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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#281

Post by dx034 »

donatj wrote: post #137
lukev wrote: post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

With energy becoming more and more renewable, does it really matter if BTC uses a lot of it?

IT's becoming more renewable from a very low base. Electricity generated in most of the world is still dirty, electricitymap [1] has a good overview.

[1] www.electricitymap.org

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#282

Post by danmaz74 »

mrb wrote: post #274
danmaz74 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way to have a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency is to waste an inordinate amount of energy and increase our global warming and pollution problems, then we'll have to do without that kind of digital currency. It's a matter of priorities.

" inordinate amount of energy " It's comparable to what a single hydro dam like the Three Gorges Dam can produce. Don't fall prey to the scary comparisons BECI employs to mislead its readers. Global warming is critical, but there are other energy wasters much, much bigger than Bitcoin miners. Besides, as it's been said many times, miners tend to use renewables since they have become cheaper than fossil fuel power pla…

Right now the share of the world economy running on Bitcoin is negligible, yet its energy consumption is relevant. If that share became consistent, the price of Bitcoin would increase by many orders of magnitude, and mining bitcoin would become more and more competitive in relation to other uses of energy, and would increase in tune - that's why I say inordinate. PoW is just unsustainable by design.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#283

Post by danmaz74 »

trickstra wrote: post #276
danmaz74 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way to have a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency is to waste an inordinate amount of energy and increase our global warming and pollution problems, then we'll have to do without that kind of digital currency. It's a matter of priorities.

It's not a "waste" if the result is a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency. And the global warming argument is a many times debunked hoax - if anyone has better use of that electricity, they are welcome to use it, which will make mining cryptocurrency unprofitable. Except in the other cases, the benefits go to the single entity that owns the business, whereas with cryptocurrency every participant benefit…

> if anyone has better use of that electricity, they are welcome to use it, which will make mining cryptocurrency unprofitable

I'm sorry, but you got this backwards. If bitcoin becomes a relevant part of the world economy, then it HAS to use a relevant part of the world energy, because consuming energy for PoW is the only limiting factor against a 51% attack. So, either Bitcoin is irrelevant - and thus its power usage is a literal waste - or it's relevant, and then its power usage has to become relevant in terms of global warming.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#284

Post by paulmd »

zadler wrote: post #259
paulmd wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest keeping it in USD or other hard currency. Bitcoin provides no advantages in obtaining/transacting hard currency relative to other currencies, nor any stability while holding it. Either way you are going to a black market, and you are paying real, unaffordable conversion rates compared to transacting in (worthless) hyperinflationary currency. The bitcoin guy is not going to accept 1 Zimbabwe dollar to 1 US…

USD bills can’t be easily transferred over the Internet.

look at this scrub who's never heard of venmo

yes, there are a lot of fungible ways to transfer hard currency over the internet... once you acquire it.

again: acquiring it is the hard part, because nobody wants to trade a zimbabwe dollar for a USD.

Bitcoin does nothing to help your zimbabwe dollars be less worthless than they are in USD, therefore they don't help the currency conversion process at all.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#285

Post by paulmd »

cwkoss wrote: post #267
paulmd wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial sector does not produce 20% of carbon emissions. They are maybe 0.1%. The act of trading on exchanges is significantly more efficient than the act of trading on blockchain. Because there really is no need for an untrusted ledger when there is the USG certifying that the NYSE and NASDAQ will not execute erroneous trades. Bitcoin does not eliminate the idea of fiduciary duty. Bitcoin holders still expect bitc…

> Because there really is no need for an untrusted ledger when there is the USG certifying that the NYSE and NASDAQ will not execute erroneous trades. What is the emission cost of the system which enables this functionality?

for processing/validating transactions? couple hundred MWH. How much do you think the Nasdaq/NYSE mainframes really eat?

bitcoin numbers don't include the off-chain stuff either, lol.

Bitcoin energy is literally expended on a massive, inefficient mainframe that processes a couple hundred transactions a second. That's all - everything else is additional to that.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#286

Post by aidanlister »

trickstra wrote: post #276
danmaz74 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way to have a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency is to waste an inordinate amount of energy and increase our global warming and pollution problems, then we'll have to do without that kind of digital currency. It's a matter of priorities.

It's not a "waste" if the result is a decentralized, trustless, robust digital currency. And the global warming argument is a many times debunked hoax - if anyone has better use of that electricity, they are welcome to use it, which will make mining cryptocurrency unprofitable. Except in the other cases, the benefits go to the single entity that owns the business, whereas with cryptocurrency every participant benefit…

Why isn’t it a waste? You say it like it is a fact ... what’s the logic there?

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#287

Post by aidanlister »

mrb wrote: post #280
dx034 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once we have enough green energy I'd totally agree with you. But currently, I don't think we can afford adding that much CO² for a currency that isn't widely used anywhere in the world.

« isn't widely used anywhere » Bitcoin processes 10 million transactions a month (300k/day) and it's generally been growing over the years: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...

But how many useful transactions? Isn’t the vast majority of that trading and not economically useful activity?

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#288

Post by trickstra »

konschubert wrote: post #240
lukev wrote: post #132

The energy consumption of Bitcoin isn't new news. What continues to disappoint me, however, is how many people immediately jump to its defense with arguments based on the value it provides, as if that offset its cost. What gets neglected is that the Bitcoin algorithm is inherently wasteful . By its very design, it results in an insane amount of duplicated, pointless computation. The question isn't whether something l…

I think bitcoin won’t be able to compete long term because one way or another, it’s users have to pay for the tremendous energy expense. I hope we recognize this rather sooner than later, such that we can stop wasting so much energy.

> it’s users have to pay for the tremendous energy expense.

They are. How else do you think miners pay for their electricity? And so far it seems like the users are happy to pay what it costs. The fact that you don't see the benefit doesn't mean there isn't any for them.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#290

Post by bmking »

A little late to the party, but here are my two cents.

First of all I also want to mention "Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index" (https://www.cbeci.org). In my opinion it makes better comparisons (https://www.cbeci.org/comparisons/).

The strongest hypothetical argument against the consumption is that Bitcoin incentivizes green energy. The mining operation is mostly interested in one thing: access to the cheapest electricity possible. Currently China is still subsidizing electricity, which has attracted a lot of Chinese miners and apparently is tolerated by the state.

But in the longer run I believe that Bitcoin will be the thing that will allow investments into green energy on a big scale. This is currently only happening by e.g. governments guaranteeing a minimum electricity price with other horrible consequences (see Germany: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...).

Bitcoin however provides the incentive by itself to invest into green energy. This also is regardless of the fact that where there are optimal conditions for green energy often no infrastructure is available to add it to the grid. Bitcoin only needs an internet connection and consumes energy on-site.

Regarding arguments that compare transactions with energy spent (comparing apples-to-banana...), I will make a counter-comparison: "The amount of electricity consumed every year by always-on but inactive home devices in the USA alone" spends three times the energy of the Bitcoin network (see "Fun Facts" at https://www.cbeci.org/comparison).

Comparing the energy consumption of a transaction is meaningless, because this transaction may enable thousands of off-chain transactions (see Lightning network) and vary in actually block-spent-size depending on if it aggregates many actual transactions or not. It also shouldn't be a surprise that a lot of energy went into it in the first place, since otherwise the whole point of Bitcoin, namely being open, borderless, censorship-resistant and neutral, wouldn't be possible.

It's like saying that all the many maintenance checks of airplanes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks) wastes so and so many hours and energy of engineers' work-time, just because you don't see that they make air travel safer.

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