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If maintaining the infrastructure for something a miniscule percentage of the world's population benefit from requires more energy than entire countries, surely
by 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 agoBut 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 agoWe 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 agoWhat'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 agoIf you don't have a 240V circuit handy you can just find two 120V circuits on opposite phases and wire them together
- mikestew 6y agoThe 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.)
- suprfsat 6y agoIs there such a thing as a 120V-only USB charger?
- mikestew 6y agoWell, if we're going to get all pedantic and stuff, I'm pretty sure those old iPhone chargers came with a non-swappable U. S. 120V plug. But for the life of me I can't find one lying within arm's reach at the moment.
- sharker8 6y agoAgreed, but there's more to it I think. The primary design goal of the system is don't accidentally start a fire or electrocute yourself. The other effect however is the inverse, a mechanism by which the power company can come up with the right distribution of transformers to get the power to your home. If you have not been wired by an electrician to handle that much electricity, your block may not be sufficiently wired and fused to deliver that much. Because presumably the electrician checks such things before putting buildings on the grid.
- thebean11 6y ago> interrogating whether the benefits outweigh the costs What does this mean, in practice? Who investigates and what is the outcome? Do the things OP listed above warrant a similar investigation?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> Who investigates and what is the outcome? The public? Something that benefits a few at the expense of the many is the canonical case for regulation. (I don’t think we should ban or even really regulate Bitcoin. Not at this point.)
- sombremesa 6y ago> at the expense of the many I think you've misunderstood something. Those people are buying their own electricity...at their own expense. So, you want to bring arbitrary restrictions to electricity - as if we didn't have enough issues with net neutrality already.
- umanwizard 6y agoThe market could solve this problem properly if there were a global carbon tax, but unfortunately, there isn't.
- devlopr 6y agoAssuming bitcoin is using carbon poluting sources. Some of the bigger miners in China use hydro/dam energy. The miners in Iceland are using geothermal.
- beckingz 6y agoExcept that most of the energy is subsidized by China or other countries.
- jevgeni 6y agoAh, so they are paying for the adverse effect on the climate. That's alright then. /s
- bhupy 6y ago> a minuscule percentage This is true right now considering how nascent this is, but what happens if adoption picks up? One thing I’d like to see discussed is what the marginal power cost of Bitcoin is. From where I sit, the vast majority of power consumption is fixed per block, and occurs regardless of whether you have 1 or 10,000 transactions.
- tekromancr 6y agoAlmost, but because of the incentives, the greater the adoption, the more valuable each individual block reward actually is. The more valuable each individual block reward is, the more energy you can afford to spend attempting to mine it.
- kybernetikos 6y agoYou can't fit 10,000 transactions in a block on BTC.
- michaelscott 6y agoThe power consumption is linked to network size and has nothing to do with the block itself. If anything the marginal power cost is linked to the price of a Bitcoin, as the higher it climbs the more incentive to mine, the greater the competition and therefore the greater the mining difficulty/energy required. The only way to really lower energy consumption is to lower the price I can get for a Bitcoin but with the current economic conditions I don't see that happening anytime soon.
- sp332 6y agoHow is power consumption related to network size? I agree that the power consumption of the network is directly related to the value of the bitcoins mined (and I supposed the transaction fee/tip size).
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoNetwork size increases competition to mine blocks faster, leading to demands for higher hash rate, leading to higher power consumption.
- whoisninja 6y agolet the market decide then, step away- don't mine, don't use Bitcoin if you prefer gold mining uses tons of energy we knew automobiles will pollute the environment, why didn't we stop using them altogether?
- bccdee 6y agoWe should spend money creating public transit infrastructure to reduce the useof cars in urban areas. Not only is it more efficient in terms of transportation, it wastes much less energy and emits much less CO2. The fact that we haven't is a policy failure. Incidentally, why would we ever let the market decide when the market consistently throws externalities under the bus?
- csharptwdec19 6y agoWe are lazy. The original Model T could run on ethanol (not perfect, but better than gasoline in many regards for pollution, and back then IDK if they would have noticed) and Henry Ford was fond of the idea of biofuels; at the time I think he was fond of Potatoes for the purpose.
- ath92 6y agoI wouldn't attribute this to only laziness. At the time people weren't yet aware that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. It's also pretty cheap to just pump fossil fuels out of the ground. On the other hand, people back then did know that fried potatoes taste quite good. And you can turn them into vodka too.
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoThe problem with biofuels derived from crops in that era is that people were actually starving to death on a regular basis.
- paulgb 6y agoThe market won’t decide optimally because the costs (climate change) are socialized across the whole population but the benefits are not. It’s basically saying if you don’t like pollution don’t pollute, which is flawed in ways I don’t have to explain.
- csomar 6y agoTrue. Let's let one guy, then, decides how our energy should be consumed.
- loceng 6y agoMaybe that guy deciding shouldn't have financial motivation, incentive, e.g. be part of the MLM scheme that they're incentivized to have succeed regardless of the costs, e.g. the guy having a conflict of interest?
- ecommerceguy 6y agoI'm not against bitcoin anymore than I am against unnecessary taxation but since bitcoin uses electricity at an insanely unnecessary quantity it should be taxed to the hilt to make up for increased environmental and infrastructure costs that are borne onto the 99.999% that do not participate in the scam.
- rawtxapp 6y agoMost of it is renewable energy. edit: 39% of it, as in a lot of it and that number should go up as the world is phasing out dirty energy for cleaner energy sources.
- newswasboring 6y agoIts really not[1]. > However, the CCAF’s report specifies that the 76% refers to the share of hashers who use renewable energy at any point. It estimates that only 39% of hashing’s total energy consumption comes from renewables. > Behind hydroelectricity, coal (38%) and natural gas (36%) are the energy sources hashers favour most. [1]https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36672/renewable-energy-not-as-prominent-in-cryptocurrency-mining-as-previously-claimed#:~:text=Behind%20hydroelectricity%2C%20coal%20(38%25),valid%20proof%2Dof%2Dwork https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36672/renewable-energy-....
- frongpik 6y agoOnly? I guess that if 40% of the worldwide energy production came from clean sources, all news outlets would count that as a massive success.
- newswasboring 6y agoYes. As they should. Its a much bigger achievement. I don't think these things are related.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 6y agoThat’s...what money does: evaluate supply vs demand, identifying the relationship of value between options, decided by those with a vested interest. Such a system inherently evaluates cost vs benefits in a holistic networked manner (vs wishful thinking by the uninvolved).
- janoside 6y agoVia Tesla, bitcoin is now implicitly held by all investors in the S&P 500, including, very likely, you. You are now a benefactor of bitcoin's growth, whether you're aware of it or not. This trend, where bitcoin quietly confers benefits to growing constituencies of people who remain completely unaware of the fact, will continue. And, at the same time, there are many people, in less fortunate circumstances, for whom the benefits of bitcoin are felt much more acutely: https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1357757736394444800 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1357757736394444800 The "minuscule percentage" you quote (without reference) is very likely already clearly incorrect and will continue, over time, to become more incorrect.