solution that you didn't mention was somehow putting the miners to work on something more useful than just verifying the ledger. I am pretty ignorant about the technical side of things but maybe someone smart than me can make that happen.

It could be that bitcoin mining is the saviour of the planet in that it might make the financial case for renewables even greater to mitigate global warming .  Or it could be as Trump said "the East Coast "could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming" as bitter cold temperatures froze large swaths of the country this holiday weekend.

That energy issue is actually a lie that has been making its rounds on the internet. The truth is that most bitcoin mining uses renewable energy sources and most mining companies are doing just that.

The  solution is to move to proof of stake which would remove the need for bitcoin mining. However I find it interesting that the mainstream media  focuses on the energy consumption of bitcoin mining while ignoring  the energy consumption of data centres used for other purposes. A bit hypocritical that cryptos are singled out  for special treatment in this way.

Nice video, quite a brilliant idea. Thanks @louisthomas for the hard work.

Been watching your vids on youtube. Love your energy and genuiness (is that a word). Great, clear concise information. I am new to crypto and your vids are helping me my journey....Oh, just 1 question, when will the new batch of ledger nano s been in. :))

I was once told a single Bitcoin transaction is now 1% of the global energy consumption. If crypto currencies move to proof of stake maybe the coins would be less volatile and hold a stable value while consuming less energy. Especially if staking coins are like Cardano and can stake via proxy and not need nodes to be online but the fear is centralization.

There is no doubt that we as a civilization need new energy producing technologies, that are easily accessible and minimal risk.

Thanks for yet another informative vid @louisthomas. Perhaps IOTA has the answer with the Tangle protocal?

In finance, a futures contract (more colloquially, futures) is a standardized forward contract, a legal agreement to buy or sell something at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future. The asset transacted is usually a commodity or financial instrument. The predetermined price the parties agree to buy and sell the asset for is known as the forward price. The specified time in the future—which is when delivery and payment occur—is known as the delivery date. Because it is a function of an underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative product.

Contracts are negotiated at futures exchanges, which act as a marketplace between buyers and sellers. The buyer of a contract is said to be long position holder, and the selling party is said to be short position holder.[1] As both parties risk their counter-party walking away if the price goes against them, the contract may involve both parties lodging a margin of the value of the contract with a mutually trusted third party. For example, in gold futures trading, the margin varies between 2% and 20% depending on the volatility of the spot market.[2]

The first futures contracts were negotiated for agricultural commodities, and later futures contracts were negotiated for natural resources such as oil. Financial futures were introduced in 1972, and in recent decades, currency futures, interest rate futures and stock market index futures have played an increasingly large role in the overall futures markets.

The original use of futures contracts was to mitigate the risk of price or exchange rate movements by allowing parties to fix prices or rates in advance for future transactions. This could be advantageous when (for example) a party expects to receive payment in foreign currency in the future, and wishes to guard against an unfavorable movement of the currency in the interval before payment is received.

However, futures contracts also offer opportunities for speculation in that a trader who predicts that the price of an asset will move in a particular direction can contract to buy or sell it in the future at a price which (if the prediction is correct) will yield a profit.[2

These environmental impact problems are very serious so I resteemed it.

How to solve the BTC energy waste problem? Hyperbitcoinization > USD collapse > No funding / need for useless wars everywhere in the word to protect the petrodollar and corrupt central banking system > Overall use less energy (you know how much oil get burned to fuel the wars?) and still have BTC

thanks for this

Thank you, always been a subscriber since your earliest videos  :)

Really interesting and short video, straight to the point and informed take on the issue. Keep the great work coming!
I personally think XRB (or alikes) are the future, as they take away the "miner" in the Chain, using the Tangled technology. The coin slowed down in speed recently, but went so high around Christmas, when other coins were crashing. 
I do believe XRB is one of the closest looks on the future of Crypto-Currencies and day-to-day spendings, where blockchain wouldn't work due to transaction time and cost.

Bitcoin could be used as a subsidy for green electricity, you can't turn off a wind farm and if there is no current demand then that energy is just going to waste. Andreas makes some very good points.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T0OUIW89II

Energy consumption of Bitcoin sounds a lot at first glance, but then again if you compare it to the energy consumption of the Eurodollar banking system (data centers in banks, atm network, cost to print money, cash transportation, etc) it is actually not that much for a global digital currency. Also Google and Facebook need huge amounts of energy to run a global network of data centers. Energy is not wasted but this is what makes Bitcoin the most secure cryptocurrency on the planet.

"Waste" might not be the best way to name it. Mining is what secures the blockchain immutability. If we replace it we will need something just as secure. I am very excited to see how well PoS will do in the future on a blockchain as big/invested as Ethereum!