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Bitcoin produces as much CO2 as a 737 does in a 5 hour flight, about 450kg, on average, per transaction. Air travel is considered one of the biggest polluters,

Bitcoin produces as much CO2 as a 737 does in a 5 hour flight, about 450kg, on average, per transaction. Air travel is considered one of the biggest polluters, and reducing air travel is considered one of the highest impact ways that individuals can reduce their carbon footprint. It only stands to reason that Bitcoin should therefore be considered far worse for its impact. The only saving grace is that people don't actually use it to pay for much, else we'd likely be in a much worse place. Edit: source is here https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption - the 450kg was from 2018, it's currently 310kg (or 685,000 VISA transactions), 651kWh (or 22 days of household energy), and nearly 100g of electronic waste. Bitcoin is essentially destined to be electricity price arbitrage in the long run, and that's a dangerous proposition.

jp555 6y ago
Which transactions? The Bitcoin transactions running on coal, natural gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, solar, or wind electricity? Figures don't lie, but liars will figure.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  The emissions come mostly from the mining necessary to secure the transactions, so it's blended across where the mining is happening. Much of it is done in China on coal power.
  - jp555 6y ago
    So the problem is more a coal energy problem than a bitcoin problem?
    - danpalmer 6y ago
      I feel like you're trying to justify using Bitcoin rather than engaging with the problem. The mining-power relationship essentially creates a price arbitrage opportunity between electricity prices and Bitcoin mining fees. This is a very bad thing for the global economy as it ties all other uses of electricity to the Bitcoin mining fees in a very direct way. I can't think of another relationship this direct to energy prices, it could be catastrophic for entire industries. Oh and also it's emitting as much emissions as Argentina at the moment. A friend of mine called Bitcoin a candidate for The Great Filter, and I'm inclined to agree.
misiti3780 6y ago
that is scary - source?
- danpalmer 6y ago
  Added.
- mortehu 6y ago
  I don't have a source, but the current block reward is $275,000 plus another 20% or so in transaction fees, and it stands to reason the energy cost of mining a block should converge to the block reward plus transaction fees. You get about one block and 2000 transactions every ten minutes.
hartator 6y ago
450kg of CO2 per Bitcoin transaction? That seems like a lot indeed.
ip26 6y ago
1Wh per VISA transaction? That seems both something to be happy about, but also something that could be improved.
gpm 6y ago
Quick back of the napkin math suggests that the kwh numbers are the right order of magnitude (surprisingly to me)... work below: It looks like transaction fees are ~8 dollars right now [1], lets call it 10 dollars for easy math. The cheapest state/kwh is Louisiana [2], at 7 cents per kwh, let's assume that the cost of mining bitcoin is just electricity, and that you can get it at 10c/kwh for easy math. You now have 100kwh/transaction... that's 1/6th of what's reported on that site... but the same order of magnitude and the above analysis ignores block rewards... [1] https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/ https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/ [2] https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html
- tromp 6y ago
  Your analysis would be appropriate if the block subsidy has becomes insignificant relative to the tx fees. Right now the former is still an order of magnitude larger. That should change within 1-2 decades...
  - gpm 6y ago
    Yep, so... a quick glance at this site [1] suggests that revenue from transaction fees is slightly over 1/10^th the total revenue from mining (avg of last 7 days). That would move my estimate of 100kwh to 1000kwh... still the same order of magnitude as the original claims. [1] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue
- jjk166 6y ago
  A current ASIC bitcoin miner will do 90 Terahashes per second (1 Terahash = 1 trillion hashes) while consuming 3420 Watts which is equivalent to 38 Watts per Terahash (38 W/TH). Average power consumption will be higher, though those with big dedicated rigs probably make up the bulk of the network's processing power. The entire bitcoin mining network which processes all transactions does 120 Exahashes (120,000,000 terahashes) per second. Were all mining done on comparable asics this would be 4.56 GW to run the whole network, which in turn means electricity consumption would be 4.56 million kwh per hour. At the time of this writing bitcoin is averaging 14,814 transactions per hour, meaning the average electricity consumption per transaction is 308 kwh. I could easily see the average hash efficiency for the whole network being half of what a 2020 dedicated mining rig can do. Do note that this is transaction processing on bitcoin proper, which is artificially limited to processing less than 7 transactions per second. There are lots of things that we would think of as transactions that don't have to go into this number. For example if you have a trusted marketplace, you can have all the transactions which take place within the marketplace in a given time period lumped together as a single transaction, and thus you only need to do a "real" transaction when you deposit or withdraw money from that market. This is the concept behind many cryptocurrencies meant to "speed up" bitcoin. So really it's not so much a 5 hour flight every time you use a credit card, but a 5 hour flight every time you get a new credit card - still inefficient, but far less extreme.
cptskippy 6y ago
According to that page, a single Bitcoin transaction (e.g. me purchasing a fraction of a coin) uses enough electricity to charge a Tesla Model 3 up 8.5 times. That doesn't seem right.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  This is averaged across transactions because it's more about the mining cost, but also there are _many_ computers that need to process your transaction and repeat the same work, because it's decentralised. That's a big factor too.
- barkingcat 6y ago
  Why doesn't that seem right? You do realize that bitcoin transactions are secured by hashrate right? It's one of the largest distributed computing projects in the world.

jp555 6y ago

Which transactions? The Bitcoin transactions running on coal, natural gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, solar, or wind electricity? Figures don't lie, but liars will figure.

danpalmer 6y ago
The emissions come mostly from the mining necessary to secure the transactions, so it's blended across where the mining is happening. Much of it is done in China on coal power.
- jp555 6y ago
  So the problem is more a coal energy problem than a bitcoin problem?
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    I feel like you're trying to justify using Bitcoin rather than engaging with the problem. The mining-power relationship essentially creates a price arbitrage opportunity between electricity prices and Bitcoin mining fees. This is a very bad thing for the global economy as it ties all other uses of electricity to the Bitcoin mining fees in a very direct way. I can't think of another relationship this direct to energy prices, it could be catastrophic for entire industries. Oh and also it's emitting as much emissions as Argentina at the moment. A friend of mine called Bitcoin a candidate for The Great Filter, and I'm inclined to agree.

misiti3780 6y ago

that is scary - source?

danpalmer 6y ago
Added.
mortehu 6y ago
I don't have a source, but the current block reward is $275,000 plus another 20% or so in transaction fees, and it stands to reason the energy cost of mining a block should converge to the block reward plus transaction fees. You get about one block and 2000 transactions every ten minutes.

hartator 6y ago

450kg of CO2 per Bitcoin transaction? That seems like a lot indeed.

ip26 6y ago

1Wh per VISA transaction? That seems both something to be happy about, but also something that could be improved.

gpm 6y ago

Quick back of the napkin math suggests that the kwh numbers are the right order of magnitude (surprisingly to me)... work below: It looks like transaction fees are ~8 dollars right now [1], lets call it 10 dollars for easy math. The cheapest state/kwh is Louisiana [2], at 7 cents per kwh, let's assume that the cost of mining bitcoin is just electricity, and that you can get it at 10c/kwh for easy math. You now have 100kwh/transaction... that's 1/6th of what's reported on that site... but the same order of magnitude and the above analysis ignores block rewards... [1] https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/ https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/ [2] https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html

tromp 6y ago
Your analysis would be appropriate if the block subsidy has becomes insignificant relative to the tx fees. Right now the former is still an order of magnitude larger. That should change within 1-2 decades...
- gpm 6y ago
  Yep, so... a quick glance at this site [1] suggests that revenue from transaction fees is slightly over 1/10^th the total revenue from mining (avg of last 7 days). That would move my estimate of 100kwh to 1000kwh... still the same order of magnitude as the original claims. [1] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue https://www.blockchain.com/charts/miners-revenue
jjk166 6y ago
A current ASIC bitcoin miner will do 90 Terahashes per second (1 Terahash = 1 trillion hashes) while consuming 3420 Watts which is equivalent to 38 Watts per Terahash (38 W/TH). Average power consumption will be higher, though those with big dedicated rigs probably make up the bulk of the network's processing power. The entire bitcoin mining network which processes all transactions does 120 Exahashes (120,000,000 terahashes) per second. Were all mining done on comparable asics this would be 4.56 GW to run the whole network, which in turn means electricity consumption would be 4.56 million kwh per hour. At the time of this writing bitcoin is averaging 14,814 transactions per hour, meaning the average electricity consumption per transaction is 308 kwh. I could easily see the average hash efficiency for the whole network being half of what a 2020 dedicated mining rig can do. Do note that this is transaction processing on bitcoin proper, which is artificially limited to processing less than 7 transactions per second. There are lots of things that we would think of as transactions that don't have to go into this number. For example if you have a trusted marketplace, you can have all the transactions which take place within the marketplace in a given time period lumped together as a single transaction, and thus you only need to do a "real" transaction when you deposit or withdraw money from that market. This is the concept behind many cryptocurrencies meant to "speed up" bitcoin. So really it's not so much a 5 hour flight every time you use a credit card, but a 5 hour flight every time you get a new credit card - still inefficient, but far less extreme.

cptskippy 6y ago

According to that page, a single Bitcoin transaction (e.g. me purchasing a fraction of a coin) uses enough electricity to charge a Tesla Model 3 up 8.5 times. That doesn't seem right.

danpalmer 6y ago
This is averaged across transactions because it's more about the mining cost, but also there are _many_ computers that need to process your transaction and repeat the same work, because it's decentralised. That's a big factor too.
barkingcat 6y ago
Why doesn't that seem right? You do realize that bitcoin transactions are secured by hashrate right? It's one of the largest distributed computing projects in the world.