Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 127 posts

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#52

Post by solveit »

sddfd wrote: post #25
founderling wrote: post #18

The energy consumption is priced into the cost of holding and transacting Bitcoins. 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.

That is all fine and good, but is it necessary at all (even if some people are willing to pay for it).

At the moment, we don't have anything clearly better. But everyone except the most hardcore Bitcoin maximalists believe some form of Proof-of-Stake will work well enough. PoS will bring along a different suite of problems, but requiring a nuclear power plant's worth of energy will not be one of them.

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#55

Post by latchkey »

tlb wrote: post #17
bobdamarley wrote: post #5

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.

"Energy can't be transported long distance" -- Electric power is regularly transported long distances with low loss. Total transmission losses in the US are about 5%, and a lot of power is shipped 1000 km or more. "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 cos…

re: aluminum smelting... @see Coinmint [0]

In this case, the Moses Saunders dam [1] used to get a nice steady stream of draw (necessary to keep the equipment operational) from the Alcoa plant, but when it shut down that draw went away. Throwing a bitcoin mining operation into the old facility is a great way of keeping things running smoothly.

  [0] https://www.coinmint.io/
  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#56

Post by ubersync »

nullandvoid wrote: post #21
shownedeadnnn wrote: post #4

So Bitcoin cannot trivially be subject to a 51% attack, certainly not by Sweden anyway. ~~~ So awesome, I have to make an account to see the dead comment. Way to go HN mods.

Hashing power is not directly equal to power consumption Sweden may hypothetically purchase miners 2x more efficient than the average miner and therefore need only half their countries power output. In addition I would be surprised if Sweden can't source power from other countries ( prove me wrong I'm not sure on this one)

The latest miners are running on 10nm technology. So unless Switzerland can start manufacturing 4-5nm devices right away, what you said is basically impossible. Also, if the Switzerland government by any chance acquires 4-5nm technology, what will keep the miners from doing that too? You would be surprised how deep their pockets are. Well they all paying all of Switzerland's electricity bill, so that might give you an idea.

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#57

Post by googlemike »

ubersync wrote: post #49
stuffbyspencer wrote: post #37

Someone created Bitcoin. It was a neat idea and people played with it. When the first pizza was bought with Bitcoin, I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh cool, real world use!" Then Bitcoin bubbled. People panicked and jumped on board without researching, Bitcoin went up a bazillion %. I wonder how the creator felt? "Oh wow... Lots of people want this!" Then the bubble burst, price went down, people got mad, but, most…

The Bitcoin "bubble" has "burst" at least 6 times now. Which one were you refering to? Every time it recovers and reaches another all time high in a couple of years. Being the nascent but potentially world changing technology, it might take a few years to realize its true market cap. And along the way, we will see a few pumps and dumps. Its just normal.

I've yet to see a single legal use case for bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

#59

Post by michaelscott »

igravious wrote: post #46
jmauritz wrote: post #32

https://medium.com/@hillpot/bitcoin-vs-gold-which-hurts-the-... gold vs btc, at least BTC energy expenditure can be patched / limited to only renewables.

Neat! I wonder how they arrive at these numbers though? I had a conversation with a non-techie friend the other day about cryptocurrencies and she expressed scepticism about the technology because of its immateriality or intangibility. Something about cryptocurrencies being artificially constructs doesn't sit well with some non-techies. I mean, when you think about it it's just as arbitrary that precious metals and g…

There's definitely an emotional component to investment (a line I often hear from property investors vs equity investors is "I can touch and feel my investment, what about you?"). The tangibility gives a much stronger sense of ownership and is also probably one of the reasons why hardware wallets are so popular in the crypto community.

That said, most people who buy gold as investments these days do so through ETFs or some other paper-based method so they never even see the gold themselves, let alone get a chance to "touch and feel" it.

Post reply on HN