3 ms·

Not sure it's happening as fast as you seem to indicate here. And if it is, what's the problem with Bitcoin and energy consumption, exactly the same thing will

• klyrs 6y ago
  Where did I indicate a timescale (outside of "it took us a while" -- wherein I said that progress is slow)? As many others have pointed out, energy efficiency is seen as a bug and bitcoin has repeatedly increased hashing difficulty in order to offset increasing efficiency. Likewise, if a locale is known to have cheap power, miners move in until the power isn't cheap anymore. Eventually we'll be on 90+% renewables, and it won't be as bad, but ultimately, bitcoin is a space heater, and never a battery unless you devise a system to capture, store, and generate electricity from that heat.
  • klyrs 6y ago
    On the topic of space heaters, though... if you replace your gas furnace with a bitcoin mining rig, and your electric is 100% renewable, then that's fine by me.
• user-the-name 6y ago
  It will not. Bitcoin is literally designed specifically to make sure this never happens. Again, as soon as you manage to develop a way to mine bitcoin more efficiently, the difficulty of mining will automatically go up to make sure you are still wasting just as much energy.
  • ChainOfFools 6y ago
    the diff goes up for everyone, not just you. you still have a relative advantage over all the other miners who have not yet reproduced your efficiency gains.
    • user-the-name 6y ago
      Irrelevant to the question of destroying the planet.
    • burnished 6y ago
      'relative difficulty' was never germane to the discussion. The point is that the system self-corrects for more efficient energy use by increasing its energy use. And its a lot of energy.