3 ms·

Are you saying that if I send you $100 worth of bitcoins, the network would spend 700 kWh? I find that hard to believe.

aakilfernandes 6y ago
Analyses like this just take the energy cost of each block of transactions and divide it by the amount of transactions in the block. If the number of transactions in a block doubles, the average energy cost per transaction is halved. Another way of stating it is "the marginal energy usage of a bitcoin transaction is essentially 0".
- MereInterest 6y ago
  Except that there is a maximum number of transactions per block. Across the entire network, by design, there can never be more than 5 transactions per second. This is stupidly small. If people received their biweekly paychecks in bitcoin, only 6 million people could be paid without going over that transaction limit, assuming that absolutely nothing else is done using bitcoin. The marginal energy usage being zero is another way of saying that Bitcoin wastes the tremendous amount of energy that it does even if nobody is using it at the time.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  Yes, but the number of transactions in 'bitcoin' as it's currently defined is severely limited (blocks are already full at a $15 per transaction cost). Conceptually, making something which increases the transaction count involves forking bitcoin, and a fork which aimed to do exactly that was denounced heavily by the community and rejected by the markets. The marginal cost may be small but the cost per transaction is high, by design, and by design which has extremely heavy resistance to even small and simple changes.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  But the number of transactions in a block is fixed. We went through this with BTC/BCH. The BTC folks did not want to increase block size.
moonbug 6y ago
...and yet it is so. Total energy required to mine one block / # transactions per block.
MereInterest 6y ago
That is exactly correct. Bitcoin's inefficiency is tremendous, its throughput minimal, and by design it cannot scale.
- frongpik 6y ago
  How did bitcoin network transacted $90 billions just yesterday? By spending more energy than the entire world has ever produced?
  - Darmody 6y ago
    The power usage is the same if you transfer $100 worth of BTC or $100 billion.
    - frongpik 6y ago
      What happens if a few millions people send 5 bucks worth of bitcoin? A global power outage?
      - MereInterest 6y ago
        Depends on the transaction fees associated with those transfers. If those millions of people also post higher-than-average transaction fees, then the Bitcoin network prioritizes those payments, and cannot process any other transfers.
      - Darmody 6y ago
        They would have to wait a lot. Also a fee is almost $20 now. So they would make a bad and slow deal.
        frongpik 6y ago
        That seems like a natural rate limiter that would prevent wasting any meaningful amount of energy on bitcoin.
xorcist 6y ago
Not really. The network spends those kWh whether you send your transaction or not. It's also worth to note that nobody really knows how many kW miners really burn. All the figures are more or less educated guesses from the efficiency of equipment sold publicly. If someone has a more efficient method they probably won't share it. But nobody accused Bitcoin of being efficient, ever. That's what almost everyone notices when reading about it first time.

Analyses like this just take the energy cost of each block of transactions and divide it by the amount of transactions in the block. If the number of transactions in a block doubles, the average energy cost per transaction is halved. Another way of stating it is "the marginal energy usage of a bitcoin transaction is essentially 0".

MereInterest 6y ago
Except that there is a maximum number of transactions per block. Across the entire network, by design, there can never be more than 5 transactions per second. This is stupidly small. If people received their biweekly paychecks in bitcoin, only 6 million people could be paid without going over that transaction limit, assuming that absolutely nothing else is done using bitcoin. The marginal energy usage being zero is another way of saying that Bitcoin wastes the tremendous amount of energy that it does even if nobody is using it at the time.
rcxdude 6y ago
Yes, but the number of transactions in 'bitcoin' as it's currently defined is severely limited (blocks are already full at a $15 per transaction cost). Conceptually, making something which increases the transaction count involves forking bitcoin, and a fork which aimed to do exactly that was denounced heavily by the community and rejected by the markets. The marginal cost may be small but the cost per transaction is high, by design, and by design which has extremely heavy resistance to even small and simple changes.
UncleMeat 6y ago
But the number of transactions in a block is fixed. We went through this with BTC/BCH. The BTC folks did not want to increase block size.

moonbug 6y ago

...and yet it is so. Total energy required to mine one block / # transactions per block.

MereInterest 6y ago

That is exactly correct. Bitcoin's inefficiency is tremendous, its throughput minimal, and by design it cannot scale.

frongpik 6y ago
How did bitcoin network transacted $90 billions just yesterday? By spending more energy than the entire world has ever produced?
- Darmody 6y ago
  The power usage is the same if you transfer $100 worth of BTC or $100 billion.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    What happens if a few millions people send 5 bucks worth of bitcoin? A global power outage?
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      Depends on the transaction fees associated with those transfers. If those millions of people also post higher-than-average transaction fees, then the Bitcoin network prioritizes those payments, and cannot process any other transfers.
    - Darmody 6y ago
      They would have to wait a lot. Also a fee is almost $20 now. So they would make a bad and slow deal.
      - frongpik 6y ago
        That seems like a natural rate limiter that would prevent wasting any meaningful amount of energy on bitcoin.

xorcist 6y ago

Not really. The network spends those kWh whether you send your transaction or not. It's also worth to note that nobody really knows how many kW miners really burn. All the figures are more or less educated guesses from the efficiency of equipment sold publicly. If someone has a more efficient method they probably won't share it. But nobody accused Bitcoin of being efficient, ever. That's what almost everyone notices when reading about it first time.