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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#51

Post by hwillis »

jstanley wrote: post #42
politician wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point -- in earlier times slaves worked the mines to extract gold from raw earth. Gold was a good store of value because of its scarcity. Likewise, Bitcoin mines the electrical grid.

Are you arguing that using the electricity you paid for is immoral, or are you arguing that using slaves is not immoral as long as you use them for something good? I don't see how your analogy applies.

Slaves are unimportant to his point. Gold being scarce means it was hard to counterfeit gold coins in a time when you couldn't mint coins in a reliable way. Likewise, the purpose of bitcoin mining is to verify transactions in a way that is hard to counterfeit, making it more difficult to get a majority share of mining. The difficulty enforces scarcity.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#52

Post by IgorPartola »

alister wrote: post #44

You can't compare Bitcoin to Visa. Visa is merely a payment sytem -- a means of transfer of money that already exists. Visa is not money. Bitcoin however is money. As well as being a payment system. The correct comparison would be to compare the cost of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars or gold. Gold requires hundreds of dollars per ounce and untold energy to extract. U.S. dollars require the existence of a powerful economy an…

Compare it to cash and coins seems the most appropriate. How much energy does harvesting cotton, making into bills, and distributing it all over the place take? Don't forget those fun armoired trucks that have to cart it from place to place. Pennies famously cost more than $0.01 to produce because of the cost of metal. Metal that has to be dug out of the earth, trucked, smelted, trucked, stamped, trucked again.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#53

Post by lemonycracket »

It would be nice to understand the Banking Industry Energy Consumption.

Let's add up:

- human time and labor for tellers

- cost to feed floor traders cocaine

- cost of ink,paper, etc

Let's add that up and see what that looks like.

We already know that FIRE (Financial Insuranc Real Estate) sectors siphon off about 40% of total economic value from GDP.

1/1000th of global energy for BTC and ETH is amazing in these early days. It will become orders of magnitude more efficient.

Another FUD article that does not compare opportunity cost compared to the cost to run the current financial systems.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#54

Post by lemonycracket »

IgorPartola wrote: post #52
alister wrote: post #44

You can't compare Bitcoin to Visa. Visa is merely a payment sytem -- a means of transfer of money that already exists. Visa is not money. Bitcoin however is money. As well as being a payment system. The correct comparison would be to compare the cost of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars or gold. Gold requires hundreds of dollars per ounce and untold energy to extract. U.S. dollars require the existence of a powerful economy an…

Compare it to cash and coins seems the most appropriate. How much energy does harvesting cotton, making into bills, and distributing it all over the place take? Don't forget those fun armoired trucks that have to cart it from place to place. Pennies famously cost more than $0.01 to produce because of the cost of metal. Metal that has to be dug out of the earth, trucked, smelted, trucked, stamped, trucked again.

This.

That site is spreading FUD and fails to show the true impact (in terms of energy and lives) of the current legacy financial system.

Next thing you know they will demand you register carbon credits to run a mining rig.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#55

Post by jstanley »

hwillis wrote: post #51
jstanley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that using the electricity you paid for is immoral, or are you arguing that using slaves is not immoral as long as you use them for something good? I don't see how your analogy applies.

Slaves are unimportant to his point. Gold being scarce means it was hard to counterfeit gold coins in a time when you couldn't mint coins in a reliable way. Likewise, the purpose of bitcoin mining is to verify transactions in a way that is hard to counterfeit, making it more difficult to get a majority share of mining. The difficulty enforces scarcity.

Sorry, I thought it was a thinly-veiled moral argument equating bitcoin mining to use of slaves. Glad I was wrong.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#56

Post by hwillis »

GBiT wrote: post #25
givinguflac wrote: post #3

That is an absurd amount of energy. This really changes my opinion on this being a feasible currency.

Energy is whats backing Bitcoins value. You need a lot of energy to create this valuable document - block

Energy doesn't back bitcoin, it just stops the currency from inflating. Or it would, if mining could always produce new bitcoins, but IIRC its supposed to stop after a while.

The difference being that a bitcoin does not entitle you to some unit of energy or work produced from it. The energy used to verify bitcoin transactions is just lost.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#57

Post by rainbowmverse »

jstanley wrote: post #49
rainbowmverse wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of waste too narrowly. That power wasn't available for other things, so more had to be produced to cover Bitcoin and the other things, which meant more of all the negatives that come with energy production. Does Bitcoin provide something valuable enough to human civilization to account for that? Could that value have come from a more efficient source? Failing to account for externalities is how we get…

If you think you can replace bitcoin with something more efficient, please do so. The millions of people who use bitcoin every day would gladly switch to a cheaper version if it was truly just as good.

I don't take it as a given that Bitcoin is a good solution to the problem those people solve with it. The best of the bad solutions is still bad, and Bitcoin isn't looking too good by its power consumption. It's okay to stop, really think about a problem, and find a good solution instead of charging ahead with a bad one oblivious to the brick wall ahead.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#58

Post by politician »

hwillis wrote: post #51
jstanley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that using the electricity you paid for is immoral, or are you arguing that using slaves is not immoral as long as you use them for something good? I don't see how your analogy applies.

Slaves are unimportant to his point. Gold being scarce means it was hard to counterfeit gold coins in a time when you couldn't mint coins in a reliable way. Likewise, the purpose of bitcoin mining is to verify transactions in a way that is hard to counterfeit, making it more difficult to get a majority share of mining. The difficulty enforces scarcity.

Correct.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#59

Post by inborn »

iaw wrote: post #5
givinguflac wrote: post #3

That is an absurd amount of energy. This really changes my opinion on this being a feasible currency.

As the network hash power increases that value will only go up.

did you mean price will go up? either way it doesn't offset that high cost of use, so if humans here still value efficiency they might find it worthwhile to switch tools.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#60

Post by hwillis »

alister wrote: post #44

You can't compare Bitcoin to Visa. Visa is merely a payment sytem -- a means of transfer of money that already exists. Visa is not money. Bitcoin however is money. As well as being a payment system. The correct comparison would be to compare the cost of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars or gold. Gold requires hundreds of dollars per ounce and untold energy to extract. U.S. dollars require the existence of a powerful economy an…

>The correct comparison would be to compare the cost of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars or gold. Gold requires hundreds of dollars per ounce and untold energy to extract. U.S. dollars require the existence of a powerful economy and trillion dollar military to keep the currency secure and desirable.

No it isn't- the energy cost of bitcoin is ongoing and depends on the volume of transactions. Each time money changes hands, it costs energy to verify it. Comparing it to VISA or ACH makes the most sense, because those also incur ongoing costs per transaction.

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