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Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many Countries
- aserafini 9y agoIsn't the more interesting statistic in the article that 2.4 million Americans consume more electricity than 159 countries?
- terryf 9y agoI live in a country with 1.3 million people total. So, not really :)
- mc32 9y agoThose Americans aren't projected to consume the majority of the produced electricity by 20xx. So, not really.
- dagaci 9y agoAnd how are we interpreting the data, for example have you noticed that the USA uses 2 - 3 time more electricity per capita the the UK.
- Cyberdog 9y agoHeadline clarification: Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than the electricity consumption of 159 individual nations, not 159 nations combined.
- macawfish 9y ago"If it keeps increasing at this rate, Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020"
- bufferoverflow 9y agoTechnically it doesn't need to increase at all, it can decrease even.
- cesarb 9y agoIt follows the price, so as long as either Bitcoin increases in price or electricity decreases in cost, the amount of electricity consumed should increase. According to https://fork.lol/reward/blocks https://fork.lol/reward/blocks the average reward per block is at the moment around USD 100k, so Bitcoin miners should consume on average 100k USD of electricity every 10 minutes. Sadly, I expect the demand for Bitcoin (and consequently its price) to increase once the Lightning Network gets ready for use by average people.
- fiatjaf 9y agoahahah, I was going to point out this too. In which world do journalists live?
- danbruc 9y agoNobody of course believes that this will actually happen, it is just to illustrate how quickly the growth is. Admittedly people are notoriously bad at dealing with exponential growth and so that number may very well provide a misleading image to many people but at least it communicates that things will change within the next few years.
- thinkloop 9y agoI usually dislike extrapolation stats (all growth starts aggressive then necessarily slows down with scale), but that's interesting.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoThere was an article pointing out that if BTC reaches 2 trillion GWP, it will require about 2% of the world's energy. I haven't been able to find it, but what are some persuasive arguments against the idea that 2 trillion GWP is worth 2% of our energy?
- randywaterhouse 9y agoI recall seeing this comment as well. Measuring BTC in GWP is an odd concept - maybe I misread - but I take it that means 2 trillion worth of global world product is made in BTC? Or just that BTC price X coins in existence = 2 trillion? Apparently today we consume 100% of our energy (hah!) for GWP of 78 trillion (nominal) [1]. So 2% for 2 trillion would actually appear to be more efficient. But again, I am not sure if this definition is even real, nor does this math apply. Maybe this is up there with bitcoin "market cap" or "price to earnings" terminology... :| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
- mikeash 9y agoI'm not sure if that math makes sense. Most economic activity involves actually doing useful things, not just shuffling numbers around. Obviously there is a segment of economic activity which is, but the vast majority is other stuff. If you get $2 trillion of economic activity denominated in Bitcoin, that activity is going to use a lot of energy in its own right. The energy used for transferring the Bitcoins around goes on top of that. If the network itself uses 2% of worldwide energy usage, that doesn't leave much for the economic activity it represents.
- celticninja 9y agoIf you click through to where they discuss how they estimate it you can see that they make some assumptions so that it looks higher than it likely really is. One of the reasons for this is because it is used as a source for articles and drives traffic. Each of the listed articles talk about how inefficient and wasteful it is, so the site does have a reason to make it look as inefficient as possible.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoEthereum's Proof of Stake will probably render all this moot eventually. For now, Bitcoin's Proof of Work electricity usage sounds high but how much electricity and resources are used by brick and mortar banks, armored trucks, etc.?
- jacobush 9y agoI am not holding my breath waiting for Ethereum Proof of Stake. When is the switch? What are the incentives for nodes and miners to switch?
- AgentME 9y agoA lot of Ethereum users are excited for a solid proof of stake system. The incentive is visible in this thread: people want to feel they're not contributing to wasting electricity. And the incentive for miners ... well, Ethereum doesn't need them if it has proof of stake, so that part doesn't matter. They don't dictate the rules of the system.
- jacobush 9y agoWithin the system, they have not. External to the Ethereum network, I expect people heavily invested in mining infrastructure to fight tooth and nail to protect their investments.
- akvadrako 9y agoIt won't happen anytime soon because PoS is still theoretical and might even be impossible to do securely.
- randywaterhouse 9y agoI've heard a number of conflicting arguments about the reliability of Ethereum switching to proof of stake... From "they will" to "this is difficult, why bother". There's also the other side of the equation - what's the value-add, and is it justified by the consumption? (e.g. the banks, trucks, etc. do something for the financial system, which has value. Is value / cost higher for BTC or lower?) I do not know.
- markkat 9y agoPerhaps this solves the Fermi Paradox.
- raverbashing 9y agoThis is not sustainable And more than that, do they expect "card processor" speed and scale with this amount of resources being needed at current scale? There must be a better way
- exit 9y agoscale and speed will come from layer-2 solutions: http://lightning.engineering/ http://lightning.engineering/
- nonbel 9y agoI posted this on a similar topic: # kilowatt-hours per transaction # https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change btc = 215 # Transactions per day tpd = 3e5 # convert btu to terawatt-hours # http://www.dvirc.org/how-much-energy-does-an-office-building-consume/ officeEnergyPerYear = 1.4e9*.293071/10^12 # https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/05/24-7-wall-st-banks-with-most-branches/16648133/ nBankBranchUS = 94725 # Convert to kw-h to tw-h btcEnergyPerYear = btc*tpd*365/10^9 > btcEnergyPerYear/(officeEnergyPerYear*nBankBranchUS) [1] 0.6057412 I have no idea if the source numbers are correct, but this is a better statistic. Mining uses the same amount of energy as used for ~58k average office buildings. So the worldwide bitcoin mining energy consumption is about half of that currently used for banks only in the US. This is assuming banks are "average" (probably higher due to security concerns) and of course that banking doesn't consume energy in any other way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614966 -----END----- Has anyone actually tried doing one of these comparisons yet? I mean going beyond just back of the napkin? Can we get estimates so about whether credit cards consume more electricity than many countries? Without that this type of article falls flat. Actually it is interesting that it is so easy to estimate the total energy consumption in this case.
- kevingadd 9y agoThis assumes that the value produced by bitcoin transactions is equivalent to the value produced by banks operating, though, which seems a rather huge assumption? The stuff banks do on a daily basis is very, very important, and they do a lot of it. Like, a trivial example: Let's say I can eventually pay my rent with bitcoin instead of a bank wire. I'd have to do that off-chain or on an exchange or something, right? What happens once you factor the cost of operating those exchanges in? My landlord probably needs to convert that BTC to USD at some point, so then banks and wires are involved to transact the USD.
- jstanley 9y agoIt's trivially the case that the value produced by bitcoin mining exceeds the cost of the electricity, else nobody would bother.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ISL 9y agoHow much energy is expended annually in mining, refining, storing, and allocating gold/precious metals?
- saalweachter 9y agoA quick google says about $900 / oz, with about $600 / oz being "direct mining costs" and the rest being things like "mine exploration and development". If all 900$ were going to crude oil, that'd be about 15 barrels / oz and 25 MWh / oz. Given that we mine about 100M oz / year, that places the upper bound at about 2500 TWh / year. Given that global energy production was about 170,000 TWh, that's actually a possible figure, although I'd be surprised if the energy consumption was actually half that (there have to be some non-energy costs involved, right?).
- rb808 9y agoDoes anyone know which countries most of the electricity is used?
- mrb 9y agoI've conducted the most detailed and precise energy estimate of Bitcoin miners and bounded it to 5.61-10.93 TWh/year as of 28 Jul 2017: http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/ Today it's probably closer to ~15 TWh/year which represents ~0.01% of the world's energy consumption. However this article claims 29.05 TWh/year, basing it on Digiconomist which is the work of an amateur and known to overestimate by ~2×: http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/
- chris_va 9y agoSo it kills about 675 people per year :/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities
- gowld 9y agoAre you assuming most Bitcoin mining is on Chinese coal electricity? Other forms of electricity are 5-10x safer.
- polskibus 9y agoAren't most large bitcoin mines located in China though?
- visarga 9y agoSoon to be located in Africa - more sun, cheap panels.
- sgt 9y agoI think solar would have to become cheaper before this becomes viable. Luckily trends show that this will happen soon, but other challenges posed in Africa is political stability (e.g. government decides BitCoin mining is illegal or imposes unreasonable taxes due to lack of understanding), lack of competency, and other types of infrastructure. The only countries I can see that are suitable are South Africa and Namibia.
- jlavine 9y agoIt seems this problem should be addressed by more energy-efficient Bitcoin mining rigs and changes to the Bitcoin system to improve efficiency over the next 1-2 years. A related very recent announcement: https://halongmining.com/ https://halongmining.com/ >Announcing the DragonMint miner series: The DragonMint 16T miner is the world’s most efficient Bitcoin miner, running faster and cooler than any competing miners. It’s the culmination of over 12 months research and development which has resulted in major advancements in mining technology including a brand new generation of ASIC mining chips. The DM8575 ASIC runs at a staggering 85GH per chip with power efficiency of around 0.075J/GH.
- foepys 9y ago> It seems this problem should be addressed by more energy-efficient Bitcoin mining rigs and changes to the Bitcoin system to improve efficiency over the next 1-2 years. Not really. The miners calculate their costs versus their gains. If a new rig consumes half of the electricity, they will just buy a second one. If they don't their competitor does.
- pjc50 9y agoThe Jevons Paradox applies brutally here: more efficient miners just increase the value of bitcoin, potentially drawing in more users and even resulting in a net increase in consumption.
- philwelch 9y agoThe trick is to make it happen suddenly enough to trigger Bitcoin hyperinflation.
- cesarb 9y ago> It seems this problem should be addressed by more energy-efficient Bitcoin mining rigs That doesn't work. Suppose, as a thought experiment, that every miner is instantly replaced by one twice as efficient. That means only that their owners can now run twice as many miners before the cost of energy makes it unprofitable. The Bitcoin protocol adjusts the difficulty so that, no matter how many miners or how efficient they are, on average a block is found every 10 minutes; it's the reward for these blocks that pays for the electricity, so the total amount of energy used by the Bitcoin network will tend to converge towards the block rewards divided by the electricity costs.
- indubitable 9y agoIn some ways I think the lack of an energy demand is playing a role in the relatively slow uptake of things like solar. Why swap over when your current plants are meeting demand just fine? It's certainly no coincidence that China, who has some of the most rapidly rising demand of energy in the world, is also installing orders of magnitude greater solar installation than the rest of the world. In particular China is expected to add about 50GW of additional solar capacity in 2017 alone, which is more solar than any other nation in the world has - in total (as of 2016). Aside from that, the imagination is the limit to things we could do if we had orders of magnitude greater energy than we do today. Propelling spacecraft by lasers, charging electric vehicles wirelessly as they drive, conveyor style road systems, and certainly many things we cannot really even imagine today. Massive energy availability would create an entirely new field of industry.
- kumarski 9y agoSure bitcoin mining consumes a lot, but let's compare apples to apples. I'd be willing to spend 200 to 300 terawatt hours a year to really make crypto work. Great civilizations are built off: 1/ Rule of Law 2/ Enough electricity to produce nitrogen, steel, and operate telecom. #1 is worth a lot. Look at India's demonetization and the crisis it caused. [link: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-demonetization-policy-consequences-by-shashi-tharoor-2016-12?barrier=accessreg https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-demonetiz...] https://medium.com/@datarade/sure-bitcoin-assumes-a-lot-of-electricity-but-f05de54e85f2 https://medium.com/@datarade/sure-bitcoin-assumes-a-lot-of-e... - The banking industry fretting over electricity consumption of bitcoin is out of whack in comparison to the sheer size and volume of bank electricity consumption at a federal and local level. I'm very okay with a future in which ethereum smart contracts and bitcoin mining consume a 10% of global energy production given the alternatives.
- leot 9y agoHypothesis: bitcoin is well-modeled as an emergent superintelligence optimizing for btc instead of paperclips. If so, we've got a problem.
- reilly3000 9y agoHow would you test to see if that is the case?
- leot 9y agoNot sure. One problem is that there isn't another super-AI to compare it against.
- visarga 9y agoJust like any meme, it is optimized to self-reproduce and grow.
- leot 9y agoMost memes lack the ability to self-modify while preserving the thing they're optimizing for.
- bduerst 9y agoWhat is the thing Bitcoin is optimized for again?
- visarga 9y agoMining coins (and hype).
- zaarn 9y agoMemes don't self-modify but they do definitely evolve over time and the more successful results survive and the less successful ones are forgotten (die). Most of the time they also preserve what they optimize for, see; cute cat pictures.
- knolan 9y agoFrom what I understand a lot of power stations produce excess electricity at low demand periods because it’s too costly to completely shut a generator down. So they dump that excess into huge resistor banks. Why not use it to mine crypto currency?
- visarga 9y agoEvery power station needs a bitcoin power sink to recoup their losses.
- cryptodogemoon 9y agoA battery system would be more useful and less wasteful.
- stale2002 9y agoBatteries are extremely expensive, on a per Kwh basis. There aren't enough batteries in the world to recoup any significant chunk of this lost/free/extra energy. Power plants will sometimes even pay people money to accept the electricity, because too much of it has the possibility of damaging something.
- cryptodogemoon 9y agoThrowing computational power at a PoW system for hash collisions is significantly more wasteful than simply reducing the cost of electricity itself or depositing the energy into a storage system for use at later in demand times. If free energy needed to be expelled and couldn't be stored for some weird reason, it could be used to grind wheat, purify water, or run scientific computing to contribute to curing diseases rather than attempt to acquire speculative database tokens.
- stale2002 9y agoTell that to the power plants who ALREADY waste this "free" electricity, by destroying it through putting into giant resistor banks. This is not "some weird reason". Thus is how the current power grid works in many locations. If your theory was correct, then negative energy rates wouldn't even exist right now. But they do.
- flowctrl 9y agoThis is silly: "Comparing Bitcoin’s energy consumption to other payment systems To put the energy consumed by the Bitcoin network into perspective we can compare it to another payment system like VISA for example. Even though the available information on VISA’s energy consumption is limited, we can establish that the data centers that process VISA’s transactions consume energy equal to that of 50,000 U.S. households. We also know VISA processed 82.3 billion transactions in 2016. With the help of these numbers, it is possible to compare both networks and show that Bitcoin is extremely more energy intensive per transaction than VISA." 1. I have read that with every VISA transaction, transactions move between no less than 5 separate institutions. What is the net energy used in all of that deliberate inefficiency? All buildings, vehicles, and energy use of people who work for VISA must also be taken into account. And for all other credit cards and payment systems. 2. Bitcoin isn't really a "payment system", so comparing it to VISA is apples to oranges. It is more of a store of value, like a bank. So it would more properly be compared to the net electricity consumption of all banks, including all buildings, armoured trucks and all vehicles used to ship people to and from banks around the world.
- cryptodogemoon 9y agoBanks offer many services in addition to secure and insured deposits. The same cannot be said for wallet software made by anonymous internet devs with a lower barrier to implant obfuscated back doors to steal user funds irreversibly. Bitcoin is in a competitive market so energy usage will be more relevant to compare against the decentralized services offering identical functionality with alternative algorithms, like litecoin, monereo, ethereum, and so on.
- wyldfire 9y agoI've always touted the line about comparing the energy consumed to the value produced. And while I still think that you must normalize the numbers, I also start to grow concerned that its continued growth seems like it might actually be a problem. Oh, wow, -- lightbulb -- I didn't notice this until I started to write this post. I was going to ruminate about what PoW could we possibly do instead (presuming we need PoW for a good cryptocoin). Now I'm thinking that this is the correction that will finally level off speculation? Bitcoin's value is bounded: it can't be worth much more to humanity than the sum of all global financial services (likely worth much less). But its energy consumption is only bounded by the perception of its future value. Hash rate growth is fueled by speculation in continued growth in the bitcoin exchange rate. At some point the energy consumption may grow fast enough to damper excitement about future gains. Then again, with each halving the inflation rate slows. So it's calibrated to keep increasing. I wonder if the next Bitcoin community crisis will be different approaches to difficulty or reward. Those seem much more "untouchable" than block size, so hopefully not.
- runeks 9y ago> But its energy consumption is only bounded by the perception of its future value. Hash rate growth is fueled by speculation in continued growth in the bitcoin exchange rate. How do you figure? Miners mine bitcoins and sell them at the current exchange rate -- not a future one. Mining to speculate on future price increases make no sense. If you believe the price will rise, just buy bitcoins now (no reason to mine them at a loss).
- raiflip 9y agoI think he pins it to future price instead of current price because of the time lag between the decision to mine for bitcoin and the time you actually get the coin. If you think bitcoin is going to crash by the time you start making a profit then even if it is worth a lot now you're not going to mine.
- nhaehnle 9y agoAre miners actually selling all earned bitcoins immediately? If so, that means there must be at least 20 million USD "entering" Bitcoin every day in net terms. That seems like a lot, certainly much more than could be supported by actual economic activities in Bitcoin (including illegal ones). How many people are there who are willing to use, say, 10k USD of their own money for gambling? How many greater fools? Then again, some of those "greater fools" could be people holding Bitcoin that they collected from ICOs, so who knows. As they say, the really tricky part of attempting to profit from the bursting of bubbles is the timing.
- bweis 9y agoWhich is one of the many reasons Ethereum's proof of stake is so interesting.
- cryptodogemoon 9y agoProof of Steak mearly gives power to whomever has established wealth. It is a marginal improvement over PoW, when the PoW algorithm is not computationally useful outside brute force hash lotteries and capital infrastructure race speculation. Both PoS and PoW implementations should have heavy scrutiny on the distribution and minting rules for the base supply.
- alanfalcon 9y agoI like the idea of Proof of Steak. He who controls the Filet Mignon controls the world!
- 6nf 9y agoEthereum doesn't actually have proof of stake yet
- ced 9y agoI live in a cold climate. In the winter, I heat up my house by passing electricity through the resistor in my radiator. This is dumb; the electricity could be doing something useful instead. Why couldn't we have BTC-mining radiators, that emit heat as a by-product of their computations?
- jokoon 9y agoI still wonder if heating a house with transistor is efficient. Gotta ask a scientist I guess. I mean there must be energy spent switching transistors back and forth.
- majewsky 9y agoWhat do you mean by "efficient"? That word is usually used to describe the fraction of energy that goes into a machine and is then not lost to heat. Since the purpose of a heater is to produce heat, it's pretty much impossible for it to waste energy.
- anonfunction 9y agoSome things produce more heat than others.
- PeterisP 9y agoFor passive heating, anything puts out exactly as much heat as it consumes electricity; there's no way around thermodynamics to gain or lose power there. Yes, there can be heat pump systems with e.g. underground connections, and pumping heat can be more effective than generating heat; but for pure heating, generating heat, the simplest resistor heater is just as 100% efficient as any complex electronic device, all the electricity spent results in just as much heat.
- rabidrat 9y agoAnd you know what happens to that energy when it's done doing its useful work? It's dissipated as heat :)
- 3cham 9y agoAccording to: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1253/report/OF11-1253.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1253/report/OF11-1253.pdf, the approximate energy consumption for mining gold in South Africa was already 26 TWh * 65% = 16.9 TWh in 2005. Bitcoin still has its future ahead :/
- Stenzel 9y agoUsually not a big fan of regulation, but in this case I wish for gouvernements to stop this madness in a smilar way they stopped use of incandescent light bulbs.
- zby 9y agoI totally agree that this is insane - but it is not much more insane than what we do with gold, we dig it from the ground and then put it back to sit in underground vaults. Still I guess gold is much more reliable as a store of value:) https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 By the way it is important to note that with each block halving in a simplified model (ignoring fees) should reduce the hash power by half. Proof of Stake might help us here: https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-stake-can-be-cheaper-than-proof-of-work-da14223a965 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-stake-can-be-cheaper-than-p... - but it is not entirely clear that there are no holes in the PoS systems design.
- igorgue 9y agoOr fracking that makes us drink contaminated water. But the HN community wants something like "Proof of planting a tree" or something like that... Take a look at "Proof of Space" and "Proof of Time" by https://chia.network/ https://chia.network/
- mort96 9y agoCan you link to anyone at all on Hacker News claiming that cryptocurrencies should be based on proof of planting a tree, or were you making a strawman argument?
- DonHopkins 9y agoThere were a few green proof-of-delivering-marijuana start-ups, but I can't remember any green proof-of-planting-a-tree ones.
- zby 9y agoProof of Time is actually Proof of Intel (or any other company providing the trusted hardware).
- jlarocco 9y agoI know we used to, but is gold still mined to sit in underground vaults?
- maerF0x0 9y agoI'm sure so do hair dryers. So what? There's nothing wrong with humanity using electricity for whatever its best compensated to use it for.
- c_shu 9y agoYes, human beings always do what's good for themselves. There is a saying: Never underestimate the power of human wisdom! They would never do negative-sum games or disastrous things like wars, arms races, environmental pollution, vicious competition, financial crisis, large-scale propaganda or persecution.
- idibidiart 9y agoAmazed that no one can see that Net Neutrality going away could very well mean the death of Bitcoin. Block the port and/or type of traffic -/ or even easier: eliminate P2P: everything must go thru a centralized service.
- Fej 9y agoPeople here are comparing the energy use of Bitcoin to that of banking institutions, but that's missing half the point. The energy here is wasted because Bitcoin does almost nothing of value. The single overwhelming use of Bitcoin is for speculation. All of this energy is consumed just so that investors can hopefully get a return on investment. It appears rather decadent. Yes, there are other uses for Bitcoin. They are miniscule in comparison to its use as an investment product.
- jlft 9y ago> The energy here is wasted because Bitcoin does almost nothing of value. You can also argue that mining gold is a waste of resources because gold does almost nothing of value. > Yes, there are other uses for Bitcoin. They are miniscule in comparison to its use as an investment product. What about gold? Aren't its uses minuscule in comparision to its speculative investment value? The point is: The market decides. One can argue that Bitcoin characteristics (encrypted, pseudo-anonymous, open source, decentralized, global, scalable, deflationary, stateless, etc.) justify its speculative price.
- PeterisP 9y agoWe're not spending country-scale amounts of power or resources to mine gold, that's a comparably small industry. That is the point, it's so out of proportion to allocate so much resources to simply validating transactions.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coldcode 9y agoIs it theoretically possible to mine bitcoin using a quantum computer, or is the math not amenable?
- latchkey 9y agoWe are scrypt mining in Saigon at a fairly large scale. This is definitely something we've been thinking a lot about. As we grow, we will likely move to Iceland, where the power is mostly based on renewable sources.
- stock_toaster 9y agoBitcoin, a product of the energy concerns in an effort to sell more energy?
- aqsheehy 9y agoCould just end the war on drugs and stop this environmental disaster
- mjfern 9y agoWe are expending limited natural resources, producing vast quantities of CO2, and accelerating global warming just to mine made-up digital coins. Think about that...
- Entangled 9y agoHonest question, what's holding the development of cryptocoins without mining?
- tudorconstantin 9y agoConsider translating the energy consumed into money (one can easily sell and buy energy). Then compare the rapport between the total value exchanged in btc and the total cost of energy with the rapport between the total value exchanged in fiat and the total costs incurred by the financial institutions and people to have that (the cost of buildings, the cost with employees, with their servers, with transporting and securing physical money, etc). That would be a much fairer comparison in efficiency. And if bitcoin wouldn't be more efficient after the abive computations, the fact that people keep using it means it brings them some extra value for which they're willing to pay the premium costs.
- mmatoscom 9y agoI would like to ask something.. cant we have estimates or analogies of same type like "internet servers now consuming more electricity than China" for example? I mean, its obvious! Any system wide available and requested, as internet or blockchain nodes to process transactions, based in computing which uses computers which are powered by energy, will spend energy to work. You guys are smart and I cant even comp to those maths on kilowatts etc, but really... I only see this electricity consumption GROWING as we are powering more and more systems, to be datacenters, vms, containers for the internet, same way to feed blockchain systems around the globe. I don't know if the point here is like "bad bitcoin it consumes energy" or just a pure analysis. cheers folks
- knowThySelfx 9y agoCouldnt Hashgraph replace Blockchain as a more viable tech? https://hashgraph.com/ https://hashgraph.com/ https://breathepublication.com/blockchain-just-became-obsolete-the-future-is-hashgraph-de4948609cbf https://breathepublication.com/blockchain-just-became-obsole... https://hackernoon.com/demystifying-hashgraph-benefits-and-challenges-d605e5c0cee5 https://hackernoon.com/demystifying-hashgraph-benefits-and-c...
- th-ai 9y agoIf PoW energy use grows 10x year over year, in 9 years by 2026 PoW will burn a billion times more energy than today. More than all countries combined, right? By what year will PoW double global electricity use?
- th-ai 9y ago> Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020 TFA infers by Feb 2021 PoW will double total human electricity use. 38 months from now. By early 2024, we can burn 1,000x more. In 9 years we can burn 1,000,000 more joules per second than we do today. Hot. The idea is to make our world a more safe and secure place to store value?
- scotty79 9y agoWill next bitcoin halving help with that? I guess bitcoin just attracts money too fast driving up the price.