3 ms·

What's depressing is that you'd need ten of these giant power plants to power Bitcoin mining. And by the time you finally got those ten $10B plants online, Bit

by pavlov 5y ago

What's depressing is that you'd need ten of these giant power plants to power Bitcoin mining. And by the time you finally got those ten $10B plants online, Bitcoin's energy use would have ballooned to some even more absurd number, assuming we do nothing to stop the current trajectory.

shaky-carrousel 5y ago
You'll need three times more to power all the standby devices in the US, and nobody is doing something as simple as to powering down their tv/console when they stop using it. People don't even unplug their chargers after their phone is charged.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  I know but... Bitcoin!!!!!!
- laurent92 5y ago
  > unplug their chargers after their phone is charged To me, that’s a flaw of the charger if it keeps working when no device is connected. As for TVs and others, we need to mandate a front-facing power switch, because most TVs/devices don’t have one anymore.
- phatfish 5y ago
  Seems like there are two colossal wastes of energy that need to be fixed.
  - chii 5y ago
    it's not a waste if the receiver of the service is paying for the service.
    - pavlov 5y ago
      That’s… not the definition of waste. Have you ever worked at a big corporation? They pay for some stupid useless shit just because it’s nobody’s job to stop paying for the service.
      - chii 5y ago
        > They pay for some stupid useless shit and who's to judge it was useless? If you're the one paying, then you can make this judgement. Otherwise, you're merely putting your own moral values above someone else's.
      - chelical 5y ago
        I think the point is that the only way to reduce crypto profitability is to impose a soft limit on electricity by massively increase the cost of electricity if you exceed a certain allotment. Otherwise, there's no real way to tell if someone is mining crypto or if they just using a lot of electricity unless it's a massive mining operation.
        chii 5y ago
        Why is crypto a waste, but another equivalently large use of electricity isn't? If somebody was growing weed indoors, or they're smelting aluminium, then they're not wasting?
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Do you have a source for the standby power consumption of US devices being 3x the Bitcoin network's consumption? Edit: Found one myself: https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons Interestingly gold mining also uses more electricity than Bitcoin mining and that doesn't even include the associated costs of pollution, cleanups etc. Gold also isn't a network that can transfer value. On the other hand some of it is used in industrial applications.
anonporridge 5y ago
Bitcoin's energy use can't balloon arbitrarily large. It's tightly constrained by the miner reward, which is getting cut in half every four years (the non fee part, which is currently less than 2% of the total reward). Energy wasted by natural gas flaring is 5.5x more energy than bitcoin consumes. Renewable energy curtailment in China alone (turning generation off because we can't consume it fast enough) is almost enough energy on its own to power all bitcoin miners. https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons It's perfectly fine to have a negative opinion of bitcoin and proof of work, but you're wasting political capital in the fight against climate change when there are much bigger fish to fry against wasteful uses of energy that don't have an army of people, businesses, and even nation states (El Salvador) gearing up to fight you to defend their money.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  > It's tightly constrained by the miner reward reward in a currency for which you buy the energy. This takes into account the current btc/eur price in finland, if that's where you buy the energy, and that's not guaranteed to halve either.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    You're right. The real constraint is the miner reward priced in the various currencies electricity producers want, which has gone up tremendously even with inflation rate halvings. But bitcoin is currently about a $1 trillion asset class, and growth of it's price has been slowly logarithmically for years. Most bullish cases suggest an eventual value of $10 trillion (in line with gold) to $100 trillion (in line with global bond market). But it's likely going to take decades (with several halving cycles) to get there. Unless you're suggesting that it's likely to balloon in value even more and/or fast than that, I don't see mining ever becoming the biggest problem we have to deal with. Especially since bitcoin holders don't see PoW mining as a liability, but as a mission critical feature of the system.

by pavlov 5y ago

shaky-carrousel 5y ago

You'll need three times more to power all the standby devices in the US, and nobody is doing something as simple as to powering down their tv/console when they stop using it. People don't even unplug their chargers after their phone is charged.

bamboozled 5y ago
I know but... Bitcoin!!!!!!
laurent92 5y ago
> unplug their chargers after their phone is charged To me, that’s a flaw of the charger if it keeps working when no device is connected. As for TVs and others, we need to mandate a front-facing power switch, because most TVs/devices don’t have one anymore.
phatfish 5y ago
Seems like there are two colossal wastes of energy that need to be fixed.
- chii 5y ago
  it's not a waste if the receiver of the service is paying for the service.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    That’s… not the definition of waste. Have you ever worked at a big corporation? They pay for some stupid useless shit just because it’s nobody’s job to stop paying for the service.
    - chii 5y ago
      > They pay for some stupid useless shit and who's to judge it was useless? If you're the one paying, then you can make this judgement. Otherwise, you're merely putting your own moral values above someone else's.
    - chelical 5y ago
      I think the point is that the only way to reduce crypto profitability is to impose a soft limit on electricity by massively increase the cost of electricity if you exceed a certain allotment. Otherwise, there's no real way to tell if someone is mining crypto or if they just using a lot of electricity unless it's a massive mining operation.
      - chii 5y ago
        Why is crypto a waste, but another equivalently large use of electricity isn't? If somebody was growing weed indoors, or they're smelting aluminium, then they're not wasting?
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
Do you have a source for the standby power consumption of US devices being 3x the Bitcoin network's consumption? Edit: Found one myself: https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons Interestingly gold mining also uses more electricity than Bitcoin mining and that doesn't even include the associated costs of pollution, cleanups etc. Gold also isn't a network that can transfer value. On the other hand some of it is used in industrial applications.

anonporridge 5y ago

Bitcoin's energy use can't balloon arbitrarily large. It's tightly constrained by the miner reward, which is getting cut in half every four years (the non fee part, which is currently less than 2% of the total reward). Energy wasted by natural gas flaring is 5.5x more energy than bitcoin consumes. Renewable energy curtailment in China alone (turning generation off because we can't consume it fast enough) is almost enough energy on its own to power all bitcoin miners. https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparisons It's perfectly fine to have a negative opinion of bitcoin and proof of work, but you're wasting political capital in the fight against climate change when there are much bigger fish to fry against wasteful uses of energy that don't have an army of people, businesses, and even nation states (El Salvador) gearing up to fight you to defend their money.

kzrdude 5y ago
> It's tightly constrained by the miner reward reward in a currency for which you buy the energy. This takes into account the current btc/eur price in finland, if that's where you buy the energy, and that's not guaranteed to halve either.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  You're right. The real constraint is the miner reward priced in the various currencies electricity producers want, which has gone up tremendously even with inflation rate halvings. But bitcoin is currently about a $1 trillion asset class, and growth of it's price has been slowly logarithmically for years. Most bullish cases suggest an eventual value of $10 trillion (in line with gold) to $100 trillion (in line with global bond market). But it's likely going to take decades (with several halving cycles) to get there. Unless you're suggesting that it's likely to balloon in value even more and/or fast than that, I don't see mining ever becoming the biggest problem we have to deal with. Especially since bitcoin holders don't see PoW mining as a liability, but as a mission critical feature of the system.