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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

#91

Post by belltaco »

superkuh wrote: post #64

How much energy did the standing army for the dollar and it's logistics network consume during 2021? Much, much, much, more. And yet the energy expenditure to defend the Bitcoin network from attacks both succeeded using far less and the energy was used completely non-violently. Bitcoin's efficiency and morality stands head and shoulders above nation state based mechanisms for defending the integrity of their currenci…

>How much energy did the standing army for the dollar and it's logistics network consume during 2021? Much, much, much, more.

The standing army defends a lot more than the USD. If BTC was adopted as currency, the size and cost of the standing army would barely change.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#92

Post by cryptica »

I like cryptocurrencies but this high electricity usage has kept me away from Bitcoin in the early days. I've since come to forgive Bitcoin for this ridiculous energy usage because of how important a problem Bitcoin is solving (the world desperately needs provably scarce, deflationary hard money). It's just unfortunate that people chose to focus on Bitcoin and not some other PoS crypto which uses less electricity... Unfortunately, now there are all sorts of false narratives around how PoW is more secure than PoS and the Bitcoin tribe will not accept any argument which says otherwise, no matter how logical.

I think we are stuck with Bitcoin for now. It's unstoppable. The delusion is too strong. But on the plus side, it will likely solve major economic problems once it reaches mass adoption.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#93

Post by geertj »

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…

> What's scary is that the whole thing was designed to be unstoppable.

It’s only unstoppable within the game theoretic model of crypto itself, not within the larger societal context. Once Bitcoin power consumption enters the common discourse, my guess is that politicians will step in and simply outlaw PoW systems. There is no real downside for politicians. The average voter hasn’t yet invested their life savings into Bitcoin, and once PoS systems exist at scale proponents can’t use the innovation argument anymore. Especially in Europe, politicians are serious about climate and are pondering much more draconian changes than outlawing some forms of crypto.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#94

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

bcherny wrote: post #69

Not an expert, but Proof-of-stake (what Etherium 2.0 does) solves this, right? Now Bitcoin needs to find a path to implement it. https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/

Yes for Ethereum but Bitcoin will never adopt it, for ideological reasons. The community is extremely resistant to big changes like this. It took what should have been a small and uncontroversial change (where to store the witness data for transactions in a block) years of vicious debate and led to competing forks.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#95

Post by clippablematt »

hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

I’d be willing to bet over the next five years we see the biggest most impactful developments for reforestation/carbon offsets/political lobbying for change/rewilding programs /etc will come from crypto groups, funded and organised by daos. It’s brewing already. I also think we’ll see bitcoin become a smaller part of crypto and pow being banned in some countries. It’s going to be an interesting decade.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#96

Post by ur-whale »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #47
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.

> Maybe you could come up with a consensus mechanism which allows people to somehow amortize recent calculations

Isn't that exactly what pooled mining is all about?

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#97

Post by hihihihi1234 »

hsavit1 wrote: post #28

We are rapidly depleting our remaining carbon budget. Can a bitcoiner please explain to me why this is a necessary technological development right now?

People don't have faith in the mainstream financial system and are fleeing for the exits.

Re: Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total during 2021

#98

Post by eric_cc »

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?

> Why does banking have to be threatened?

Is this a real question?

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