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Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#291

Post by triceratops »

jstanley wrote: post #217
triceratops wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To accomplish what end? Why are they marketing efficiency?

People like to buy energy from a company that they think shares their view on energy efficiency.

Is it common to have more than 2 options for a power company?

I personally pick my power company, if I have a choice at all, based on their rates and proportion of renewable energy generated. Most people probably only care about the rate.

Power companies aren't brands. People don't make choices based on which one is more "woke" or whatever.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#292

Post by rspeele »

patricius wrote: post #253
acdha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a particularly energy-efficient industry. This is your first mistake: the traditional banking system does not have a security model predicated on the ability to waste power. Bitcoin does, and it’s dynamic so there’s no way to waste less power which isn’t explicitly ceding control. The second error is tr…

Your first mistake is assuming that the power used to secure the Bitcoin network is a waste. It is clearly not, since thousands of people believe it is worth paying for. The second error is implicitly assuming that the number of people Bitcoin serves is correlated with it’s power usage. You could serve the same number of people as the banking sector does now without increased power consumption when you bring layer 2…

Your first point kind of makes it impossible to call anything a waste, right? Everything we do in society is paid for by somebody so it must all be worthwhile.

For the second point, are you talking about Layer 2 solutions that track cryptocurrency in a centralized database, like an exchange, where most transactions happen? Basically just traditional banking but with crypto as the unit of account. Or are you talking about decentralized layer 2 solutions like Lightning Network? I don't think Lightning Network can scale to match what the banking sector does, even if you ignore all the services banks provide other than facilitating transactions. For example you could not pay the US workforce with Lightning Network because it would take several months worth of of blocks just to open a channel to each person, and quickly those channels would run out of inbound capacity and you'd need to open more on top of that, so the Layer 1 capacity still limits the ability to use LN at that scale.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#293

Post by Symbiote »

sackfield wrote: post #136

If this is economically unproductive work, why are the miners being rewarded for it? Is it just that the market hasn't figured out what the detractors here seem to know? Or is it that they don't understand as much about economics as they think they do?

The miners are rewarded as bitcoins are useful for scamming, and kept as speculative investments.

Many people don't think either use justifies the environmental cost.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#294

Post by pcthrowaway »

tibbon wrote: post #172
PretzelPirate wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "security" of any cryptocurrency is proportional to how much energy it wastes This only applies to Proof of Work blockchain.

Which is what Bitcoin uses, and it is one of the largest and most commonly used cryptocurrencies out there.

Yes, but bitcoin is something of an outlier there.. I realize the "top 100" cryptocurrencies by market cap isn't necessarily very meaningful, but like 90% of those are proof of stake, including ethereum, which is the second most valuable cryptocurrency, and actually more widely used than bitcoin in terms of transactions or number of unique wallets.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#295

Post by digging »

spankalee wrote: post #158
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

> Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist. Fossil fuel consumption is. Sorry, but this is a ridiculous statement. Electricity is one of the most fungible things in existence, and renewables don't yet make up 100% of production, therefore any additional consumption _for the most part_ might as well be 100% generated from fossil fuels. Even if a miner has a contract…

> Even if a miner has a contract with a solar farm for all of their power, that's still electricity that someone else could be using instead of electricity from fossil fuels.

Not if the infrastructure wouldn't have been built without the miners.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#296

Post by timeon »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #183

The underlying problem is energy creation, not usage. If we had nuclear power plants everywhere and energy "too cheap to meter", no one would bat an eye at BTC energy usage. We need to stop thinking energy conservation, and start thinking on how we can GROW sustainable energy usage. People live better with more energy.

This thinking drives climate change.

There is no perpetual motion.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#298

Post by sp332 »

patricius wrote: post #253
acdha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a particularly energy-efficient industry. This is your first mistake: the traditional banking system does not have a security model predicated on the ability to waste power. Bitcoin does, and it’s dynamic so there’s no way to waste less power which isn’t explicitly ceding control. The second error is tr…

Your first mistake is assuming that the power used to secure the Bitcoin network is a waste. It is clearly not, since thousands of people believe it is worth paying for. The second error is implicitly assuming that the number of people Bitcoin serves is correlated with it’s power usage. You could serve the same number of people as the banking sector does now without increased power consumption when you bring layer 2…

We know that the power is wasted because the results are just thrown away. Only potentially winning results are even presented to the network.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#299

Post by mandibles »

Symbiote wrote: post #149
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

Visa used 189GWh in 2017, worldwide, of which around half was data centres [1]. That handled 111.2 billion transactions, so about 1.7Wh per transaction (half for datacentres). Bitcoin used 844670Wh per transaction [2]. [1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibil... [2] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Ah, the old Visa vs Bitcoin comparison. It was wrong when it was first made in 2009, and it's wrong now.

1. Bitcoin is a final settlement system, akin to moving gold bars from one vault to another. It achieves this settlement in minutes and requires no trusted intermediaries.

2. Bitcoin's energy consumption is a function of price, not of transaction throughput, so the two are orthogonal.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#300

Post by digging »

boc wrote: post #212
rglullis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard talking points from Bitcoin proponents.

Yeah that's a fair correction. Proof of Work appears to be a much, much better solution from an energy standpoint, although I'm less informed about the nitty-gritty.

You mean Proof of Stake.

POW is the wasteful one.

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