10 ms·

The Crypto-Chernobyl

89 points by louwrentius 6y ago

emteycz 6y ago
All this talk about waste without mentioning waste electricity one single time. Why nobody puts any thought into these criticisms? Anybody can calculate the total energy consumption and we've seen it a million times already. How about uncovering where that energy actually (not theoretically) comes from?
devname 6y ago
The energy usage is for mining new bitcoin and collecting fees, not "7 transactions per second". Newly mined bitcoin will be used for infinite future transactions. If you want more settlement with same store-of-value properties, use Bitcoin Cash.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > The energy usage is for mining new bitcoin and collecting fees, not "7 transactions per second". I think you've misunderstood. The mining fees you cited are for those 7 transactions per second. Miners collect fees for processing those transactions. Focusing on the dollar amount of those Bitcoin or how many times a Bitcoin can be re-used is irrelevant. If anything, it's bizarrely wasteful that Bitcoin requires the energy consumption of a medium sized country just to continue confirming that your balance hasn't changed.
  - ywei3410 6y ago
    Or, to put it more strongly, if no-one mined bitcoin tomorrow, you literally can't transact anymore. Bitcoin PoW /needs/ the energy consumption to function at all.
- tylersmith 6y ago
  The energy usage is for keeping transactions that have happened from being reorged out of the chain.
MarcScott 6y ago
Still one of the best descriptions of bitcoin I have seen. > imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1030225104234373121 https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1030225104234373121
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Yes, I think it's perfect.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Imagine if the government required you to use ice cubes for currency and people wondered why everyone was using some highly inefficient workaround so their money didn’t vanish in between getting paid and paying bills.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Considering the volatility and poor fundamentals of BTC I think your ice cube analogy might be reversed.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      Considering the value proposition of BTC is to avoid keeping your money in fiat currency that is constantly depreciating while BTC is appreciating, the analogy is apt.
      - paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Key part being "while BTC is appreciating". Which seems based more on the greater fool theory than a sustainable asset or currency. (Lightning network not withstanding)
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > Key part being "while BTC is appreciating". Which seems based more on the greater fool theory than a sustainable asset or currency. Thats just a failure to understand the value proposition of bitcoin. Its a medium of exchange that has a hard limit on inflation, no greater fool required. Hence, the comparison of ice cubes and fiat currency.
justforyou 6y ago
It's disengenuous to make that argument without a comparison to the full manifold energy consumption required to support fiat cash... (including things like burning gasoline and jet fuel to move paper and metal for shredding/melting.)
- paul_f 6y ago
  I don't think we need a detailed study for most everyone to accept that fiat cash is several orders of magnitude less energy costly than bitcoin
  - tal8d 6y ago
    You couldn't be more wrong, even the people complain about this made up problem will admit it when pressed. Follow the link and see for yourself.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    You’re not factoring in the military industrial complex cost of military enforcement of fiat currencies. You have to be factoring in the cost of militaries, fossil fuel exploits, and more. The cost of operating US dollars as a transactional concept is many, many, many orders of magnitude greater energy cost than Bitcoin.
  - programmarchy 6y ago
    What’s hilarious about this argument is that people with an axe to grind with cryptocurrency suddenly become hyper-libertarians. They criticize its waste and inefficiency, while lauding fiat currency backed by the state, with all its largesse, as a paragon of efficiency. It’s sour grapes disguised as moral righteousness.
- DNied 6y ago
  A comparison with cash would be completely arbitrary: bitcoin doesn't replace cash, so it only adds to the problem.
- wsinks 6y ago
  The counter argument to this that I've seen and has me thinking about Bitcoin's value again is this one: Right now Bitcoin is an additive to the financial system, and actually promotes more usage of fiat. So if you were to compare the manifold energy consumption to Bitcoin, you need to somewhere also calculate those other effects. I can't find a reference, but there's a good phrase that talked about how for every new innovation that comes out and is going to "completely replace X", the actual equilibrium always turns into a hybrid of the legacy systems and the new systems. Much like we've seen with Bitcoin. So at least at this point, I find your argument disingenuous, because it doesn't take into effect the interplay of the systems.
tal8d 6y ago
The whole "Cryptographically securing your currency is wasteful, you should fold proteins!" talking point has popped up several times over the years, despite the fact that it is silly to complain about when considered in relation to the present solution. > Whataboutism arguments regarding traditional currencies and the financial sector are a completely absurd response. Yes, a real currency like the Euro and by proxy the Eurozone absolutely emits more CO2 than bitcoin. lol, and there it is. I've never seen such a concerted effort to hammer this misinformation into peoples heads as I have for the last few days. Like I said, the concern has been raised and addressed before, but this volume of messaging is new.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Can you actually point out the misinformation? This article is not proposing to 'waste energy' on folding proteins. This article points out that other systems may also consume a lot of energy, but they give our societies a ton of value in return.
  - tal8d 6y ago
    > Can you actually point out the misinformation? Yes. I submit to you this article. Consider the framing of bitcoin's utility and the immovability of the status quo. > This article is not proposing to 'waste energy' on folding proteins. No, that accompanies the handwringing about POW - you can substitute an number of other silly suggestions: SETI, fusion reactor modeling, etc. > This article points out that other systems may also consume a lot of energy, but they give our societies a ton of value in return. Have you maybe considered the possibility that, I dunno, bitcoin replaces the fiat currency - as intended from the outset of the entire endeavor?
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      BOINC has many projects, several of which are geared towards solving open questions in mathematics https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
corona-research 6y ago
The author clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Bitcoin is an attempt to establish hard money.
dcolkitt 6y ago
An off-topic segue since Stephen Diehl is being linked... Does anyone know if he plans to finish his exotic programming ideas series? He was suppose to do one every week, but stopped with three left in early December. I quite enjoyed the series, and was hoping he'd get around to the remainder.
krasin 6y ago
I agree that wasting so much energy is not good. But it would be amusing, if we end up getting fusion energy sooner because someone makes a business case to mine bitcoins with the produced energy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Yes, if it subsidizes a total revolution in energy production that significantly improves the long-term sustainability of the human race. Not gonna happen anyway, but fun to think about.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Yes let's create a Dyson Sphere to mine Bitcoin. Seems like a noble goal. Hm...
  - senectus1 6y ago
    Its 2035 and Elon Musk owns most of the Sol system First he built Starlink, the precursor to the Musk Mining Dyson sphere. Then he bought 1.5B in BTC and sat on it investing the accrued gains in space mining technology, where he rapidly drained the Sol system of free range mineral resources to funnel them into his Dyson Sphere mining operations. Churning out Dogecoin/Bitcoin and other crypto currencies.. now the only fiat currency with any value on earth. on the up side, the earth has cooled a bit and we all drive electric cars and fly to the moon for holidays.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  There is not a lack of demand for energy. New forms of energy production are not being delayed because nobody wants them. Adding to the demand at this point does not help anything or anyone.
rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
Same old misinformed opinions 'ma energy', while feigning some kind of environmentally superiority. We have to get off Planet Earth! We need to reach Kardashev Type I before we start talking waste. The energy usage argument is a neoluddite position and will doom humanity to die on this rock stuck forever in some kind of mid 20th century malaise. You could scream into the abyss, or you could enrich your future. Some people keep screaming, year after year, while others keep on building, earning, working and playing.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  So what's your response? That spending an ever-increasing amount of energy and generating a significant quantity of non-reusable electronics waste on a Red Queen's race is Good, Actually? And if so: why?
  - rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
    All technology behaves this way! It generates a significant quantity of non-reusable electronics waste, from that 10 year old laptop to that 3 year old cell phone. Its ALWAYS a Red Queens race. This is good actually, because our lives are enhanced by the resultant technology to solve our problems. What I feel is missing from these comparisons to waste is a sense of scale. Quoting Gigajoules of usage should be seen as a plus to the scale of any technology. Its never waste. It means its working! Waste is when a finite resource like the atmosphere is ruined. Energy is everywhere. It is everything. We harness it to achieve our goals and solve our problems. Energy is never truly wasted.
    - user-the-name 6y ago
      There exists no technology, and there has never existed any technology, that has such an abysmal rate of utility to waste as Bitcoin does. It is singularly inefficient in the history of mankind.
      - rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
        One man's waste is another man's treasure. Ultimately it is a black hole, the black hole that sucks all value from other monetary systems. It provides immutability, permanence and durability like no other data structure that has come before it. This takes a lot of energy. It is best to stop looking at "factories" and "mines" producing "waste", it is more akin to software running in data centers using available energy to secure a ledger. This utility is almost unmeasurable, but we can put a market value to its units based on how useful it is to its users and how willing they are to trade their national currencies for it. Knowing how many SHA256^2's my rivals can hash a second is also pretty useful information. The system is opt-in, permissionless and extremely resilient. You don't have to use it, but if you try it, you might like it.
dustingetz 6y ago
It's also a financial weapon which looks to be slowly but inevitably sucking the whole world into a pyramid scheme. You can only grow exponentially so long before you run against limits of physics and something fractures. Well, maybe when Tether gets shut down it will unwind under the pressure of electric bills and taxes.
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
> incentives an ever increasing amount of waste that can only increase with time. That is NOT true: The Bitcoin block reward is cut in half every four years - an exponential decay! In the long-term it will be zero, miners will only earn transaction fees. This means that there will be a supply vs demand market, where supply is the willingness of people to pay transaction fees, and demand is miners who consume them. And there is only a finite willingness to pay fees! So the energy usage has a finite upper boundary through the limited supply of fees.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  Why are you downvoting this? It's right in the source code, this is not just a personal opinion!
  - tylersmith 6y ago
    Because the energy expenditure is not supposed to halve when the rewards do. The premise of Nakamoto consensus is that the decisions are finalized if and only if the chain constantly has enough hash rate to outpace anybody that might want to rewrite it. If the hash rate were to every halve, the chain would be jeopardy.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    The price of electricity, it's CO2 emissions per KWh and the future price of bitcoin is not in the source code.
- robjan 6y ago
  That's a big problem then. That means once the block mining reward turns to zero most miners will have to cease their operation to keep themselves in the black. If that happens, the cost of a 50% attack significantly decreases.
  - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
    They will sell off their equipment to the general public, which causes a lot of decentralization, and thus makes a coordinated attack more difficult.
nexthash 6y ago
Yes, yes, yes. In another discussion, I brought up that according to current energy consumption rates for average mining equipment, it took 2.4 million terrawatts to mine the $1.5 billion in Bitcoin Tesla bought recently. Does putting this much money in Bitcoin have a positive economic impact? Does it have any tangible value other than as a stopover for hedge fund and organized crime money? I think not, despite all the chaff crypto-fanatics throw at you when you question their ideology. It would've been far better and make more sense if the $238 billion invested in Bitcoin today in the forms of CPU power, brains, and cash was put into actual economic activity rather than idling and burning resources in an attempt to fulfill the greater-fools theory.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  I feel this. Just imagine all that effort and all those resources put in more noble causes like sustainable energy solutions, or anything similar that comes to mind. But it seems all about lambo money.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  How much energy did it consume to mint all the physical metal coins we have in circulation? How much does it consume to mint fresh ones when the old ones are damaged? Bitcoins don't wear off, the ones we've been mining now will be in use for possibly centuries to come once the block reward is zero and only transaction fees will fund the miners. By then, mining will decrease a lot because people won't be willing to pay as much transaction fees as miners currently earn from minting coins. So this is completely equal to the question of how much energy our physical coin minting has cost us - except that physical coins actually are damaged and will be replaced! In the end they might consume more energy!
  - nexthash 6y ago
    Ah, the Bitcoin gang has arrived! Have you considered the fact that coinage is actually for buying things? It drives economic activity! Now explain what Bitcoin does
    - 6y ago
atweiden 6y ago
> And what is there to show for all this waste? The safest safe haven asset: a global currency of fixed supply controlled by computer algorithms. Essentially the author posits Earth’s ecosystems don't have room for another Argentina. But they arguably don't even have room for half of the current human population. Particularly a human population that exploits nature to the tune of millions of acres of clearcut forests and billions of animals per year — the latter almost entirely for their value to our taste buds alone. Perhaps it’s time one of these systems came to an end.
- donclark 6y ago
  > Perhaps it’s time one of these systems came to an end. You mean the USD?
- donclark 6y ago
  Anyone have any data on how much waste is associated with Nasdaq, NYSE, credit card transactions, call centers to support credit cards, websites to support credit cards, ads that support credit cards, tv and radio commercials that support credit cards, etc. (for comparison)?
  - davidgerard 6y ago
    sure! bitcoin: 0.1% of all electricity, 7 transactions per second THE ENTIRE REST OF CIVILISATION AND EVERYONE IN IT: 99.9% of electricity, a heck of a lot more than 6,993 tps you're welcome! (notice how 0% of coiners who raise this point ever provide a number)
  - leereeves 6y ago
    What do Nasdaq and NYSE have to do with this? Are you proposing using Bitcoin to track ownership of companies?
    - playingchanges 6y ago
      I think the point being BTC is only one aspect of a financial system which surely uses more energy than BTC alone.
JoshTko 6y ago
My understanding is that the vast majority of crypto mining happens at dedicated farms in energy cost optimal locations such as Iceland where you can have clean geothermal energy. I haven't seen an analysis that looks at actual mining facilities carbon costs vs. a general average figure of CO/2 emissions per energy unit which absolutely would not apply in this case.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  That's the narrative being pushed to distract from the massive scale of Bitcoin's energy usage, but it's largely a myth. Yes, some Bitcoin mines use cheap renewable energy. However, renewable energy isn't free. If it wasn't going to mining, it would be transferred through the power grid to other locations that rely on non-renewable energy sources. > the vast majority of crypto mining happens at dedicated farms in energy cost optimal locations such as Iceland where you can have clean geothermal energy To put it in perspective, the energy usage of: Bitcoin network: 121.36 TWh per year All of Iceland: 18.68 TWh per year. Bitcoin uses 6.5X more energy than the entire country of Iceland combined.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Have you forgotten about the existence of China (and its enormous hydro-dams)? Nobody suggested Iceland is the sole location of Bitcoin mining. > it would be transferred through the power grid to other locations that rely on non-renewable energy sources. Not at all. Electricity is not easy to transport nor store. Do you know there are many days with negative prices of electricity in many locations in EU, because the electricity can't be economically transported even across the rather small region? > Bitcoin uses 6.5X more energy than the entire country of Iceland combined. Given the benefit of Bitcoin, that's excellent!
    - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      We transport electricity all the time, and we get better at it every year. Do you live next to a power plant? Or even in sight of a power plant? No, because we have a power grid to move this electricity around. I can assure you that new power generation plants are built with electricity transportation in mind. Surely you don't think that power plants are being built in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no way to use the electricity until Bitcoin conveniently came along with power-intensive proof-of-work requirements? > Have you forgot about the existence of China (and its enormous hydro-dams)? Please don't be facetious. Obviously I have not "forgotten" about China. However, you can surely agree we'd all be better off if new hydroelectric power was used to take older fossil fuel plants offline rather than performing arbitrary proof-of-work calculations.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I find this completely tone deaf, factually unconvincing, ignorant of the true required comparisons to the sum total power consumption of the whole transactional, fossil fuel and military industrial complex systems and infrastructure required to support the existence and usage of first world fiat currency. “Bitcoin uses a lot of energy” utterly doesn’t mean anything on its own like this. It’s infuriating to see such an intellectually dishonest and disgraceful, disingenuous line of argument taken with even the smallest modicum of seriousness. This just needs to be ignored out of existence.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  It's by Stephen Diehl, and as much as this community thinks it's above arguments from authority/ad hominem attacks, it will still favor reputable sources as a means of filtering. So ignoring an argument from him will hardly be sufficient.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    It being by Stephen only lowers the credibility. This is the same guy who wrote up a big slide deck insulting all the cretin, moron programmers in his eyes who aren’t using functional programming, by saying we are in the “bloodletting and leeches” stage of software at this point of history. (And then he took down the slide deck after getting backlash.) Stephen is bombastic in all the worst ways, while insulting and looking down on other engineers. I’m willing to look past Stephen being the author and give the general story of Bitcoin power consumption a fair shake despite it (and a clear-minded assessment suggests it’s a total non-story), but Stephen being the author absolutely does not help with credibility.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      I mostly know him as the Haskell expert, so good to know.
Lerc 6y ago
Are there any evaluations of cryptocurrency energy consumption as total usage rather than peak usage, A sort of area-under-the-curve comparison? If Bitcoin is a flash in the pan phenomenon and it one-day collapses into nothing then comparisons against countries like Argentina are inaccurate (Argentina is likely to continue existing). To extrapolate into the future you would have to have some assumptions. Some would be fixed, such as Miners would only mine if they could do so profitably, Mining scales with electricity consumption. Some would be tunable such as cost of electricity, value of Bitcoin The long term energy consumption seems intrinsically tied to the long term value. This seems at odds with the surprising correlation between those who dismiss the utility of crypto currency and those who express concerns about the energy consumption
- lumost 6y ago
  Bitcoin is an interesting asset class. It has a few properties such as 1) You can buy or sell a billion dollars of it in a day without moving the price too much. (current transaction volume is 7.6B per day) 2) Given some level of physical security, it's a very difficult asset to seize or freeze. This is useful for anyone who could be affected by government/non-government asset seizure. 3) As an individual you can literally put your entire net worth into BTC wallet on your cellphone, and walk across any border in the world. 4) Overall, while BTC is volatile - it's been a ridiculously good asset to hold long returning ~2000x over the last 8 years. Considering civil forfeiture laws in the US, politically motivated asset seizures globally, and the general risk of being de-banked and robbed of any savings - we're likely to see more use of BTC as a store of value. It's a useful exercise to understand if we've replaced gold with watts and hashing power.
coralreef 6y ago
Bitcoin is only a problem if you believe the future of energy creation is fossil fuels. This is simply not the case. Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy for new power plants compared to nuclear, gas peaker (natural gas), and coal. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth 2019 Prices Coal - $109/MWh Solar - $68/MWh On shore wind - $53/MWh Basic economic theory dictates that energy consuming businesses would seek out the lowest cost sources of energy to maximize profits.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Missing the point. No matter how you spin it, Bitcoin's energy usage is additive on top of all other energy usage. If Bitcoin wasn't consuming that energy, renewable or otherwise, it would be re-routed to other endeavors. If Bitcoin was using renewable energy, that's still renewable energy that could be used to replace older fossil fuel power stations. Instead, we're burning 121 TWh per year to perform arbitrary proof-of-work calculations. That requires us to keep 121 TWh of older generation capacity online. There's no free lunch, especially when it comes to power generation.
  - coralreef 6y ago
    Renewable energy isn't a commodity like oil. You can't yet generate watts at a waterfall in the jungle, and turn around to sell them to towns in the desert. A bitcoin mining operation at a geothermal vent in remote Iceland is not taking away energy units from people in India.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Basic economic theory doesn't include lobbying, political-industrial complex, subsidies and vested interests.
twouhm 6y ago
In my perspective, this is a perfect example of accelerationism.
seibelj 6y ago
Considering I have devoted my life to cryptocurrency and blockchain, am not a dumb person, and have entirely opposite views to the author, you can certainly believe there are many people who disagree strongly. If you judge my electricity consumption don’t be angry when I judge yours! Better to have a free market and price in externalities.
dang 6y ago
Other large current related threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26088455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26088455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26093099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26093099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082324
lallysingh 6y ago
I do wish the computation for proof of work was more useful than "this has an interesting hash."
noipv4 6y ago
nocoiner?
bitcoin23 6y ago
Is this dude a virgin?
blurden 6y ago
Bitcoin has fantastic utility. The scarcest resource any of us have is time. We all sell our time for money. Money is essentially a battery of time. Bitcoin is a profoundly better battery than poorly managed fiat. The energy consumed by Bitcoin is a registry of human effort. Bitcoin’s raise in value is proof of this utility and human desire for all time spent to be equal and honored as such in the future.
- leereeves 6y ago
  > Bitcoin’s raise in value is proof of this utility and human desire for all time spent to be equal and honored as such in the future. One hour's wages spent on Bitcoin a decade ago is worth how many hours' wages now? How would Bitcoin make all time spent be equal?

89 points by louwrentius 6y ago

All this talk about waste without mentioning waste electricity one single time. Why nobody puts any thought into these criticisms? Anybody can calculate the total energy consumption and we've seen it a million times already. How about uncovering where that energy actually (not theoretically) comes from?

devname 6y ago

The energy usage is for mining new bitcoin and collecting fees, not "7 transactions per second". Newly mined bitcoin will be used for infinite future transactions. If you want more settlement with same store-of-value properties, use Bitcoin Cash.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> The energy usage is for mining new bitcoin and collecting fees, not "7 transactions per second". I think you've misunderstood. The mining fees you cited are for those 7 transactions per second. Miners collect fees for processing those transactions. Focusing on the dollar amount of those Bitcoin or how many times a Bitcoin can be re-used is irrelevant. If anything, it's bizarrely wasteful that Bitcoin requires the energy consumption of a medium sized country just to continue confirming that your balance hasn't changed.
- ywei3410 6y ago
  Or, to put it more strongly, if no-one mined bitcoin tomorrow, you literally can't transact anymore. Bitcoin PoW /needs/ the energy consumption to function at all.
tylersmith 6y ago
The energy usage is for keeping transactions that have happened from being reorged out of the chain.

MarcScott 6y ago

Still one of the best descriptions of bitcoin I have seen. > imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1030225104234373121 https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1030225104234373121

louwrentius 6y ago
Yes, I think it's perfect.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Imagine if the government required you to use ice cubes for currency and people wondered why everyone was using some highly inefficient workaround so their money didn’t vanish in between getting paid and paying bills.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Considering the volatility and poor fundamentals of BTC I think your ice cube analogy might be reversed.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Considering the value proposition of BTC is to avoid keeping your money in fiat currency that is constantly depreciating while BTC is appreciating, the analogy is apt.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      Key part being "while BTC is appreciating". Which seems based more on the greater fool theory than a sustainable asset or currency. (Lightning network not withstanding)
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > Key part being "while BTC is appreciating". Which seems based more on the greater fool theory than a sustainable asset or currency. Thats just a failure to understand the value proposition of bitcoin. Its a medium of exchange that has a hard limit on inflation, no greater fool required. Hence, the comparison of ice cubes and fiat currency.

justforyou 6y ago

It's disengenuous to make that argument without a comparison to the full manifold energy consumption required to support fiat cash... (including things like burning gasoline and jet fuel to move paper and metal for shredding/melting.)

paul_f 6y ago
I don't think we need a detailed study for most everyone to accept that fiat cash is several orders of magnitude less energy costly than bitcoin
- tal8d 6y ago
  You couldn't be more wrong, even the people complain about this made up problem will admit it when pressed. Follow the link and see for yourself.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  You’re not factoring in the military industrial complex cost of military enforcement of fiat currencies. You have to be factoring in the cost of militaries, fossil fuel exploits, and more. The cost of operating US dollars as a transactional concept is many, many, many orders of magnitude greater energy cost than Bitcoin.
- programmarchy 6y ago
  What’s hilarious about this argument is that people with an axe to grind with cryptocurrency suddenly become hyper-libertarians. They criticize its waste and inefficiency, while lauding fiat currency backed by the state, with all its largesse, as a paragon of efficiency. It’s sour grapes disguised as moral righteousness.
DNied 6y ago
A comparison with cash would be completely arbitrary: bitcoin doesn't replace cash, so it only adds to the problem.
wsinks 6y ago
The counter argument to this that I've seen and has me thinking about Bitcoin's value again is this one: Right now Bitcoin is an additive to the financial system, and actually promotes more usage of fiat. So if you were to compare the manifold energy consumption to Bitcoin, you need to somewhere also calculate those other effects. I can't find a reference, but there's a good phrase that talked about how for every new innovation that comes out and is going to "completely replace X", the actual equilibrium always turns into a hybrid of the legacy systems and the new systems. Much like we've seen with Bitcoin. So at least at this point, I find your argument disingenuous, because it doesn't take into effect the interplay of the systems.

tal8d 6y ago

The whole "Cryptographically securing your currency is wasteful, you should fold proteins!" talking point has popped up several times over the years, despite the fact that it is silly to complain about when considered in relation to the present solution. > Whataboutism arguments regarding traditional currencies and the financial sector are a completely absurd response. Yes, a real currency like the Euro and by proxy the Eurozone absolutely emits more CO2 than bitcoin. lol, and there it is. I've never seen such a concerted effort to hammer this misinformation into peoples heads as I have for the last few days. Like I said, the concern has been raised and addressed before, but this volume of messaging is new.

louwrentius 6y ago
Can you actually point out the misinformation? This article is not proposing to 'waste energy' on folding proteins. This article points out that other systems may also consume a lot of energy, but they give our societies a ton of value in return.
- tal8d 6y ago
  > Can you actually point out the misinformation? Yes. I submit to you this article. Consider the framing of bitcoin's utility and the immovability of the status quo. > This article is not proposing to 'waste energy' on folding proteins. No, that accompanies the handwringing about POW - you can substitute an number of other silly suggestions: SETI, fusion reactor modeling, etc. > This article points out that other systems may also consume a lot of energy, but they give our societies a ton of value in return. Have you maybe considered the possibility that, I dunno, bitcoin replaces the fiat currency - as intended from the outset of the entire endeavor?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    BOINC has many projects, several of which are geared towards solving open questions in mathematics https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

corona-research 6y ago

The author clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Bitcoin is an attempt to establish hard money.

dcolkitt 6y ago

An off-topic segue since Stephen Diehl is being linked... Does anyone know if he plans to finish his exotic programming ideas series? He was suppose to do one every week, but stopped with three left in early December. I quite enjoyed the series, and was hoping he'd get around to the remainder.

krasin 6y ago

I agree that wasting so much energy is not good. But it would be amusing, if we end up getting fusion energy sooner because someone makes a business case to mine bitcoins with the produced energy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Yes, if it subsidizes a total revolution in energy production that significantly improves the long-term sustainability of the human race. Not gonna happen anyway, but fun to think about.
louwrentius 6y ago
Yes let's create a Dyson Sphere to mine Bitcoin. Seems like a noble goal. Hm...
- senectus1 6y ago
  Its 2035 and Elon Musk owns most of the Sol system First he built Starlink, the precursor to the Musk Mining Dyson sphere. Then he bought 1.5B in BTC and sat on it investing the accrued gains in space mining technology, where he rapidly drained the Sol system of free range mineral resources to funnel them into his Dyson Sphere mining operations. Churning out Dogecoin/Bitcoin and other crypto currencies.. now the only fiat currency with any value on earth. on the up side, the earth has cooled a bit and we all drive electric cars and fly to the moon for holidays.
user-the-name 6y ago
There is not a lack of demand for energy. New forms of energy production are not being delayed because nobody wants them. Adding to the demand at this point does not help anything or anyone.

rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago

Same old misinformed opinions 'ma energy', while feigning some kind of environmentally superiority. We have to get off Planet Earth! We need to reach Kardashev Type I before we start talking waste. The energy usage argument is a neoluddite position and will doom humanity to die on this rock stuck forever in some kind of mid 20th century malaise. You could scream into the abyss, or you could enrich your future. Some people keep screaming, year after year, while others keep on building, earning, working and playing.

duskwuff 6y ago
So what's your response? That spending an ever-increasing amount of energy and generating a significant quantity of non-reusable electronics waste on a Red Queen's race is Good, Actually? And if so: why?
- rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
  All technology behaves this way! It generates a significant quantity of non-reusable electronics waste, from that 10 year old laptop to that 3 year old cell phone. Its ALWAYS a Red Queens race. This is good actually, because our lives are enhanced by the resultant technology to solve our problems. What I feel is missing from these comparisons to waste is a sense of scale. Quoting Gigajoules of usage should be seen as a plus to the scale of any technology. Its never waste. It means its working! Waste is when a finite resource like the atmosphere is ruined. Energy is everywhere. It is everything. We harness it to achieve our goals and solve our problems. Energy is never truly wasted.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    There exists no technology, and there has never existed any technology, that has such an abysmal rate of utility to waste as Bitcoin does. It is singularly inefficient in the history of mankind.
    - rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
      One man's waste is another man's treasure. Ultimately it is a black hole, the black hole that sucks all value from other monetary systems. It provides immutability, permanence and durability like no other data structure that has come before it. This takes a lot of energy. It is best to stop looking at "factories" and "mines" producing "waste", it is more akin to software running in data centers using available energy to secure a ledger. This utility is almost unmeasurable, but we can put a market value to its units based on how useful it is to its users and how willing they are to trade their national currencies for it. Knowing how many SHA256^2's my rivals can hash a second is also pretty useful information. The system is opt-in, permissionless and extremely resilient. You don't have to use it, but if you try it, you might like it.

dustingetz 6y ago

It's also a financial weapon which looks to be slowly but inevitably sucking the whole world into a pyramid scheme. You can only grow exponentially so long before you run against limits of physics and something fractures. Well, maybe when Tether gets shut down it will unwind under the pressure of electric bills and taxes.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago

> incentives an ever increasing amount of waste that can only increase with time. That is NOT true: The Bitcoin block reward is cut in half every four years - an exponential decay! In the long-term it will be zero, miners will only earn transaction fees. This means that there will be a supply vs demand market, where supply is the willingness of people to pay transaction fees, and demand is miners who consume them. And there is only a finite willingness to pay fees! So the energy usage has a finite upper boundary through the limited supply of fees.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
Why are you downvoting this? It's right in the source code, this is not just a personal opinion!
- tylersmith 6y ago
  Because the energy expenditure is not supposed to halve when the rewards do. The premise of Nakamoto consensus is that the decisions are finalized if and only if the chain constantly has enough hash rate to outpace anybody that might want to rewrite it. If the hash rate were to every halve, the chain would be jeopardy.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  The price of electricity, it's CO2 emissions per KWh and the future price of bitcoin is not in the source code.
robjan 6y ago
That's a big problem then. That means once the block mining reward turns to zero most miners will have to cease their operation to keep themselves in the black. If that happens, the cost of a 50% attack significantly decreases.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  They will sell off their equipment to the general public, which causes a lot of decentralization, and thus makes a coordinated attack more difficult.

nexthash 6y ago

Yes, yes, yes. In another discussion, I brought up that according to current energy consumption rates for average mining equipment, it took 2.4 million terrawatts to mine the $1.5 billion in Bitcoin Tesla bought recently. Does putting this much money in Bitcoin have a positive economic impact? Does it have any tangible value other than as a stopover for hedge fund and organized crime money? I think not, despite all the chaff crypto-fanatics throw at you when you question their ideology. It would've been far better and make more sense if the $238 billion invested in Bitcoin today in the forms of CPU power, brains, and cash was put into actual economic activity rather than idling and burning resources in an attempt to fulfill the greater-fools theory.

louwrentius 6y ago
I feel this. Just imagine all that effort and all those resources put in more noble causes like sustainable energy solutions, or anything similar that comes to mind. But it seems all about lambo money.
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
How much energy did it consume to mint all the physical metal coins we have in circulation? How much does it consume to mint fresh ones when the old ones are damaged? Bitcoins don't wear off, the ones we've been mining now will be in use for possibly centuries to come once the block reward is zero and only transaction fees will fund the miners. By then, mining will decrease a lot because people won't be willing to pay as much transaction fees as miners currently earn from minting coins. So this is completely equal to the question of how much energy our physical coin minting has cost us - except that physical coins actually are damaged and will be replaced! In the end they might consume more energy!
- nexthash 6y ago
  Ah, the Bitcoin gang has arrived! Have you considered the fact that coinage is actually for buying things? It drives economic activity! Now explain what Bitcoin does
  - 6y ago

atweiden 6y ago

> And what is there to show for all this waste? The safest safe haven asset: a global currency of fixed supply controlled by computer algorithms. Essentially the author posits Earth’s ecosystems don't have room for another Argentina. But they arguably don't even have room for half of the current human population. Particularly a human population that exploits nature to the tune of millions of acres of clearcut forests and billions of animals per year — the latter almost entirely for their value to our taste buds alone. Perhaps it’s time one of these systems came to an end.

donclark 6y ago
> Perhaps it’s time one of these systems came to an end. You mean the USD?
donclark 6y ago
Anyone have any data on how much waste is associated with Nasdaq, NYSE, credit card transactions, call centers to support credit cards, websites to support credit cards, ads that support credit cards, tv and radio commercials that support credit cards, etc. (for comparison)?
- davidgerard 6y ago
  sure! bitcoin: 0.1% of all electricity, 7 transactions per second THE ENTIRE REST OF CIVILISATION AND EVERYONE IN IT: 99.9% of electricity, a heck of a lot more than 6,993 tps you're welcome! (notice how 0% of coiners who raise this point ever provide a number)
- leereeves 6y ago
  What do Nasdaq and NYSE have to do with this? Are you proposing using Bitcoin to track ownership of companies?
  - playingchanges 6y ago
    I think the point being BTC is only one aspect of a financial system which surely uses more energy than BTC alone.

JoshTko 6y ago

My understanding is that the vast majority of crypto mining happens at dedicated farms in energy cost optimal locations such as Iceland where you can have clean geothermal energy. I haven't seen an analysis that looks at actual mining facilities carbon costs vs. a general average figure of CO/2 emissions per energy unit which absolutely would not apply in this case.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
That's the narrative being pushed to distract from the massive scale of Bitcoin's energy usage, but it's largely a myth. Yes, some Bitcoin mines use cheap renewable energy. However, renewable energy isn't free. If it wasn't going to mining, it would be transferred through the power grid to other locations that rely on non-renewable energy sources. > the vast majority of crypto mining happens at dedicated farms in energy cost optimal locations such as Iceland where you can have clean geothermal energy To put it in perspective, the energy usage of: Bitcoin network: 121.36 TWh per year All of Iceland: 18.68 TWh per year. Bitcoin uses 6.5X more energy than the entire country of Iceland combined.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Have you forgotten about the existence of China (and its enormous hydro-dams)? Nobody suggested Iceland is the sole location of Bitcoin mining. > it would be transferred through the power grid to other locations that rely on non-renewable energy sources. Not at all. Electricity is not easy to transport nor store. Do you know there are many days with negative prices of electricity in many locations in EU, because the electricity can't be economically transported even across the rather small region? > Bitcoin uses 6.5X more energy than the entire country of Iceland combined. Given the benefit of Bitcoin, that's excellent!
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    We transport electricity all the time, and we get better at it every year. Do you live next to a power plant? Or even in sight of a power plant? No, because we have a power grid to move this electricity around. I can assure you that new power generation plants are built with electricity transportation in mind. Surely you don't think that power plants are being built in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no way to use the electricity until Bitcoin conveniently came along with power-intensive proof-of-work requirements? > Have you forgot about the existence of China (and its enormous hydro-dams)? Please don't be facetious. Obviously I have not "forgotten" about China. However, you can surely agree we'd all be better off if new hydroelectric power was used to take older fossil fuel plants offline rather than performing arbitrary proof-of-work calculations.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

I find this completely tone deaf, factually unconvincing, ignorant of the true required comparisons to the sum total power consumption of the whole transactional, fossil fuel and military industrial complex systems and infrastructure required to support the existence and usage of first world fiat currency. “Bitcoin uses a lot of energy” utterly doesn’t mean anything on its own like this. It’s infuriating to see such an intellectually dishonest and disgraceful, disingenuous line of argument taken with even the smallest modicum of seriousness. This just needs to be ignored out of existence.

Apocryphon 6y ago
It's by Stephen Diehl, and as much as this community thinks it's above arguments from authority/ad hominem attacks, it will still favor reputable sources as a means of filtering. So ignoring an argument from him will hardly be sufficient.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  It being by Stephen only lowers the credibility. This is the same guy who wrote up a big slide deck insulting all the cretin, moron programmers in his eyes who aren’t using functional programming, by saying we are in the “bloodletting and leeches” stage of software at this point of history. (And then he took down the slide deck after getting backlash.) Stephen is bombastic in all the worst ways, while insulting and looking down on other engineers. I’m willing to look past Stephen being the author and give the general story of Bitcoin power consumption a fair shake despite it (and a clear-minded assessment suggests it’s a total non-story), but Stephen being the author absolutely does not help with credibility.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    I mostly know him as the Haskell expert, so good to know.

Lerc 6y ago

Are there any evaluations of cryptocurrency energy consumption as total usage rather than peak usage, A sort of area-under-the-curve comparison? If Bitcoin is a flash in the pan phenomenon and it one-day collapses into nothing then comparisons against countries like Argentina are inaccurate (Argentina is likely to continue existing). To extrapolate into the future you would have to have some assumptions. Some would be fixed, such as Miners would only mine if they could do so profitably, Mining scales with electricity consumption. Some would be tunable such as cost of electricity, value of Bitcoin The long term energy consumption seems intrinsically tied to the long term value. This seems at odds with the surprising correlation between those who dismiss the utility of crypto currency and those who express concerns about the energy consumption

lumost 6y ago
Bitcoin is an interesting asset class. It has a few properties such as 1) You can buy or sell a billion dollars of it in a day without moving the price too much. (current transaction volume is 7.6B per day) 2) Given some level of physical security, it's a very difficult asset to seize or freeze. This is useful for anyone who could be affected by government/non-government asset seizure. 3) As an individual you can literally put your entire net worth into BTC wallet on your cellphone, and walk across any border in the world. 4) Overall, while BTC is volatile - it's been a ridiculously good asset to hold long returning ~2000x over the last 8 years. Considering civil forfeiture laws in the US, politically motivated asset seizures globally, and the general risk of being de-banked and robbed of any savings - we're likely to see more use of BTC as a store of value. It's a useful exercise to understand if we've replaced gold with watts and hashing power.

coralreef 6y ago

Bitcoin is only a problem if you believe the future of energy creation is fossil fuels. This is simply not the case. Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy for new power plants compared to nuclear, gas peaker (natural gas), and coal. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth 2019 Prices Coal - $109/MWh Solar - $68/MWh On shore wind - $53/MWh Basic economic theory dictates that energy consuming businesses would seek out the lowest cost sources of energy to maximize profits.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Missing the point. No matter how you spin it, Bitcoin's energy usage is additive on top of all other energy usage. If Bitcoin wasn't consuming that energy, renewable or otherwise, it would be re-routed to other endeavors. If Bitcoin was using renewable energy, that's still renewable energy that could be used to replace older fossil fuel power stations. Instead, we're burning 121 TWh per year to perform arbitrary proof-of-work calculations. That requires us to keep 121 TWh of older generation capacity online. There's no free lunch, especially when it comes to power generation.
- coralreef 6y ago
  Renewable energy isn't a commodity like oil. You can't yet generate watts at a waterfall in the jungle, and turn around to sell them to towns in the desert. A bitcoin mining operation at a geothermal vent in remote Iceland is not taking away energy units from people in India.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
quickthrower2 6y ago
Basic economic theory doesn't include lobbying, political-industrial complex, subsidies and vested interests.

twouhm 6y ago

In my perspective, this is a perfect example of accelerationism.

seibelj 6y ago

Considering I have devoted my life to cryptocurrency and blockchain, am not a dumb person, and have entirely opposite views to the author, you can certainly believe there are many people who disagree strongly. If you judge my electricity consumption don’t be angry when I judge yours! Better to have a free market and price in externalities.

dang 6y ago

Other large current related threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26088455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26088455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26093099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26093099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26091536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082324

lallysingh 6y ago

I do wish the computation for proof of work was more useful than "this has an interesting hash."

noipv4 6y ago

nocoiner?

bitcoin23 6y ago

Is this dude a virgin?

blurden 6y ago

Bitcoin has fantastic utility. The scarcest resource any of us have is time. We all sell our time for money. Money is essentially a battery of time. Bitcoin is a profoundly better battery than poorly managed fiat. The energy consumed by Bitcoin is a registry of human effort. Bitcoin’s raise in value is proof of this utility and human desire for all time spent to be equal and honored as such in the future.

leereeves 6y ago
> Bitcoin’s raise in value is proof of this utility and human desire for all time spent to be equal and honored as such in the future. One hour's wages spent on Bitcoin a decade ago is worth how many hours' wages now? How would Bitcoin make all time spent be equal?