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Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

cbeci.org

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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#571

Post by ric2b »

ashtonkem wrote: post #474
nickpp wrote: post #332

How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs.…

That’s a neat slight of hand trick you’ve pulled off there, connecting Bitcoin to entertainment in order to shame those of us concerned about Bitcoin energy usage. Everything else you’ve listed provides subjective value to the user, which makes them hard to attack. Who can say what the value of skiing is to a society in terms of kWh? There is no way to objectively compare the value of energy spent on a ski lift vs. d…

> But the issue is that Bitcoin isn’t supposed to provide subjective value, it’s supposed to provide objective value; it’s literally supposed to be money.

Money's value is also subjective, I'm not sure what you think is objective about it.

Sounds like you're just trying to dodge the comparison.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#572

Post by flush »

snickms wrote: post #237

If the goal is to educate the public on the scale of power involved, a comparison with a commonly used service would help a lot IMHO. Something like 'Bitcoin consumes 14 times the energy of Google and half (according rough estimates) that of Youtube' would make things easier to grasp before hitting the reader with country comparisons. FWIW here is my list of 'if a service were a country': Google Guatemala Bitcoin Arg…

Thank you for such a high quality comment.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#573

Post by 3np »

sharpneli wrote: post #440

At that rate and assuming 4tx per second a single Bitcoin transaction consumes 165kWh. A Tesla battery is bit over 50kWh. So let's round that to 3 full charges of Tesla battery. That's 350km/220 miles of range per charge. In total 1050km or 660 miles of driving. So basically if you want to transfer money and the recipient is closer than 660 miles from you it's more efficient to just get a bunch of bills, drive there…

It's misrepresentative to represent it just in quantities of number of on-chain transactions.

First, let's look at the actual transacted value: last 24h ~90 billion USD.

Then, consider the narrative of Bitcoin as a store of value - the value of Bitcoin depends on the security of the network, so this needs to be taken into consideration as well.

One estimate of the current market cap of Bitcoin is ~800 billion USD.

Then you also have all the things relying on and extending Bitcoin, without each unit of added value resulting in individual on-chain transactions. Take Lightning Network, for example. Uncountable (literally) number of transactions all enabled by the base layer of the Bitcoin blockchain, protected by its proof of work. It's only the entry- and exit-points that result in on-chain transactions.

Then there is also something untangible; the things bitcoin enables. Can you put a number in watts on how much is reasonable for the unknown number of individuals who have been able to remit money to their families that they otherwise would not have been able to? Those locked out of the global financial ecosystem just because they were born or are living in the "wrong" country?

If you personally find that those dimensions makes it more reasonable or not is up to you, but let's at least try to get a reasonable narrative.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#574

Post by kungito »

wickoff wrote: post #484
baxtr wrote: post #265

Ok, I have to admit that I am one of those people who knew about BTC very, very early but never bought any. Now, of course I should have mined at least 100 back in the days, but anyways. The reason I have never mined nor bought into it is that I still, to this day struggle to come up with a real reason to do so. Am I getting too old? Do I not see the "huge potential" what it may become? Don't I want to get freaking r…

Can you really not find a single use for bitcoin? Here is the most obvious one - true sovereignty over your capital. When you have bitcoin, you have have physical ownership of a digitally transferable asset. Not legal ownership where a custodian ultimately decides whether you can access it. In theory nothing prevents individuals from carrying entire national budgets as seed words in their heads. You can argue ethics,…

Well, the owner of 51% of processing decides. It also has no use if both parties aren't connected to the internet. Also, you are in the truest sense not the owner of the bitcoins. You are using the "ownership service" of the network. If the network goes down, you lose access to the network (goverment internet filtering) or the network gets taken over, you lose everything. It's strictly worse than gold. The only downside of gold compared to this is that gold has to be physically stored somewhere

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#575

Post by undersuit »

nickpp wrote: post #332

How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs.…

I've always wondered what the cost for HDCP encryption on our media wastes.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#576

Post by DennisP »

nelsonenzo wrote: post #436
px43 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there. I'm one of those people who read Schneier's Applied Cryptography in highschool in the 90s, and immediately recognized the groundbreaking potential of using asymmetric cryptography for currency. I work in information security, and have seen first hand how our existing financial infrastructure is held together with string and scotch tape. For 10 years or so, every time I heard about some big credit card thef…

So, what about refunds when corporations rip us off? And what about losing 100% of my funds when my key is lost or stolen? All keys are lost/stolen - it doesn't take a rocket degree to have observed that from human behavior. Who enforces splitting of equity when some rich dick beats his wife into submission? The courts don't control any bitcoin keys. The problems of bitcoin are proportionately larger than then proble…

Some of the following applies more to chains with smart contracts, rather than Bitcoin itself, but:

> refunds when corporations rip us off?

Easily implemented in various ways. One old scheme is a simple 2-of-3 multisig, where the keys are buyer, seller, and arbitrator. If buyer and seller agree, the arb doesn't have to be involved, otherwise the arb decides where the funds go.

> what about losing 100% of my funds when my key is lost or stolen?

Hence Vitalik's advocacy of social recovery wallets: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html

> Who enforces splitting of equity when some rich dick beats his wife into submission? The courts don't control any bitcoin keys.

No, but courts have effective ways to make you pay up even when they don't directly control your funds, including putting you in jail for contempt.

> my children would not be able to trade fiat for it

If Bitcoin or whatever isn't available to anyone besides miners, then I don't see why it would have any value at all. Cryptocurrency that succeeds is out in the economy, not locked up in a small group of professionals. There are plenty of cryptocurrencies owned only by a small group of enthusiasts, and they are nearly worthless.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#577

Post by sparkie »

simias wrote: post #41

If this trend continue we may well seal our fate by crunching useless numbers at a global scale for the sake of greed and because we seem incapable of trusting each other. If this was written in a novel we'd deem it a bit too much on the nose really.

The greed is the chairs of central banks and the policymakers who are debasing other monies (some people benefit more than others from this).

If they weren't debasing other people's hard earned value, there would be no need for bitcoin.

But since they are, and are doing it at an increasing pace, the demand for bitcoin is inevitable.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#578

Post by betterunix2 »

Taek wrote: post #477
betterunix2 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important difference between Bitcoin and everything else you mentioned: there is no incentive to improve the energy-efficiency of mining. We went from CPU to GPU to ASIC mining, each time reducing the per-hash energy consumption, and all the miners did was hash more using the same amount of energy. Whereas, for example, the energy used to watch porn -- energy spent by all the routers, switches, and servers involved -…

Spending material wealth on mining is what makes it secure. We work on improving the per-hash cost because it makes it more difficult for someone with a brilliant technological innovation to compromise the security of the system. And there is incentive to improve the total energy use. Every participant in the system pays for the electricity that secures bitcoin in the form of inflation and transaction fees. If some a…

Basically your argument is, "Bitcoin may not incentivize improvements in energy efficiency, so we should scrap Bitcoin and use something more efficient." Great, let's do it. The technology is already here, in fact, the technology was always there. Have a consortium of banks operate a distributed public ledger. The banks will charge fees to include transactions on the ledger, just like miners charge fees now, and the economic incentives to raise or lower fees will be similar -- but the fees will be lower because the consortium members will not need to cover the electricity cost of mining, only the cost of operating their servers.

The only problem Bitcoin mining solves is the lack of identification among the miners (i.e. the "Sybil attack" problem). Seems pretty obvious to solve the problem by introducing identity, particularly given that the large miners / mining pools are not really anonymous. Sacrifice the small miners who contribute little to the system, set up a consortium, and enjoy whatever benefits the distributed ledger provide without the waste.

(Yes I know, banks are evil, how dare anyone suggest that we acknowledge any authorities in a system, why should we trust the banks, etc.)

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#579

Post by optimiz3 »

amackera wrote: post #504
sharpneli wrote: post #440

At that rate and assuming 4tx per second a single Bitcoin transaction consumes 165kWh. A Tesla battery is bit over 50kWh. So let's round that to 3 full charges of Tesla battery. That's 350km/220 miles of range per charge. In total 1050km or 660 miles of driving. So basically if you want to transfer money and the recipient is closer than 660 miles from you it's more efficient to just get a bunch of bills, drive there…

The downside of driving your tesla with a case full of bills is that there's no immutable world-wide distributed record of your transaction making it irreversible.

Plus the non-instantaneous driving part.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#580

Post by jf22 »

paystaxes wrote: post #544
jf22 wrote: post #169

Remember, the earth is burning. Crypto is a huge environmental issue.

If all crypto was mined with renewable energy, would it be a huge environmental issue?

Yes. Renewable doesn't mean without a carbon or other cost. All energy usage and production takes resources from the planet.
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