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Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

blog.bitcoin.org.hk

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Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#11

Post by kevinthew »

joss82 wrote: post #7

From a quick research online, it seems that most mining pools are located in China [1] Roughly 2/3rd of electricity in China is produced from burning coal or gas, which, upon combustion, emit their own weight in CO2, basically. [2] From this two facts, one can conclude that Bitcoin has a pretty huge carbon footprint overall. This is not the impression that I got from reading that article. [1] https://bit-media.org/bi…

Yeah, the article makes some false claims about how electricity markets work. By driving up power demand, you're incentivizing fossil fuel usage as it is the marginal molecule. The cheap power on the grid is already likely being max utilized, so any incremental kwh from bitcoin will come from the next cheapest source. Globally, that's probably coal or natgas.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#12

Post by jrimbault »

robin_reala wrote: post #4

Its base reward (currently at 12.5 Bitcoin per block) will half every four years, until it reaches zero. That’s not how halving works.

Computers can't keep dividing, at some point halving will reach "0". (funnily I had forgotten until your comment that in real[sic] mathematics, you can keep dividing)

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#13

Post by drinchev »

I don't get why journalists are not writing about the criminal side of Bitcoins.

Lots of "users" ( not investors ) interested in Bitcoins are actually .onion sites or other shady / crime organisations.

They actually don't care for human life and I doubt they will care for electricity consumption.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#14

Post by yonatron »

"Stellar maintenance entities, are those pesky Star-beavers ruining your convective zone? Do their hydrogen dams constantly clog up radiation from your photosphere? Never fear! With new extra-strength Dam-begone, your star will shine as brightly as 4 galactic years ago! Stay radiant! Stay prominent! Don't wait. Get Dam-begone this rotation! Operators are standing by.". - (I think you might have meant "hydroelectric generator dams")

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#15

Post by ben_w »

joss82 wrote: post #7

From a quick research online, it seems that most mining pools are located in China [1] Roughly 2/3rd of electricity in China is produced from burning coal or gas, which, upon combustion, emit their own weight in CO2, basically. [2] From this two facts, one can conclude that Bitcoin has a pretty huge carbon footprint overall. This is not the impression that I got from reading that article. [1] https://bit-media.org/bi…

Three times their weight in CO2. The C’s and the O’s are similar (ish) masses.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#16

Post by tromp »

robin_reala wrote: post #4

Its base reward (currently at 12.5 Bitcoin per block) will half every four years, until it reaches zero. That’s not how halving works.

The current reward of 12.5*10^8 satoshi will reduce to 1 satoshi in exactly 30 halvings (120 years), and the next halving after that will truncate it down to 0 satoshi.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#17

Post by vog »

joss82 wrote: post #7

From a quick research online, it seems that most mining pools are located in China [1] Roughly 2/3rd of electricity in China is produced from burning coal or gas, which, upon combustion, emit their own weight in CO2, basically. [2] From this two facts, one can conclude that Bitcoin has a pretty huge carbon footprint overall. This is not the impression that I got from reading that article. [1] https://bit-media.org/bi…

If I remember correctly, mining farms (and data centers in general) are usually colocated to an energy source, i.e. a plant.

Some of those plants are not fully stretched, because there's almost no civilization nearby, so delivering to the next city comes with a huge loss in the energy network.

So miners can get cheap energy from those plants - energy that would otherwise be unused or lost anyway.

Not sure how much this saves in the end, but this shows that you can't simply convert energy to CO2 emission without considering which types of plants are used and where these are located.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#18

Post by have_faith »

drinchev wrote: post #13

I don't get why journalists are not writing about the criminal side of Bitcoins. Lots of "users" ( not investors ) interested in Bitcoins are actually .onion sites or other shady / crime organisations. They actually don't care for human life and I doubt they will care for electricity consumption.

Do you know of any sources that try and track this sort of thing? like as a rough percentage of dirty money in the system. Because I get the impression that with the recent run of people getting in the percentage of shadyness is dropping as result because of the massive increase in volume from speculators.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#20

Post by sandworm101 »

moneytide1 wrote: post #5

The electricity consumption is a red flag, but perhaps it could be cheaper than the cost to build and maintain Guarda/Loomis trucks that carry physical currency, energy to melt metal to mint coins, and all the costs of building brick&mortar banks (even then, bankers provide auxiliary services like loans and advisement). We are all spending time talking about it as a collective effort to determine whether or not it sh…

These numbers are far beyond the energy required for trucks hauling cash. And they dont fully account for the truck-type energy to build and manage the bcoin mining industry.
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