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Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

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Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#31

Post by cryptica »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #25

One bullet point says: "On average Bitcoin generates 272 g of e-waste per transaction processed on the blockchain." So transactions on exchanges are less wasteful? A deposit from wallet to exchange generates the same pollution? Or is it "only" mined transactions? Does the transaction size matter?

Transactions on exchanges do not affect the blockchain's state so they require orders of magnitude less energy... Making a trade on a centralized exchange or performing an off-chain transaction on a centralized wallet doesn't use much more energy than posting a Tweet on Twitter.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#32

Post by paulgb »

unnouinceput wrote: post #7

This reminds me of that tweet from BP about their environment calculator, can't find the source right now. But the idea is they "care" about environment while they did the biggest oil spillage in history, otherwise known as the old proverbial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_bla... Do I really need to point who is the biggest e-waste generator in the world? Solve that problem first.

> Solve that problem first.

What’s “that problem”? It’s not clear from your post.

We always seem to go in circles with whataboutism when posts like this appear: “X is a bigger problem so let’s solve that”. We can do this for every problem — look at the data through the right lens and another problem is always bigger - and never solve anything.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#34

Post by mdale »

api wrote: post #15
giuliomagnifico wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need a way better (re)use of the heat generated by the hardware instead cooling it or placing the hardware in cool places.

There was a startup somewhere trying to sell Bitcoin miners as home heating units in cold climates, but the economics don't work since the chips are too expensive and gas is also still too much less expensive than electricity to heat with. Most industrial processes require heat beyond what a mining chip could handle... unless you fabricated special mining chips out of different semiconductor materials that can handle…

Except in 2 years they would be obsolete because of wear and tear and or because a new node process is released and or we get more clever around specialized chips for this purpose. More and more parts of the economy are mapped into this work relative to the scarcity of these bits of value. Bitcoin is 0.5% today of global energy usage a few more multiples and it's going to much more directly tie global energy costs to the price fluctuations the currency.

We risk the whole world becoming paperclips type economics doomsday scenario.. least growing number of people that ascribe value to cryto agree to collectively ascribe to an alternative model for distribution of transaction security.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#35

Post by mcjshciejebcu »

Whenever I read anything about how resource intensive the bitcoin network is, I wonder how it compares to the total energy and other resource use of traditional finance. Those costs have got to be pretty high for traditional finance, especially considering minting and transportation of physical money and considering the innumerable humans needed to run it. However, I've never seen a serious estimate of those numbers, so I have no idea how they compare to bitcoin's.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#36

Post by krisrm »

mcjshciejebcu wrote: post #35

Whenever I read anything about how resource intensive the bitcoin network is, I wonder how it compares to the total energy and other resource use of traditional finance. Those costs have got to be pretty high for traditional finance, especially considering minting and transportation of physical money and considering the innumerable humans needed to run it. However, I've never seen a serious estimate of those numbers,…

I think it's a somewhat moot comparison, as Bitcoin does just about none of what traditional finance actually does, particularly on the "human" side of things.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#37

Post by shtps »

pcdoodle wrote: post #13

Apple is doing the same thing along with everyone else. Go look at an e-waste facility, It will be less than 0.001% of total e-waste.

This is an interesting point and made me wonder what percentage does bitcoin contribute annually according to the numbers in the linked paper.

Bitcoins annual estimated e-waste: 307 000 metric tons Global annual estimated e-waste: 53 600 000 metric tons

307 000 / 53 600 000 * 100 = 0.57 %

I don't know if the numbers in the linked paper and the following paper can be used together as I haven't read both, but I've taken the global annual e-waste estimate from here as unfortunately the linked paper does not mention it in the abstract: https://www.itu.int/myitu/-/media/Publications/2020-Publicat...

While I do think Bitcoin in its current form is a problem and the developers should start thinking of solutions sooner than later, I think starting with Bitcoin to reduce total e-waste is misguided at best.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#38

Post by me_me_me »

simonw wrote: post #23
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #19

Completely pales next to something as egregious as disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods. They will still be washing up on beaches 100 years after every single person involved in their design has passed. Whole electronics industry needs to take this stuff more seriously, we need more replaceable batteries and storage, right to repair on a global level and laws…

You really think that AirPods are a larger cause of e-waste than dedicated Bitcoin mining equipment? Or are you comparing dedicate mining equipment to all consumer technology combined?

Of course. The example wasnt about AirPods but the whole catalogue of consumer electronics bought every year, for sole reason of owning newer version as a social status.

Iphones pods pads etc etc.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#39

Post by rattlesnakedave »

moritonal wrote: post #12

I'm starting to get irate now with the hypocrisy of some who talk about how the Government need to be more green, but then follow up with "oh my bitcoin worth's gone through the roof!"

I'm starting to grow irate with the weekly "bitcoin is killing the enivornment" HN FUD threads from people that use AWS.

Re: Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem

#40

Post by zsmi »

JonathanBeuys wrote: post #24

Is the hardware still working when it is discarded? If it is only discarded because there is new hardware with a better calculations/energy ratio then it would be better to use a new POW algorithm, which does not benefit from single purpose ASICs. Or are processors and memory broken beyond repair when they have been running at max speed for a few years?

For dedicated ASICs: It's still working, but the hardware can only perform the SHA-256 hash algorithm crazy fast, that's it.

> it would be better to use a new POW algorithm, which does not benefit from single purpose ASICs.

It's hard for me to imagine what that would be but that could be a lack of imagination on my part. Maybe other non-payment blockchain applications?

The other day some friends and I were musing how cool it would be if we could map some simulation algorithms to SHA-256 primitives. I thought there could be chance because I didn't actually know the mathematical operation SHA was doing. Once I found out, it didn't work out at all. Not even close. Maybe others will be more fortunate.

And for the one-off needs more mainstream CPUs already have support for some acceleration of SHA-256 [1] and that seems to be enough for them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_SHA_extensions

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