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How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in va

by nickpp 6y ago

How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? As a species we use energy to meet our goals. Those goals may be situated anywhere in our hierarchy of needs. Some are essential, some could be considered trivial. But they are all important for their consumers. Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons. Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude.

louwrentius 6y ago
That energy consumption provides a ton of benefits for a very large group of people. The energy consumption of Bitcoin makes a few thousand people rich and that's about it. Yes other things consume a lot of energy, maybe even more, but that doesn't justify the energy consumption of Bitcoin.
minitoar 6y ago
The almighty dollar rights all wrongs. If I’m paying for it, what do you care? This is a slightly dressed up Tragedy in The Commons.
- IndySun 6y ago
  Some people do say that whatever anything costs is what it is worth.
- alecbz 6y ago
  Yeah I don't really understand -- normally people buying things (energy) at a price the supplier is willing to sell is good. If energy is priced appropriately, this shouldn't be a problem. Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? If so, it seems like the real issue is that all energy use is "bad", anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad, and bitcoin is one such thing. But even though it's bitcoin in practice, the real issue seems like not being able to correctly price energy.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    > Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? YES. > anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad YES. This is not hard. The earth's climate is being affected by the emissions from our energy demands. Most nations are trying to control emissions and one major way of doing that is energy efficiency. Bitcoin comes along and is anti-efficient, incentivises using as much power as is still (just about) profitable in mining, and creates nothing but a speculative financial instrument on the back of it. It looks like the worst kind of insult to anyone that gives a crap about climate change.
    - alecbz 6y ago
      Maybe this is too idealistic, but like I said, the root issue feels like energy not being priced correctly (i.e., in a way that captures the true costs of energy consumption to the climate/planet). Rough analogy to "safer systems over safer processes": if an intern presses a big red button that brings down google, the problem isn't that they pressed that button, it's that there's a button any intern can just press to bring down google. The fact that the market allows trades that are net negative is a bug. Bitcoin just happens to be the intern that pressed the button. BUT, if we're in a state where we can't get rid of the big red button, it seems reasonable to get people to stop pressing it in the interim.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        Pricing in the 'true' externalities is a hard problem in itself to define. It's a problem that would require some sort of global standard (maybe in 20 years then), and one that would be pushed back upon by a large number of industries and interests. There are baby steps in some places, and there is massive progress in some countries towards renewables and carbon-zero energy. But in the current state, huge increases in energy consumption are a bad thing. So I think we're in a state where we could potentially get rid of the big red button but a lot of people don't really want to and the realistic chances of doing so are basically zero. And in that situation, yes, we call out the button pressers.
  - 6y ago
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Climate change. Carbon taxes don't exist right now. So you aren't paying for it. People who use disproportionately large amounts of electricity should absolutely be judged (yes, this includes things other than btc).
  - minitoar 6y ago
    Yes, I agree. This is why I described it as a tragedy in the commons.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  What if the externality is not into the price? When the externality of it (pollution, global warming, etc) is not within the price, then yes, we do care, because you aren't paying the true cost and you transfer that cost to me. If you have a carbon tax? Then sure. But if you dump all your emission on the rest of us and wash your hand because "you paid for it", then yes, we will question the value of a waste of energy because that's really the only thing we can do.
  - minitoar 6y ago
    Yes, you are agreeing with me. A tragedy in the commons is a negative thing. That’s why I used that language.
ForHackernews 6y ago
Mining a single bitcoin block takes way way more energy than every one of the things you listed. Somebody on a different thread estimated you could drive a Tesla down the whole California coastline for the energy used processing a single BTC transaction. So yes, I absolutely do judge people who leave an SUV idling in their driveway 24/7 because "you never know when I'll need to jump in and run away from government agents"
- noch 6y ago
  > Somebody on a different thread estimated you could drive a Tesla down the whole California coastline for the energy used processing a single BTC transaction. Bitcoin energy consumption is not a function of the number of transactions. A node broadcasts a transaction which miners then include in a block which, within limits, can have an arbitrary number of transactions. It is the Proof of Work(PoW) contest to find a valid hash for the block at a certain level of difficulty that creates a valid block. Further, with Layer 2 solutions, a single transaction in a Bitcoin block can be "dense" with the value of an arbitrary number of transactions that occurred in Layer 2. That is Bitcoin providing the settlement layer. Importantly, because Bitcoin is a timechain where the current blockheight represents the entire history of Bitcoin. "The average cost per transaction isn’t an adequate metric for measuring the efficiency of Bitcoin’s PoW, it should be defined in terms of the security of an economic history. The energy spend secures the stock of bitcoin, and that percentage is going down over time as inflation decreases. A Bitcoin “accumulates” the energy associated with all the blocks mined since its creation. LaurentMT, a researcher, has found empirically that Bitcoin’s PoW is indeed becoming more efficient over time: increasing cost is counterbalanced by the even greater increasing total value secured by the system."[0] [0] : https://danhedl.medium.com/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3 https://danhedl.medium.com/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    The only reasonable metric is energy usage per NECESSARY effect. If bitcoin spends inordinate amounts of energy on storing historic transactions, that is not our problem. That is not a value most people care about.
dixego 6y ago
If maintaining the infrastructure for something a miniscule percentage of the world's population benefit from requires more energy than entire countries, surely it's worth interrogating whether the benefits outweigh the costs?
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  But how do you set differential electricity prices by type of use? That seems nightmarish to try to enforce. So you criticize the miners, but what can actually be done about it?
  - sharker8 6y ago
    We do that somewhat by limitations in the grid itself. A simple example is that different kind of outlet you use for your washer dryer machine.
    - ragebol 6y ago
      What's different about it? All my 230v devices use the same outlet and plug. Or is that on a different voltage and current, power rating alltogether?
    - suprfsat 6y ago
      If you don't have a 240V circuit handy you can just find two 120V circuits on opposite phases and wire them together
    - mikestew 6y ago
      The kind of outlet one sees for 240V is to keep you from plugging your 120V iPhone charger into it, not because it's any kind of limitation on the grid. You can have European-style (or Australian, or Vietnamese, or...) outlets in your U. S. house if you like, and pull 220V out of every outlet in your house, you'll just have to do a ton of rewiring. (Theoretically; if I've forgotten something, it's because I've never heard of anyone converting a U. S. house to use non-U. S. appliances.)
umanwizard 6y ago
> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system Yeah, but those people are wrong. It's perfectly reasonable to judge them for doing harmful actions in service of a wrong belief.
- pdpi 6y ago
  Why are they wrong? People who consider Bitcoin important are not a homogeneous mass — are you saying all those people are wrong, or some portion of it?
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    I believe that everyone who thinks Bitcoin is important to the future of the global financial system is wrong about that particular point. (They might be fine people in other ways, or have other reasons to like Bitcoin, sure).
    - meowkit 6y ago
      Ok but why. Here is a primer on why BTC and crypto are important to the future of the global financial system. https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/05/decentralized-finance-on-blockchain-and-smart-contract-based-financial-markets https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/...
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  Why are they wrong?
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Because Bitcoin is not important to our future finance system. It does not solve any problem that any meaningful fraction of people cares about.
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
> $X is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons. [...] Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. Et voilà! "Some" people think $X is now important, and thus, the rest of the world shall no longer be able to produce judgements on either $X or "those people". I think it is definitely up for debate, and we can ask questions such as how absurd $X actually is (or is not), how absurdly wasteful (or not) $X is, how many "some people" is, whether the assumption that $X is important for $Y is true (or not), etc. Please...
Shoue 6y ago
When the alternative is simply just using Proof of Stake and lowering the energy consumption by an estimated 99%, yes, we can be judgmental of how others use energy in this specific case. It's not Bitcoin/PoW or no cryptocurrencies at all, that's a false dichotomy, if that's what you're implying.
- Nursie 6y ago
  Good luck with that. The bitcoin core folks can't even agree to change blocksizes to increase transaction throughput. Switching to PoS is highly unlikely.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    True, but the rest of us can switch blockchains.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Good luck with that too.
      - deeeeplearning 6y ago
        Ether is the number 2 coin and has been steadily gaining on Btc. Do you think everyone uses Btc exclusively?
        Nursie 6y ago
        No, but I don't think ether uses PoS either (though I know they've been trying to move to it for years). Further, whether or not some folks move to ethereum is more or less irrelevant to whether BTC carries on doing what it's doing. The problem is not individuals making the switch, it's getting enough people to switch in order to reduce the energy footprint of BTC.
        DennisP 6y ago
cambaceres 6y ago
If Bitcoin uses that amount of energy now, imagine how much it will consume when a large amount of the population actualy uses it for payments.
- zadler 6y ago
  How many people use it for payments is not the right metric, it’s not the payments that cost a lot of electricity it’s the competition to win block rewards where more energy means a higher chance of mining a block. Indirectly, if a lot of people use it for payments it may be worth more and attract more mining competition.
- zie 6y ago
  Bitcoin and most(all?) crypto currencies pretty much suck for payments. I think a BTC transaction costs around $16 USD just to get it on the blockchain now. Plus transactions are not private, and they are permanently public, so even if your BTC Address is unknown today, doesn't mean it won't be known tomorrow. There are perhaps, some reasonable arguments for using crypto-currencies, but buying groceries is not on the list. Buying Houses... *MAYBE*, since that information is already public anyway.
pixelpoet 6y ago
I tried to make this point on Reddit, and was downvoted to a smoking hole in the ground by people who were complaining that they can't get GPUs to play games, and that it's not eco-friendly. Of course, playing games on high powered GPUs is super eco-friendly, as are many other ways of making money... Half of them think people are mining Bitcoin on GPUs, and almost none of them know about Proof of Stake coins. Not that I want to excuse the egregious power consumption of PoW coins, but I do wish the holier-than-thou crowd would at least do a little more research.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Most people have a job and game part-time. GPUs in gaming rigs are not powered on 24/7. Let's be honest about this.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The price of all cryptocurrencies more or less move in tandem, so that when Bitcoin has a good time, so does all the cryptocurrencies that can be mined with GPUs.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  Some people are really out of touch. By the time they found out about Bitcoin in the past couple years it had moved past GPU mining almost a decade ago.
- Weebs 6y ago
  Yes, high powered gaming isn't eco friendly either, but can we please stop ignoring magnitude and utility in this thread? You can power a typical US household for almost an entire month using the energy of a single bitcoin transaction. What utility does Bitcoin bring with that single transaction? Is it worth the measurable harm it's doing to our ecosystem and human lives?
  - pixelpoet 6y ago
    I wasn't ignoring it, only pointing out that they were ignoring the eco-unfriendliness of their preferred use of GPUs (single users with single GPU, also not mining fulltime probably since it's in their PC). Please tell me you see the hypocrisy. I'm personally fully onboard with Bitcoin and all PoW coins being crap and wish they would die, leaving only PoS coins in the crypto space.
betterunix2 6y ago
Important difference between Bitcoin and everything else you mentioned: there is no incentive to improve the energy-efficiency of mining. We went from CPU to GPU to ASIC mining, each time reducing the per-hash energy consumption, and all the miners did was hash more using the same amount of energy. Whereas, for example, the energy used to watch porn -- energy spent by all the routers, switches, and servers involved -- will be reduced if technological improvements allow the same task to be accomplished with less energy.
- leeoniya 6y ago
  aka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - betterunix2 6y ago
    Nope, not the same. Bitcoin mining does not "produce" hashes, it "produces" Bitcoin blocks. All that changed with the improvement in hashing speed is the number of hashes that must be computed before a block is added to the block chain.
    - leeoniya 6y ago
      i dont follow. moving from cpu to gpu to fpga to asics (each a gain in efficiency) did not reduce electricity consumption, because it in effect accelerated the rate at which the hashing complexity was raised by the network, in effect negating up any efficiency gains. that's exactly the phenomenon.
- Taek 6y ago
  Spending material wealth on mining is what makes it secure. We work on improving the per-hash cost because it makes it more difficult for someone with a brilliant technological innovation to compromise the security of the system. And there is incentive to improve the total energy use. Every participant in the system pays for the electricity that secures bitcoin in the form of inflation and transaction fees. If some alternative to Bitcoin can provide all the same benefit but with less inflation and lower fees, then there is a good reason to switch to that alternative. And people are trying to innovate here continuously, the blockchain sector at this point is getting more investment than the AI sector.
dubcanada 6y ago
I do agree that most of these articles are picking on bitcoin. I think the main problem people have is the actual result of the mining is useless, say compared to using all those computers for MI or Folding @ Home. I think a better solution would be to get rid of these random bytes and replace them with a Folding @ Home or similar solution, where the computing power you donate results in you getting X bitcoin. Things that are a positive on society, rather then a negative. But then again that is me being judgmental on others, maybe people care a ton about that string of random alphanumeric characters.
- pdpi 6y ago
  The actual result of mining is defending the network against double-spending (and censorship, to a degree — though this is more fragile). Insofar as you believe that Bitcoin-the-currency is itself a social positive, the mining process has a positive effect. (But also a very meaningful cost, which leads us to a subtler question — is it a net positive?)
- hakesdev 6y ago
  this is a really dumb argument that is trotted out every 4 years. There's also already a FoldingCoin that's been around since 2014. https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/foldingcoin/ https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/foldingcoin/ For PoW to work it must be a costly signal. If you introduce positive externalities of mining (such as Folding @ Home) the system isn't sustainable.
toolz 6y ago
I don't know that name-calling adds much value to the conversation, but I will say it's a failing strategy to try and make value judgements for other people. The way forward is technological advancement. That has always been the case. We're not going to solve climate crisis by stifling anything as should be evident just by looking at China. I'd imagine we're all much better off supporting green energy rather than pointing fingers at anyone who has a different value judgement for how that energy should be used.
nelsonenzo 6y ago
> reeks of hypocrisy says the bitcoin holder that profits from it's adoption.
- nickpp 6y ago
  I own zero cryptocurrency, they are not aligned with my investment strategy. But I do think they are an experiment worth pursuing.
ausbah 6y ago
and this post reeks of missing the point. people should be judged for how they consume energy because excess consumption is simply wasteful, and in the middle of the ongoing global catastrophe called climate change - isn't something we can exactly afford obviously this raises the question of what is and isn't excessive, but I think there are apparent cases where the benefits of excessive energy consumption people clearly don't out weight the cost - see flying, cruises, rampant shopping, etc. I think Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies fall into that category, especially when there are other coins that require nearly as many resources to function
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kingkawn 6y ago
Why is not wanting to waste electricity on Ponzi schemes so triggering?
- bccdee 6y ago
  They're emotionally invested in cryptocurrency being the future. When people challenge them by suggesting that it's basically bad all the way down, they lash out.
  - Weebs 6y ago
    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  It is a really low form of argument to simply use the word "triggering". Implying that the original poster doesn't have any real reasoning behind what they are writing, no original thoughts or responsible viewpoints that they have worked on - instead that they are "triggered", - thus are reacting in a simply emotional way. Implying that somehow all of their argument can be simply discarded. Really? You mean that just because you have used the word "triggering" (there are no other meaningful arguments in your comment), that would somehow invalidate an argument? What grade is that logic from?
  - kingkawn 6y ago
    Lol at calling anything “low” as a form of argument and expecting to be heard
nr2x 6y ago
If you combine the energy costs of delivering streaming video and the client side costs of playing video and executing JavaScript I have no doubt porn far outstrips Bitcoin. Hell, I bet JavaScript bloat from adtech alone and exceeds the totally energy budget of France.
- starclerk 6y ago
  There are 3.4 billion internet users. It takes about 30 W to watch video in a browser [1]. Assuming every internet user watches 85 minutes of video per day [2] (517 hr/year), video consumption is 52 TWh per year. Or less than half of than the bitcoin network. Google uses 12 TWh per year [3]. Assuming Google is entirely focused on serving the world's video (it likely could), that still is ~half of the bitcoin network. (France consumes about 480 TWh per year [4]) [1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explorer-10-is-the-most-energy-efficient-browser-uses-up-to-18-less-power-than-chrome-and-firefox/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explore... [2] https://www.marketingcharts.com/digital/video-110520 https://www.marketingcharts.com/digital/video-110520 [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/10/21/googles-dominance-is-fueled-by-zambia-size-amounts-of-electricity/?sh=522016fb68c9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/10/21/googles-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
  - nr2x 6y ago
    Seems like I lost my bet if those numbers are correct, kudos on doing the math!
jp555 6y ago
Even more directly - How much energy does all the world's "legacy" Fintech use? Banks, exchanges, government tax agencies, accountants, money printing, retail cash machines (ATM, registers, etc) and all the way to gold mining.
- Nursie 6y ago
  When bitcoin provides 1% of the services that the "legacy" financial world does, let's talk.
- bccdee 6y ago
  If you want to analogize 1:1, a bitcoin transaction consumes approximately five hundred thousand times more energy than a visa transaction [1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    But you're also not counting all the people, buildings, surrounding systems needed to make the VISA network work.
    - bccdee 6y ago
      Nor am I counting the infrastructure surrounding Bitcoin mining. This tabulates only the energy expenditure of the computers performing the transactions.
  - hakesdev 6y ago
    Please read. Nic Carter is a good place to start. https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bitcoins-climate-footprint https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit... "First of all, Bitcoin and Visa are fundamentally different systems. Bitcoin is a complete, self-contained monetary settlement system; Visa transactions are non-final credit transactions that rely on external underlying settlement rails. Visa relies on ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, the global correspondent banking system, the Federal Reserve and, of course, the military and diplomatic strength of the U.S. government to ensure all of the above are working smoothly. Any energy comparison must take the above into account – including the externalities from the extraction of oil, which implicitly backs the dollar. As those who make this comparison inevitably fail to mention, the dollar’s ubiquity is partly due to a covert arrangement whereby the U.S. provides military support to countries like Saudi Arabia that agree to sell oil exclusively for dollars. It’s worth noting that the grossly oversized U.S. military, whose presence worldwide is necessary to backstop the international dollar system, is the largest single consumer of oil worldwide."
justapassenger 6y ago
Bitcoin isn’t religion (although it has many religious-like followers), so there aren’t dogmas you cannot question. Energy usage of it is ridiculously high and people are totally allowed to question how wasteful it is, no matter if you allow them to.
hummusman 6y ago
When it became blindingly apparent that mining diamonds, gold and rare earth metals was proving harmful to societies (pollution, war etc.) countries put into place regulation to ensure that future mining would be conducted in ways to try and eliminate these harms. Mining bitcoin is a growing contributor to energy consumption, and subsequently environmental damage and harm. Similar precedent?
- Taek 6y ago
  Kind of but not really. People aren't upset at _how_ bitcoin is using electricity, they are upset at how much bitcoin is using electricity. If you want to save the environment, regulate the production of electricity irrespective of how that electricity is put to use. Let the market figure out how to allocate the electricity to various tasks.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Energy consumption does not necessarily mean environmental harm. That's not a law of the universe at all.
  - mentalpiracy 6y ago
    Where do you think energy being consumed comes from?
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Depends on the source, right? For example, in Iceland it's mostly geothermal power plants. And that's why electricity is so cheap there, and that's why, despite being one of the smallest countries in terms of population, it is #4 for Bitcoin mining: https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/bitcoin-mining-top-5-countries-with-highest-share-of-mining-hashpower/ https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/bitcoin-mining-top-5-cou...
matsemann 6y ago
> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. It's impossible to have a good debate if you from the get-go insult everyone that disagree with you and heighten bitcoin to something not allowed to be criticized because some people believe it can be important in the future. As if that absolves something from all sins.
bccdee 6y ago
One bitcoin transaction uses FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES more energy than one Visa transaction [1]. This is like lighting a cigar with a $500 bill and going "what, I have to light my cigars somehow, and inevitably it'll cost something. I spend money to meet my goals." [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
- parliament32 6y ago
  Compared to the cost of lighting a cigar with a matchstick, it'd be more like lighting it with a penny. Despite Visa transactions being cheap, bitcoin transactions are also very cheap -- you spend more power turning on your living room light for a few seconds. Probably best if we keep things in perspective. Further: https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50 https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consu...
  - bccdee 6y ago
    Okay, so the gist of that article is that bitcoin burns about a third as much energy as the entire global institution of banking, based on some extremely back-of-the-envelope calculations. Bitcoin's current market cap is about $600 billion. There are quadrillions of dollars worth of capital in the the world, mostly managed by banks. Bitcoin remains EXTREMELY inefficient in comparison.
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
This is the most concise and crystallized attempt at putting this (certainly popular and in some ways inevitable) argument into relatable words. Kudos.
game_the0ry 6y ago
Agreed. Governments and financial institutions are having to resort to "virtue" and "value" arguments against bitcoin, instead of technical arguments: - Bitcoin consumes so much energy! Think of the planet! - Iran, China, and Russia mine bitcoin! They are our enemies! Indeed it does reek of hypocrisy. Oh, now you care about the environment and international competition? Please...
ashtonkem 6y ago
That’s a neat slight of hand trick you’ve pulled off there, connecting Bitcoin to entertainment in order to shame those of us concerned about Bitcoin energy usage. Everything else you’ve listed provides subjective value to the user, which makes them hard to attack. Who can say what the value of skiing is to a society in terms of kWh? There is no way to objectively compare the value of energy spent on a ski lift vs. driving to see friends; that’s all subjective value. But the issue is that Bitcoin isn’t supposed to provide subjective value, it’s supposed to provide objective value; it’s literally supposed to be money. Once you remember that it’s supposed to literally be money, then comparisons to ski lifts become extremely disingenuous. It also becomes fair to compare Bitcoin against other competitors that provide the exact same service to society, comparisons that make Bitcoin look very wasteful indeed.
- ric2b 6y ago
  > But the issue is that Bitcoin isn’t supposed to provide subjective value, it’s supposed to provide objective value; it’s literally supposed to be money. Money's value is also subjective, I'm not sure what you think is objective about it. Sounds like you're just trying to dodge the comparison.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Definitionally, money’s value is not supposed to be subjective.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Definitionally, money’s value is not supposed to be subjective. Not only is that not true, but if to was it would just render “money” a non-concept, because definitionally value (in general, not just of money) is subjective.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        Ah, the “everything is subjective” rabbit hole. No thanks, that’s never a useful conversation. The purpose of any monetary system is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. That’s why humans make money; to avoid the need to barter or depend on social credit systems that don’t scale well. This provides us some objective goals with which we can compare and contrast monetary systems against; while what one does with money is subjective, we can objectively compare the efficiency and ease with which a monetary system can facilitate transactions. In this area Bitcoin does terribly. This is probably why Bitcoin advocates have mostly moved onto “it’s a store of value”, that’s more a more defensible proposition.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>How much energy does watching porn consume? I guess if you got stats on how much porn they watch in Argentina you would be well on your way to answering this question. Same for the rest. I think the more interesting thing is: as bitcoin becomes more difficult to mine energy needs go up, but countries are working hard to bring their energy usage down. Can bitcoin be overtaken on the downward journey by a country, or will it always be bitcoin overtaking countries on its upward swing. Is there some country decreasing its usage as bitcoin increases its, and the two pass each other like ships in the night. What is the next country most likely to be surpassed by bitcoin?
- ric2b 6y ago
  > as bitcoin becomes more difficult to mine energy needs go up Difficulty adjusts up and down as needed to maintain an average of 1 block every 10 minutes, it doesn't just tend to infinity. It's mostly correlated to the block reward, miners won't spend more money on energy than they get back from mining blocks.
  - newswasboring 6y ago
    I may be confused here. But the regulation mechanism to get to 1block/min is to ask miners to do more computations, right? Making the problem harder in this context does have the effect of more power consumed. A block is an answer to the riddle who's parameters are being regulated. So the block rate is not important, number of computations is. And that is directly linked with power consumption.
    - ric2b 6y ago
      It's 1 block every 10 minutes. The difficulty adjustment goes both ways, if blocks start taking longer than 10 minutes to be mined (for example if some large miner stops mining for some reason) the difficulty goes down, which likely means less energy is used. You're correct that the actual adjustment is on the number of computations, so the correlation to energy use isn't direct, different machines can be more or less efficient at making those calculations.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cft 6y ago
It's a salvo in the imminent central banks attack against this serious threat, that would compete with their fiat experiment. They are not sure yet whether to use the environmental angle or the "terrorist use of Bitcoin" like Yellen announced .
moonbug 6y ago
> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. Really? give us a source, one who isn't either a grifter, a shill, or a criminal.
- RIMR 6y ago
  Does it count if they're all three?
- meowkit 6y ago
  https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/05/decentralized-finance-on-blockchain-and-smart-contract-based-financial-markets https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/... Bitcoin may not be around for ever if it isn’t upgraded to be more efficient, but public and private blockchains are here to stay and have real use cases. You can be a salty Luddite if you want, but assuming proponents are mostly grifters, shills, or criminals just tells me you don’t have a clue.
  - moonbug 6y ago
    "As such, DeFi may potentially contribute to a more robust and transparent financial infrastructure." check your comprehension.
tw04 6y ago
How many of those directly convert electricity into profit? How many of those businesses have been rent seeking countries/states/locations that subsidize electricity for their populations? Electricity is one of those things most of society has deemed an essential good, and as such has subsidized it for the poorest among us. Bitcoin farmers are abusing that system to turn the government subsidies into personal profit for a handful. Let's not even begin to equate THAT to someone going to a concert put on for the benefit of and at the cost to those participating.
- ric2b 6y ago
  > Electricity is one of those things most of society has deemed an essential good, and as such has subsidized it for the poorest among us. Sounds like an argument for giving subsidies to the poor instead of anyone using electricity.
- ha4fsd3fas 6y ago
  Well it's like any other business that runs on electricity. AWS converts electricity directly into profit. They provide a service for paying customers, just like a miner does. I'm sure many datacenters are located in places where electricity is cheap, hell I bet some datacenters get it even cheaper with lobbying.
  - tw04 6y ago
    Can you list an example of AWS building a datacenter, in secret, in a location with subsidized power? I GUARANTEE YOU Amazon lets the local municipality know when they're building a new datacenter and they aren't getting subsidized rates.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
I mostly agree. As long as the price of energy is adequately priced, we should be able to make our own decisions on what amenities we need. You need a F150? Great, but be prepared to pay for its use. Naturally, the question immediately becomes, who decides what is adequate, which is not fun. Incidentally, I am learning about bitcoin now since it is clearly becoming mainstream and it is related to my job. I am trying to build a miner ( I don't want one click zerohash solutions for variety of reasons ) on Ubuntu derivative ( POPos ) and now I am stuck troubleshooting pool connections. Anyone could recommend a reliable resource? I am starting to get really aggravated by having to google every single error encountered.
- Nursie 6y ago
  > As long as the price of energy is adequately priced. It's not, and doing so is a hard problem, requiring a global solution, against the wishes of many interests and industries. It doesn't seem likely any time soon.
RIMR 6y ago
But here's the thing: This article didn't say anything bad about Bitcoin's energy usage. It's simply quantifying it. If quantifying the energy usage of Bitcoin makes you angry, you should probably self-reflect a bit. This is a very unbiased source, and nothing they have published is untrue.
gnramires 6y ago
The problem is that Bitcoin doesn't need to use this much energy. We've now discovered distributed consensus algorithms that don't rely on Proof of Work, so it's really quite terrible we still waste so much by using an outdated consensus algorithm.
- ric2b 6y ago
  I'm not aware of any other consensus algorithm that is proven to be as secure as PoW.
  - gnramires 6y ago
    Proof of Stake has proven quite robust. None of the larger PoS coins have been compromised (despite much theoretical discussion), and newer ones such as Cardano seem to address early objections. Peercoin has been around for a while without any issues. The fact is, I see all of those massive distributed consensus algorithms as much more robust than they appeared initially. 51%/double spend attacks in practice are extremely hard to occur because of the exposure/publicity of the ledger and how hard it would be to capitalize on crashing the currency (PoS/PoW does not change it).
    - ric2b 6y ago
      > Proof of Stake has proven quite robust. They're not mathematically provable and the jury is still out. Attackers who know some exploit might be waiting for the much larger Ethereum to switch to PoS so they can reap maximum profit.
      - cstein2 6y ago
        Here's the paper of Cardano's provably secure PoS algorithm https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf
  - bcheung 6y ago
    They are known as "proof of stake". The way it works is that "validator" nodes confirm the blocks. The validators are randomly chosen based on the percentage they have staked. You stake by owning the coin and locking it up using a staking mechanism tied into the protocol. This locks up your coins for a set period of time. If a validator does not validate correctly or fakes the transactions then they run the risk of being "slashed". Slashing means they forfeit what they have invested. Usually you need to stake $10K+ USD but there are also pools where people can combine their money. Both pools and proof of work mining farms suffer from large groups consolidating the validation power. One of the newer blockchains (Caradano) introduces the concept of a penalty for large pools in favor of having lots of smaller validators to make the network more resilient to a single group having too much validation power. This encourages decentralization.
boh 6y ago
I mean it's just a standard economic argument concerning the use of scarce resources. All your examples have a higher impact on the real economy vs. Bitcoin. As in, these industries employ large numbers of people and sustain economic growth to some degree, in contrast Bitcoin services a comparatively limited population engaged in limited productive activity relative to its energy use. People are free to be judgmental about anything they like.
tomxor 6y ago
A maximum of 178 things on the planet consume >= to the electricity of Bitcoin. 99.44%/0.56% = ~178 according to their estimate. So if you want to compare, the premise is that there are no more than 178 things on Earth more valuable per watt, no more than 178 things to compare to... That is absurd.
ctdonath 6y ago
Excellent questions with interesting answers. OP’s observation begins a fascinating discussion. I’ve been roughing out minimal cost of living, finding baseline around 5¢/hr; need to re-cast to kWh units.
undersuit 6y ago
I've always wondered what the cost for HDCP encryption on our media wastes.
_jal 6y ago
Watching porn and playing video games do not have structural ratchets essentially forcing ever-greater porn-watching or game-playing.
- pattisapu 6y ago
  Wait a minute . . .
wcarron 6y ago
> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. No, seeing a bunch of rich nerds wasting massive amounts of energy in a time of environmental crisis so they can make millions convincing people a store of value is actually a currency, and then getting mad about it, is not hypocritical. > While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, It's not. It's a massive waste. Stop killing the planet.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  Hell, just consider that it's a store of value that costs $12B+ / year to secure.
starclerk 6y ago
You're getting a lot of replies but I don't see anyone answering the initial questions. Some really rough math for playing video games: Assuming I'm playing with someone across the country, I hop 13 routers in a quick traceroute. Assuming each router is commercial hardware (~400W) and my traffic completely saturates them, that's 5,200W. Plus the two machines at the end of each line, assuming they're beefy gaming PCs/servers with 1,000W power supplies at 100% load just for this game. That's 2,000W. Playing a 30 minute Starcraft game comes to 3.6kWh, or two orders of magnitude less than a bitcoin transaction. It's almost certainly less than that since my assumptions were very conservative. ~~~ For something live like a concert, a 54,000 sqft hall uses about 1,100 kWh of power per day (lighting, HVAC). Plus 15kW of speakers for a 6 hour concert is 1,190 kWh. Divided by the 6000 people attending, is 0.2 kWh per attendee. Adding a 10 mile solo drive per person is about 3 kWh. Or again about 2 orders of magnitude less. ~~~ These aren't good comparisons when I could do hundreds of each of the activities you listed for the cost of one transaction.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Oh, come on. All of those things, except for travel, draw roughly zero watts compared to Bitcoin. One Bitcoin transaction is about 750 kWh. That's enough to power a typical home for a month. It's enough to drive about 500 miles in an electric car, or (with vigorous handwaving based on EPA numbers) about 200 miles in an efficient gasoline car. Bitcoin uses about 1/3 the energy of all the datacenters in the world. There are about 120 million Bitcoin transactions per year. If we assume 360 million people are using services that run in datacenters (obviously too low), one Bitcoin transaction uses as much electricity as the server time to support one user across all the services they use for a year. >Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. This is an engineering problem.
- bcheung 6y ago
  A transaction or a block? Multiple transactions are recorded in a single block. The massive computational power is used to certify and lock down blocks at a time, not individual transactions.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    A transaction. A block can hold a limited number of transactions, so the throughput is limited. It works out to about four transactions per second on average. The cost to "mine" a whole block is even more ludicrous.
cesarb 6y ago
> How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? The difference is that, for all of these, the incentive is to lower the energy usage. For Bitcoin, the incentive is to increase the energy usage, until the amount of energy used costs the same as the amount of Bitcoin received by the miners.
titzer 6y ago
Like it or not, we live on the same planet. I have to smell your farts, and inhale your air pollution, and your CO2 output ruins my climate. You can use energy however you want when you pay for all the externalities yourself. Right now, you can't. In aggregate, this concept is known as social responsibility.
agumonkey 6y ago
I'd really like to know the energy cost of HD streaming in general. Including god damn hi-res GIFs.
sharkjacobs 6y ago
> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. Are you actually seeing this or are you conflating criticisms of bitcoin with criticisms of bitcoin miners? Because I feel like I see a lot of the former and very little of the latter, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.
maclured 6y ago
> How much energy does watching porn consume? Just about all of mine

by nickpp 6y ago

louwrentius 6y ago

That energy consumption provides a ton of benefits for a very large group of people. The energy consumption of Bitcoin makes a few thousand people rich and that's about it. Yes other things consume a lot of energy, maybe even more, but that doesn't justify the energy consumption of Bitcoin.

minitoar 6y ago

The almighty dollar rights all wrongs. If I’m paying for it, what do you care? This is a slightly dressed up Tragedy in The Commons.

IndySun 6y ago
Some people do say that whatever anything costs is what it is worth.
alecbz 6y ago
Yeah I don't really understand -- normally people buying things (energy) at a price the supplier is willing to sell is good. If energy is priced appropriately, this shouldn't be a problem. Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? If so, it seems like the real issue is that all energy use is "bad", anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad, and bitcoin is one such thing. But even though it's bitcoin in practice, the real issue seems like not being able to correctly price energy.
- Nursie 6y ago
  > Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? YES. > anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad YES. This is not hard. The earth's climate is being affected by the emissions from our energy demands. Most nations are trying to control emissions and one major way of doing that is energy efficiency. Bitcoin comes along and is anti-efficient, incentivises using as much power as is still (just about) profitable in mining, and creates nothing but a speculative financial instrument on the back of it. It looks like the worst kind of insult to anyone that gives a crap about climate change.
  - alecbz 6y ago
    Maybe this is too idealistic, but like I said, the root issue feels like energy not being priced correctly (i.e., in a way that captures the true costs of energy consumption to the climate/planet). Rough analogy to "safer systems over safer processes": if an intern presses a big red button that brings down google, the problem isn't that they pressed that button, it's that there's a button any intern can just press to bring down google. The fact that the market allows trades that are net negative is a bug. Bitcoin just happens to be the intern that pressed the button. BUT, if we're in a state where we can't get rid of the big red button, it seems reasonable to get people to stop pressing it in the interim.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Pricing in the 'true' externalities is a hard problem in itself to define. It's a problem that would require some sort of global standard (maybe in 20 years then), and one that would be pushed back upon by a large number of industries and interests. There are baby steps in some places, and there is massive progress in some countries towards renewables and carbon-zero energy. But in the current state, huge increases in energy consumption are a bad thing. So I think we're in a state where we could potentially get rid of the big red button but a lot of people don't really want to and the realistic chances of doing so are basically zero. And in that situation, yes, we call out the button pressers.
- 6y ago
UncleMeat 6y ago
Climate change. Carbon taxes don't exist right now. So you aren't paying for it. People who use disproportionately large amounts of electricity should absolutely be judged (yes, this includes things other than btc).
- minitoar 6y ago
  Yes, I agree. This is why I described it as a tragedy in the commons.
jeromegv 6y ago
What if the externality is not into the price? When the externality of it (pollution, global warming, etc) is not within the price, then yes, we do care, because you aren't paying the true cost and you transfer that cost to me. If you have a carbon tax? Then sure. But if you dump all your emission on the rest of us and wash your hand because "you paid for it", then yes, we will question the value of a waste of energy because that's really the only thing we can do.
- minitoar 6y ago
  Yes, you are agreeing with me. A tragedy in the commons is a negative thing. That’s why I used that language.

ForHackernews 6y ago

Mining a single bitcoin block takes way way more energy than every one of the things you listed. Somebody on a different thread estimated you could drive a Tesla down the whole California coastline for the energy used processing a single BTC transaction. So yes, I absolutely do judge people who leave an SUV idling in their driveway 24/7 because "you never know when I'll need to jump in and run away from government agents"

noch 6y ago
> Somebody on a different thread estimated you could drive a Tesla down the whole California coastline for the energy used processing a single BTC transaction. Bitcoin energy consumption is not a function of the number of transactions. A node broadcasts a transaction which miners then include in a block which, within limits, can have an arbitrary number of transactions. It is the Proof of Work(PoW) contest to find a valid hash for the block at a certain level of difficulty that creates a valid block. Further, with Layer 2 solutions, a single transaction in a Bitcoin block can be "dense" with the value of an arbitrary number of transactions that occurred in Layer 2. That is Bitcoin providing the settlement layer. Importantly, because Bitcoin is a timechain where the current blockheight represents the entire history of Bitcoin. "The average cost per transaction isn’t an adequate metric for measuring the efficiency of Bitcoin’s PoW, it should be defined in terms of the security of an economic history. The energy spend secures the stock of bitcoin, and that percentage is going down over time as inflation decreases. A Bitcoin “accumulates” the energy associated with all the blocks mined since its creation. LaurentMT, a researcher, has found empirically that Bitcoin’s PoW is indeed becoming more efficient over time: increasing cost is counterbalanced by the even greater increasing total value secured by the system."[0] [0] : https://danhedl.medium.com/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3 https://danhedl.medium.com/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3
- Grustaf 6y ago
  The only reasonable metric is energy usage per NECESSARY effect. If bitcoin spends inordinate amounts of energy on storing historic transactions, that is not our problem. That is not a value most people care about.

dixego 6y ago

If maintaining the infrastructure for something a miniscule percentage of the world's population benefit from requires more energy than entire countries, surely it's worth interrogating whether the benefits outweigh the costs?

CydeWeys 6y ago
But how do you set differential electricity prices by type of use? That seems nightmarish to try to enforce. So you criticize the miners, but what can actually be done about it?
- sharker8 6y ago
  We do that somewhat by limitations in the grid itself. A simple example is that different kind of outlet you use for your washer dryer machine.
  - ragebol 6y ago
    What's different about it? All my 230v devices use the same outlet and plug. Or is that on a different voltage and current, power rating alltogether?
  - suprfsat 6y ago
    If you don't have a 240V circuit handy you can just find two 120V circuits on opposite phases and wire them together
  - mikestew 6y ago
    The kind of outlet one sees for 240V is to keep you from plugging your 120V iPhone charger into it, not because it's any kind of limitation on the grid. You can have European-style (or Australian, or Vietnamese, or...) outlets in your U. S. house if you like, and pull 220V out of every outlet in your house, you'll just have to do a ton of rewiring. (Theoretically; if I've forgotten something, it's because I've never heard of anyone converting a U. S. house to use non-U. S. appliances.)

umanwizard 6y ago

> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system Yeah, but those people are wrong. It's perfectly reasonable to judge them for doing harmful actions in service of a wrong belief.

pdpi 6y ago
Why are they wrong? People who consider Bitcoin important are not a homogeneous mass — are you saying all those people are wrong, or some portion of it?
- umanwizard 6y ago
  I believe that everyone who thinks Bitcoin is important to the future of the global financial system is wrong about that particular point. (They might be fine people in other ways, or have other reasons to like Bitcoin, sure).
  - meowkit 6y ago
    Ok but why. Here is a primer on why BTC and crypto are important to the future of the global financial system. https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/05/decentralized-finance-on-blockchain-and-smart-contract-based-financial-markets https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/...
rawtxapp 6y ago
Why are they wrong?
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Because Bitcoin is not important to our future finance system. It does not solve any problem that any meaningful fraction of people cares about.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago

AshamedCaptain 6y ago

> $X is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons. [...] Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. Et voilà! "Some" people think $X is now important, and thus, the rest of the world shall no longer be able to produce judgements on either $X or "those people". I think it is definitely up for debate, and we can ask questions such as how absurd $X actually is (or is not), how absurdly wasteful (or not) $X is, how many "some people" is, whether the assumption that $X is important for $Y is true (or not), etc. Please...

Shoue 6y ago

When the alternative is simply just using Proof of Stake and lowering the energy consumption by an estimated 99%, yes, we can be judgmental of how others use energy in this specific case. It's not Bitcoin/PoW or no cryptocurrencies at all, that's a false dichotomy, if that's what you're implying.

Nursie 6y ago
Good luck with that. The bitcoin core folks can't even agree to change blocksizes to increase transaction throughput. Switching to PoS is highly unlikely.
- DennisP 6y ago
  True, but the rest of us can switch blockchains.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Good luck with that too.
    - deeeeplearning 6y ago
      Ether is the number 2 coin and has been steadily gaining on Btc. Do you think everyone uses Btc exclusively?
      - Nursie 6y ago
        No, but I don't think ether uses PoS either (though I know they've been trying to move to it for years). Further, whether or not some folks move to ethereum is more or less irrelevant to whether BTC carries on doing what it's doing. The problem is not individuals making the switch, it's getting enough people to switch in order to reduce the energy footprint of BTC.
        DennisP 6y ago

cambaceres 6y ago

If Bitcoin uses that amount of energy now, imagine how much it will consume when a large amount of the population actualy uses it for payments.

zadler 6y ago
How many people use it for payments is not the right metric, it’s not the payments that cost a lot of electricity it’s the competition to win block rewards where more energy means a higher chance of mining a block. Indirectly, if a lot of people use it for payments it may be worth more and attract more mining competition.
zie 6y ago
Bitcoin and most(all?) crypto currencies pretty much suck for payments. I think a BTC transaction costs around $16 USD just to get it on the blockchain now. Plus transactions are not private, and they are permanently public, so even if your BTC Address is unknown today, doesn't mean it won't be known tomorrow. There are perhaps, some reasonable arguments for using crypto-currencies, but buying groceries is not on the list. Buying Houses... *MAYBE*, since that information is already public anyway.

pixelpoet 6y ago

I tried to make this point on Reddit, and was downvoted to a smoking hole in the ground by people who were complaining that they can't get GPUs to play games, and that it's not eco-friendly. Of course, playing games on high powered GPUs is super eco-friendly, as are many other ways of making money... Half of them think people are mining Bitcoin on GPUs, and almost none of them know about Proof of Stake coins. Not that I want to excuse the egregious power consumption of PoW coins, but I do wish the holier-than-thou crowd would at least do a little more research.

louwrentius 6y ago
Most people have a job and game part-time. GPUs in gaming rigs are not powered on 24/7. Let's be honest about this.
jcranmer 6y ago
The price of all cryptocurrencies more or less move in tandem, so that when Bitcoin has a good time, so does all the cryptocurrencies that can be mined with GPUs.
bonestamp2 6y ago
Some people are really out of touch. By the time they found out about Bitcoin in the past couple years it had moved past GPU mining almost a decade ago.
Weebs 6y ago
Yes, high powered gaming isn't eco friendly either, but can we please stop ignoring magnitude and utility in this thread? You can power a typical US household for almost an entire month using the energy of a single bitcoin transaction. What utility does Bitcoin bring with that single transaction? Is it worth the measurable harm it's doing to our ecosystem and human lives?
- pixelpoet 6y ago
  I wasn't ignoring it, only pointing out that they were ignoring the eco-unfriendliness of their preferred use of GPUs (single users with single GPU, also not mining fulltime probably since it's in their PC). Please tell me you see the hypocrisy. I'm personally fully onboard with Bitcoin and all PoW coins being crap and wish they would die, leaving only PoS coins in the crypto space.

betterunix2 6y ago

Important difference between Bitcoin and everything else you mentioned: there is no incentive to improve the energy-efficiency of mining. We went from CPU to GPU to ASIC mining, each time reducing the per-hash energy consumption, and all the miners did was hash more using the same amount of energy. Whereas, for example, the energy used to watch porn -- energy spent by all the routers, switches, and servers involved -- will be reduced if technological improvements allow the same task to be accomplished with less energy.

leeoniya 6y ago
aka https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- betterunix2 6y ago
  Nope, not the same. Bitcoin mining does not "produce" hashes, it "produces" Bitcoin blocks. All that changed with the improvement in hashing speed is the number of hashes that must be computed before a block is added to the block chain.
  - leeoniya 6y ago
    i dont follow. moving from cpu to gpu to fpga to asics (each a gain in efficiency) did not reduce electricity consumption, because it in effect accelerated the rate at which the hashing complexity was raised by the network, in effect negating up any efficiency gains. that's exactly the phenomenon.
Taek 6y ago
Spending material wealth on mining is what makes it secure. We work on improving the per-hash cost because it makes it more difficult for someone with a brilliant technological innovation to compromise the security of the system. And there is incentive to improve the total energy use. Every participant in the system pays for the electricity that secures bitcoin in the form of inflation and transaction fees. If some alternative to Bitcoin can provide all the same benefit but with less inflation and lower fees, then there is a good reason to switch to that alternative. And people are trying to innovate here continuously, the blockchain sector at this point is getting more investment than the AI sector.

dubcanada 6y ago

I do agree that most of these articles are picking on bitcoin. I think the main problem people have is the actual result of the mining is useless, say compared to using all those computers for MI or Folding @ Home. I think a better solution would be to get rid of these random bytes and replace them with a Folding @ Home or similar solution, where the computing power you donate results in you getting X bitcoin. Things that are a positive on society, rather then a negative. But then again that is me being judgmental on others, maybe people care a ton about that string of random alphanumeric characters.

pdpi 6y ago
The actual result of mining is defending the network against double-spending (and censorship, to a degree — though this is more fragile). Insofar as you believe that Bitcoin-the-currency is itself a social positive, the mining process has a positive effect. (But also a very meaningful cost, which leads us to a subtler question — is it a net positive?)
hakesdev 6y ago
this is a really dumb argument that is trotted out every 4 years. There's also already a FoldingCoin that's been around since 2014. https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/foldingcoin/ https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/foldingcoin/ For PoW to work it must be a costly signal. If you introduce positive externalities of mining (such as Folding @ Home) the system isn't sustainable.

toolz 6y ago

I don't know that name-calling adds much value to the conversation, but I will say it's a failing strategy to try and make value judgements for other people. The way forward is technological advancement. That has always been the case. We're not going to solve climate crisis by stifling anything as should be evident just by looking at China. I'd imagine we're all much better off supporting green energy rather than pointing fingers at anyone who has a different value judgement for how that energy should be used.

nelsonenzo 6y ago

> reeks of hypocrisy says the bitcoin holder that profits from it's adoption.

nickpp 6y ago
I own zero cryptocurrency, they are not aligned with my investment strategy. But I do think they are an experiment worth pursuing.

ausbah 6y ago

and this post reeks of missing the point. people should be judged for how they consume energy because excess consumption is simply wasteful, and in the middle of the ongoing global catastrophe called climate change - isn't something we can exactly afford obviously this raises the question of what is and isn't excessive, but I think there are apparent cases where the benefits of excessive energy consumption people clearly don't out weight the cost - see flying, cruises, rampant shopping, etc. I think Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies fall into that category, especially when there are other coins that require nearly as many resources to function

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kingkawn 6y ago

Why is not wanting to waste electricity on Ponzi schemes so triggering?

bccdee 6y ago
They're emotionally invested in cryptocurrency being the future. When people challenge them by suggesting that it's basically bad all the way down, they lash out.
- Weebs 6y ago
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
It is a really low form of argument to simply use the word "triggering". Implying that the original poster doesn't have any real reasoning behind what they are writing, no original thoughts or responsible viewpoints that they have worked on - instead that they are "triggered", - thus are reacting in a simply emotional way. Implying that somehow all of their argument can be simply discarded. Really? You mean that just because you have used the word "triggering" (there are no other meaningful arguments in your comment), that would somehow invalidate an argument? What grade is that logic from?
- kingkawn 6y ago
  Lol at calling anything “low” as a form of argument and expecting to be heard

nr2x 6y ago

If you combine the energy costs of delivering streaming video and the client side costs of playing video and executing JavaScript I have no doubt porn far outstrips Bitcoin. Hell, I bet JavaScript bloat from adtech alone and exceeds the totally energy budget of France.

starclerk 6y ago
There are 3.4 billion internet users. It takes about 30 W to watch video in a browser [1]. Assuming every internet user watches 85 minutes of video per day [2] (517 hr/year), video consumption is 52 TWh per year. Or less than half of than the bitcoin network. Google uses 12 TWh per year [3]. Assuming Google is entirely focused on serving the world's video (it likely could), that still is ~half of the bitcoin network. (France consumes about 480 TWh per year [4]) [1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explorer-10-is-the-most-energy-efficient-browser-uses-up-to-18-less-power-than-chrome-and-firefox/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explore... [2] https://www.marketingcharts.com/digital/video-110520 https://www.marketingcharts.com/digital/video-110520 [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/10/21/googles-dominance-is-fueled-by-zambia-size-amounts-of-electricity/?sh=522016fb68c9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/10/21/googles-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
- nr2x 6y ago
  Seems like I lost my bet if those numbers are correct, kudos on doing the math!

jp555 6y ago

Even more directly - How much energy does all the world's "legacy" Fintech use? Banks, exchanges, government tax agencies, accountants, money printing, retail cash machines (ATM, registers, etc) and all the way to gold mining.

Nursie 6y ago
When bitcoin provides 1% of the services that the "legacy" financial world does, let's talk.
bccdee 6y ago
If you want to analogize 1:1, a bitcoin transaction consumes approximately five hundred thousand times more energy than a visa transaction [1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  But you're also not counting all the people, buildings, surrounding systems needed to make the VISA network work.
  - bccdee 6y ago
    Nor am I counting the infrastructure surrounding Bitcoin mining. This tabulates only the energy expenditure of the computers performing the transactions.
- hakesdev 6y ago
  Please read. Nic Carter is a good place to start. https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bitcoins-climate-footprint https://www.coindesk.com/what-bloomberg-gets-wrong-about-bit... "First of all, Bitcoin and Visa are fundamentally different systems. Bitcoin is a complete, self-contained monetary settlement system; Visa transactions are non-final credit transactions that rely on external underlying settlement rails. Visa relies on ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, the global correspondent banking system, the Federal Reserve and, of course, the military and diplomatic strength of the U.S. government to ensure all of the above are working smoothly. Any energy comparison must take the above into account – including the externalities from the extraction of oil, which implicitly backs the dollar. As those who make this comparison inevitably fail to mention, the dollar’s ubiquity is partly due to a covert arrangement whereby the U.S. provides military support to countries like Saudi Arabia that agree to sell oil exclusively for dollars. It’s worth noting that the grossly oversized U.S. military, whose presence worldwide is necessary to backstop the international dollar system, is the largest single consumer of oil worldwide."

justapassenger 6y ago

Bitcoin isn’t religion (although it has many religious-like followers), so there aren’t dogmas you cannot question. Energy usage of it is ridiculously high and people are totally allowed to question how wasteful it is, no matter if you allow them to.

hummusman 6y ago

When it became blindingly apparent that mining diamonds, gold and rare earth metals was proving harmful to societies (pollution, war etc.) countries put into place regulation to ensure that future mining would be conducted in ways to try and eliminate these harms. Mining bitcoin is a growing contributor to energy consumption, and subsequently environmental damage and harm. Similar precedent?

Taek 6y ago
Kind of but not really. People aren't upset at _how_ bitcoin is using electricity, they are upset at how much bitcoin is using electricity. If you want to save the environment, regulate the production of electricity irrespective of how that electricity is put to use. Let the market figure out how to allocate the electricity to various tasks.
chrisco255 6y ago
Energy consumption does not necessarily mean environmental harm. That's not a law of the universe at all.
- mentalpiracy 6y ago
  Where do you think energy being consumed comes from?
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Depends on the source, right? For example, in Iceland it's mostly geothermal power plants. And that's why electricity is so cheap there, and that's why, despite being one of the smallest countries in terms of population, it is #4 for Bitcoin mining: https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/bitcoin-mining-top-5-countries-with-highest-share-of-mining-hashpower/ https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/bitcoin-mining-top-5-cou...

matsemann 6y ago

> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. It's impossible to have a good debate if you from the get-go insult everyone that disagree with you and heighten bitcoin to something not allowed to be criticized because some people believe it can be important in the future. As if that absolves something from all sins.

bccdee 6y ago

One bitcoin transaction uses FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES more energy than one Visa transaction [1]. This is like lighting a cigar with a $500 bill and going "what, I have to light my cigars somehow, and inevitably it'll cost something. I spend money to meet my goals." [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...

parliament32 6y ago
Compared to the cost of lighting a cigar with a matchstick, it'd be more like lighting it with a penny. Despite Visa transactions being cheap, bitcoin transactions are also very cheap -- you spend more power turning on your living room light for a few seconds. Probably best if we keep things in perspective. Further: https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50 https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consu...
- bccdee 6y ago
  Okay, so the gist of that article is that bitcoin burns about a third as much energy as the entire global institution of banking, based on some extremely back-of-the-envelope calculations. Bitcoin's current market cap is about $600 billion. There are quadrillions of dollars worth of capital in the the world, mostly managed by banks. Bitcoin remains EXTREMELY inefficient in comparison.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

This is the most concise and crystallized attempt at putting this (certainly popular and in some ways inevitable) argument into relatable words. Kudos.

game_the0ry 6y ago

Agreed. Governments and financial institutions are having to resort to "virtue" and "value" arguments against bitcoin, instead of technical arguments: - Bitcoin consumes so much energy! Think of the planet! - Iran, China, and Russia mine bitcoin! They are our enemies! Indeed it does reek of hypocrisy. Oh, now you care about the environment and international competition? Please...

ashtonkem 6y ago

That’s a neat slight of hand trick you’ve pulled off there, connecting Bitcoin to entertainment in order to shame those of us concerned about Bitcoin energy usage. Everything else you’ve listed provides subjective value to the user, which makes them hard to attack. Who can say what the value of skiing is to a society in terms of kWh? There is no way to objectively compare the value of energy spent on a ski lift vs. driving to see friends; that’s all subjective value. But the issue is that Bitcoin isn’t supposed to provide subjective value, it’s supposed to provide objective value; it’s literally supposed to be money. Once you remember that it’s supposed to literally be money, then comparisons to ski lifts become extremely disingenuous. It also becomes fair to compare Bitcoin against other competitors that provide the exact same service to society, comparisons that make Bitcoin look very wasteful indeed.

ric2b 6y ago
> But the issue is that Bitcoin isn’t supposed to provide subjective value, it’s supposed to provide objective value; it’s literally supposed to be money. Money's value is also subjective, I'm not sure what you think is objective about it. Sounds like you're just trying to dodge the comparison.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Definitionally, money’s value is not supposed to be subjective.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Definitionally, money’s value is not supposed to be subjective. Not only is that not true, but if to was it would just render “money” a non-concept, because definitionally value (in general, not just of money) is subjective.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Ah, the “everything is subjective” rabbit hole. No thanks, that’s never a useful conversation. The purpose of any monetary system is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. That’s why humans make money; to avoid the need to barter or depend on social credit systems that don’t scale well. This provides us some objective goals with which we can compare and contrast monetary systems against; while what one does with money is subjective, we can objectively compare the efficiency and ease with which a monetary system can facilitate transactions. In this area Bitcoin does terribly. This is probably why Bitcoin advocates have mostly moved onto “it’s a store of value”, that’s more a more defensible proposition.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>How much energy does watching porn consume? I guess if you got stats on how much porn they watch in Argentina you would be well on your way to answering this question. Same for the rest. I think the more interesting thing is: as bitcoin becomes more difficult to mine energy needs go up, but countries are working hard to bring their energy usage down. Can bitcoin be overtaken on the downward journey by a country, or will it always be bitcoin overtaking countries on its upward swing. Is there some country decreasing its usage as bitcoin increases its, and the two pass each other like ships in the night. What is the next country most likely to be surpassed by bitcoin?

ric2b 6y ago
> as bitcoin becomes more difficult to mine energy needs go up Difficulty adjusts up and down as needed to maintain an average of 1 block every 10 minutes, it doesn't just tend to infinity. It's mostly correlated to the block reward, miners won't spend more money on energy than they get back from mining blocks.
- newswasboring 6y ago
  I may be confused here. But the regulation mechanism to get to 1block/min is to ask miners to do more computations, right? Making the problem harder in this context does have the effect of more power consumed. A block is an answer to the riddle who's parameters are being regulated. So the block rate is not important, number of computations is. And that is directly linked with power consumption.
  - ric2b 6y ago
    It's 1 block every 10 minutes. The difficulty adjustment goes both ways, if blocks start taking longer than 10 minutes to be mined (for example if some large miner stops mining for some reason) the difficulty goes down, which likely means less energy is used. You're correct that the actual adjustment is on the number of computations, so the correlation to energy use isn't direct, different machines can be more or less efficient at making those calculations.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cft 6y ago

It's a salvo in the imminent central banks attack against this serious threat, that would compete with their fiat experiment. They are not sure yet whether to use the environmental angle or the "terrorist use of Bitcoin" like Yellen announced .

moonbug 6y ago

> Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. Really? give us a source, one who isn't either a grifter, a shill, or a criminal.

RIMR 6y ago
Does it count if they're all three?
meowkit 6y ago
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/05/decentralized-finance-on-blockchain-and-smart-contract-based-financial-markets https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2021/02/... Bitcoin may not be around for ever if it isn’t upgraded to be more efficient, but public and private blockchains are here to stay and have real use cases. You can be a salty Luddite if you want, but assuming proponents are mostly grifters, shills, or criminals just tells me you don’t have a clue.
- moonbug 6y ago
  "As such, DeFi may potentially contribute to a more robust and transparent financial infrastructure." check your comprehension.

tw04 6y ago

How many of those directly convert electricity into profit? How many of those businesses have been rent seeking countries/states/locations that subsidize electricity for their populations? Electricity is one of those things most of society has deemed an essential good, and as such has subsidized it for the poorest among us. Bitcoin farmers are abusing that system to turn the government subsidies into personal profit for a handful. Let's not even begin to equate THAT to someone going to a concert put on for the benefit of and at the cost to those participating.

ric2b 6y ago
> Electricity is one of those things most of society has deemed an essential good, and as such has subsidized it for the poorest among us. Sounds like an argument for giving subsidies to the poor instead of anyone using electricity.
ha4fsd3fas 6y ago
Well it's like any other business that runs on electricity. AWS converts electricity directly into profit. They provide a service for paying customers, just like a miner does. I'm sure many datacenters are located in places where electricity is cheap, hell I bet some datacenters get it even cheaper with lobbying.
- tw04 6y ago
  Can you list an example of AWS building a datacenter, in secret, in a location with subsidized power? I GUARANTEE YOU Amazon lets the local municipality know when they're building a new datacenter and they aren't getting subsidized rates.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

I mostly agree. As long as the price of energy is adequately priced, we should be able to make our own decisions on what amenities we need. You need a F150? Great, but be prepared to pay for its use. Naturally, the question immediately becomes, who decides what is adequate, which is not fun. Incidentally, I am learning about bitcoin now since it is clearly becoming mainstream and it is related to my job. I am trying to build a miner ( I don't want one click zerohash solutions for variety of reasons ) on Ubuntu derivative ( POPos ) and now I am stuck troubleshooting pool connections. Anyone could recommend a reliable resource? I am starting to get really aggravated by having to google every single error encountered.

Nursie 6y ago
> As long as the price of energy is adequately priced. It's not, and doing so is a hard problem, requiring a global solution, against the wishes of many interests and industries. It doesn't seem likely any time soon.

RIMR 6y ago

But here's the thing: This article didn't say anything bad about Bitcoin's energy usage. It's simply quantifying it. If quantifying the energy usage of Bitcoin makes you angry, you should probably self-reflect a bit. This is a very unbiased source, and nothing they have published is untrue.

gnramires 6y ago

The problem is that Bitcoin doesn't need to use this much energy. We've now discovered distributed consensus algorithms that don't rely on Proof of Work, so it's really quite terrible we still waste so much by using an outdated consensus algorithm.

ric2b 6y ago
I'm not aware of any other consensus algorithm that is proven to be as secure as PoW.
- gnramires 6y ago
  Proof of Stake has proven quite robust. None of the larger PoS coins have been compromised (despite much theoretical discussion), and newer ones such as Cardano seem to address early objections. Peercoin has been around for a while without any issues. The fact is, I see all of those massive distributed consensus algorithms as much more robust than they appeared initially. 51%/double spend attacks in practice are extremely hard to occur because of the exposure/publicity of the ledger and how hard it would be to capitalize on crashing the currency (PoS/PoW does not change it).
  - ric2b 6y ago
    > Proof of Stake has proven quite robust. They're not mathematically provable and the jury is still out. Attackers who know some exploit might be waiting for the much larger Ethereum to switch to PoS so they can reap maximum profit.
    - cstein2 6y ago
      Here's the paper of Cardano's provably secure PoS algorithm https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf
- bcheung 6y ago
  They are known as "proof of stake". The way it works is that "validator" nodes confirm the blocks. The validators are randomly chosen based on the percentage they have staked. You stake by owning the coin and locking it up using a staking mechanism tied into the protocol. This locks up your coins for a set period of time. If a validator does not validate correctly or fakes the transactions then they run the risk of being "slashed". Slashing means they forfeit what they have invested. Usually you need to stake $10K+ USD but there are also pools where people can combine their money. Both pools and proof of work mining farms suffer from large groups consolidating the validation power. One of the newer blockchains (Caradano) introduces the concept of a penalty for large pools in favor of having lots of smaller validators to make the network more resilient to a single group having too much validation power. This encourages decentralization.

boh 6y ago

I mean it's just a standard economic argument concerning the use of scarce resources. All your examples have a higher impact on the real economy vs. Bitcoin. As in, these industries employ large numbers of people and sustain economic growth to some degree, in contrast Bitcoin services a comparatively limited population engaged in limited productive activity relative to its energy use. People are free to be judgmental about anything they like.

tomxor 6y ago

A maximum of 178 things on the planet consume >= to the electricity of Bitcoin. 99.44%/0.56% = ~178 according to their estimate. So if you want to compare, the premise is that there are no more than 178 things on Earth more valuable per watt, no more than 178 things to compare to... That is absurd.

ctdonath 6y ago

Excellent questions with interesting answers. OP’s observation begins a fascinating discussion. I’ve been roughing out minimal cost of living, finding baseline around 5¢/hr; need to re-cast to kWh units.

undersuit 6y ago

I've always wondered what the cost for HDCP encryption on our media wastes.

_jal 6y ago

Watching porn and playing video games do not have structural ratchets essentially forcing ever-greater porn-watching or game-playing.

pattisapu 6y ago
Wait a minute . . .

wcarron 6y ago

> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. No, seeing a bunch of rich nerds wasting massive amounts of energy in a time of environmental crisis so they can make millions convincing people a store of value is actually a currency, and then getting mad about it, is not hypocritical. > While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, It's not. It's a massive waste. Stop killing the planet.

saalweachter 6y ago
Hell, just consider that it's a store of value that costs $12B+ / year to secure.

starclerk 6y ago

You're getting a lot of replies but I don't see anyone answering the initial questions. Some really rough math for playing video games: Assuming I'm playing with someone across the country, I hop 13 routers in a quick traceroute. Assuming each router is commercial hardware (~400W) and my traffic completely saturates them, that's 5,200W. Plus the two machines at the end of each line, assuming they're beefy gaming PCs/servers with 1,000W power supplies at 100% load just for this game. That's 2,000W. Playing a 30 minute Starcraft game comes to 3.6kWh, or two orders of magnitude less than a bitcoin transaction. It's almost certainly less than that since my assumptions were very conservative. ~~~ For something live like a concert, a 54,000 sqft hall uses about 1,100 kWh of power per day (lighting, HVAC). Plus 15kW of speakers for a 6 hour concert is 1,190 kWh. Divided by the 6000 people attending, is 0.2 kWh per attendee. Adding a 10 mile solo drive per person is about 3 kWh. Or again about 2 orders of magnitude less. ~~~ These aren't good comparisons when I could do hundreds of each of the activities you listed for the cost of one transaction.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

Oh, come on. All of those things, except for travel, draw roughly zero watts compared to Bitcoin. One Bitcoin transaction is about 750 kWh. That's enough to power a typical home for a month. It's enough to drive about 500 miles in an electric car, or (with vigorous handwaving based on EPA numbers) about 200 miles in an efficient gasoline car. Bitcoin uses about 1/3 the energy of all the datacenters in the world. There are about 120 million Bitcoin transactions per year. If we assume 360 million people are using services that run in datacenters (obviously too low), one Bitcoin transaction uses as much electricity as the server time to support one user across all the services they use for a year. >Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. This is an engineering problem.

bcheung 6y ago
A transaction or a block? Multiple transactions are recorded in a single block. The massive computational power is used to certify and lock down blocks at a time, not individual transactions.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  A transaction. A block can hold a limited number of transactions, so the throughput is limited. It works out to about four transactions per second on average. The cost to "mine" a whole block is even more ludicrous.

cesarb 6y ago

> How much energy does watching porn consume? Playing video games? Watching a movie? Browsing Facebook? Using a ski chair? Visiting an amusement park? Going in vacation? Cooking your favorite type of food? Making ice cream? Driving to your friends? Listening to music? Concerts? Having a party? Banking? Casinos? The difference is that, for all of these, the incentive is to lower the energy usage. For Bitcoin, the incentive is to increase the energy usage, until the amount of energy used costs the same as the amount of Bitcoin received by the miners.

titzer 6y ago

Like it or not, we live on the same planet. I have to smell your farts, and inhale your air pollution, and your CO2 output ruins my climate. You can use energy however you want when you pay for all the externalities yourself. Right now, you can't. In aggregate, this concept is known as social responsibility.

agumonkey 6y ago

I'd really like to know the energy cost of HD streaming in general. Including god damn hi-res GIFs.

sharkjacobs 6y ago

> Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude. Are you actually seeing this or are you conflating criticisms of bitcoin with criticisms of bitcoin miners? Because I feel like I see a lot of the former and very little of the latter, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

maclured 6y ago

> How much energy does watching porn consume? Just about all of mine