Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
1–10 of 109 posts
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#2""If Bitcoin were to be adopted as a global reserve currency," he speculates, "the Bitcoin price will probably be in the millions, and those miners will have more money than the entire [US] Federal budget to spend on electricity."
"We'd have to double our global energy production," he says with a laugh. "For Bitcoin."
He says it also limits the number of transactions the system can process to about five per second.
This doesn't make for a useful currency, he argues."
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#3The people that write these articles haven't the faintest idea of the protocol and repeat the same tired arguments over and over again. Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not? Who becomes the arbiter of what tech or sector deserves to draw on the grid?
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#4The people that write these articles haven't the faintest idea of the protocol and repeat the same tired arguments over and over again. Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not? Who becomes the arbiter of what tech or sector deserves to draw on the grid?
Because there are alternatives to Bitcoin that don't suffer from that design flaw.
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#5Bitcoin's energy use is only high because so many people want to participate in mining, the difficulty constant had to increase. If the "bubble burst", bitcoin would continue to operate unhindered with the exact same number of processed transactions with a much lower use of energy.
The assertion that bitcoin may be doomed specifically because more people want to participate, is laughably wrong. It is designed to adapt to a market that is itself adapting to it.
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#6The people that write these articles haven't the faintest idea of the protocol and repeat the same tired arguments over and over again. Why does Bitcoin have to justify its energy usage when the legacy financial system does not? Who becomes the arbiter of what tech or sector deserves to draw on the grid?
The "legacy financial system" is far, FAR more energy efficient in comparison.
Bitcoin's rising power usage doesn't achieve a greater capacity, it's simply the result of an arms race between miners. The faster others mine, the faster you must do so as well, if you want to keep making money. But Bitcoin's design results in that the increased power doesn't really do anything for the network. It doesn't make it faster, or give it a higher capacity.
Bitcoin is also not a financial system, it's a global game of chicken.
Even Bitcoin Cash, which keeps the same stupid design is a more attractive option if one wants to have anything resembling an economy simply due to that they increased the block size limit.
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#7At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes.
How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#8""If Bitcoin were to be adopted as a global reserve currency," he speculates, "the Bitcoin price will probably be in the millions, and those miners will have more money than the entire [US] Federal budget to spend on electricity." "We'd have to double our global energy production," he says with a laugh. "For Bitcoin." He says it also limits the number of transactions the system can process to about five per second. T…
People just want an asset that can't be manipulated away. If it takes tons of energy, or if it totally changes power dynamics, or if we need to transact in different ways, then so be it. No one is going to give up the opportunity to own something like this for any reason. Regardless of whether people like it or not, they will have to adapt, since there is probably no viable way to stop something like this when people decide they want it.
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#9Luckily there is a whole new generation of PoS networks that don't rely on proof of work. Some even automatically buy carbon offset credits to maintain a carbon neural footprint.
Re: Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
#10At some point mining will stop and energy use will only amount to running the blockchain nodes. How far are we from the total number of Bitcoins the system allows?
That's not how it works. As the number of coins minted nears the maximum the difficulty and reward for mining coins increases exponentially.