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Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

blog.bitcoin.org.hk

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Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#101

Post by ballenf »

Why is energy consumption itself become a bad thing? I get greenhouse gas emissions being bad, but why make energy consumption itself a negative?

Not to mention that "consuming" energy is somewhat a fiction: it's more so changing the entropy of a system. True consumption of energy, at the extreme, would imply sending energy into deep space (any direction other than the sun really) where it can never be recovered.

Is the problem that such entropy changes usually (always?) result in at least some heat loss? And the the planet is warming, so heat itself is seen as a negative?

To make my point a different way, if a mining rig were 100% solar and 100% efficient (both fantasy, of course), then it could consume unlimited solar energy with no ill effects. Thus basing our judgment on energy consumption instead of waste heat and energy source issues seems misguided.

Is it just too complicating to discuss this in terms of CO2 emissions and waste heat, instead of Watts alone?

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#102

Post by matt_wulfeck »

When a handful of people control 40% of your market: it’s not decentralized.

When you consume more energy than your house does over 1 week to make a single transaction: it’s not efficient.

When it takes hours or days to settle: it’s not fast.

So what is bitcoin, anyway? From what I can tell a way for people to get rich.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#103

Post by jasode »

asdgkknio wrote: post #91
seanwilson wrote: post #22

One of the big selling points of Bitcoin is that it's meant to be decentralised but it doesn't look like this plays out. Proof of work seems to inevitably lead to all the power going to parties that can afford specialised hardware who are in countries with low electricity costs. Running a Bitcoin miner on commodity hardware now is pointless which seems to go against the spirit of Bitcoin when it started. Was this pre…

>Coming up with a way to have a decentralised currency where everyone involved gets a fair say without consuming too many resources is a super interesting problem. I think the obvious solution is to do useful work rather than throwing away work on crypto. Have miners solve real problems and give them credit for getting the right answer. This is what Ethereum is supposed to do. I don't think it's a great solution. It'…

>obvious solution is to do useful work rather than throwing away work on crypto

Keep in mind that the parent stated multiple conditions in the problem and your "obvious solution" only addresses the "too many resources" component.

Doing "useful work" is obviously better but still doesn't address the "fair say in decentralization".

>I'm trying to design a system where something like 95% of the work goes to useful computation, [...] It's a hard problem.

And to make it an even harder problem, also try to design a cryptocurrency system where Bill Gates' billions to buy supercomputer hardware has no advantage over a typical homeowner with a cheap computer. Maintaining _economic_ decentralization is very hard. I'm not aware of any decentralized protocol that has solved it. Heck, most whitepapers about decentralized protocols don't even explicitly discuss it.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#104

Post by matt4077 »

UncleEntity wrote: post #80
matt4077 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about not bitcoin, where a transaction doesn't consume 9 day's worth of an average family's energy budget? Utility: a transaction costs $10, right? It's useless. Security: Have you followed this? The actual recommendation is to print your private keys and stick them in a vault. Trust: It's funny that, fundamentally, people started doubting the Federal Reserve when the gold standard was abolished, because suddenly…

People doubted the Federal Reserve long before 1971...

....and Bitcoin can't even dream of the trust that comes with having been doubted long before 1971.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#105

Post by rspeer »

dmihal wrote: post #93
QAPereo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a waste to burn CPU cycles, to have a chunk of entropy to wave around so that you can possibly buy shit? Yes.

Is it a waste to have a webserver running all day, sitting idle for most of the day?

Idle CPUs use very little power.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#106

Post by ResearchAtPlay »

ballenf wrote: post #101

Why is energy consumption itself become a bad thing? I get greenhouse gas emissions being bad, but why make energy consumption itself a negative? Not to mention that "consuming" energy is somewhat a fiction: it's more so changing the entropy of a system. True consumption of energy, at the extreme, would imply sending energy into deep space (any direction other than the sun really) where it can never be recovered. Is…

Every form of electricity production consumes an array of limited natural resources. Wind and solar power don't have no direct CO2 emissions, but minerals need to be mined, plenty of clean water is consumed during manufacturing, and wildlife habitats are impacted by land-use change (wind and solar plants have a comparatively larger land footprint than fossil fuel plants).

Fun Fact: The article says Bitcoin mining consumes ~1.1 GW of power. There is currently a massive political struggle over the construction of "Site C", a 1.1 GW Hydroelectric dam in British Columbia, Canada. Construction on that dam began last year, but public opposition caused a new provincial government to review the dam construction. The dam will flood 93 square kilometers of land but produce 5.1 GWh of low-carbon electricity annually, about 53% of the articles assumed Bitcoin mining consumption of 9.6 GWh (which is = 1.1 GW x 8760 hours/year). Whether construction of the dam will be cancelled or resumed, the decision will be controversial! (The decision will be announced before the end of the year).

In summary, bitcoin mining from renewable energy sources is desirable, but bitcoin mining (and all other forms of computing) will always have some negative impact. That is something we need to be aware of.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#107

Post by scrumper »

DSMan195276 wrote: post #92
scrumper wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so different to burning diesel to dig up rocks so you have a chunk of metal to wave around. Which isn't, you'll notice, necessarily a counter argument to yours.

I would actually argue it is very fundamentally different. Once you've dug up your chucks of metal, trading them with others requires very little extra energy to be expended (Especially if we're going to go all the way to talking about actual cash, which is easy to split-up into smaller denominations). Vs. Bitcoin, which will still require miners to expend the same amount of CPU cycles to keep the network working so…

It'd be interesting to see a table of 5 year energy cost from inception of a bar of gold vs. equivalent value of Bitcoin, at various #s of transactions.

Re: Bitcoin mining and energy consumption

#109

Post by OhDagny »

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.

Banks make tons of money laundering illegal operations.

You don't think they are licking their chops over bitcoin too?

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