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The title of the article is incredibly misleading. According to the content of the article, you could use, "as much energy as your house [uses] in a week," to m

The title of the article is incredibly misleading. According to the content of the article, you could use, "as much energy as your house [uses] in a week," to mine a bitcoin and still make a profit off of it due to the current price of bitcoin. That's a very different thing from a single transaction using that much energy.

ajross 9y ago
No, that's not what it's saying. Here's the quote: > [Bitcoin total power consumption] averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, I didn't go to primary sources to confirm those numbers, but if they are correct the title is accurate. The bigger point here isn't the price per transaction, it's to point out the absolutely absurd liquidity mess that bitcoin has become. To first approximation, no one uses bitcoin to buy anything anywhere, ever. They just park coins as investments, hoping to cash out at some point in the future. Except of course that won't work, because when it comes time to cash out, everyone will realize that there is no one out there to buy your coins. The crash, when it comes (and it will) will be catastrophic. And also, yeah, it's wasting a ton of energy.
- danbruc 9y ago
  No, you got it wrong, the Bitcoin total power consumption is unknown but it can be bound from below by the hash rate and the most efficient mining hardware available and from above by the price, block reward, and energy costs assuming nobody is mining at a loss. Reread the paragraph before your quote. [...] estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually [...]
  - ajross 9y ago
    All estimates I've seen are that bitcoin mining in practice is extraordinarily efficient and that new capacity comes online to track price increases quickly. You have evidence to the contrary that miners are leaving money on the table?
    - danbruc 9y ago
      If that is true, then the actual energy consumption would closely track the theoretically expected maximum. This shifts the question to how accurate the discussed estimate is but it still does not give the total energy consumption. But we could probably agree that it is probably on the same order of magnitude.
- cgmg 9y ago
  > The crash, when it comes (and it will) will be catastrophic. Your statement is unfalsifiable and meaningless. When will the crash come?
- dr_win 9y ago
  I just preordered Trezor T (hardware wallet) and paid with bitcoins. So your statement "no one uses bitcoin to buy anything anywhere, ever" is provably false.
  - ajross 9y ago
    There, uh, was a clause immediately preceding that statement. The point isn't that it never happens, it's that the total value of bitcoin transactions used for "money" is dwarfed by those used to simply "buy coins".
- harpiaharpyja 9y ago
  Did you read the paragraph just before that, where they state how they came up with the "[Bitcoin total power consumption]" figure? What I said, is what they are saying.
- senectus1 9y ago
  I know a guy that used his bitcoin to buy a 3D printer, and eBike and some other bits of tech. Then Sold a huge chunk off to pay off his mortgage. Does this not count as using bitcoin to buy things?
danbruc 9y ago
The lower bound given by the current hash rate and the most efficient miners available is only about a factor three lower. So it might be only two days instead of an entire week but that doesn't really change the overall numbers and message.
- harpiaharpyja 9y ago
  That doesn't excuse making an observation about how much energy used per transaction would be profitable, then turning around and saying that's the actual amount of energy used. The impact of the message is lost when it's given without any sensible basis. Until your comment I didn't really know what a realistic estimate of the energy usage would be - I couldn't use their claim, since it was obviously garbage. If it's two days then they should say two days.

ajross 9y ago

No, that's not what it's saying. Here's the quote: > [Bitcoin total power consumption] averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, I didn't go to primary sources to confirm those numbers, but if they are correct the title is accurate. The bigger point here isn't the price per transaction, it's to point out the absolutely absurd liquidity mess that bitcoin has become. To first approximation, no one uses bitcoin to buy anything anywhere, ever. They just park coins as investments, hoping to cash out at some point in the future. Except of course that won't work, because when it comes time to cash out, everyone will realize that there is no one out there to buy your coins. The crash, when it comes (and it will) will be catastrophic. And also, yeah, it's wasting a ton of energy.

danbruc 9y ago
No, you got it wrong, the Bitcoin total power consumption is unknown but it can be bound from below by the hash rate and the most efficient mining hardware available and from above by the price, block reward, and energy costs assuming nobody is mining at a loss. Reread the paragraph before your quote. [...] estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually [...]
- ajross 9y ago
  All estimates I've seen are that bitcoin mining in practice is extraordinarily efficient and that new capacity comes online to track price increases quickly. You have evidence to the contrary that miners are leaving money on the table?
  - danbruc 9y ago
    If that is true, then the actual energy consumption would closely track the theoretically expected maximum. This shifts the question to how accurate the discussed estimate is but it still does not give the total energy consumption. But we could probably agree that it is probably on the same order of magnitude.
cgmg 9y ago
> The crash, when it comes (and it will) will be catastrophic. Your statement is unfalsifiable and meaningless. When will the crash come?
dr_win 9y ago
I just preordered Trezor T (hardware wallet) and paid with bitcoins. So your statement "no one uses bitcoin to buy anything anywhere, ever" is provably false.
- ajross 9y ago
  There, uh, was a clause immediately preceding that statement. The point isn't that it never happens, it's that the total value of bitcoin transactions used for "money" is dwarfed by those used to simply "buy coins".
harpiaharpyja 9y ago
Did you read the paragraph just before that, where they state how they came up with the "[Bitcoin total power consumption]" figure? What I said, is what they are saying.
senectus1 9y ago
I know a guy that used his bitcoin to buy a 3D printer, and eBike and some other bits of tech. Then Sold a huge chunk off to pay off his mortgage. Does this not count as using bitcoin to buy things?

danbruc 9y ago

The lower bound given by the current hash rate and the most efficient miners available is only about a factor three lower. So it might be only two days instead of an entire week but that doesn't really change the overall numbers and message.

harpiaharpyja 9y ago
That doesn't excuse making an observation about how much energy used per transaction would be profitable, then turning around and saying that's the actual amount of energy used. The impact of the message is lost when it's given without any sensible basis. Until your comment I didn't really know what a realistic estimate of the energy usage would be - I couldn't use their claim, since it was obviously garbage. If it's two days then they should say two days.