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Humans have also been gambling for thousands of years (which is just playing games with the added component of money on the line), so by this logic there's valu

Humans have also been gambling for thousands of years (which is just playing games with the added component of money on the line), so by this logic there's value in it too. I would also be interested to see the worldwide energy consumption of all gaming devices in comparison to the worldwide energy consumption of all crypto mining, especially now that many have moved to proof of stake. Considering the explosion in the gaming industry in recent years you may find that it outpaces crypto already, or is catching up very fast.

tsimionescu 5y ago
> especially now that many have moved to proof of stake. For tiny values of many. There is no major cryptocurrency using anything other than PoW. Ethereum has plans to start moving to PoS in 2022, but isn't there yet. And related to gaming: Bitcoin alone consumes more power than entire European countries - including all the gaming, smelting, heating, industry, finance, data centers etc in those countries. There is no chance in hell gaming alone, for the entire world, is consuming more power than even Bitcoin - not to mention comparing it to all crypto combined.
- ben_w 5y ago
  > Bitcoin alone consumes more power than entire European countries - including all the gaming, smelting, heating, industry, finance, data centers etc in those countries. EU nations may be a poor comparison, as it has many tiny nations as members as well as a few big ones. The first Google hit I got said Bitcoin uses 80 TWh/year which puts it around Belgium (9th in EU) for pure electricity, the second said Bitcoin was using about 177 TWh/year (bit more than Poland, 5th in EU, again just for electricity). I don’t have exact figures for game consoles or power usage per console or gaming PCs, so I will do a Fermi estimate: 1 billion active gaming devices (PCs and all consoles combined), 200 W per device, each used for 3 hours per day. This is 219 TWh/year. As a Fermi estimate, take with a grain of salt. (I don’t accept the general claim that BTC actually has real value; conversely I think most gaming does, including gambling although for gambling the value is much less than the cost, but that’s not the focus of this comment).
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    1 billion devices each consuming 200W for 3h every day is waaaay over estimated. The PS4 has sold 115 million devices over its entire lifetime (2013-now), being the most popular modern console; and it consumes closer to 150W while gaming. Consoles are famously more popular than gaming PCs, so the total amount of high-power gaming devices is probably much closer to 300million than 1 billion. So, let's say 300 million devices, running 3h/day at 150W, that's closer to 50TWh/year, less than even your smaller estimate for Bitcoin.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Perhaps, perhaps not, this is an explicit limit of Femi estimates. But you do also have to include the power cost of displays when the game machine doesn’t have one built in, adding 10-120W. And the older consoles didn’t all vanish into the ether when new models arrived; my brother still has an original Xbox 360, and not for lack of money to upgrade. So I expect many of its contemporaries to also contribute to the total number of gaming units, not just total sales of most recent Xbox + most recent PlayStation + most recent Nintendo console.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  > There is no major cryptocurrency using anything other than PoW 7 of the 10 largest chains use PoS.
  - ac29 5y ago
    By volume traded per day, there really are only two major cryptocurrency chains: Bitcoin and Ethereum. Both are PoW. As near as I can tell, the 3rd largest blockchain by volume is XRP and its an order of magnitude smaller than BTC or ETH. Volume traded is admittedly an imperfect measure of activity, but its better than market cap.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      Solana and Avalanche both process more transaction activity than Ethereum (and way more than Bitcoin). And that’s not “fake activity” by any means. Both chains run essentially the same DeFi and NFT activity as Ethereum.

tsimionescu 5y ago

> especially now that many have moved to proof of stake. For tiny values of many. There is no major cryptocurrency using anything other than PoW. Ethereum has plans to start moving to PoS in 2022, but isn't there yet. And related to gaming: Bitcoin alone consumes more power than entire European countries - including all the gaming, smelting, heating, industry, finance, data centers etc in those countries. There is no chance in hell gaming alone, for the entire world, is consuming more power than even Bitcoin - not to mention comparing it to all crypto combined.

ben_w 5y ago
> Bitcoin alone consumes more power than entire European countries - including all the gaming, smelting, heating, industry, finance, data centers etc in those countries. EU nations may be a poor comparison, as it has many tiny nations as members as well as a few big ones. The first Google hit I got said Bitcoin uses 80 TWh/year which puts it around Belgium (9th in EU) for pure electricity, the second said Bitcoin was using about 177 TWh/year (bit more than Poland, 5th in EU, again just for electricity). I don’t have exact figures for game consoles or power usage per console or gaming PCs, so I will do a Fermi estimate: 1 billion active gaming devices (PCs and all consoles combined), 200 W per device, each used for 3 hours per day. This is 219 TWh/year. As a Fermi estimate, take with a grain of salt. (I don’t accept the general claim that BTC actually has real value; conversely I think most gaming does, including gambling although for gambling the value is much less than the cost, but that’s not the focus of this comment).
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  1 billion devices each consuming 200W for 3h every day is waaaay over estimated. The PS4 has sold 115 million devices over its entire lifetime (2013-now), being the most popular modern console; and it consumes closer to 150W while gaming. Consoles are famously more popular than gaming PCs, so the total amount of high-power gaming devices is probably much closer to 300million than 1 billion. So, let's say 300 million devices, running 3h/day at 150W, that's closer to 50TWh/year, less than even your smaller estimate for Bitcoin.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Perhaps, perhaps not, this is an explicit limit of Femi estimates. But you do also have to include the power cost of displays when the game machine doesn’t have one built in, adding 10-120W. And the older consoles didn’t all vanish into the ether when new models arrived; my brother still has an original Xbox 360, and not for lack of money to upgrade. So I expect many of its contemporaries to also contribute to the total number of gaming units, not just total sales of most recent Xbox + most recent PlayStation + most recent Nintendo console.
dcolkitt 5y ago
> There is no major cryptocurrency using anything other than PoW 7 of the 10 largest chains use PoS.
- ac29 5y ago
  By volume traded per day, there really are only two major cryptocurrency chains: Bitcoin and Ethereum. Both are PoW. As near as I can tell, the 3rd largest blockchain by volume is XRP and its an order of magnitude smaller than BTC or ETH. Volume traded is admittedly an imperfect measure of activity, but its better than market cap.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    Solana and Avalanche both process more transaction activity than Ethereum (and way more than Bitcoin). And that’s not “fake activity” by any means. Both chains run essentially the same DeFi and NFT activity as Ethereum.