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Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

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Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#41

Post by Nbox9 »

robomartin wrote: post #36

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago. We both installed larger solar systems than we need. We are net exporters of energy. And we are both disgusted by how the energy company takes this energy and, effectively, pays us nothing for it while charging our neighbors who use it full rate. One of the ideas that was floated in the conversation was to setup a Bitcoin (or some other crypto) mining sy…

If you’re trying to ‘do the math’ one thing you might consider is that any excess heat from the rig can be recycled in the house.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#43

Post by lordnacho »

robomartin wrote: post #36

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago. We both installed larger solar systems than we need. We are net exporters of energy. And we are both disgusted by how the energy company takes this energy and, effectively, pays us nothing for it while charging our neighbors who use it full rate. One of the ideas that was floated in the conversation was to setup a Bitcoin (or some other crypto) mining sy…

Even if you only use excess energy for your own personal mining, the only way it has any value is if the rest of the network is running and mining.

In the end, whether you're disconnected or not, there's one market connecting everything and if incentives decide it, business (in general) and here electricity specifically will flow across whatever boundaries you've set.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#44

Post by vmception »

grzm wrote: post #14
hrhrhrhrhr wrote: post #8

Gold mining consumes 240.61 TWh per year, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Australia. Source: https://globalenergyprize.org/en/2021/11/24/the-bitcoin-gold...

Gold as a material has many uses, not only to back currency. Comparison to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is not particularly useful.

No post body was provided.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#45

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

>> My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun.

Dyson spheres and stellar engineering to power cryptocurrency mining rigs.

I shudder at the thought.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#47

Post by AlexCoventry »

sktrdie wrote: post #7

With a climate crisis the last thing we needed was to make the most effective energy consumption system ever constructed. The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. No other system works so efficiently towards such goal. What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable. My utopian hope for the future is that we start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun. Since we only…

> start sending rigs in orbit close to the sun

The 16-minute round-trip delay would wipe out any energy benefits, for bitcoin. Maybe you could come up with a consensus mechanism which allows people to somehow amortize recent calculations, though.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#48

Post by qqqwerty »

robomartin wrote: post #36

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a few days ago. We both installed larger solar systems than we need. We are net exporters of energy. And we are both disgusted by how the energy company takes this energy and, effectively, pays us nothing for it while charging our neighbors who use it full rate. One of the ideas that was floated in the conversation was to setup a Bitcoin (or some other crypto) mining sy…

It would take decades just to recoup the equipment costs. It currently takes about 12-18 months to recoup the equipment costs ignoring electricity costs This assumes running the miners 24/7. If you only run your equipment a few hours a day in the summer months when your excess solar power is most abundant, then a decade feels about right.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#49

Post by teraflop »

mwattsun wrote: post #25

The counter argument is that Bitcoin is a battery [1] so that if you live in a place like Iceland with plentiful energy, so much that even exporting it as aluminum leaves extra, then you can turn it into Bitcoin and export it that way. But most Bitcoin mining is not that. I feel like Joni Mitchell in the Big Yellow Taxi: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" [2] Why are we allowing this to happen? (Well, at…

The "Bitcoin as battery" analogy fails for at least two significant reasons, IMO:

1. If you spend energy to produce, say, charged batteries or aluminum or biodiesel, that allows you to do something useful with those resources without needing corresponding energy consumption later. When you spend energy to mine Bitcoin, there's no way to use it to decrease your future energy needs; you can only use it to pay others and induce them to produce something you want, spending even more energy in the process.

2. With most energy production methods, you can get at least a bit of extra efficiency by scaling up. But the Bitcoin economy in aggregate can't produce coins at a higher rate; the best you can do is compete for a larger slice of the fixed pie. So even though each individual miner is incentivized to spend more and more energy, the economies of scale are negative.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#50

Post by qwertygnu »

robomartin wrote: post #40
Nbox9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole thing literally works on competing on consuming more energy. I know this is pedantic, but the competition is about computational power. Energy is a significant input. Let’s not ignore the benefit that the more computational power that is spent in the competition the more secure the blockchain is from 51% attacks. Maybe 134 TWh is too high of a price for such a limited use technology such as bitcoin. Maybe…

> Blockchain is the single largest threat to banking, and that doesn’t come without a price. That's an interesting statement. The first question that occurred to me was: Why does banking have to be threatened? In other words, is this a solution looking for a problem?

Yes there are lots of problems with banking. Cryptocurrency does have a reason to exist, though of course we went and fucked it all up. It can help ordinary people outmaneuver oppressive regimes. It can perform that same core functions that banks can (i.e. keeping track of and moving around money) in a public and distributed way. The banking industry (often metonymically known as "Wall Street") is literally the canonical example of greed. There are problems with banking. In a better world, crypto can distribute the power of money. But, since it's a technology born within the system, it is instead used as a way of amassing value, and in the end only making the rich richer.
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