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«Shouldn't that be observable somehow?» No, because of two reasons. First, many miners simply pointed their hardware to mine other cryptocurrencies such as ETH

by mrb 4y ago

«Shouldn't that be observable somehow?» No, because of two reasons. First, many miners simply pointed their hardware to mine other cryptocurrencies such as ETHW or ETC. For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. Second, contrary to sensationalist headlines Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only 0.1%. Yes that can be a "country's worth of electricity" but in relative terms, 0.1% would be barely visible on charts you might examine. Also, digiconomist, an often quoted source of Ethereum miner's energy consumption statistics, was grossly overestimating the figures. The actual consumption was probably around 20-30 TWh/year instead of the ~80 TWh/year figure they estimated. Just look at their chart: it made no sense, for example between Sep 2020 and May 2022 Ethereum hashrate grew 5-fold from 200 to 1000 TH/s, whereas in that same time-frame digiconomist estimated the consumption grew 15-fold from 6 TWh/year to 90 TWh/year. If anything, hardware has become (a bit) more efficient over time, it didn't become 3 times less efficient... But that's not too surprising, given the author of digiconomist has a history of exaggerating his figures, like he did for Bitcoin see https://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/ https://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/ But nowadays his Bitcoin estimate is more in-line with more reputable estimates such as Cambridge's https://cbeci.org/ https://cbeci.org/ Last time I looked he was within ±30%

anonporridge 4y ago
> First, many miners simply pointed their hardware to mine other cryptocurrencies such as ETHW or ETC. For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. We'll see if this is maintainable. Miners can't mine if the reward doesn't cover their costs. So, the only way the mining remains sustainable is if these tokens rise drastically in value. It is possible that many miners are huge holders of ETH, in which case we may see them massively dump ETH and buy ETC to try to invert the price and keep their business going.
ninkendo 4y ago
> Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only 0.1% 1 out of every 1000 watts of energy produced in the whole world going to ethereum mining is tragic. It’s an absolutely massive waste, and the fact that crypto miners think a number like that isn’t a big deal is horrifying to me.
- mrb 4y ago
  You care about 1 in 1000 ? Did you know that 660 out of 1000 watts of primary energy used to create electricity are wasted by the time the electricity arrives at the customer meter? (source: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-Primary-Energy-Is-Wasted-Before-Consumers-See-Value-from-Electricity.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... ) Logically, you should be 660 times more "horrified" by this waste than by cryto mining, and yet you are not. In fact most likely until today you were not even aware of such waste. This is what bothers me the most about these discussions. People have priorities in the wrong places. You want to show you care about waste? Then start caring about the most important problems instead of being laser-focusing on 0.1%.
  - mort96 4y ago
    Your 66% number includes generation losses. You're literally arguing that we should be horrified that solar panels don't produce 1 watt of electricity for every watt of light which hits them. Would it be great if solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear reactors converted 100% of the heat/light/wind energy into useful electricity? Sure. But that's also not something we have the technology to achieve, and likely never will. People are constantly researching ways to improve power plants, but they will never reach 100% efficiency. What we _do_ have the technology to achieve, however, is turning off things which use a ton of energy but provide no value. Saving 1‰ of earth's global electricity consumption just by turning off a useless gambling toy is a huge win, and the fact that it was allowed to use 1‰ of our global energy use in the first place is horrifying.
    - 0x6c6f6c 4y ago
      0.1%, but I do agree.
      - mort96 4y ago
        1‰ is 0.1%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_mille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_mille
derefr 4y ago
> For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. ...which is a stop-gap, holding-pattern sort of action to take, because there is OpEx to running a mining farm, and the lower trading value of ETC vs ETH (1 ETC = 0.025ETH) means ETC block rewards likely won't be enough to be positive-margin for these farmers. This is just a way to reduce burn while they try to sell their rigs. (Which they likely won't be able to do, because nobody wants overheated near-EOL mining GPUs. Mining farms will likely just end up bankrupt with assets liquidated at fire-sale prices.)

by mrb 4y ago

anonporridge 4y ago

> First, many miners simply pointed their hardware to mine other cryptocurrencies such as ETHW or ETC. For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. We'll see if this is maintainable. Miners can't mine if the reward doesn't cover their costs. So, the only way the mining remains sustainable is if these tokens rise drastically in value. It is possible that many miners are huge holders of ETH, in which case we may see them massively dump ETH and buy ETC to try to invert the price and keep their business going.

ninkendo 4y ago

> Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only 0.1% 1 out of every 1000 watts of energy produced in the whole world going to ethereum mining is tragic. It’s an absolutely massive waste, and the fact that crypto miners think a number like that isn’t a big deal is horrifying to me.

mrb 4y ago
You care about 1 in 1000 ? Did you know that 660 out of 1000 watts of primary energy used to create electricity are wasted by the time the electricity arrives at the customer meter? (source: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-Primary-Energy-Is-Wasted-Before-Consumers-See-Value-from-Electricity.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... ) Logically, you should be 660 times more "horrified" by this waste than by cryto mining, and yet you are not. In fact most likely until today you were not even aware of such waste. This is what bothers me the most about these discussions. People have priorities in the wrong places. You want to show you care about waste? Then start caring about the most important problems instead of being laser-focusing on 0.1%.
- mort96 4y ago
  Your 66% number includes generation losses. You're literally arguing that we should be horrified that solar panels don't produce 1 watt of electricity for every watt of light which hits them. Would it be great if solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear reactors converted 100% of the heat/light/wind energy into useful electricity? Sure. But that's also not something we have the technology to achieve, and likely never will. People are constantly researching ways to improve power plants, but they will never reach 100% efficiency. What we _do_ have the technology to achieve, however, is turning off things which use a ton of energy but provide no value. Saving 1‰ of earth's global electricity consumption just by turning off a useless gambling toy is a huge win, and the fact that it was allowed to use 1‰ of our global energy use in the first place is horrifying.
  - 0x6c6f6c 4y ago
    0.1%, but I do agree.
    - mort96 4y ago
      1‰ is 0.1%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_mille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_mille

derefr 4y ago

> For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. ...which is a stop-gap, holding-pattern sort of action to take, because there is OpEx to running a mining farm, and the lower trading value of ETC vs ETH (1 ETC = 0.025ETH) means ETC block rewards likely won't be enough to be positive-margin for these farmers. This is just a way to reduce burn while they try to sell their rigs. (Which they likely won't be able to do, because nobody wants overheated near-EOL mining GPUs. Mining farms will likely just end up bankrupt with assets liquidated at fire-sale prices.)