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By reading through the comments. I don't think people realise how much energy it actually uses. One bitcoin transaction already now uses as much energy as your

By reading through the comments. I don't think people realise how much energy it actually uses. One bitcoin transaction already now uses as much energy as your house in 1 week. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mi... I'm sorry but I just fail to see how this can work going forward.

VMG 9y ago
Why measure it in energy/transaction? The energy is not used for transactions, but for securing the ledger. With second-layer scaling solutions you will have no limit of transactions per block.
- cryptodogemoon 9y ago
  Why bother with a second layer when new blockchain designs improve upon the designs of Bitcoin? The ledger is "secured" by about 6 mining pools which might even be controlled by the same people. Second layer goes completely against Satoshi's primary design in the first sentence of the white paper - which is removing the need for third parties. The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. After all, if you look at Bitcoin from a technical perspective the services Bitcoin offers are available in Litecoin, Monoero, etc.
  - AgentME 9y ago
    Payment channels and LN don't introduce trusted 3rd parties or counterparty risk. Payment channels weren't discussed in the whitepaper, but Satoshi discussed and attempted some payment channel designs[1]. He left before coming up with a secure payment channel design. Recent improvements to Bitcoin, including the transaction malleability fix included in the recent segwit upgrade a few months ago, finally make secure payment channels feasible. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high-frequency_transactions https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high-fr...
  - EthanHeilman 9y ago
    >Why bother with a second layer when new blockchain designs improve upon the designs of Bitcoin? We can argue about how to scale layer one, but layer two always provides scalability benefits that layer one can't provide. So choose your favorite layer one scaling scheme and then use layer two on top of that. >Second layer goes completely against Satoshi's primary design in the first sentence of the white paper - which is removing the need for third parties. Satoshi in the whitepaper proposed SPV nodes which introduce semi-trusted third parties for the sake of scalability. Layer two does not introduce trusted third parties. It, under certain conditions, is less censorship resistant that layer one, but that is why you want a scalable layer one as well so that transactions which need censorship resistance can fall back to layer one. There is no reason to bloat layer one with transactions that layer two can handle. Layer two helps layer one scale. >The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. Even if this is true, and I very strongly doubt it, that shouldn't influence your view on the technology. Either it works or it doesn't.
  - VMG 9y ago
    > The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. Please stop lying.
rothbardrand 9y ago
This is rapidly becoming a thought terminating cliche. Your claim is nonsensical and you linked to an article from a highly politically slanted site whose author doesn't understand much about how bitcoin works. Yes, I understand that the left does not like sound money and thins that government should be able to inflate as much as it wants (to pay for all those great programs- like bombing brown people). But this kind of false claim, that is repeated over and over and over again is just not acceptable. It's a rejection of science to do so. Also, the opposition to bitcoin on energy grounds is silly-- most bitcoin is mined by renewable excess energy and the system is more cost / energy efficient than the alternative, in my opinion. Go to venezuela or zimbabwe and see the suffering of people who don't have sound money. Hell, go to a small american town where people are poor because the government has inflated the money away.
- jsmeaton 9y ago
  Reject a claim because you don’t like the source. Assert that the initial claim is a rejection of science. But instead of refuting the numbers with your own, you launch into an emotional attack about “the left” bombing brown people and people from developing nations having no access to money. This is not how to defend bitcoin.
- flipp3r 9y ago
  Why is their claim nonsensical? Just do the math, politics and countries are not relevant. Take the hash rate, transactions per second, and power consumption of any mining rig. The current hash rate is about 11 ExaH/s (; 11 Million TH/s) supporting approximately 3.81 transactions per second. Meaning power to support about 3 ExaH is used, for every transaction. Taking a decent mining GPU youre at about 3MH/J. To perform this amount of hashing with this example it would take 3TJ. Or for comparison, the energy in about 170 barrels of oil, for one Bitcoin transaction. The numbers may be a bit off, but they're not off by a factor 100, and my house for sure doesn't even need 1/100th of this to run a day.
- esarbe 9y ago
  To me it seems that you make the mistake of buying into the old dichotomy of 'left' vs. 'right'. This leads you to believe that every lefty is a communist, rejects 'sound money' and supports a strong centralized government. But that's not the whole picture. I consider myself to be an anarcho syndicalist - which is pretty lefty - and I don't have a problem with Bitcoin. Quite the contrary; I support the replacement of centralized hierarchical structures by distributed democratic structures. Be it financial, political or societal. 'The left' is much more diverse than you might think. Don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that there's only 'left' vs. 'right'. So, may I suggest that the dislike of decentralized systems correlates more with a preference for authoritarian systems? Anyway; about the rest of your post: > [...] like bombing brown people [...] I think this is uncalled for. It's a strawman deflection and not a very good one at that. Warmongering has been a favorite past time of all sorts of governments, not only leftist ones. > It's a rejection of science to do so. How so? > But this kind of false claim, that is repeated over and over and over again is just not acceptable. > [...] most bitcoin is mined by renewable excess energy [...] Do you have any pointers to refute the claim? Can you give me a link to some numbers? Looking forward to hear from you!
cwkoss 9y ago
Because increasing the number of transactions does not significantly change energy cost. Bitcoin's daily energy cost will asymptotically approach (price per coin)*(daily miner reward amount). As block reward decreases, we may see less energy investment in the future. There is a loose link between number of transactions and price (network effect of more people using Bitcoin increases perceived value), but its probably a fairly small correlation.
MichaelScarn69 9y ago
Do you think it costs less energy to produce and maintain a fiat currency + supporting systems?

VMG 9y ago

Why measure it in energy/transaction? The energy is not used for transactions, but for securing the ledger. With second-layer scaling solutions you will have no limit of transactions per block.

cryptodogemoon 9y ago
Why bother with a second layer when new blockchain designs improve upon the designs of Bitcoin? The ledger is "secured" by about 6 mining pools which might even be controlled by the same people. Second layer goes completely against Satoshi's primary design in the first sentence of the white paper - which is removing the need for third parties. The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. After all, if you look at Bitcoin from a technical perspective the services Bitcoin offers are available in Litecoin, Monoero, etc.
- AgentME 9y ago
  Payment channels and LN don't introduce trusted 3rd parties or counterparty risk. Payment channels weren't discussed in the whitepaper, but Satoshi discussed and attempted some payment channel designs[1]. He left before coming up with a secure payment channel design. Recent improvements to Bitcoin, including the transaction malleability fix included in the recent segwit upgrade a few months ago, finally make secure payment channels feasible. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high-frequency_transactions https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high-fr...
- EthanHeilman 9y ago
  >Why bother with a second layer when new blockchain designs improve upon the designs of Bitcoin? We can argue about how to scale layer one, but layer two always provides scalability benefits that layer one can't provide. So choose your favorite layer one scaling scheme and then use layer two on top of that. >Second layer goes completely against Satoshi's primary design in the first sentence of the white paper - which is removing the need for third parties. Satoshi in the whitepaper proposed SPV nodes which introduce semi-trusted third parties for the sake of scalability. Layer two does not introduce trusted third parties. It, under certain conditions, is less censorship resistant that layer one, but that is why you want a scalable layer one as well so that transactions which need censorship resistance can fall back to layer one. There is no reason to bloat layer one with transactions that layer two can handle. Layer two helps layer one scale. >The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. Even if this is true, and I very strongly doubt it, that shouldn't influence your view on the technology. Either it works or it doesn't.
- VMG 9y ago
  > The lightening network design is a siphoning power grab by Blockstream. Please stop lying.

rothbardrand 9y ago

This is rapidly becoming a thought terminating cliche. Your claim is nonsensical and you linked to an article from a highly politically slanted site whose author doesn't understand much about how bitcoin works. Yes, I understand that the left does not like sound money and thins that government should be able to inflate as much as it wants (to pay for all those great programs- like bombing brown people). But this kind of false claim, that is repeated over and over and over again is just not acceptable. It's a rejection of science to do so. Also, the opposition to bitcoin on energy grounds is silly-- most bitcoin is mined by renewable excess energy and the system is more cost / energy efficient than the alternative, in my opinion. Go to venezuela or zimbabwe and see the suffering of people who don't have sound money. Hell, go to a small american town where people are poor because the government has inflated the money away.

jsmeaton 9y ago
Reject a claim because you don’t like the source. Assert that the initial claim is a rejection of science. But instead of refuting the numbers with your own, you launch into an emotional attack about “the left” bombing brown people and people from developing nations having no access to money. This is not how to defend bitcoin.
flipp3r 9y ago
Why is their claim nonsensical? Just do the math, politics and countries are not relevant. Take the hash rate, transactions per second, and power consumption of any mining rig. The current hash rate is about 11 ExaH/s (; 11 Million TH/s) supporting approximately 3.81 transactions per second. Meaning power to support about 3 ExaH is used, for every transaction. Taking a decent mining GPU youre at about 3MH/J. To perform this amount of hashing with this example it would take 3TJ. Or for comparison, the energy in about 170 barrels of oil, for one Bitcoin transaction. The numbers may be a bit off, but they're not off by a factor 100, and my house for sure doesn't even need 1/100th of this to run a day.
esarbe 9y ago
To me it seems that you make the mistake of buying into the old dichotomy of 'left' vs. 'right'. This leads you to believe that every lefty is a communist, rejects 'sound money' and supports a strong centralized government. But that's not the whole picture. I consider myself to be an anarcho syndicalist - which is pretty lefty - and I don't have a problem with Bitcoin. Quite the contrary; I support the replacement of centralized hierarchical structures by distributed democratic structures. Be it financial, political or societal. 'The left' is much more diverse than you might think. Don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that there's only 'left' vs. 'right'. So, may I suggest that the dislike of decentralized systems correlates more with a preference for authoritarian systems? Anyway; about the rest of your post: > [...] like bombing brown people [...] I think this is uncalled for. It's a strawman deflection and not a very good one at that. Warmongering has been a favorite past time of all sorts of governments, not only leftist ones. > It's a rejection of science to do so. How so? > But this kind of false claim, that is repeated over and over and over again is just not acceptable. > [...] most bitcoin is mined by renewable excess energy [...] Do you have any pointers to refute the claim? Can you give me a link to some numbers? Looking forward to hear from you!

cwkoss 9y ago

Because increasing the number of transactions does not significantly change energy cost. Bitcoin's daily energy cost will asymptotically approach (price per coin)*(daily miner reward amount). As block reward decreases, we may see less energy investment in the future. There is a loose link between number of transactions and price (network effect of more people using Bitcoin increases perceived value), but its probably a fairly small correlation.

MichaelScarn69 9y ago

Do you think it costs less energy to produce and maintain a fiat currency + supporting systems?