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Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

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Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#701

Post by bjr- »

Why do these discussions so often assume electricity is a finite resource? Are people not able to turn their lights on because of Bitcoin miners?

When Bitcoin miners consume electricity shouldn't that increased demand affect the market price and dis-incentivize mining? What other use of electricity has such a high price elasticity? People don't turn off their ACs in the middle of summer because electricity costs are high -- they value comfort, a lot. But miners, IIUC, shut down their ASICs when they're unprofitable. Bitcoin mining is extremely price sensitive.

If Bitcoin mining is driving up local electricity prices it seems worthy of local regulation. It also seems like an incentive for increased energy production -- and given today's prices would most likely be clean energy production.

The report states Bitcoin's consumption is 39% clean energy. That is considerably higher than the overall portion of global energy consumption from renewables. Does this not mean Bitcoin is a large source of demand for renewable energy? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...

Increased demand increases prices in the short-run and incentivizes production -- decreasing prices, and further increasing usage in the long-run. Right? What am I missing?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#703

Post by raziel2701 »

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…

This is amazing and absolutely crazy! Thanks for the analysis. It's still not going to convince the cultists that are hodling it unfortunately.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#704

Post by vruiz »

flopunctro wrote: post #697
kqr wrote: post #546

And 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 e…

I was going to point that the universe is not relevant here, only humans, the energy we produce and how we produce it matters. But then I realized that either your comment must be tongue in cheek or you are trying to hard to rationalize this than there is no point on try to convince you.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#705

Post by narcissismo »

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.

Also, if you accidentally drive 3601 miles, you lose on the transaction :)

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#707

Post by rednerrus »

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…

I've been in since very early on as well. There isn't anything, other than black market transactions, that BTC is good for. The idea that it has some kind of inherent value is completely insane. People are willing to pay for it now because Tether is artificially keeping the price high. Sooner or later someone (US government, Russian mobsters) are going to nab those Tether dudes and the game is going to be up.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#709

Post by xorcist »

frongpik wrote: post #596
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…

Are you saying that if I send you $100 worth of bitcoins, the network would spend 700 kWh? I find that hard to believe.

Not really. The network spends those kWh whether you send your transaction or not.

It's also worth to note that nobody really knows how many kW miners really burn. All the figures are more or less educated guesses from the efficiency of equipment sold publicly. If someone has a more efficient method they probably won't share it.

But nobody accused Bitcoin of being efficient, ever. That's what almost everyone notices when reading about it first time.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#710

Post by dsco »

kqr wrote: post #546

And 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.

There’s also proof of stake which requires a lot less energy. I think a lot of nuance is missed when discussing Bitcoin and its consensus mechanism as the only way of running a blockchain
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