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Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally
- kelp 6y agoProof of work blockchains should be banned by various governments for this reason alone. At this point BTC is a speculative bubble that benefits a very small group to the detriment of the rest of us. I also have a lot of personal frustration with how mining (more of ETH and others) is impacting the global GPU supply. A whole cottage industry has cropped up of sites, discords, etc that provide notifications when GPUs come into stock. Not all the issues are related to mining, but it certainly is enough of an issue that Nvidia has announced mining specific cards and is throttling mining on their 3060 series. AMD is rumored to be doing similar soon. Edit: Replaced 'anti-social Ponzi scheme' with 'speculative bubble' to be more accurate.
- viklove 6y agoI say we should ban data centers instead. They're clearly a scam and no one should be allowed to use them because they waste so much power!
- base698 6y agoAnd Xbox and other gaming consoles.
- insertnickname 6y agoAnd Argentina.
- kelp 6y agoA lot of datacenters provide substantial utility to others. Like the customers of the services that are hosted in those datacenters. BTC mining makes the miners more wealthy. In service of the BTC network, which has what utility? There are quite a number of criminal or at least grey market uses for BTC. But what are the legitimate uses that are not as well or better served by the traditional payment networks?
- viklove 6y agoOperating data centers makes the data center owners more wealthy. All in service of the data center network, which has what utility? There are quite a number of criminal and grey market uses for data centers. What are the legitimate uses of data centers that are not served by traditional pen & paper?
- dvh1990 6y agoBitcoin's true use case hasn't showed itself yet because it is uniquely suited to help us in case of a select few low probability and extreme scenarios, aka black swan events which we can't predict, but will probably happen.
- verdverm 6y agoIf those events happen, do you think the infra (electricity generation and telecom interconnection) that it relies upon will still be around?
- dvh1990 6y agoYes. I'm talking about financial collapse, not destruction of infra.
- verdverm 6y agoWithout details, the impact of a financial collapse is unknown. Given how BTC moves in connection with the broader market now, one would expect that the value would crash with the system, especially since BTC has no intrinsic value.
- loopz 6y agoSociety know financial collapse. They occur quite regularly every 5-7 years. The outcomes are roughly identical.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
- gruez 6y ago>BTC is an anti-social Ponzi scheme speculative bubble =/= ponzi scheme https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26203396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26203396
- neaden 6y agoTo be fair, if Satoshi Nakamoto is still around and has access to 1 million bitcoins, then it's more of a Ponzi scheme.
- gruez 6y agoEven then it's still not really a ponzi scheme unless he promised returns. Just because vitalik buterin is around doesn't mean ethereum is a ponzi scheme.
- kelp 6y agoYeah, you're right on the definition.
- 627467 6y agoI can list so many dumb uses of energy out of my head that could be beneficial if banned...
- hudon 6y agoVISA alone processes over 60,000 transactions per second [0] and only uses a tiny subset of the world's data centers. Bitcoin processes a whooping 7 transactions per second and consumes as much energy as *all data centers globally*. I'm curious to hear what dumb use of energy you have in your head that rivals this level of stupidity. edit: I'll address the "apple to oranges" replies here: you can combine the energy consumed by VISA and whatever other financial service exists that would together match the feature-set of bitcoin (eg. VISA + Bank of America + ...) and you'd still have energy consumption many orders of magnitude lower than the Bitcoin network. [0] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate/media/visanet-technology/aboutvisafactsheet.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate/media/visan...
- 627467 6y agoRipping myself off from another "bitcoin will destroy the world because climate change" thread: > But visa doesn't provide most of the functions of bitcoin infrastructure. Visa does[n't] need to hold the balance of my account. Visa does[n't] need to or makes available all of my equity worth of assets for me to transfer. Visa does not custody my assets. This is literally apple to oranges (or visa to bitcoin)
- tybit 6y agoSo you think those extra functions do account for all data center power consumption added up?
- coderzach 6y ago> Visa does[n't] need to hold the balance of my account. Yes they do? > Visa does[n't] need to or makes available all of my equity worth of assets for me to transfer. This is a horrifying bug, right? A thing that no person would ever want, and it's so rare that visa would make you talk to a person and raise your limit first, or they'd get more people involved to make sure you're not being coerced because it's such an abnormal thing to do. Lawyers in some cases, just because you're being so silly. But if you REALLY wanted to make a $1b debit card transaction, you probably totally could, just call the visa billionaire line. > Visa does not custody my assets. But a regular bank can, and visa will send to and from there with a debit card.
- inshadows 6y agoYeah, pretty much expected these comments would appear soon. How come everytime Bitcoin thread is started, 99% of comments are people absolutely clueless about how difficulty is regulated within Bitcoin protocol?
- Daishiman 6y agoThere was no comment about BTC difficulty. It's a comment about the pernicious impact of BTC on the world with practically no benefit to show for it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cpach 6y agoPersonally, I would rather see a reasonable tax on emissions.
- kelp 6y agoYeah, when it comes to policy, I think you're right. I'd prefer a tax on the externalities than an outright ban.
- pazimzadeh 6y agoOr, dirty energy should be banned.
- kelp 6y agoYes, and that doesn't really address the issue of proof of work blockchains wasting energy. With BTC specifically, the incentives are there to waste as much energy as possible as the difficulty and price goes up. Yes, you try to do more work with a unit of electricity, but the net incentive is to add more and more. Then what? Do you end up with this problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26226470
- hddu 6y agoFuck all those people using Bitcoin to circumvent oppressive governments. Fuck your freedom. We need the gov to solve all our problems. We need to ban bit coin now!!! Muh climate change https://www.pinterest.com/pin/810859107894008357/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/810859107894008357/
- uncletammy 6y ago> Proof of work blockchains should be banned by various governments for this reason alone. How does one ban a blockchain? Serious question. Would you only arrest the miners or would you also arrest non-mining full node operators? How could you tell if regular citizens were transacting with POW coins? Would you subpoena telecom companies for records where customers have visited known sites which transact in POW coins? Or would you go the AT&T route and pipe telecom traffic through a little cabinet that uses deep packet inspection to sniff out POW transactions occurring over RPC? What about traders? Would you outlaw trading POW coins and make exchange exclude US customers? That could make for some serious arbitrage opportunities for tech savy citizens. I would genuinely appreciate your answer to any or all of these questions. I build cryptocurrency software and would gain a lot from additional insight into the threat model I face in the not-so-distant future.
- verdverm 6y agoYou don't ban the blockchain, you make it illegal to use the coins. Then the network loses value and mining doesn't pay off. If you don't do KYC or AML, you will likely become part of the banned list. Also you can look for energy consumption. Towns in upstate New York are banning new permits for mining. So it's already happened. In short, society has certain expectations and if you violate those there will be consequences. Govt and laws are always behind the publics will, so it's coming for cryptos. Which survive is the real speculative bets that will pay off
- kelp 6y agoYou regulate exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini, so there are no legitimate ways to trade your proof of work cryptocurrency for USD (or your local gov backed currency). Then the demand for the crypto currency plummets. In 2010-2011, I traded BTC for USD in person, with a laptop on wifi. And via PayPal with someone I met on IRC, where there was a bot that kept track of your reputation so the BTC sellers would know if it was safe to sell to you. At that time the price of 1 BTC was about $1 USD. I think we'd see something similar, if there was an outright ban.
- gruez 6y ago
- jennrn 6y agoHonestly, I'm thinking about buying a brand new Silverado with my crypto just because of how much I hate you whiny climate change bitches.
- brighton36 6y agoEveryone needs a thneed.
- lurquer 6y agoCareful... referring to banned authors is dangerous. /s
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y agoHow much energy do the following consume in total: - mining metal for coins of fiat currency - mining gold because people don't trust fiat (digging otherwise useless-in-that-quantity rocks out of the earth, a Proof of... hmm... WORK?) - running stock exchanges because people don't trust gold either (tungsten has almost the same density) - smelting the plain metal and gold - the US military which backs the dollar, and the other armies which compete with it - manufacturing paper for fiat (lots of water consumption?) - printing fiat - transporting fiat - transporting bank employees - building shiny glass palaces for banks to signal their status (PoW) - flying bank managers across the planet to signal status (PoW) - the office equipment, servers, and employees of banks - existing fiat currency becoming garbage due to wear, better fakes, and inflation - the network of hundreds of thousands of ATMs and the COBOL mainframes which back them
- verdverm 6y agoDoes it matter? Bitcoin will never be a currency based on the implementation (a satoshi is not small enough) and just because something else is bad or worse doesn't make what you do acceptable.
- jonahrd 6y agoJust to provide some balance, you can add to the bitcoin side: - Mining metals for GPUs and other devices that run proof of work - Manufacturing those devices - Transporting those devices - Building shiny glass bitcoin cafes. I'm aware that several of your list items dwarf my items, but it's useful to still remember that producing (and as the article states, using) electronics _also_ has a cost.
- rspeele 6y agoAnd don't forget: - space exploration - streaming videos - grocery stores - cars - shipping containers full of fidget spinners - building and maintaining zoos - giant casinos in Las Vegas - hospitals And all the other things associated with the so-called "green" USD ecosystem.
- creato 6y ago
- inshadows 6y agoBitcoin does not consume energy. Miners do. Before presenting your views on Bitcoin, you should have some knowledge about how the network works, in particular how mining difficulty is regulated. Bitcoin would do just fine if its energy consumption dropped to 2008 levels.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- inshadows 6y agoGo on. Suppress the truth. :-D https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
- rspeele 6y agoUm, if it was at 2008 levels, wouldn't somebody do a 51% attack?
- inshadows 6y agoThen it wouldn't be at 2008 levels anymore. The problem is that miners have so much power today.
- rspeele 6y agoSo when you said "Bitcoin would do just fine if its energy consumption dropped to 2008 levels.", the phrase "do just fine" means "rapidly grow its energy consumption back to present levels"?
- masklinn 6y agoBitcoin is set up to incentivise exactly the behaviour we're seeing right now, it's built into the structure of bitcoin combined with human psychology. So yes bitcoin absolutely consumes energy, it goes hand it hand with bitcoin being a popular speculation vehicle.
- SamPatt 6y agoAnother anti-Bitcoin article focusing on energy consumption, how original. HN has discussed this to death.
- MBCook 6y agoIt’s still a problem. And getting worse.
- hddu 6y agoGood
- donovanian 6y agoThere's a certain type of person that applies this exact phrase to everything they ideologically oppose. They're joyless and authoritarian.
- verdverm 6y agoMaybe society is tuning in to the problem more. My parents mentioned it. If they are going to ban ICE vehicles, crypto mining is worth considering for the same fate, especially when energy efficient alternatives exist
- gruez 6y agoThe equivalent to banning bitcoin mining would be banning personal vehicles, or banning pickup trucks/SUVs. Banning ICE vehicles would be closer to banning the use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.
- verdverm 6y agoIt's about significant contributors to climate change. If BTC contributes disproportionately, then there will be a call to ban its mining. It's already happening (see China and St Lawrence County, where locals were unhappy that BTC miners drove up their electricity bills)
- 6y ago
- dvh1990 6y agoBitcoin is a good thing. It's a simple financial system with very few rules that can serve as an anti-fragile backbone for much bigger systems on top of it. Instead of looking for ways to curtail it (because that ALWAYS works, right?) we should be looking for cleaner ways to power it like renewables and nuclear.
- MBCook 6y agoLet’s just pretend that all bitcoin mining was done in data centers. That means that whatever practical good bitcoin provides, we’ve DOUBLED the energy usage of data centers. Is that good worth having to build that much additional capacity? What about the problem that bitcoin keeps increasing it’s energy usage? And finally, is there no more efficient (in energy usage) way of doing the same thing?
- dvh1990 6y agoYou can probably tell that I'm a Taleb fan, but it seems that whatever we have in place for doing the same thing is rotten to the core. What happens when we get hit 2x or 4x as hard as 2008? The way financial systems are structured today is the problem, and decentralization seems to be the only answer. Bitcoin is exactly that. Bitcoin's future value may end up being no more and no less than helping us preserve a functioning world economy given an unprecedented financial crisis. Is that worth double the energy of data centers? Yes, because without it you will have 0 data centers. Solutions will have to be implemented to curtail that energy use. Could be better power sources, could be more efficient consensus mechanisms.
- em3rgent0rdr 6y agoand focus on internalizing carbon cost into energy prices, and that will help focus on lightning network for micro-transactions.
- asinoastuto 6y agoblockchain is a good thing. bitcoin is just a early adopter that refuses to go away because people keep pumping it up for one reason or another. there are many better alternatives to bitcoin that solve all the issues people here on HN complain about, but all you will read is people calling others "non-coiners", as if thats the reason anyone is against bitcoin.
- izzydata 6y agoI think we should focus on funding more clean renewable energy sources instead of banning things.
- xiphias2 6y agoThere are so many frustrated nocoiners here on HN, it’s crazy. It’s interesting that on a tech site people can be more negative towards new technology, than on youtube for example, where I don’t see so much hate....I just don’t understand why.
- hddu 6y agoThey read that Bitcoin uses more electric than Argentina and now they have their panties in a bunch because they believe the talking heads that say climate change will end the world.
- shitloadofbooks 6y agoI think the answer is because it IS a tech site. Members here understand that Bitcoin is a vastly inefficient and ineffective way to achieve the end goal. My view is definitely that Bitcoin solves a problem I don't have, in just about the worst way possible (proof of work).
- dvh1990 6y agoOf course you don't have the problem because your government is currently not oppressing you and nobody is targeting you. But if that were to change I believe you'll start appreciating Bitcoin more.
- lottin 6y agoThe idea that some made-up money that only exists on the internet is some kind of weapon against oppressive governments is so out of touch with reality, that it's incomprehensible how somebody can actually believe that.
- xiphias2 6y agoFor me it is the only reality that exists. I have been using Bitcoin for a long time, travelling a lot, and I see a lot of currencies, and none of them feel close to my ideology. I accept them at the same time, and work around the tax laws imposed by my country by getting a loan against my BTC (which I wouldn't need to if I would live in another country).
- dvh1990 6y agoBitcoin is insurance for when the banks go bust.
- tracedddd 6y agoIt’s getting old seeing the same posts with no new data or analysis day after day. I get that people feel this is important, or perhaps are excited to share something wrong with Bitcoin, but I’d be surprised if 99% of the regular visitors to this site haven’t heard about Bitcoin’s energy use and perhaps heard some counterarguments already several times. It really does seem like a grudge more than a genuine care. For example, you can often find some of the same accounts parroting cherry picked takes or intentionally misleading comparisons in the comments.
- xiphias2 6y agoI felt the same way as well, but you know what they say: all publicity is good publicity. If you parrot the same thing over and over, some people may get interested, why other people are so angry....it's because they are nocoiners.
- c0nducktr 6y ago"Everyone who has a problem with bitcoin is a nocoiner" is bullshit and you know it. I have money invested in cryptocurrencies, and still don't like that it's an incredible waste of energy.
- xiphias2 6y agoI accept it as a part of the system / algorithm. People would prefer if Matrix multiplication was O(n^2) algorithm (which would get rid of a lot of waste resources in the datacenters), but people accept that it takes more resources. What I don’t accept is the amount of lies that people say about Proof of Stake algorithms being an improvement over Bitcoin’s current protocol without any security compromise. If I see an algorithm that is less costly while giving the same security as Bitcoin, I will evaluate it, but the amount of shaming that I get for paying miners a seignorage to secure my money is what I don’t have to tolerate.
- flerchin 6y agoHow much electricity should miners waste to get a single bitcoin. Obviously up to the expected price of return. Ergo high BTC prices waste more energy. Bitcoin is designed to be deflationary, so....
- hanse00 6y agoSurely that cannot be? If some relatively large set of Bitcoin related energy consumption happens in datacenters. Then how does it consume more than those datacenters? This only works out if all non-DC bitcoin related power usage (At home mining), is higher than all non-Bitcoin related DC power usage. Are there really that many people mining at home vs. in some sort of DC?
- root_axis 6y agoThe problem with bitcoin isn't merely that it uses a ton of energy, it's that the amount of energy consumed has practically zero relationship to the utility provided by the network. Yes, Visa uses a lot of energy, it's also a global payment platform servicing hundreds of millions of transactions per day, the amount of energy used correlates with the amount of useful work provided by the network, this is not true of PoW which consumes increasingly more and more energy while facilitating the same rate of transactions. Unlike every other technology in history, when advancements in efficiency are made, bitcoin power consumption actually increases because an increase in efficiency means more miner profit if similar rates of power are consumed, except this also has the side effect of increasing mining difficulty, thus making the entire network more energy hungry overall. Bitcoin is wasteful in a manner that is unique compared to other technology.
- gruez 6y ago>bitcoin power consumption actually increases because an increase in efficiency means more money if similar rates of power are consumed, except this also has the side effect of increasing mining difficulty, thus making the entire network more energy hungry overall well not really, the amount of bitcoin to be mined is fixed (and actually drops in the long term), so the amount of money that is up for grabs should stay the same unless the price changes. Therefore it's more reasonable to say that the increase is power consumption is fueled by the increase in price, not because of increase in efficiency.
- root_axis 6y agoPrice is one factor, but ultimately the actual price is secondary to the fact that miners are incentivized to hash as much as possible because more hashes per kWh means more earnings, regardless of the actual price, yet this increase in hashes per kWh doesn't actually provide more utility for the network.
- 627467 6y agoOnly if miners paid their costs in BTC which they don't (yet).
- Triv888 6y agoit may or may not... but it doesn't