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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

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Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#91

Post by hypnoce »

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…

>Bitcoin however is money.

Bitcoin is not money as we think in a modern way. If you think of money a way to exchange goods then yes Bitcoin is money. Modern money (printed piece of paper labeled in currencies in its materialized form. Just a sequence of digits on your bank account) is dept. That's why currencies have interest rates (IR). It is also possible to create money out of nothing. IR and volume are adjusted according to the economy. Bitcoin is closer to a commodity in the sense that it is finite and requires work to be extracted.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#92

Post by zeroxfe »

hwillis wrote: post #60
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…

> the energy cost of bitcoin is ongoing and depends on the volume of transactions

Wait, what? That's not correct at all.

The energy cost is based on the "difficulty", which is derived from the moving average of the hashpower in the network. Bitcoin effectively forces the network to take a specific amount of time to mine a block irrespective of the number of mining nodes. The transaction volume has nothing to do with it.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#93

Post by acchow »

alister wrote: post #78
hwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If read the article correctly, he's including the cost of mining Bitcoin, not merely energy cost to verify a coin (which is absolutely trivial). Once all Bitcoin is mined (yes, there's a built-in maximum), or it becomes prohibitively expensive to mine, there won't be any mining costs. You can look at the current Bitcoin energy costs as the startup cost to establish a new gold mine or a new country with its own curren…

> Once all Bitcoin is mined (yes, there's a built-in maximum), or it becomes prohibitively expensive to mine, there won't be any mining costs.

In that future you will still mine blocks, but there won't be any new bitcoin generated in that block. Sure, you might want to use a different word for that than "mining", but it will still have very real and significant energy.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#95

Post by aianus »

etatoby wrote: post #76
homero wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the mining is done next to hydro plants in China.

Still, there is a fixed amount of hydro power available, short of building new dams. This puts Bitcoin's toll on fossil fuel. (If Bitcoin didn't exist, the hydro power would still be there and would be used for something else, therefore less fossil fuel would have to be burned in its place.)

> If Bitcoin didn't exist, the hydro power would still be there and would be used for something else

That's not a good assumption. There are many power plants in China in the middle of nowhere unconnected to much. It's completely plausible that the entire bitcoin network could run on clean energy that otherwise couldn't be used for much else because it's too remote (geothermal in Greenland or something).

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#96

Post by jstanley »

alister wrote: post #78
hwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If read the article correctly, he's including the cost of mining Bitcoin, not merely energy cost to verify a coin (which is absolutely trivial). Once all Bitcoin is mined (yes, there's a built-in maximum), or it becomes prohibitively expensive to mine, there won't be any mining costs. You can look at the current Bitcoin energy costs as the startup cost to establish a new gold mine or a new country with its own curren…

Once all bitcoin is mined, there will still be mining costs, but they'll be 100% paid by tx fees.

Bitcoin will probably look extremely different by then, so most bets are off anyway.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#97

Post by aqme28 »

rspeer wrote: post #9

Apparently "terawatt-hours per year" is a unit that people use in public policy, but it strikes me as strange. Converting 16.22 TWh/year to a "more metric" unit, that's a sustained power usage of 1.85 gigawatts. So Bitcoin is constantly using more than enough power to make Doc Brown's eyes bug out.

I too hate seeing __ watt-hours per year. What's the point of the double time conversion? It's like saying "The movie starts in 3 kilometers per mile-per-hour"

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#98

Post by tylersmith »

hwillis wrote: post #60
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…

Energy consumption is in no way related to transaction volume. Whether there are thousands of txs per block or only one the energy used will be the same.

Re: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index

#99

Post by cloudhead »

alister wrote: post #78
hwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If read the article correctly, he's including the cost of mining Bitcoin, not merely energy cost to verify a coin (which is absolutely trivial). Once all Bitcoin is mined (yes, there's a built-in maximum), or it becomes prohibitively expensive to mine, there won't be any mining costs. You can look at the current Bitcoin energy costs as the startup cost to establish a new gold mine or a new country with its own curren…

Not quite, even when the cap is reached, new blocks will still need to be created for new transactions, which will require proof-of-work to achieve consensus, and thus energy expenditure.
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