Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index • Hacker News Board

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#941

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #939

arcticbull wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nic Carter's point is intentionally obtuse and belies his conflicted interests. The reality is that if you scaled up the bitcoin system linearly so it provided as much transaction capacity as Visa (let alone the entire world economy) [edit or rather worded differently if each Visa transaction consumed as much power as a Bitcoin transaction], it would require a number of times more power than the entire world produces…

"if you scaled up the bitcoin system linearly so it provided as much transaction capacity as Visa ... it would require a number of times more power than the entire world produces" This is a complete fantasy - power consumption is driven by the desire to secure the network, it is not related to transaction volume. There is an argument that power consumption would have to be significant because attacking the network ha…

[deleted]

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#942

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #695

Am 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?

Yes that's wrong. Bitcoin can be trivially understood to be unnecessary, given the alternative proof-of-stake system, the alternative cash system, the alternative online banking system, the e-cash systems that exist...

It's less trivial to say that air travel can be trivially migrated to alternatives. In fact, I think you could make a good argument that some air travel is a net positive for the climate. The trick is knowing which part and whether you can get away with taking people's favorite toys away as a government (lots of people enjoy not traveling 3 weeks for a holiday on the other side of the globe).

The only practical use that I can see for Bitcoin is that you don't need a bank yet can make donations. I can donate to sci-hub without signing up for a shady online wallet that operates in Kazakhstan and isn't impacted by sanctions against sci-hub in other countries. But if that's really all there is aside from the investment scheme (you can invest in, say, helium: move the amount of money that people invested in Bitcoin to the helium market and you get the same effect without the power consumption) then we should just find alternative solutions for donating to "good for everyone but unfortunately illegal" services like wikileaks and sci-hub.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#943

Post by wendyshu » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

jude- wrote: post #870

There's lots of misdirected anger these last few days towards Bitcoin. First, the only thing that's energy-intensive about Bitcoin is block production. Making transactions, relaying them, validating them and storing them have negligible energy cost. Second, nothing about the Bitcoin protocol requires block production to use fossil fuels. Just like with every other energy-intensive industry , the problem isn't the ind…

Fossil fuels are already taxed and regulated.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#944

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

klntsky wrote: post #492

Why don't we care about how dynamic typing contributes to global energy consumption? Runtime overhead for preserving type info in memory (on large quantity of machines) is probably comparable to crypto mining (which is performed on very few machines in comparison).

Because that can't be trivially understood to be wholly unnecessary. Who is to say that it doesn't make programming a lot faster and saves a lot of development time? Conversely, Bitcoin really is unnecessary given all the alternative investment, payment, and timestamping schemes that don't use proof of work.

It's a matter of picking the easiest battles first. Bitcoin -> clearly evil -> why not move to another investment? Why not tax it for its environmental damage, like we tax other things that cause damage that the government later has to clean up?

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#945

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #253

How much of that would be wasted otherwise though? You want cheap electricity to mine Bitcoin, so any energy that would otherwise be wasted is ideal. Before Bitcoin, some energy was literally just thrown away. With Bitcoin, it can be put to use for a profit instead.

Electricity thrown away is a very very trivial amount compared to the amount Bitcoin uses. And there are still surpluses that are thrown away. Bitcoin doesn't magically tap into the grid and run only when there is a surplus; virtually all miners run it regardless of the current energy price on wholesale markets.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#946

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

meirelles wrote: post #607

It's not about today, but tomorrow. Inefficiency is way easier to fix than break paradigms. How much it spends per transaction now isn't that relevant.

I don't know if you're serious, but you can't make proof of work more efficient, nor can cryptocurrencies realistically get even close to the transaction capacity of current "paradigm" (banks). This won't ever change the paradigm. I fear you may be misinformed about where Bitcoin is headed.

I get you, though, I was also in it for the technology (as well as the profit, but I got in back when the "bitcoin faucet" gave away mined bitcoins freely, and I spent like 2 whole bitcoin on socks, there was no investment scheme in the beginning), but it has since become clear that this system can't be more than it currently is: an investment scheme that only works so long as more people put money in.

It will take another paradigm shift, as big as Bitcoin was compared to the "paradigm" before 2009, before perhaps someone proposes something that has all the beneficial properties and actually practically works (regardless of energy efficiency).

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#947

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

Layvier wrote: post #38

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there reason to believe even a majority comes from renewable sources? And then, how much of that clean energy could be powering other things which are instead using fossil fuels?

At least in Europe, the lowest prices (even negative sometimes) for electricity are when renewable energies are producing a lot (e.g. when there's a storm in the north sea). If bitcoin mines are plugged on the real time market of electricity they would have an incentive to turn on when there's a lot of renewable energy produced. Assuming mines optimize their mining schedules on that, there's a scenario in which it co…

Maybe, but only running miners when electricity is cheap doesn't work for a proof of work currency. 51% attacks would consist of an individual turning on their ASIC on a windless day. You need a large base load for it to be secure.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#948

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #75

raziel2p wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if all of Bitcoin uses renewables, that's demand for renewable energy that drives prices up, which will lead other energy consumers to either pay more or pick less expensive non-renewable energy sources instead.

I don’t think power markets are that fluid in most of the world

If energy demand suddenly halved, I do think we would choose to turn coal plants off before solar panels. Of course Bitcoin isn't half of any country's energy, but proportionally it works the same way. There is no reason not to turn it off except some daredevils' get-rich-quick scheme falls apart.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#949

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

durnygbur wrote: post #179

15 years ago we had been leaving computers running in the background to download and share data over P2P networks, nowadays it's to mine cryptocurrencies. How sad.

At least there was a point to the former: you got content. With bitcoin, just move the money to Helium or something and if everyone does it, you have the same investment scheme. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about Bitcoin, it's just that everyone agrees to put money into it. We can easily move away and still have an investment scheme. You can't easily move away from downloading movies yet still have that movie on your hard disk to watch. There is a difference here.

Re: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

#950

Post by mmoskal » Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

patchtopic wrote: post #911

A simple "back of the envelope" power use calculation of the possible power use of the bitcoin network, using the total hash rate from https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/hashrate-chart ( 151.55 EH/s ) and assuming all Antminer S19 (110 TH/s for 3250 watts) gives me a total power use of 0.00445 TWH which is very different to the 121 TWH on the cbeci site.. even given the efficiency range of mining gear (like if s…

It's TWh per year, so you have to multiply your figure of 0.00445 TW (without H!) by 24*365.25 hours giving you 39TWh/year; I guess if you add cooling and different gear you can get to 120TWh/year.

I agree it's kind of strange to measure stuff in TWh/year instead of just TW...