Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index • Hacker News Board

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#871

Post by biolurker1 » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

doctorwho42 wrote: post #313

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'm in your boat, when it was first explained to me in a hacker space at college when it was first growing and priced at a few cents per 100++ Bitcoin. All I could see was a waste of energy and resources (time, energy, hardware). It will always be a drain on society, and it scares me that it hasn't failed because we see it draining our GPU industry to the point that market prices have gone insane and availability is…

In the end GPUs are better off using energy to play counterstrike than to generate sound money right?!

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#872

Post by johnyzee » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #677

janoside wrote: post #612

Nic Carter's rebuttal to a Bloomberg comparison between Bitcoin/Visa, including assessments of total and per/transaction energy usage: "First of all, Bitcoin and Visa are fundamentally different systems. Bitcoin is a complete, self-contained monetary settlement system; Visa transactions are non-final credit transactions that rely on external underlying settlement rails. Visa relies on ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, the global…

The first paragraph is a fair consideration. The second is a complete stretch. It's not as if America would suddenly stop providing military support to Saudi Arabia if we suddenly switched to bitcoin. An America that historically used Bitcoin would be even more incentivized to "secure" fossil fuel nations.

I think it is a very worthwhile observation, that existing, comparable systems also have massive 'externalities', only they aren't measured in kwH.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#873

Post by totalZero » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

johnyzee wrote: post #872

Aunche wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first paragraph is a fair consideration. The second is a complete stretch. It's not as if America would suddenly stop providing military support to Saudi Arabia if we suddenly switched to bitcoin. An America that historically used Bitcoin would be even more incentivized to "secure" fossil fuel nations.

I think it is a very worthwhile observation, that existing, comparable systems also have massive 'externalities', only they aren't measured in kwH.

That is a general defense of the form of the statement, but not a defense of the statement itself.

The dollar is not the largest cause of perpetual US entanglement in the Middle East. Oil dependency, on the other hand, may be.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#874

Post by totalZero » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #768

Aunche wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first paragraph is a fair consideration. The second is a complete stretch. It's not as if America would suddenly stop providing military support to Saudi Arabia if we suddenly switched to bitcoin. An America that historically used Bitcoin would be even more incentivized to "secure" fossil fuel nations.

Take a look at OPEC companies that have priced oil in other currencies: Iraq started pricing oil in euros in 1999: https://www.theglobalist.com/iraq-the-dollar-and-the-euro-5/ Iran started pricing oil in yuan in 2012: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-17988142 What's our geopolitical relationship with Iraq and Iran now?

The first Gulf War began in 1990, and the Iranian Revolution took place in 1979. The causality may well have taken place in the reverse of what you suggest.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#875

Post by frongpik » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

Cool. Now show us the Adtech Electricity Consumption Index and see if bitcoin would add up to even 1% of ads.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#876

Post by sbolt » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

choward wrote: post #702

sbolt wrote: post #228

Does anyone know how much energy the global gold mining industry uses?

Why does that matter? Nobody uses the gold standard anymore.

Both gold and Bitcoin are stores of value with high production costs, Bitcoin gets a lot of heat for its electricity consumption but I haven’t seen anyone ask the same for gold.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#877

Post by andreygrehov » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #860

andreygrehov wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super pessimistic. I don't know why this comment is at the top. The analogy and calculations are fun, but nothing more than that. You are basically suggesting that we all should buy Teslas, right? 330 miles roundtrip is about 5-6 hours of non-stop driving. Not the best UX. I do international transfers quite often. Every time I try to send a more or less large amount, it becomes a pain in the ass both for sender and r…

>You are basically suggesting that we all should buy Teslas, right? Here's how arguments work. You read a claim and disprove it by offering a counterexample. The weaker the counterexample, the weaker the disproven claim. In the case of Bitcoin a weak counter example is to show that even a grossly inefficient method of money transfer has superior efficiency. A stronger counterexample based on Visa's less than 2Wh per…

I'm well aware of how facts work. My Tesla response was more of a sarcasm and was primarily meant to highlight that the OPs arguments are somewhat useless. They make sense, but, practically, they are useless.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#878

Post by tomxor » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

A maximum of 178 things on the planet can consume >= to the electricity of Bitcoin.

99.44%/0.56% = ~178 (according to their estimate of 0.56% global use). So for the many comments invoking rhetorical comparisons: Bitcoin mining value per watt can be compared to no more than 178 things on Earth. Are we really saying there are only possibly 178 better uses for global energy than doing double SHA2 for no material value?

Bitcoin is wasteful.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#879

Post by Apofis » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

bennybitcoin wrote: post #835

Hi HackerNews, I don't typically post but seeing as this involves what I do daily, thought my input might be warranted. 1)Bitcoin mining by nature is a competitive game, people have flocked to cheapest power sources (unused hydro, solar, etc.) where the power costs are super low as that is the only recurring production cost. 2)There are no batteries that are power plant sized..... other than Bitcoin. Bitcoin allows o…

So, where do we draw the line? At which percentage of all human electric output do we say, maybe there's something wrong with this picture? 1% total? 5% total? 20% total output? We're at 0.59% now. Of all electricity we generate as a species.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#880

Post by andreygrehov » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

rspeele wrote: post #827

andreygrehov wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super pessimistic. I don't know why this comment is at the top. The analogy and calculations are fun, but nothing more than that. You are basically suggesting that we all should buy Teslas, right? 330 miles roundtrip is about 5-6 hours of non-stop driving. Not the best UX. I do international transfers quite often. Every time I try to send a more or less large amount, it becomes a pain in the ass both for sender and r…

In your estimation, how much Bitcoin is purchased in hopes of gaining freedom from the existing banking system, and how much Bitcoin is purchased in hopes of making money when it goes up?

> In your estimation, how much Bitcoin is purchased in hopes of gaining freedom

Not a lot, but it's definitely a thing. Speaking about majority, these days, most people and companies are accumulating Bitcoin only because in 5-10 years it'll worth much, much more. And that makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The shift to a digital form of currency will eventually happen anyway. I do not believe Bitcoin will ever become a global currency, but I strongly believe that it's going to stay with us for quite a long while. The blockchain technology is in its infancy and is experiencing a lot of research on all fronts.