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Can you share some sources where I can read up on this? I checked the bitcoin docs - but couldn't find much about energy use (or I'm just not very good at sear

Can you share some sources where I can read up on this? I checked the bitcoin docs - but couldn't find much about energy use (or I'm just not very good at searching ;) )

db48x 6y ago
Mining a block requires a lot of calculations, calculations are done on computers, computers use electricity, and producing electricity necessarily produces pollution. Ergo, bitcoin is bad. Of course, the estimates of how much energy is used are always a bit suspect. I've seen articles like this that just don't quote any sources at all, and I've seen a number of them that all ultimately refer the same reddit comment from a decade ago where someone made an estimate of the per-hash electricity cost. They then scale that up to the current hash rate and use that as an authoritative figure. Of course, nobody adds up all the electricity used heating and cooling all the bank branches in the world, or the cost of the looping animations on the screens of all the ATMs in the world, or the food eaten by all of the bank tellers in the world. Single-book accounting can make anything look bad. But aside from that, the real story here is that the proof of work implementation allows the bitcoin system to spend money on something that makes certain kinds of attacks difficult or impossible. Other banking systems have to protect against those same attacks, but they do it by using trust between humans, exhaustive reporting and accounting requirements, and so on. As a result, those attacks are easier than in the bitcoin system, especially when international banks are involved. That big scandal in Germany where Wirecard told it's auditors that it had €1.9B in a bank in the Philippines comes to mind. It turns out that they forged the documents in an attempt to cover up their failing business. Forging a bitcoin transaction like that is impossible.
jude- 6y ago
I've written code to sign and validate Bitcoin transactions (see my profile). Believe me, they're cheap -- loading this site and rendering it in your browser probably takes an order of magnitude more watts. It's really not that different -- both in principle and execution -- than signing and verifying a SSL certificate.

Can you share some sources where I can read up on this? I checked the bitcoin docs - but couldn't find much about energy use (or I'm just not very good at searching ;) )

db48x 6y ago

Mining a block requires a lot of calculations, calculations are done on computers, computers use electricity, and producing electricity necessarily produces pollution. Ergo, bitcoin is bad. Of course, the estimates of how much energy is used are always a bit suspect. I've seen articles like this that just don't quote any sources at all, and I've seen a number of them that all ultimately refer the same reddit comment from a decade ago where someone made an estimate of the per-hash electricity cost. They then scale that up to the current hash rate and use that as an authoritative figure. Of course, nobody adds up all the electricity used heating and cooling all the bank branches in the world, or the cost of the looping animations on the screens of all the ATMs in the world, or the food eaten by all of the bank tellers in the world. Single-book accounting can make anything look bad. But aside from that, the real story here is that the proof of work implementation allows the bitcoin system to spend money on something that makes certain kinds of attacks difficult or impossible. Other banking systems have to protect against those same attacks, but they do it by using trust between humans, exhaustive reporting and accounting requirements, and so on. As a result, those attacks are easier than in the bitcoin system, especially when international banks are involved. That big scandal in Germany where Wirecard told it's auditors that it had €1.9B in a bank in the Philippines comes to mind. It turns out that they forged the documents in an attempt to cover up their failing business. Forging a bitcoin transaction like that is impossible.

jude- 6y ago

I've written code to sign and validate Bitcoin transactions (see my profile). Believe me, they're cheap -- loading this site and rendering it in your browser probably takes an order of magnitude more watts. It's really not that different -- both in principle and execution -- than signing and verifying a SSL certificate.