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Bitcoin seems completely irresponsible to me because of the amount of electricity it uses: "Mining companies that run lots of ASIC miners as businesses claim t

Bitcoin seems completely irresponsible to me because of the amount of electricity it uses: "Mining companies that run lots of ASIC miners as businesses claim to use only one watt of power for every gigahash per second of computing performed when mining for bitcoins. If this information is correct, the bitcoin network in 2020 consumes 120 gigawatts (GW) per second. https://www.thebalance.com/how-much-power-does-the-bitcoin-network-use-391280 https://www.thebalance.com/how-much-power-does-the-bitcoin-n...

krupan 6y ago
How much energy is used to secure other forms of money, like the U.S. dollar? Hint: you need to include the entire military, at least.
- boxmonster 6y ago
  I don't know. Has any BC enthusiast calculated it to counter this argument? Using BC exclusively doesn't mean we don't need a military anymore btw.
  - krupan 6y ago
    (It’s BTC) There was an article just a day or two ago talking about how our currency is currently a petrodollar. Look that up. Think about the wars we’ve fought over oil, and global warming. Those are the costs of our fiat currency. Bitcoin is cheap!
ur-whale 6y ago
Gigawatts per second???? [EDIT]: I see this needs elaboration ... watts are already "per second". Watts per second implies some sort of acceleration of energy consumption. Just wondering if I'm missing the point.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  77.78TWh/year or the same as Chile. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    Which is about 0.3%, and not 1% as the source claims. I bet some of that goes into heating residential and non-residential buildings, that require heating regardless. So if one to speak about waste, it should be even less than that. For comparison, I guesstimate ~6% is used for heating homes.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Feel free to check their methodology. With that said, if you could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 0.3% with a flip of the switch literally nobody would notice, you'd be mad not to do it. All you'd turn off is crime, and speculation.
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        Sorry, I did not mean your source gave wrong data, I meant the comment you responded to had.
arcticbull 6y ago
Yes and it’s amazing that there’s such a big overlap between the environmentalist electric car owning, composting granola munchers and Bitcoin. They’re burning tires in the back yard each time they make a transaction and driving a Tesla to work.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Is there? I thought Bitcoin hodlers tilted more towards the Lambos, hookers and coke end of the spectrum, at least aspirationally.
  - kinghajj 6y ago
    I'll take financial independence and not needing to work, but getting to work if and when I choose.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Sounds like you’re just advocating for basic income with extra steps. I’m a fan of UBI, but it has to apply to everyone not just the folks on the right crypto forum in 2010.
      - kinghajj 6y ago
        Absolutely, I wholeheartedly support a UBI. But that's not mutually exclusive with wanting to be financially independent now, instead of some indeterminate time in the future, once the political will for UBI becomes strong enough. And if/when a UBI does come to pass, I might be in a better position due to my decade-plus of hodling.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Oh I'm pro making money, I wish you all the best in that regard. I just think crypto is thoroughly and utterly worthless. Regressive at best.
nickpp 6y ago
How do you feel about Porn? Movies? Video Games? Skiing? Driving to a party or vacation spot? Pretty much any kind of entertainments uses energy. Bitcoin just uses energy to perform an (arguably) useful function. Is that a more irresponsible usage of energy compared to our other reasons of using energy?
- boxmonster 6y ago
  It's irresponsible because there's an alternative "Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption by 99 Percent" https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-to-cut-its-absurd-energy-consumption-by-99-percent https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-... "How One Of The Largest Free Porn Sites Uses More Than 6 Million KWh To Power Streaming Services" https://fightthenewdrug.org/what-if-porn-is-bad-for-the-environment/ https://fightthenewdrug.org/what-if-porn-is-bad-for-the-envi...
  - krupan 6y ago
    Totally unproven, fraught with peril. The rolling out of proof of stake was delayed years as new challenges were discovered. It’s good that somebody is giving it a try, but it’s no slam dunk. Bitcoin would be irresponsible to jump on proof of stake right now.
    - boxmonster 6y ago
      I see. Well, here's hoping they solve it.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    I agree that proof-of-stake systems are an interesting and promising development on top of existing cryptocurrency technology. But how does that make Bitcoin "completely irresponsible" just because it might not be as good as the best, newest available technology? Today's proof-of-stake systems probably never would have existed without Bitcoin. When proof-of-stake systems become mature then Bitcoin could adopt one, or perhaps if Bitcoin users can't reach agreement on that then maybe a new proof-of-stake based cryptocurrency will gain enough trust to overtake Bitcoin. Either way, it serves the purpose of a relatively mature decentralized store of value until then.
Lerc 6y ago
Most of the estimates of power consumption are problematic. Some are better than others but Alex de Vries's numbers are the most quoted and quite questionable. The article you linked to refers to https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-45D4-A1AB-B894E913737D https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-4... which contains "An accepted method for deriving an estimate of the energy consumption of mining is to assume that all miners use the most energy efficient mining device available on the market.(3) Commercial devices are accompanied by published specifications listing the number of hashes that can be computed per second using the device, as well as the power consumption of the device in watts. It is then straightforward to calculate how much power is required to compute 50 billion billion hashes per second using the most energy efficient devices available. I performed such a calculation and obtained an estimate of around 5 gigawatts for Bitcoin mining alone today.(4) This is slightly under 1% of world electricity consumption, or slightly more than the electricity consumption of the state of Ohio or that of the state of New York." The footnotes in turn refer back to Alex de Vries. The numbers rely on the assumption that the majority of mining is using hardware with efficiency similar to the published specifications upon which they made their calculations. Given the nature of the rate of development and the immediate financial benefit to higher efficiency, it is likely that any published hash-per-joule number is obsolete by the time it is read. Nevertheless It can be accurately said that Bitcoin miners consume a _lot_ of power and as long as the value of Bitcoin increases at an average rate of about 20% per year, that consumption will stay high. On the other hand, you shouldn't expect Bitcoin to increase in value at 20% per year forever. In that respect the fix to the energy consumption problem is embedded within Bitcoin halving itself. Eventually the value will not be increasing at a rate that will keep up with halving

krupan 6y ago

How much energy is used to secure other forms of money, like the U.S. dollar? Hint: you need to include the entire military, at least.

boxmonster 6y ago
I don't know. Has any BC enthusiast calculated it to counter this argument? Using BC exclusively doesn't mean we don't need a military anymore btw.
- krupan 6y ago
  (It’s BTC) There was an article just a day or two ago talking about how our currency is currently a petrodollar. Look that up. Think about the wars we’ve fought over oil, and global warming. Those are the costs of our fiat currency. Bitcoin is cheap!

ur-whale 6y ago

Gigawatts per second???? [EDIT]: I see this needs elaboration ... watts are already "per second". Watts per second implies some sort of acceleration of energy consumption. Just wondering if I'm missing the point.

arcticbull 6y ago
77.78TWh/year or the same as Chile. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Which is about 0.3%, and not 1% as the source claims. I bet some of that goes into heating residential and non-residential buildings, that require heating regardless. So if one to speak about waste, it should be even less than that. For comparison, I guesstimate ~6% is used for heating homes.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Feel free to check their methodology. With that said, if you could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 0.3% with a flip of the switch literally nobody would notice, you'd be mad not to do it. All you'd turn off is crime, and speculation.
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      Sorry, I did not mean your source gave wrong data, I meant the comment you responded to had.

arcticbull 6y ago

Yes and it’s amazing that there’s such a big overlap between the environmentalist electric car owning, composting granola munchers and Bitcoin. They’re burning tires in the back yard each time they make a transaction and driving a Tesla to work.

howlgarnish 6y ago
Is there? I thought Bitcoin hodlers tilted more towards the Lambos, hookers and coke end of the spectrum, at least aspirationally.
- kinghajj 6y ago
  I'll take financial independence and not needing to work, but getting to work if and when I choose.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Sounds like you’re just advocating for basic income with extra steps. I’m a fan of UBI, but it has to apply to everyone not just the folks on the right crypto forum in 2010.
    - kinghajj 6y ago
      Absolutely, I wholeheartedly support a UBI. But that's not mutually exclusive with wanting to be financially independent now, instead of some indeterminate time in the future, once the political will for UBI becomes strong enough. And if/when a UBI does come to pass, I might be in a better position due to my decade-plus of hodling.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Oh I'm pro making money, I wish you all the best in that regard. I just think crypto is thoroughly and utterly worthless. Regressive at best.

nickpp 6y ago

How do you feel about Porn? Movies? Video Games? Skiing? Driving to a party or vacation spot? Pretty much any kind of entertainments uses energy. Bitcoin just uses energy to perform an (arguably) useful function. Is that a more irresponsible usage of energy compared to our other reasons of using energy?

boxmonster 6y ago
It's irresponsible because there's an alternative "Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption by 99 Percent" https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-to-cut-its-absurd-energy-consumption-by-99-percent https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-... "How One Of The Largest Free Porn Sites Uses More Than 6 Million KWh To Power Streaming Services" https://fightthenewdrug.org/what-if-porn-is-bad-for-the-environment/ https://fightthenewdrug.org/what-if-porn-is-bad-for-the-envi...
- krupan 6y ago
  Totally unproven, fraught with peril. The rolling out of proof of stake was delayed years as new challenges were discovered. It’s good that somebody is giving it a try, but it’s no slam dunk. Bitcoin would be irresponsible to jump on proof of stake right now.
  - boxmonster 6y ago
    I see. Well, here's hoping they solve it.
- shawnz 6y ago
  I agree that proof-of-stake systems are an interesting and promising development on top of existing cryptocurrency technology. But how does that make Bitcoin "completely irresponsible" just because it might not be as good as the best, newest available technology? Today's proof-of-stake systems probably never would have existed without Bitcoin. When proof-of-stake systems become mature then Bitcoin could adopt one, or perhaps if Bitcoin users can't reach agreement on that then maybe a new proof-of-stake based cryptocurrency will gain enough trust to overtake Bitcoin. Either way, it serves the purpose of a relatively mature decentralized store of value until then.

Lerc 6y ago

Most of the estimates of power consumption are problematic. Some are better than others but Alex de Vries's numbers are the most quoted and quite questionable. The article you linked to refers to https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-45D4-A1AB-B894E913737D https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-4... which contains "An accepted method for deriving an estimate of the energy consumption of mining is to assume that all miners use the most energy efficient mining device available on the market.(3) Commercial devices are accompanied by published specifications listing the number of hashes that can be computed per second using the device, as well as the power consumption of the device in watts. It is then straightforward to calculate how much power is required to compute 50 billion billion hashes per second using the most energy efficient devices available. I performed such a calculation and obtained an estimate of around 5 gigawatts for Bitcoin mining alone today.(4) This is slightly under 1% of world electricity consumption, or slightly more than the electricity consumption of the state of Ohio or that of the state of New York." The footnotes in turn refer back to Alex de Vries. The numbers rely on the assumption that the majority of mining is using hardware with efficiency similar to the published specifications upon which they made their calculations. Given the nature of the rate of development and the immediate financial benefit to higher efficiency, it is likely that any published hash-per-joule number is obsolete by the time it is read. Nevertheless It can be accurately said that Bitcoin miners consume a _lot_ of power and as long as the value of Bitcoin increases at an average rate of about 20% per year, that consumption will stay high. On the other hand, you shouldn't expect Bitcoin to increase in value at 20% per year forever. In that respect the fix to the energy consumption problem is embedded within Bitcoin halving itself. Eventually the value will not be increasing at a rate that will keep up with halving