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This is not a bug, it's a feature.
It is a feature yes but that makes this technology very inefficient to process transactions.
Price goes up > People turn on more miners > Difficulty goes up > Less efficient miners become unprofitable > People turn off more miners > Difficulty goes down.
It's a self-correcting dynamic purely due to economics, not linked to usage.
The sensationalism ignores that this tends to be trapped pockets of otherwise wasted surplus energy. Bitcoin creates a global energy arbitrage market for the first time. Energy can't be transported long distance, but it can be used to mine bitcoin. The benefits here are massive, including incentivizing cheap green energy, or the use of mining for ambient heating.
I'm pretty sure miners don't pick and choose when they mine, to coincide when there's going to be 'wasted surplus energy' otherwise. They just add on to the demand on the grid, around the clock.
They almost sound like Buddhist monks re: meat eating, from the way you phrase things!
Does this energy consumption come more from mining (i.e. finding the new bitcoins) or from transactions? If the former, then the Bitcoin network should find a way to reward nodes for transactions in a more environmentally-friendly manner since mining should (in my understanding) disappear or become insignificant at some point.
This will be bad for global warming. All that extra energy being produced.
The sensationalism ignores that this tends to be trapped pockets of otherwise wasted surplus energy. Bitcoin creates a global energy arbitrage market for the first time. Energy can't be transported long distance, but it can be used to mine bitcoin. The benefits here are massive, including incentivizing cheap green energy, or the use of mining for ambient heating.
This makes sense only in two cases: you're using energy from power sources which can't regulate output, or you're adjusting usage immediately based on feedback from the source. Otherwise the generation side just raises, accounting for your usage. Does that actually happen anywhere?
> Energy can't be transported long distance
Of course it can be. I expect you're quite far from a power plant right now. On the extreme we've got high voltage lines going over 2000km.
Does this energy consumption come more from mining (i.e. finding the new bitcoins) or from transactions? If the former, then the Bitcoin network should find a way to reward nodes for transactions in a more environmentally-friendly manner since mining should (in my understanding) disappear or become insignificant at some point.
The sensationalism ignores that this tends to be trapped pockets of otherwise wasted surplus energy. Bitcoin creates a global energy arbitrage market for the first time. Energy can't be transported long distance, but it can be used to mine bitcoin. The benefits here are massive, including incentivizing cheap green energy, or the use of mining for ambient heating.
"Bitcoin creates a global energy arbitrage market for the first time" -- There are existing energy arbitrage technologies, such as aluminum smelting. The requirement is low capital cost with high energy cost, so you can have plants that are idle most of the time, waiting for low marginal-cost energy. Bitcoin mining isn't actually very good for this: the capital costs of rapidly depreciating mining chips are quite high.
"Incentivizing cheap green energy" -- every consumer of energy does this. Consumers that run mainly during the day are much better at incentivizing wind and solar.
"Mining for ambient heating" -- also suffers from the problem that mining chips are too valuable to leave idle, so you can't place them in homes and only run them when it's cold.
I wonder if it is any different with any other thing you pay for. Or if any money you pay for anything ultimately results in energy being used up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a feature yes but that makes this technology very inefficient to process transactions.
Bitcoins energy consumption has no correlation with its transaction throughput. Price goes up > People turn on more miners > Difficulty goes up > Less efficient miners become unprofitable > People turn off more miners > Difficulty goes down. It's a self-correcting dynamic purely due to economics, not linked to usage.
Do you not agree that, loosely, there is a correlation between transaction throughput/ popularity/ real world usage, and the amount of people being happy to invest time, effort, and money into mining?
Missing from all of the discussions about this is the fact that almost all of the electricity is purchased with the mining reward, which is temporary . It is cut in half every 4 years, and will eventually dwindle to nothing. The amount of electricity Bitcoin miners can afford to buy therefore will fall. Of course, until now that effect has been more than compensated by the increase in the Bitcoin price. But that cert…