The problem with Bitcoin is that POW is an unbounded competition of who can provide more computational power, ie. energy, to represent a consensus. Comparing the energy usage to Argentina, Island or any other country is therefore just a snapshot of the issue: Miners are incentivized to either increase the efficiency of mining, or invest more energy -- and because the latter option is easier, we see power usage rising and rising, without it having any influence on the performance or functionality. The only imaginable bound is all the energy that Humans can dispose of, but I think that if that is even being considered, the means have been mistaken for the goals.
Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#692Isn't it funny how the attacks on bitcoin have come after the Tesla announcement?
Who is paying for these attacks I wonder?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#693Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#694And this is not surprising. Cryptocurrency is designed to be anti-efficient. "Proof of work" is just a synonym for "having wasted tons of energy." This is my main beef with these systems. Gaining fundamental value from the act of wasting energy and being the one to accelerate the (local) heat death by the most is not a sensible basis for a 21st century technology.
You may be interested in Ada coin. It uses a "proof of stake" algorithm instead which does not rely on processing power. Virtually infinitely more eco-friendly.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#695Am I wrong that resources spent mining Bitcoin aren't that much different from money spent on else? Is the impact of buying $1000 worth of concrete, airline flights, tomatoes, iPhones, etc. etc. significantly different?
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#696At 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…
You are leaving out significant amounts of energy consumed in the legacy financial system. Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? Where’d that come from? Etc. I’m not sure that any of this is meaningful in any way.
If you compare the money (resources) spent bitcoin mining and the money (resources) spent operating the world’s central banks, then the costs are similar.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#697And this is not surprising. Cryptocurrency is designed to be anti-efficient. "Proof of work" is just a synonym for "having wasted tons of energy." This is my main beef with these systems. Gaining fundamental value from the act of wasting energy and being the one to accelerate the (local) heat death by the most is not a sensible basis for a 21st century technology.
In the grand scheme, the "tons" (or rather, gigajoules) of energy wasted by the Proof-of-Work are nothing. The Sun radiation that hits Earth every second dwarfs this consumption.
Also, one of the definitions of life is "a local decrease in entropy, at the cost of a global, larger, increase in entropy". By this criteria, every living being is a bad thing for the universe, because it accelerates the global heat death ever so slightly.
I guess my point is, some uses of energy are acceptable, even desirable. And every use of energy accelerates the heat death of the universe, but we humans are insignificant on this scale; there is really nothing that we can do to even accelerate our Sun's death. We're not even Kardashev-1 :)
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#698At 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…
Bitcoin uses electricity for security, not transactions. The transaction rate for bitcoin is basically independent of the hashrate
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#699I'm here for the bad takes by the hodlers.
Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system Yeah, but those people are wrong. It's perfectly reasonable to judge them for doing harmful actions in service of a wrong belief.
Beliefs that used to be "wrong" and now are considered right: abolitionism, homosexuality, marijuana. How do you know this is a wrong belief that will stay wrong?
> How do you know this is a wrong belief that will stay wrong?
How do you know it won't?
Just because some beliefs that used to be "wrong" are now considered "right", does not mean all beliefs that used to be "wrong" will in the future be considered "right".
As the quote says, "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."