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The entire world should ban it. Burning the energy requirement of a nation to do less than 1M transactions per day, when credit cards alone handle 1 BILLION tra

The entire world should ban it. Burning the energy requirement of a nation to do less than 1M transactions per day, when credit cards alone handle 1 BILLION transactions per day, is absurd.

YATA0 5y ago
When someone told me all of that energy behind Bitcoin produces less than 20 transactions per second I thought they were joking.
- nicbou 5y ago
  4, actually. By design. This is fixed with off-chain transactions, which negate the benefits of using a blockchain in the first place.
  - YATA0 5y ago
    That's so many orders of magnitude off of what even just AMEX does, let alone VISA.
    - nicbou 5y ago
      Yes but you can bribe people to get your transaction processed first, and it will go through in... about 10 minutes. Also by design.
kevinak 5y ago
It’s also a system that is built on centralized systems. Is this really ideal? Do you really trust governments to handle the monetary system? No currency in the history of the world has survived in the long run. The number of transactions has nothing to do with the energy spent on mining. Besides, the LN can already handle millions, if not billions, of transactions per second. You’re parrot
- multjoy 5y ago
  >Do you really trust governments to handle the monetary system? Where do you think the monetary system actually came from?
  - kevinak 5y ago
    Does it matter? Not sure I follow, can you elaborate?
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Banks.
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      Currencies have been existing literally thousands of years more than banks.
      - emteycz 5y ago
        Yes indeed - currencies (not monetary systems) based on precious metals, such as the Groschen or Thaler. That doesn't have much in common with the "gold standard" monetary system as it was in the USA. That emerged from a monetary system of private banks that issued their own banknotes. And it has practically nothing in common with the modern quantitative easing monetary system that is orchestrated by public and private banks.
- cedilla 5y ago
  Some currencies have survived for centuries. But that's hardly a concern. When currencies fail, it's usually just another symptom of a deeper problem. Imagine Germany in the late 1920s with Bitcoin. There would still be mass unemployment, there would still be riots on the street, the Rheinland was still occupied, the government would still have to pay reparations, US companies would still be unwilling to continue investments in Germany. Almost none of the problems were caused by monetary policies. And if a government destroys their monetary system with monetary policies alone, they can just introduce a new currency. That's not a apocalyptic measure.
siraben 5y ago
Also, one bitcoin transaction takes as much energy as 1.5 million visa transactions[0]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
- bob1029 5y ago
  I don't think that 1.5mm figure is accurate. Assuming the power consumption for 1 BTC transaction is 1173 kWh as stated in the article, then we are off by a few orders of magnitude. This is enough energy to run an IBM z15 mainframe at maximum configuration (~30kW consumption) for ~39 hours [0]. I am 100% certain that Visa can process more than 1.5 million transactions on such a platform in that amount of time. [0]: https://ibm-zcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-z15-Technical-Pitch-Handout.pdf https://ibm-zcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-z15-... (See page 88)
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    I'm guessing there's probably several such maiframes spread out all over the place. One would presumably not want to store all the world's money on one server. At the very least banks all have their own, right? And would they not want redundancy? 1.5 million might stil be a bit low though.
    - bob1029 5y ago
      > One would presumably not want to store all the world's money on one server. That's not how any of this works. Money is not stored anywhere in particular, unless we are talking about physical currency or commodities. The entire point of a mainframe is to be able to centralize critical things (like credit card processing) that simply cannot be allowed to fail. Most large banks and credit card processors operate their own pile of magic and then settle after the fact. It's not like VISA's IBM is the one big money bin that everything runs through. > 1.5 million might stil be a bit low though. In my scenario above, 1.5 million is a joke. That max spec machine could easily handle tens or hundreds of billions of credit card transactions in that timeframe.
DickingAround 5y ago
It is if you think it's as simple as 'processing a transaction'. Anyone can design a system that records a transaction. It's very hard to make one that can't be deleted and can't be reversed. Doing this unlocks some amazing things, in particular hard, inflation resistant money. And if you don't think inflation resistance is important, consider how many poor people have been robbed by those who just print more money and give it to their friends. It's been happening for centuries. It has destroyed whole countries just just once or twice but many times. Coin clipping to fund wars is as old as coins. So is stealing people's money at the point of a sword. On the outside it might not appear 'efficient' when you don't have to implement all the same features bitcoin has. But if you actually try to build a system with these features, there is no better way so far.
- pipodeclown 5y ago
  Look the central point of fiat currencies is that it provides for monetary control to governments, which includes a measure of inflation. If you truly believe that replacing that with a non-state controlled currency that does not allow for monetary control is something government will allow or is even something that the general public would want, you're diluting yourself and are way to deep into the crypto bubble. The only reason you hear anything positive about cryptos from the general public is because they think they can make a quick buck.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Bitcoin can absolutely be stolen at the point of a sword, and unlike with a bank, they can't just reverse it. In some countries, bitcoin might be better... but there's got to be ways to help them that don't involve the whole world mining. It might not have inflation, but I suspect that if the whole world switched to CC we would still have poverty, still have slave labor type wages for some, and all the usual stuff. Bitcoin specifically seems to have a built in regressive tax in the form of transaction fees. Even sales tax is a bit better because that has exceptions for most essentials. This punishes those who rarely ever make transactions above 100$ and rewards those who make large ones regularly.
- drekk 5y ago
  You can reverse it, it's called a 51% attack. It's also too volatile to transact with. If I have $100 today I know it's not going to be $90 next week, then $65 the following, then $250 after that. This also makes it a shitty store of value. Just be honest with what it is — a speculative asset everyone is hoping to get in "on the ground floor of". It only has value today because you can convert it to fiat, do you really think people would still use it if that were to change?
Feeble 5y ago
I guess we should ban christmas lights in the US too then. They also use more energy than whole countries - https://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countries.html https://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countr...
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  That’s a good idea; if you write that up as a blog post and submit it to HN, I’d read it!
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  Do they also suffer from high exponential growth in energy usage?
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    No, but they are definitely an excessive use of incandescent bulbs in the United States. It’s too bad they haven’t figured out how to make cheap LED strands that are more diffuse and in warm colors, as this is a significant energy burden for both homeowners and the country’s electrical grid. Your point that their usage doesn’t accelerate over time is valid, but as the link notes, this is still a significant energy burden on the country and should be addressed over time. It can be worked on in parallel to efforts to curb the growth of crypto coin energy waste, so there’s no harm in encouraging reductions to both.
    - YATA0 5y ago
      >It’s too bad they haven’t figured out how to make cheap LED strands that are more diffuse and in warm colors, as this is a significant energy burden for both homeowners and the country’s electrical grid. They have figured it out. It's becoming exceedingly difficult to find incandescent Christmas lights these days. A quick check on two of my local big box store websites shows that non-LED Christmas lights are not even available for sale. LED lights use an order of magnitude less energy, so the current energy consumption is going to be quite different.
- 5y ago
jrsj 5y ago
You’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not primarily a technology for transactions. Number of transactions doesn’t scale with the number of miners, the amount of value that can be securely stored in the network does. Environmental concerns are a temporary issue & Bitcoin is moving to renewables faster than most anything else for a variety of reasons. An outright ban is an absurd policy aimed at being punitive towards something people have an irrational hatred for. If you care so much about the environment just have reasonable energy policies such as a carbon tax and nobody would mine BTC with fossil fuels because it would be too expensive. Plus then you’re improving every other industry too instead of attacking cryptocurrency and making an insufficient impact on CO2 emissions in the process
- nicbou 5y ago
  So what is it for? I keep seeing this argument, but it the end it seems like it's wasting a ridiculous amount of energy while not being particularly good at anything. The energy being renewable doesn't mean much if it still wastes it. It could be used for something actually useful.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  > It’s not primarily a technology for transactions. Well, what else is it for? All the things to be "put on the chain" (including transactions btw.) already existed in a more efficient form. > Environmental concerns are a temporary issue The environment is a concern for as long as humanity exists in it. And Carbon emissions are far from the only problem Mining causes: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58572385 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58572385 37,000 tonnes of waste per year. That's 37,000 tonnes of electronics for which raw materials must be gathered and processed, which must be assembled, transported. > Bitcoin is moving to renewables faster than most anything else for a variety of reasons https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Bitcoin-mining-is-dirtier-than-coal-Here-16663155.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Bitcoi... https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/bitcoin-mining-breathes-life-into-zombie-coal-plants/ https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/bitcoin-mining-breathes... https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/kazakhstan-internet-bitcoin-mining-mystery-crypto/ https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/kazakhstan-internet-bitcoin-m... https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/some-states-lure-crypto-miners-to-keep-their-coal-plants-alive/ https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/some-stat... And even without that: It's just a giant waste of energy. Using the Energy requirements of a nation to process less than 0.5M transactions a day, when credit cards alone process 1B in the same time? If we have surplus electricity, we can use it to power desalination plants, lower energy prices in underserved communities or literally just pump water uphill to store it. Almost everything is a better use than burning through tons of hardware, just so computers can scream SHA256 hashes at each other.

The entire world should ban it. Burning the energy requirement of a nation to do less than 1M transactions per day, when credit cards alone handle 1 BILLION transactions per day, is absurd.

YATA0 5y ago

When someone told me all of that energy behind Bitcoin produces less than 20 transactions per second I thought they were joking.

nicbou 5y ago
4, actually. By design. This is fixed with off-chain transactions, which negate the benefits of using a blockchain in the first place.
- YATA0 5y ago
  That's so many orders of magnitude off of what even just AMEX does, let alone VISA.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    Yes but you can bribe people to get your transaction processed first, and it will go through in... about 10 minutes. Also by design.

kevinak 5y ago

It’s also a system that is built on centralized systems. Is this really ideal? Do you really trust governments to handle the monetary system? No currency in the history of the world has survived in the long run. The number of transactions has nothing to do with the energy spent on mining. Besides, the LN can already handle millions, if not billions, of transactions per second. You’re parrot

multjoy 5y ago
>Do you really trust governments to handle the monetary system? Where do you think the monetary system actually came from?
- kevinak 5y ago
  Does it matter? Not sure I follow, can you elaborate?
- emteycz 5y ago
  Banks.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Currencies have been existing literally thousands of years more than banks.
    - emteycz 5y ago
      Yes indeed - currencies (not monetary systems) based on precious metals, such as the Groschen or Thaler. That doesn't have much in common with the "gold standard" monetary system as it was in the USA. That emerged from a monetary system of private banks that issued their own banknotes. And it has practically nothing in common with the modern quantitative easing monetary system that is orchestrated by public and private banks.
cedilla 5y ago
Some currencies have survived for centuries. But that's hardly a concern. When currencies fail, it's usually just another symptom of a deeper problem. Imagine Germany in the late 1920s with Bitcoin. There would still be mass unemployment, there would still be riots on the street, the Rheinland was still occupied, the government would still have to pay reparations, US companies would still be unwilling to continue investments in Germany. Almost none of the problems were caused by monetary policies. And if a government destroys their monetary system with monetary policies alone, they can just introduce a new currency. That's not a apocalyptic measure.

siraben 5y ago

Also, one bitcoin transaction takes as much energy as 1.5 million visa transactions[0]. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...

bob1029 5y ago
I don't think that 1.5mm figure is accurate. Assuming the power consumption for 1 BTC transaction is 1173 kWh as stated in the article, then we are off by a few orders of magnitude. This is enough energy to run an IBM z15 mainframe at maximum configuration (~30kW consumption) for ~39 hours [0]. I am 100% certain that Visa can process more than 1.5 million transactions on such a platform in that amount of time. [0]: https://ibm-zcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-z15-Technical-Pitch-Handout.pdf https://ibm-zcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-z15-... (See page 88)
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I'm guessing there's probably several such maiframes spread out all over the place. One would presumably not want to store all the world's money on one server. At the very least banks all have their own, right? And would they not want redundancy? 1.5 million might stil be a bit low though.
  - bob1029 5y ago
    > One would presumably not want to store all the world's money on one server. That's not how any of this works. Money is not stored anywhere in particular, unless we are talking about physical currency or commodities. The entire point of a mainframe is to be able to centralize critical things (like credit card processing) that simply cannot be allowed to fail. Most large banks and credit card processors operate their own pile of magic and then settle after the fact. It's not like VISA's IBM is the one big money bin that everything runs through. > 1.5 million might stil be a bit low though. In my scenario above, 1.5 million is a joke. That max spec machine could easily handle tens or hundreds of billions of credit card transactions in that timeframe.

DickingAround 5y ago

It is if you think it's as simple as 'processing a transaction'. Anyone can design a system that records a transaction. It's very hard to make one that can't be deleted and can't be reversed. Doing this unlocks some amazing things, in particular hard, inflation resistant money. And if you don't think inflation resistance is important, consider how many poor people have been robbed by those who just print more money and give it to their friends. It's been happening for centuries. It has destroyed whole countries just just once or twice but many times. Coin clipping to fund wars is as old as coins. So is stealing people's money at the point of a sword. On the outside it might not appear 'efficient' when you don't have to implement all the same features bitcoin has. But if you actually try to build a system with these features, there is no better way so far.

pipodeclown 5y ago
Look the central point of fiat currencies is that it provides for monetary control to governments, which includes a measure of inflation. If you truly believe that replacing that with a non-state controlled currency that does not allow for monetary control is something government will allow or is even something that the general public would want, you're diluting yourself and are way to deep into the crypto bubble. The only reason you hear anything positive about cryptos from the general public is because they think they can make a quick buck.
eternityforest 5y ago
Bitcoin can absolutely be stolen at the point of a sword, and unlike with a bank, they can't just reverse it. In some countries, bitcoin might be better... but there's got to be ways to help them that don't involve the whole world mining. It might not have inflation, but I suspect that if the whole world switched to CC we would still have poverty, still have slave labor type wages for some, and all the usual stuff. Bitcoin specifically seems to have a built in regressive tax in the form of transaction fees. Even sales tax is a bit better because that has exceptions for most essentials. This punishes those who rarely ever make transactions above 100$ and rewards those who make large ones regularly.
drekk 5y ago
You can reverse it, it's called a 51% attack. It's also too volatile to transact with. If I have $100 today I know it's not going to be $90 next week, then $65 the following, then $250 after that. This also makes it a shitty store of value. Just be honest with what it is — a speculative asset everyone is hoping to get in "on the ground floor of". It only has value today because you can convert it to fiat, do you really think people would still use it if that were to change?

Feeble 5y ago

I guess we should ban christmas lights in the US too then. They also use more energy than whole countries - https://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countries.html https://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countr...

floatingatoll 5y ago
That’s a good idea; if you write that up as a blog post and submit it to HN, I’d read it!
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
Do they also suffer from high exponential growth in energy usage?
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  No, but they are definitely an excessive use of incandescent bulbs in the United States. It’s too bad they haven’t figured out how to make cheap LED strands that are more diffuse and in warm colors, as this is a significant energy burden for both homeowners and the country’s electrical grid. Your point that their usage doesn’t accelerate over time is valid, but as the link notes, this is still a significant energy burden on the country and should be addressed over time. It can be worked on in parallel to efforts to curb the growth of crypto coin energy waste, so there’s no harm in encouraging reductions to both.
  - YATA0 5y ago
    >It’s too bad they haven’t figured out how to make cheap LED strands that are more diffuse and in warm colors, as this is a significant energy burden for both homeowners and the country’s electrical grid. They have figured it out. It's becoming exceedingly difficult to find incandescent Christmas lights these days. A quick check on two of my local big box store websites shows that non-LED Christmas lights are not even available for sale. LED lights use an order of magnitude less energy, so the current energy consumption is going to be quite different.
5y ago

jrsj 5y ago

You’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not primarily a technology for transactions. Number of transactions doesn’t scale with the number of miners, the amount of value that can be securely stored in the network does. Environmental concerns are a temporary issue & Bitcoin is moving to renewables faster than most anything else for a variety of reasons. An outright ban is an absurd policy aimed at being punitive towards something people have an irrational hatred for. If you care so much about the environment just have reasonable energy policies such as a carbon tax and nobody would mine BTC with fossil fuels because it would be too expensive. Plus then you’re improving every other industry too instead of attacking cryptocurrency and making an insufficient impact on CO2 emissions in the process

nicbou 5y ago
So what is it for? I keep seeing this argument, but it the end it seems like it's wasting a ridiculous amount of energy while not being particularly good at anything. The energy being renewable doesn't mean much if it still wastes it. It could be used for something actually useful.
usrbinbash 5y ago
> It’s not primarily a technology for transactions. Well, what else is it for? All the things to be "put on the chain" (including transactions btw.) already existed in a more efficient form. > Environmental concerns are a temporary issue The environment is a concern for as long as humanity exists in it. And Carbon emissions are far from the only problem Mining causes: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58572385 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58572385 37,000 tonnes of waste per year. That's 37,000 tonnes of electronics for which raw materials must be gathered and processed, which must be assembled, transported. > Bitcoin is moving to renewables faster than most anything else for a variety of reasons https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Bitcoin-mining-is-dirtier-than-coal-Here-16663155.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Bitcoi... https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/bitcoin-mining-breathes-life-into-zombie-coal-plants/ https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/bitcoin-mining-breathes... https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/kazakhstan-internet-bitcoin-mining-mystery-crypto/ https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/kazakhstan-internet-bitcoin-m... https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/some-states-lure-crypto-miners-to-keep-their-coal-plants-alive/ https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/some-stat... And even without that: It's just a giant waste of energy. Using the Energy requirements of a nation to process less than 0.5M transactions a day, when credit cards alone process 1B in the same time? If we have surplus electricity, we can use it to power desalination plants, lower energy prices in underserved communities or literally just pump water uphill to store it. Almost everything is a better use than burning through tons of hardware, just so computers can scream SHA256 hashes at each other.