10 ms·

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/BitFury-Launch-Energy-Efficient-Immersion-Cooling-Data https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201512110

• twic 11y ago
  40MW! For bitcoin! This is nuts!
  • morsch 11y ago
    As a point of comparison, a typical commercial nuclear reactor produces around 1000 MW (give or take; most power stations have more than one reactor).
    • thaumasiotes 11y ago
      You know, I'd kind of like to see someone construct a nuclear plant just to self-source their bitcoin mining power needs.
  • urbanarson 11y ago
    For comparison, how much power does Visa, Mastercard, the Federal Reserve (and its printing presses), banks, and all of the buildings and employees that work in the traditional financial sector use? Now think about that in every single country on this planet. It's a lot more than 40MW. The Bitcoin network is a steal by comparison.
    • homogeneous 11y ago
      You're comparing the microscopic bitcoin economy to the financial infrastructure that services the entire planet; it's a ridiculous comparison. How would bitcoin's power consumption stack up if it were tasked with servicing tens of millions of transactions per second?
      • astrodust 11y ago
        Given how people use tap-to-pay type services for vending machines and bus fare, that might be a low estimate on volume.
      • SolarNet 11y ago
        Well a miner like the one going live is also responsible for managing the transaction volume. So the capacity of Bitcoin to manage many more transactions just went up.
        • davidgerard 11y ago
          No, this is completely incorrect: the transaction rate limit is inherent in the protocol. You could do it with an increase in the block size, but the Bitcoinsphere has bitterly resisted all attempts to increase the block size.
      • CyberDildonics 11y ago
        > How would bitcoin's power consumption stack up if it were tasked with servicing tens of millions of transactions per second? It would stay almost the same since the hashing power is not connected to the number of transactions. Also by the way, no one does tens of millions of transactions per second, visa does something like 40,000 at their absolute peak.
        • gritzko 11y ago
          No, no, no. The amount of power wasted by BitCoin indirectly depends on the monetary turnover of the system. Because if somebody can spend $1mln to perform 51% attack and move around $1bln, that will likely be done. Hence, the power wasted is proportional to the turnover of the system. Otherwise, it does not work. Also, when a bank charges me 1% for a wire transfer, they pay salaries from that money and some people buy food. The power burnt by BitCoin is actually literally immediately irrecoverably physically wasted.
          • ikeboy 11y ago
    • sanswork 11y ago
      The federal reserve has no printing presses. VISA can process 10,000x as many transactions per second as Bitcoin and banks do a lot more than transferring funds.