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I have no problem with itemizing the electricity usage of various things computers do. But is there any particular reason to single out the energy usage of Bitc

I have no problem with itemizing the electricity usage of various things computers do. But is there any particular reason to single out the energy usage of Bitcoin as opposed to say, email, or Google's ad network, or Clash of Clans, or the estimated average electricity usage generated by a single Trump tweet? By all means, let's scrutinize electricity usage, but I don't know what coherent set of priorities puts Bitcoin at the top of the list for scrutiny.

swalsh 9y ago
It makes sense, People will keep buying and adding computational power until the return on running the machines is lower than the cost of electricity. when the "cost of a bitcoin" rises faster than the cost of electricity it can directly lead to an increase in use. So unlike any other thing we run on computers for profit... bitcoin has a direct cause and effect relationship.
- glenstein 9y ago
  People feel their computers return value in all sorts of ways that have zero connection to a monetary return on investment. The value of being able to communicate, to do research, to store their cat pictures, etc. No one is isolating out the marginal added value of additional cat pictures and measuring it against the cost of electricity. And even for the small subset of computer users just interested in bitcoin mining, they just have to know their own electric bill, not the resource usage across the entire network. So I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about.
rtpg 9y ago
because we can compare the energy usage for Bitcoin with that of the next comparable thing: credit card transactions. This is useful when judging whether Bitcoin is a good replacement for other payment networks.
- glenstein 9y ago
  We can't compare electricity usage of Clash of Clans to Castle Clash/Clash Royale/Clash of Lords?
thisisit 9y ago
Because of bitcoin history. One of the early transactions in Bitcoin's history, first in US, a user called NewLibertyStandard got coins from Martti Malmi. The price was $5 for ~5k bitcoins. The price was calculated from an estimated cost of electricity spent by Malmi to mine those coins. Since then bitcoin and electricity have been in inter linked to each other. There are efficient machines for mining bitcoin but the profitability comes down a lot on electricity costs. I don't think there is so much history of electricity attached with email, Clash of Clans etc.

swalsh 9y ago

It makes sense, People will keep buying and adding computational power until the return on running the machines is lower than the cost of electricity. when the "cost of a bitcoin" rises faster than the cost of electricity it can directly lead to an increase in use. So unlike any other thing we run on computers for profit... bitcoin has a direct cause and effect relationship.

glenstein 9y ago
People feel their computers return value in all sorts of ways that have zero connection to a monetary return on investment. The value of being able to communicate, to do research, to store their cat pictures, etc. No one is isolating out the marginal added value of additional cat pictures and measuring it against the cost of electricity. And even for the small subset of computer users just interested in bitcoin mining, they just have to know their own electric bill, not the resource usage across the entire network. So I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about.

rtpg 9y ago

because we can compare the energy usage for Bitcoin with that of the next comparable thing: credit card transactions. This is useful when judging whether Bitcoin is a good replacement for other payment networks.

glenstein 9y ago
We can't compare electricity usage of Clash of Clans to Castle Clash/Clash Royale/Clash of Lords?

thisisit 9y ago

Because of bitcoin history. One of the early transactions in Bitcoin's history, first in US, a user called NewLibertyStandard got coins from Martti Malmi. The price was $5 for ~5k bitcoins. The price was calculated from an estimated cost of electricity spent by Malmi to mine those coins. Since then bitcoin and electricity have been in inter linked to each other. There are efficient machines for mining bitcoin but the profitability comes down a lot on electricity costs. I don't think there is so much history of electricity attached with email, Clash of Clans etc.