4 ms·

> Even still, there is no way to know That seems unconvincing. In fact how much energy is required per hash is something that's really quite easy to measure a

by ajross 4y ago

> Even still, there is no way to know That seems unconvincing. In fact how much energy is required per hash is something that's really quite easy to measure accurately. At any given time there are no more than a few dozen hardware platforms in use (they get priced out rapidly, everyone is running the newest stuff in the BTC world). Just plug them in and measure them. All that's left from there is to come up with second order corrections about stuff like grid efficiency. But we absolutely know to quite high precision how many joules were spent to produce the coins we observe to have been created.

bombcar 4y ago
And the only way to hypothesize something different is if there's a ASIC or something that can mine much better than existing equipment (in which case the group that had it would suddenly shoot up in the blocks mined lists) or there's a weakness in the cryptographic protocol somewhere that we don't know about.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  I must note that this in fact happened in the past (AsicBoost). Currently, I don't think there is AsicBoost-like secret information, but you can't be sure. https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00575 https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00575
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Let’s assume you have AsicBoost 2.0 - what would be the most strategic way to deploy it? I assume it’d look like a hashpower increase to the rest of the world, which may or may not go noticed; but perhaps have them run “normal” and then fling it wide open just before? after? a havening?
    - erikpukinskis 4y ago
      I’d guess the optimal strategy is “get that thing turned on as fast as possible and keep as much of the cluster running 24/7 as you possibly can before you get leapfrogged.”
dashdot 4y ago
> everyone is running the newest stuff in the BTC world That's not true. The profitability of a miner is not measured with their hardware generation but with the energy cost needed to operate them. If you have access to very cheap energy, they can still be very profitable. There is a reason the market price of old mining rigs is not 0.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ajross 4y ago
  > There is a reason the market price of old mining rigs is not 0. Electrical costs vary by a factor of two or three around the world. Maybe five at the extreme outliers. Modern mining hardware is tens of thousands of times more efficient than the stuff used less than a decade ago. Also due to growth in the market, the rate of production has been increasing rapidly so the total number of old rigs is negligible anyway.[1] To rather accurate first approximation, all BTC mining is done with hardware less than two years old or so. [1] Also also, the recent crash has had the effect of depressing mining revenue and accelerating the retirement of the old junk.
latchkey 4y ago
Others have mentioned it, but I'll say it too: what you know is an estimate of total network hashrate. that's it. but! total network hashrate moves around all the time, so it is really just an estimate. it has gotten better over time, but these machines don't operate perfectly 24/7 and older hardware is still in use. power outages happen too. stuff is just coming on and offline all the time. you don't know efficiency (watts to hash) of the equipment on a global scale. you can extrapolate, but it is impossible to know for sure. there are other losses, like stale and invalid shares. also impossible to know. you don't know how much is 'wasted' either... every single power supply on the planet is a snowflake. this would actually increase power usage estimates since it is effectively truly wasted energy. disclaimer: I've PoW mined since 2014. Even I, with many many megawatts of power, have a hard time calculating exactly how much power we use and that's having access to the raw data!
- jcranmer 4y ago
  If you have access to the raw data, then you should be able to quite easily provide a good estimate for what the article is trying to assess--what's the actual operational cost of bitcoin mining. Estimating the energy consumption is only a vehicle to doing this because those of us who don't have any raw data to do this. What you should be able to do is: a) Open up your electricity bill and look at the total energy consumption for a given period. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with how electricity is invoiced, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't something that was at least coarsely indicating total energy consumption for a billing period. (Or you can skip several middlemen steps and just take the total cost of the electric bill.) b) Tot up all the bitcoin mining rewards you received in the same time period. c) Count how many bitcoin blocks were mined in the same time period. d) Divide b by c, now you know what fraction you are of the total bitcoin mining network. e) Divide a by d, now you have an estimate of total worldwide energy consumption of bitcoin. The only reason I can see that might make this hard is if you mine more than just bitcoin, in which case, replace "bitcoin" in the above steps with "sum over all of the cryptocurrencies you mine"--which is closer to what people want to know anyways. Even then, you can use crude weighting metrics to estimate what the consumption of just bitcoin is, which would at least let you know if the estimate is in the right ballpark or not. The exact number doesn't matter; it instead matters if the real number is closer to 14 TWh/yr, 140 TWh/yr or 1400 TWh/yr.

by ajross 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

And the only way to hypothesize something different is if there's a ASIC or something that can mine much better than existing equipment (in which case the group that had it would suddenly shoot up in the blocks mined lists) or there's a weakness in the cryptographic protocol somewhere that we don't know about.

sanxiyn 4y ago
I must note that this in fact happened in the past (AsicBoost). Currently, I don't think there is AsicBoost-like secret information, but you can't be sure. https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00575 https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00575
- bombcar 4y ago
  Let’s assume you have AsicBoost 2.0 - what would be the most strategic way to deploy it? I assume it’d look like a hashpower increase to the rest of the world, which may or may not go noticed; but perhaps have them run “normal” and then fling it wide open just before? after? a havening?
  - erikpukinskis 4y ago
    I’d guess the optimal strategy is “get that thing turned on as fast as possible and keep as much of the cluster running 24/7 as you possibly can before you get leapfrogged.”

dashdot 4y ago

> everyone is running the newest stuff in the BTC world That's not true. The profitability of a miner is not measured with their hardware generation but with the energy cost needed to operate them. If you have access to very cheap energy, they can still be very profitable. There is a reason the market price of old mining rigs is not 0.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ajross 4y ago
> There is a reason the market price of old mining rigs is not 0. Electrical costs vary by a factor of two or three around the world. Maybe five at the extreme outliers. Modern mining hardware is tens of thousands of times more efficient than the stuff used less than a decade ago. Also due to growth in the market, the rate of production has been increasing rapidly so the total number of old rigs is negligible anyway.[1] To rather accurate first approximation, all BTC mining is done with hardware less than two years old or so. [1] Also also, the recent crash has had the effect of depressing mining revenue and accelerating the retirement of the old junk.

latchkey 4y ago

Others have mentioned it, but I'll say it too: what you know is an estimate of total network hashrate. that's it. but! total network hashrate moves around all the time, so it is really just an estimate. it has gotten better over time, but these machines don't operate perfectly 24/7 and older hardware is still in use. power outages happen too. stuff is just coming on and offline all the time. you don't know efficiency (watts to hash) of the equipment on a global scale. you can extrapolate, but it is impossible to know for sure. there are other losses, like stale and invalid shares. also impossible to know. you don't know how much is 'wasted' either... every single power supply on the planet is a snowflake. this would actually increase power usage estimates since it is effectively truly wasted energy. disclaimer: I've PoW mined since 2014. Even I, with many many megawatts of power, have a hard time calculating exactly how much power we use and that's having access to the raw data!

jcranmer 4y ago
If you have access to the raw data, then you should be able to quite easily provide a good estimate for what the article is trying to assess--what's the actual operational cost of bitcoin mining. Estimating the energy consumption is only a vehicle to doing this because those of us who don't have any raw data to do this. What you should be able to do is: a) Open up your electricity bill and look at the total energy consumption for a given period. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with how electricity is invoiced, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't something that was at least coarsely indicating total energy consumption for a billing period. (Or you can skip several middlemen steps and just take the total cost of the electric bill.) b) Tot up all the bitcoin mining rewards you received in the same time period. c) Count how many bitcoin blocks were mined in the same time period. d) Divide b by c, now you know what fraction you are of the total bitcoin mining network. e) Divide a by d, now you have an estimate of total worldwide energy consumption of bitcoin. The only reason I can see that might make this hard is if you mine more than just bitcoin, in which case, replace "bitcoin" in the above steps with "sum over all of the cryptocurrencies you mine"--which is closer to what people want to know anyways. Even then, you can use crude weighting metrics to estimate what the consumption of just bitcoin is, which would at least let you know if the estimate is in the right ballpark or not. The exact number doesn't matter; it instead matters if the real number is closer to 14 TWh/yr, 140 TWh/yr or 1400 TWh/yr.