7 ms·
Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Chile and a single transaction has the same carbon footprint as ~700k Visa transactions. This may also be underestimated and
by yyy888sss 6y ago
Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Chile and a single transaction has the same carbon footprint as ~700k Visa transactions. This may also be underestimated and account for around half of global data centre energy consumption as per a recent study. [1]
[1] - https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
- Hamuko 6y agoThe Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index gives a much higher estimate (78 TWh vs. 117 TWh), which makes it about the same as the annual electricity usage of United Arab Emirates (pop. 9.9 million). https://www.cbeci.org/ https://www.cbeci.org/
- codenotmath 6y agoTesla should have waited 3 more years until the next halvening.
- BLanen 6y agoThat doesn't change anything in energy usage, and shows how you fundamentally don't understand how it works.
- imwillofficial 6y agoI don’t care about the energy issue. See actual sources of most of bitcoins energy. (Nat gas, thermal, etc that would be otherwise wasted.)
- Hamuko 6y agoCan you show those actual sources?
- imwillofficial 6y agoGo google it.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoThe energy usage of Bitcoin is directly related to the revenue available to BTC miners. As mining rewards decline, so does energy expenditure to mine BTC.
- Retric 6y agoBTC miners make significant money from transaction fees which largely offsets future drops. Unfortunately, if rewards drop enough 51% attacks become possible so Bitcoin requires massive energy expenditure to remain viable. The basic equation the rewards from mining using X hardware over it’s useful lifetime vs the rewards from using that hardware for a 51% attack.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoThe vast majority of BTC miner revenue - around 90% - comes from block rewards: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue With every halving, assuming price remains constant, BTC miner revenue, and with it, energy expenditure, declines, until it's 10% of current energy expenditure. You're right that this could pose problems for Bitcoin's security, but that's unrelated to the fact that Bitcoin miners' energy expenditure as a share of BTC price will decline.
- Retric 6y agoIt’s nowhere near consistent enough to say 10% going forward, as block rewards per day have been anything from 1400 to 10 BTC per day over the last 3 years.
- gruez 6y ago>BTC miners make significant money from transaction fees which largely offsets these drops Today's block subsidy is currently 6.25 BTC, and the amount with fees is around 7.2 BTC. That's nowhere close to the pre-halvening about of 12.5 BTC.
- Retric 6y ago
- codenotmath 6y agoReduced mining rewards will indeed reduce the amount of energy spend. Just check the price surges/declines of the past.
- tomtomtom777 6y agoIt seems really weird to compare the energy consumption to that of a country. "The total energy usage for the production of cars/yachts/fitness machines/musical instruments/toilets equals that of country X" What does it even mean? How do you interpret it? It seems more sensible to compare to total worldwide energy consumption of which Bitcoin takes roughly 0.05%
- zaarn 6y agoConsidering you're talking worldwide energy consumption, 0.05% is a lot of energy. Just because the number is small doesn't mean it's not large by comparison.
- shawnz 6y agoTrue, but similarly just because the number is big in an absolute sense also doesn't mean it is actually a worthwhile target for reducing emissions. There are plenty of lower-hanging fruit.
- zaarn 6y agoIt's 0.05% of energy that could be used elsewhere to reduce emissions (since a lot of miners sit on renewable energy). It's a worthwhile target because it#s easy to fix: don't waste energy like that. edit: additionally a lot of small crap is still a pile or crap at the end of the day, the small little energy wasters (comparatively) still make up a combined total that is wortwhile to take on.
- narcissismo 6y agoIts great that you can find these consumption figures so easily in some cases. It seems that Google only uses 10.6 terawatt hours. https://www.google.co/search?q=google+total+power+consumption https://www.google.co/search?q=google+total+power+consumptio... Add Facebook's 5.1 and you get the amount of power required to kill half of the planet's productivity. [Edit] typo
- mrb 6y ago«as much electricity as Chile» Or about as much as a single large hydroelectric dam. Fun fact: many miners are located in places with cheap hydro/wind electricity like Sichuan & Yunnan provinces in China. These provinces abandon 100+ TWh/year of hydropower. They literally run water through the dams without powering the turbines. 100 TWh/year is more than what Bitcoin consumes globally. «single transaction has the same carbon footprint as...» Misleading. Bitcoin transactions don't consume mining energy. Mining power is completely independent of transaction volume.
- Hamuko 6y ago>Or about as much as a single large hydroelectric dam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_... According to this list, there are two dams in the world which generate that much electricity. And if you take the Cambridge estimate, zero dams.
- olejorgenb 6y ago> Bitcoin transactions don't consume mining energy. Mining power is completely independent of transaction volume. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of bitcoin, but another comment claimed that the block size is limited (without hardforking) and the number of transactions per block surly is limited by the block size?