4 ms·
Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy. The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as
by graeme 6y ago
Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy.
The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use.
Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.
Again, that is while doing all of global finance. Bitcoin powers a rounding error of transactions yet consumes 75 twh.
There’s just no comparison energy wise. My math could be off by several orders of magnitude and bitcoin would still consume more if it were actually powering the world’s transactions.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
- blake1 6y agoThe US consumes about 4 PWh/year, so bitcoin isn't comparable with the nation as a whole. However, that is more power consumption than many individual states, so your overall point remains completely valid.
- graeme 6y agoWhoops yeah that should have been 9.4 quadrillion BTU. The online calculator I used for TWH conversion was very wrong. Looks like the correct value is about 2,000 twh for the us commercial sector? If we assume banks are 10% of that, then it’s 200 twh. 3x bitcoin. But also, handling literally all finance and banking in the US. Vs essentially nothing for bitcoin, compared to the scale of the us economy.
- matt-attack 6y agoYour units are funny. Using W-hr (energy) and then making it a rate by making it per year which gets you back to power. You could have just said, “the US consumes energy at a rate of 450 GW”. There’s no need to introduce hrs and years to the mix. Watts describe precisely what you’re attempting to quantify. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=4+PW+hr%2Fyear+in+GW&oq=4+PW+hr%2Fyear+in+GW https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=4+PW+hr%2Fyear+in+GW&o...
- phaemon 6y agoYour numbers are totally wrong. The fact your own link suggests that bitcoin uses as much electrical energy as Chile should tell you it's not close to the USA. Recheck?
- biolurker1 6y agoBitcoin transacted way more money that PayPal etc
- graeme 6y agoPeople actually buy stuff on paypal. They processed 2.5 billion transactions in 2020. Bitcoin processed about 250 million transactions. The total amount of reported money transacted might be higher for bitcoin but that doesn’t come from contact with the real economy. So that depends on the valuation of bitcoin rather than economic impact. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-payment-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-pay... https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-bitcoin-transactions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b...
- issamehh 6y agoIt'd be really nice if I could find a study on this, but just because bitcoin doesn't power the majority of the transactions doesn't mean it couldn't do so without the energy needs scaling linearly with transactions. If anything I'd imagine it could become more efficient as more transactions were taking place. I see people argue this a lot and I think it's too narrow of a view on the situation. Of course it'd be much better for us to adopt a crypto currency that uses a different algorithm that has even less energy usage. Even without that though I think it could prove to be more efficient than existing financial systems.