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Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap" energy, which improves the efficiency and costs of energy production, making it surprisingly "green". B

Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap" energy, which improves the efficiency and costs of energy production, making it surprisingly "green". Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than Gold and Silver. Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than credit cards and the banking system in general. Yet Bitcoin is frowned upon by environmentalists, as if Bitcoin was a company and they could use political power to shut it down.

vmception 6y ago
Yeah people harp on and on about the amount of energy instead of the source of energy turns out those entire countries in their favorite analogy also use a smaller amount of energy than many industries the source is more important either way
texasbigdata 6y ago
I’m a beginner but is your energy comment in perpetuity or at current point? Specially in 2734 or whatever due to the verification of Bitcoin transactions each requiring energy, as long as the transaction cost of non-Bitcoin was lower than Bitcoin in the long run (maybe the “you’re long dead” long run run) wouldn’t coin use more energy? Sorry for n00b question
dtech 6y ago
Bitcoin is not even close to a replacement of banking and debit/credit cards. If bitcoin fulfilled those roles, it would use a lot more energy than the current system because of how energy-intensive transactions are due to the required mining.
- moralsupply 6y ago
  Bitcoin can't handle the amount of transactions the banking system can handle at the moment. For it to scale to that level it requires an L2 solution (eg. Lightning), in which case energy consumption is not going to increase.
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    Why would L2 solutions use less energy than current banking, payment processing and transactions solutions? Or with other services related be at least in same ballpark?
    - moralsupply 6y ago
      L2 doesn't require mining, only channels maintained with relatively low processing capabilities
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    What’s the argument for using L2 networks on top of Bitcoin instead of simply using one of the other cryptocurrencies that was designed from the start to handle transaction volume? Why do we need a separate currency for sending money around anyway?
    - moralsupply 6y ago
      The argument is that Bitcoin work very well as a store of value, and is proven (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). It doesn't need to be "perfect" in every front. L2 solutions still transact the same tokens as their L1 counterparts. Other solutions may potentially be "better" technically, but that doesn't mean they are proven in the long run, and the on-ramp, corporate, etc. infrastructure is not in place for them.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        > (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). Shame about all of those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin that have been stolen. Come to think of it, while I haven't crunched the statistics, it wouldn't surprise me if your money were more likely to be stolen if you kept it in Bitcoin than a boring bank account.
        6y ago
- MrMan 6y ago
  If a bitcoin is functionally equivalent to a dollar you still need the entire stack of the financial industry, bitcoin doesn't in any way obviate finance
- xur17 6y ago
  I keep hearing this repeated in threads about Bitcoin, and it's just flat out wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does not scale based on the number of transactions. Its energy usage scales based upon the value of the block reward and the efficiency of mining operations.
  - lalaland1125 6y ago
    It's not wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does scale based on usage; it scales based on the value of money flowing through the system (in order to secure a certain transaction volume, you need electricity usage that corresponds to the value of those transactions). In order for Bitcoin to replace banks, it would have to consume an incredible amount of electricity.
    - xur17 6y ago
      That is simply not true. I don't think you understand how Bitcoin works.
      - lalaland1125 6y ago
        If the electricity usage falls below a certain fraction of the value going through the network then double spending attacks become a significant risk. Bitcoin only works on the assumption that the electricity usage (and hardware usage) is too high to make double spending attacks feasible.
mgberlin 6y ago
[citation needed] But really, I'm interested in these arguments, please let me know where I can learn more. Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than the current banking system.
- moralsupply 6y ago
  https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2018/01/25/gold-mining-energy-consumption-001386 https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2018/01/25/gold-mining-ener... https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/DataTrends_Banks_20150128.pdf https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/DataTre... Do your calculations
  - mgberlin 6y ago
    That's a completely ridiculous answer and makes it clear you have no idea what you're talking about. 1) Gold has nothing to do with banking transactions, I've lived my whole life without ever touching a spec of gold. 2) Is about the energy consumption of bank branches. My bank doesn't even have branches. You're comparing apples to... tires or something.
    - moralsupply 6y ago
      So your bank has no offices, no people, no nothing to make it work? Do you think that corporations don't require buildings, computing resources, transportation, etc. to exist? As for the link about gold, read my original comment.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        And you are willing and able to tot up those statistics for the people who make Bitcoin miners and other machines running nodes? And the buildings that house those, etc.? As long as you are not, it's still an improper comparison.
- tonfa 6y ago
  > Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than the current banking system. I guess this one is pretty clear, OP was only comparing to gold/silver (I have no idea how it compares in practice). To be comparable to banking, bitcoin should probably first reach the level where it can provide the same functionality (payment, fractional banking, etc.). (And then prorated as even if it were to provide the functionality, it would have to scale by several orders of magnitude to replace banking)
maxerickson 6y ago
It's pretty unlikely that the majority of energy consumed is truly 'excess', it's just not how energy generation and distribution works. There can certainly be periods of time where it is excess, it's just hard to believe it's typical for there to be zero dispatchable sources operating on the grids supplying the power.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Realistically, miners aren’t going to turn the equipment off as long as the ROI is positive, however narrowly. When it the ROI becomes too small to mine, they’ll sell the equipment to someone else who can run it cheaper. The mining equipment is also diffusing into the hands of people who don’t pay their own energy bills. I’m part of an IT forum where network admins are constantly sharing stories about employees trying to hide mining equipment in the office to use the free power and cooling for pure profit. Similar situation in school dorms. The idea of miners turning these things on only during rare times of excess grid capacity is a myth. They’re running 24/7 and they’re consuming energy that would otherwise be sent to the grid to offset fossil fuel consumption elsewhere.
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Could you provide some links for these: > Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap" energy, which improves the efficiency and costs of energy production, making it surprisingly "green". > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than Gold and Silver. As for > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than credit cards and the banking system in general. Bitcoin supports at many orders of magnitude less transactions on the ledger than the banking systems [1] and needs 10 minutes to add a new block to the ledger [2] and ETH about 10-15 seconds[2]. In contrast, according to this [3], in 2019 there were on average 100M visa transactions in the US alone, per day, so around 5 orders of magnitude more transactions in just the States, excluding MasterCard, paypal and every other system. Now, there are better alternatives, ETH uses proof of stake, there are also papers on proof of space [4]. Personally I'd like to move to something decentralised and away from the banks as much as possible. [1] https://charts.bitcoin.com/btc/chart/transactions-per-block#5ma4 https://charts.bitcoin.com/btc/chart/transactions-per-block#... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/block-time-cryptocurrency.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/block-time-cryptocurren... [3] https://www.cardrates.com/advice/number-of-credit-card-transactions-per-day-year/ https://www.cardrates.com/advice/number-of-credit-card-trans... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space
- pyrale 6y ago
  > ETH uses proof of stake AFAIK they have pledged to move to proof of stake for quite some time now, without delivering so far.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The idea of cheap, “excess” energy that keeps Bitcoin mining operations running 24/7 is a myth. Bitcoin is, and always will be, additive on top of the world’s energy consumption. Every Terawatt of energy that goes into Bitcoin is a Terawatt of energy that isn’t being put into the grid to send to homes or industries or other users. No one is choosing to build power plants in the middle of nowhere without a way to send that energy into the grid. The grid is not perfectly efficient, but it’s still better to transfer that energy through the grid than to keep a coal plant running somewhere else because Bitcoin is (hypothetically) consuming the new renewable energy sources coming online. The key is to remember that no one is waking up and wondering if they should run their Bitcoin miner or charge their Tesla. Both happen independently, and it’s not hard to see that miners run 24/7 regardless of energy demand fluctuations elsewhere. This idea of unused, surplus energy that somehow can’t be connected to the grid is a myth perpetuated to whitewash the absolutely massive (country-scale) energy consumption of Bitcoin. Not to mention, none of us can buy video cards right now because they’re all being consumed to mine other cryptocurrencies. Discussion forums are full of people swapping tips for mining with their GPUs to offset the cost. There is no angle on this in which we can ignore the 120,000 Gigawatt energy consumption of Bitcoin and the additional energy consumption of all the other crypto currencies popping up in its wake. Frankly, at this point it’s depressing to see this trope repeated so often on HN, where usually the users would have enough intellectual curiosity and engineering sense to read up on the basics of power transmission and marginal energy costs before repeating such an obviously flawed argument. I’m afraid everyone’s personal financial investment in cryptocurrency is clouding judgment on the topic when all of the facts are right in front of us.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Every Terawatt of energy that goes into Bitcoin is a Terawatt of energy that isn’t being put into the grid to send to homes or industries or other users. Not really. Electricity is tough to transport over distances and interconnects are expensive and have limited capacity. That's why new hampshire's retail cost for electricity is 17 cents/kWh[1] but quebec only pays 5.8 cent/kWh [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ [2] https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/ https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/ (7.3¢/kWh converted to USD)

vmception 6y ago

Yeah people harp on and on about the amount of energy instead of the source of energy turns out those entire countries in their favorite analogy also use a smaller amount of energy than many industries the source is more important either way

texasbigdata 6y ago

I’m a beginner but is your energy comment in perpetuity or at current point? Specially in 2734 or whatever due to the verification of Bitcoin transactions each requiring energy, as long as the transaction cost of non-Bitcoin was lower than Bitcoin in the long run (maybe the “you’re long dead” long run run) wouldn’t coin use more energy? Sorry for n00b question

dtech 6y ago

Bitcoin is not even close to a replacement of banking and debit/credit cards. If bitcoin fulfilled those roles, it would use a lot more energy than the current system because of how energy-intensive transactions are due to the required mining.

moralsupply 6y ago
Bitcoin can't handle the amount of transactions the banking system can handle at the moment. For it to scale to that level it requires an L2 solution (eg. Lightning), in which case energy consumption is not going to increase.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Why would L2 solutions use less energy than current banking, payment processing and transactions solutions? Or with other services related be at least in same ballpark?
  - moralsupply 6y ago
    L2 doesn't require mining, only channels maintained with relatively low processing capabilities
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  What’s the argument for using L2 networks on top of Bitcoin instead of simply using one of the other cryptocurrencies that was designed from the start to handle transaction volume? Why do we need a separate currency for sending money around anyway?
  - moralsupply 6y ago
    The argument is that Bitcoin work very well as a store of value, and is proven (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). It doesn't need to be "perfect" in every front. L2 solutions still transact the same tokens as their L1 counterparts. Other solutions may potentially be "better" technically, but that doesn't mean they are proven in the long run, and the on-ramp, corporate, etc. infrastructure is not in place for them.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      > (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). Shame about all of those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin that have been stolen. Come to think of it, while I haven't crunched the statistics, it wouldn't surprise me if your money were more likely to be stolen if you kept it in Bitcoin than a boring bank account.
      - 6y ago
MrMan 6y ago
If a bitcoin is functionally equivalent to a dollar you still need the entire stack of the financial industry, bitcoin doesn't in any way obviate finance
xur17 6y ago
I keep hearing this repeated in threads about Bitcoin, and it's just flat out wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does not scale based on the number of transactions. Its energy usage scales based upon the value of the block reward and the efficiency of mining operations.
- lalaland1125 6y ago
  It's not wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does scale based on usage; it scales based on the value of money flowing through the system (in order to secure a certain transaction volume, you need electricity usage that corresponds to the value of those transactions). In order for Bitcoin to replace banks, it would have to consume an incredible amount of electricity.
  - xur17 6y ago
    That is simply not true. I don't think you understand how Bitcoin works.
    - lalaland1125 6y ago
      If the electricity usage falls below a certain fraction of the value going through the network then double spending attacks become a significant risk. Bitcoin only works on the assumption that the electricity usage (and hardware usage) is too high to make double spending attacks feasible.

mgberlin 6y ago

[citation needed] But really, I'm interested in these arguments, please let me know where I can learn more. Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than the current banking system.

moralsupply 6y ago
https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2018/01/25/gold-mining-energy-consumption-001386 https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2018/01/25/gold-mining-ener... https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/DataTrends_Banks_20150128.pdf https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/DataTre... Do your calculations
- mgberlin 6y ago
  That's a completely ridiculous answer and makes it clear you have no idea what you're talking about. 1) Gold has nothing to do with banking transactions, I've lived my whole life without ever touching a spec of gold. 2) Is about the energy consumption of bank branches. My bank doesn't even have branches. You're comparing apples to... tires or something.
  - moralsupply 6y ago
    So your bank has no offices, no people, no nothing to make it work? Do you think that corporations don't require buildings, computing resources, transportation, etc. to exist? As for the link about gold, read my original comment.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      And you are willing and able to tot up those statistics for the people who make Bitcoin miners and other machines running nodes? And the buildings that house those, etc.? As long as you are not, it's still an improper comparison.
tonfa 6y ago
> Especially regarding the idea that it uses less energy than the current banking system. I guess this one is pretty clear, OP was only comparing to gold/silver (I have no idea how it compares in practice). To be comparable to banking, bitcoin should probably first reach the level where it can provide the same functionality (payment, fractional banking, etc.). (And then prorated as even if it were to provide the functionality, it would have to scale by several orders of magnitude to replace banking)

maxerickson 6y ago

It's pretty unlikely that the majority of energy consumed is truly 'excess', it's just not how energy generation and distribution works. There can certainly be periods of time where it is excess, it's just hard to believe it's typical for there to be zero dispatchable sources operating on the grids supplying the power.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Realistically, miners aren’t going to turn the equipment off as long as the ROI is positive, however narrowly. When it the ROI becomes too small to mine, they’ll sell the equipment to someone else who can run it cheaper. The mining equipment is also diffusing into the hands of people who don’t pay their own energy bills. I’m part of an IT forum where network admins are constantly sharing stories about employees trying to hide mining equipment in the office to use the free power and cooling for pure profit. Similar situation in school dorms. The idea of miners turning these things on only during rare times of excess grid capacity is a myth. They’re running 24/7 and they’re consuming energy that would otherwise be sent to the grid to offset fossil fuel consumption elsewhere.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago

Could you provide some links for these: > Bitcoin is mostly mined using excess energy, or "cheap" energy, which improves the efficiency and costs of energy production, making it surprisingly "green". > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than Gold and Silver. As for > Bitcoin requires less energy on a per-store-of-value basis than credit cards and the banking system in general. Bitcoin supports at many orders of magnitude less transactions on the ledger than the banking systems [1] and needs 10 minutes to add a new block to the ledger [2] and ETH about 10-15 seconds[2]. In contrast, according to this [3], in 2019 there were on average 100M visa transactions in the US alone, per day, so around 5 orders of magnitude more transactions in just the States, excluding MasterCard, paypal and every other system. Now, there are better alternatives, ETH uses proof of stake, there are also papers on proof of space [4]. Personally I'd like to move to something decentralised and away from the banks as much as possible. [1] https://charts.bitcoin.com/btc/chart/transactions-per-block#5ma4 https://charts.bitcoin.com/btc/chart/transactions-per-block#... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/block-time-cryptocurrency.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/block-time-cryptocurren... [3] https://www.cardrates.com/advice/number-of-credit-card-transactions-per-day-year/ https://www.cardrates.com/advice/number-of-credit-card-trans... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space

pyrale 6y ago
> ETH uses proof of stake AFAIK they have pledged to move to proof of stake for quite some time now, without delivering so far.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

The idea of cheap, “excess” energy that keeps Bitcoin mining operations running 24/7 is a myth. Bitcoin is, and always will be, additive on top of the world’s energy consumption. Every Terawatt of energy that goes into Bitcoin is a Terawatt of energy that isn’t being put into the grid to send to homes or industries or other users. No one is choosing to build power plants in the middle of nowhere without a way to send that energy into the grid. The grid is not perfectly efficient, but it’s still better to transfer that energy through the grid than to keep a coal plant running somewhere else because Bitcoin is (hypothetically) consuming the new renewable energy sources coming online. The key is to remember that no one is waking up and wondering if they should run their Bitcoin miner or charge their Tesla. Both happen independently, and it’s not hard to see that miners run 24/7 regardless of energy demand fluctuations elsewhere. This idea of unused, surplus energy that somehow can’t be connected to the grid is a myth perpetuated to whitewash the absolutely massive (country-scale) energy consumption of Bitcoin. Not to mention, none of us can buy video cards right now because they’re all being consumed to mine other cryptocurrencies. Discussion forums are full of people swapping tips for mining with their GPUs to offset the cost. There is no angle on this in which we can ignore the 120,000 Gigawatt energy consumption of Bitcoin and the additional energy consumption of all the other crypto currencies popping up in its wake. Frankly, at this point it’s depressing to see this trope repeated so often on HN, where usually the users would have enough intellectual curiosity and engineering sense to read up on the basics of power transmission and marginal energy costs before repeating such an obviously flawed argument. I’m afraid everyone’s personal financial investment in cryptocurrency is clouding judgment on the topic when all of the facts are right in front of us.

gruez 6y ago
>Every Terawatt of energy that goes into Bitcoin is a Terawatt of energy that isn’t being put into the grid to send to homes or industries or other users. Not really. Electricity is tough to transport over distances and interconnects are expensive and have limited capacity. That's why new hampshire's retail cost for electricity is 17 cents/kWh[1] but quebec only pays 5.8 cent/kWh [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ [2] https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/ https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/ (7.3¢/kWh converted to USD)