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Whenever this kind of thing comes up, I hear bitcoin enthusiasts use strange logic to claim that it's good because most of this power is coming from renewables,
by elevaet 3y ago
Whenever this kind of thing comes up, I hear bitcoin enthusiasts use strange logic to claim that it's good because most of this power is coming from renewables, or that if it's not then it's incentivizing the switch to renewables by increasing demand, and so on.
Bollocks!
Unlike other technologies that are incentivized to become more efficient over time, because of how competition over mining rewards works, this technology has the characteristic of consuming more and more energy the more it succeeds.
It's designed to waste energy. Even if that was "green" energy, it's still just making heat out of electricity for pretend internet money. Energy that other things could be using.
- adam_arthur 3y agoEnergy is fungible anyway, so if it comes from renewables that means that renewable energy can no longer go towards other applications. The pollution is simply outsourced to other non-renewable applications
- t0bia_s 3y agoDo we have some comparison with energy consumption by banks?
- gloosx 3y agoBitcoin is actually useful for the people, so spending energy on it is not a waste. The waste is something not useful, like 877 billion U.S. dollars dedicated each year to the military of the United States. Or would you say it is an efficient spend and it is incentivised for even MORE efficiency? Not everyone around is supporting the idea that the government scam and it's "real" money is the best option for us all. Electricity is burned in exchange for the utility of the bitcoin, avoiding operations with traditional state-issued money, having a currency which nobody truly governs or controls but the people, and it is definitely here to stay since it is a revolutionary financial instrument. If it wasn't, it would simply be gone, and no-one in his sane mind would be "turning electricity into heat" for nothing. It is a natural economical progression for the humanity, to have the money nobody owns, and the maths behind it make it happen having it's natural energy toll, which is way more efficient that of any government. Commies go downvote, it is your bread
- DonsDiscountGas 3y agoThis is Jevons Paradox, and it's not limited to Bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- vdaea 3y agoImagine how many people are now watching shows you abhor on Netflix - think of all the electricity we could save if they turned off their TVs.
- Analemma_ 3y agoYou did not address the parent's point at all and instead made a pathetic attempt at deflection with a strawman. Both Netflix and Netflix customers benefit, in the form of lower electricity bills, if either find a way to use energy more efficiently. And since you can only spend 24 hours a day watching TV, the increased efficiency can only be offset by increased consumption to a minimal extent. Bitcoin has no incentive to do this, and no ceiling on consumption, since any efficiency gains just get plowed straight into increased mining, and so energy consumption can only ratchet up, forever. Address that claim, please.
- beiller 3y agoThe price of a bitcoin sets an upper bound on consumption of energy where the miner will be in a place that is no longer profitable since energy costs money. On top of this, miners have no upward way to influence the price of bitcoin, only downward (selling of coins, or destruction of trust). If we just properly externalized the cost of CO2 emissions it solves this problem along with many others. So why don't we do that?
- oraphalous 3y agoI believe the argument is that it increases redundancy and resilience of the renewable power supply... That redundancy is otherwise uneconomical to produce (if there isn't the demand). When that redundancy is needed, that power can be redirected from the miners. Presumably the miners are expected to behave and switch off at such times, but there is no reason why that expectation can't be legislated.
- pintxo 3y agoOne can easily structure an energy market to pay for redundancy. There is zero reason why we’d need crypto to fund expansion of renewable energy.
- hmapple 3y agoWhether or not it’s a worthwhile use of energy is certainly debatable, but it’s not exactly “pretend internet money” when you can trade it for billions worth of USD in a single day with minimal slippage
- isoprophlex 3y agoBut it is pretend internet money! These people are trading "a proof of work backed cryptocurrency", pretend internet money. It is indeed, by convention, worth real dollars, but there's no underlying thing except bullshit. It could have been a sqlite db file on a raspberry pi somewhere, keeping track of digital jars of goat semen that people then pay real dollars for. But no, instead we're wasting one Australia worth of electricity on Bitcoin.
- throwup238 3y ago> digital jars of goat semen That is... oddly specific.
- randomNumber7 3y agoIf you use a sql db file you would need a trusted party. Dollar is also just paper, there is no underlying thing except trusting the united states. Im not arguing its worth the amount of energy, but its not as dumb as you pretend it is
- jcranmer 3y agoEven in the theoretically trustless world of cryptocurrency, you still need to trust that if you give 1USD to someone in exchange for $1 worth of Bitcoin, they will actually give you that $1 worth of Bitcoin, and vice versa. And the history of cryptocurrency seems to indicate that virtually everybody who has ever occupied that role for cryptocurrency is not worthy of that amount of trust.
- throwway120385 3y agoHow do you exchange it directly for physical goods?
- emurillo510 3y agoit takes a lot of computational power to secure something so important like protecting a whole digital currency. you can only make profit by creating renewable resources in bitcoin ecosystem.
- realusername 3y agoIf it was really a digital currency sure, maybe we could debate on that. But there's no way now the current real usage of Bitcoin is worth that much electricity though.
- danhak 3y agoA crypto enthusiast friend once made that argument to me and it was so baffling. By this logic, we should all leave our lights and air conditioners on while we're at work or on vacation because it will increase demand and hasten the transition to renewables.
- nightski 3y agoI'm no crypto enthusiast, but that's not the same argument. You are not moving demand to physical proximity of the renewables in that case, whereas miners claim they can.
- danhak 3y agoFriend in question was mining bitcoin out of his NYC co-op apartment on a master electricity meter.
- arcticbull 3y agoThe correct answer is to connect the energy source to the grid or to do something useful with it at the point of generation. If it's being consumed instead to guess random numbers the economic incentive to do something useful with it is suppressed.
- foobarian 3y agoOn the flipside if all resistive load heaters came with a BTC miner they could get some additional utility from the energy.
- arcticbull 3y agoSure, but the gotcha there is that we shouldn't be using resistive load heaters, they're only 100% efficient. Heat pumps are several hundred percent efficient - 300-600% in fact. Whereas resistive heaters convert electricity into heat directly, heat pumps use energy to move heat against a temperature gradient. The idea that you can be paid to waste this power just creates economic incentives against the improvements we actually need to be making.
- everfree 3y agoInterestingly whenever this kind of thing comes up, I also hear cryptocurrency critics use the energy argument to deride blockchains in general. They don't seem to understand that Bitcoin alone accounts for 98% of all cryptocurrency energy usage due to its uniquely energy-intensive algorithm. Hypothetically if Bitcoin were shut down, crypto would be as energy-efficient as any other distributed/federated technology.
- woodruffw 3y agoIt's hard to imagine that the market for PoS coins would be nearly as large as it currently is without the 800 pound gorilla that is Bitcoin.
- randomNumber7 3y agoIt burns the energy as a proof, its not just doing it because its badly designed. The reason most money goes into bitcoin is probably, that people consider it safer than proof of stake.
- everfree 3y agoLet's not kid ourselves, bitcoin's dominance is due to network effect. Nobody understands blockchains.
- jlmorton 3y agoThere are upsides though. It does add to grid resiliency, as the loads can be easily shed. It does make more funds available for investment in the industry. It's not clear that reducing loads would lead to quicker investment in renewables.
- calamari4065 3y agoRunning my AC and my oven at the same time adds to grid resiliency, as the loads can be easily shed.
- throw0101d 3y ago> Even if that was "green" energy, it's still just making heat out of electricity for pretend internet money. See: > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/1135243595273986048 https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604...
- MattRix 3y agoI also don’t think most people realize just how much energy it uses. It is mind blowing. I remember doing some calculations a couple years ago and discovering that if you took the total energy spent on mining bitcoin per year, and divided it by the number of transactions per year, each individual transaction would use more energy than driving across the entire country from New York City to San Francisco in a Tesla Model 3.
- lostlogin 3y agoAnd if you get an inverter [1], you could use a mobile rig to mine while you drive! [1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/power-inverters-for-newer-16v-outlet-cars.265365/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/power-inverters-for-...
- p1mrx 3y agoThis will directly subtract from your mileage, and DC charging is among the most expensive electricity in the country.
- this_user 3y agoThe entire system is just so incredibly stupid and inelegant. If you really wanted to build something like this, you could at least have designed it in a way were the work done serves an actual purpose.
- bsdetector 3y ago> because of how competition over mining rewards works, [bitcoin] has the characteristic of consuming more and more energy the more it succeeds. New bitcoin from mining is halved every ~4 years, so every four years miners can afford to spend only half as much electricity to mine from that revenue. As revenue from new bitcoins tapers off the work expended will self limit to the value of transactions. If you're charged 1% to include your transaction the value of energy used to mine a block will eventually not exceed the fee for including those transactions. So it doesn't have the characteristic of consuming more and more energy and is self-limiting in how much energy is used. The bitcoin energy problem will take care of itself in time.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoDoesn't the security of proof of work consensus depend on the work being fairly expensive?
- londons_explore 3y agoYes. An attacker who is prepared to spend the same amount of money as all other network players earn combined can do various attacks. The goal of the "halve every 4 years, plus transaction fees" model is to make sure the above is never possible for an attacker.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI think they just need more than half?
- londons_explore 3y agoThey either need to sway more than half the miners to their evil side, or they need to exceed the total of everyone else.
- Repulsion9513 3y agoHow can you have more than half without more than everyone else (who by definition have less than half) combined?
- Dylan16807 3y agoIF there were people running bitcoin rigs only 4-5 hours per day when the duck curve peaks, it would be plausible for it to incentivize building more solar because the profit is more consistent. Which could be a net positive even though that power gets wasted, since a lot of it would get wasted anyway. I don't think basically anyone is doing that.
- razemio 3y agoThat's me. I am mining only when my Tesla Battery is above 80%. I have a node-red automation that keeps all of this in check. Mining stops when battery reaches 60%. It basically runs all day from April to Oktober. My solar system now has a roi of 6-7 years if everything works out. 2 years in the experiment. I am planning to invest mining profits in other environment friendly projects. Here in Germany you only get 8 cents/kW from the state. Mining doubles that. Sometimes even triple. During the ETH run it was even 5 times more. Fun thing 90% of my overproduction still reaches the grid. My mining rig only uses 300 to 600 watts. Next I am planning to integrate awattar (dynamic price provider) to mine when the price of electricity is negative or close to zero. This happens sometimes during the night because of low demand and wind turbines going strong.
- HeadsUpHigh 3y agoThat is exactly the type of thing that miners that seek to capture wasted energy do.
- Dylan16807 3y agoWhat fraction of miners are doing this? Keep in mind this means they have to get pretty expensive equipment and leave it idle more than 80% of the time.
- HeadsUpHigh 3y agoA large fraction because they get the energy almost for free. In Brazil they are using mining to compensate for the low viability in financial terms.
- _Algernon_ 3y agoWhat makes Bitcoin a "waste of energy" and a data center hosting TikTok or Reddit not?
- svara 3y agoAs far as entertainment goes, Reddit and TikTok are relatively efficient. As far as financial instruments go, Bitcoin is fantastically, comically inefficient, and by design.
- Repulsion9513 3y agoWhat do people get from TikTok or Reddit? Entertainment, knowledge, community... What do people get from Bitcoin? Monopoly money with no purpose or intrinsic value.
- cconroy 3y agoIt is b/c he says so! Since they dont value it -- it must be stupid or wasteful!
- achrono 3y ago(Why) do you consider Bitcoin to not be a waste of energy, independent of TikTok or Reddit? What problems has it solved in the last decade that would make it sensible to shut down Reddit before you shut down Bitcoin? (I'm not even climbing up the tree of Bitcoin's energy consumption being many multiples greater than Reddit's.)
- x86x87 3y agowhat gives you the right to bucket something as waste? maybe to some people tiktok is a waste of energy, resources, time. Some people would argue that alchohol consumption is wasteful since it does not have any health benefits? ultimately, once you start thinking you have the right to ban things you should be prepared for someone else to ban things you enjoy.
- beeskip 3y agoI give myself the right, as having an opinion. It feels like you're saying that all opinions are equally valid and that we shouldn't strive to critically evaluate and debate things. While there are different ways to evaluate any given topic, all opinions are not equally valid.
- sph 3y ago> Energy that other things could be using. Like what? You really believe people are mining BTC in Manhattan? For mining to be profitable, cost of energy you put in must be lower than the value of a Bitcoin. Where is energy cheap? Not where there is a need for it, like you claim, but where it is wasted. You don't mine BTC in Manhattan, you put a Bitcoin farm mining off peak on a hydroelectric power plant in the middle of nowhere, China. Please let's stop this nonsense of Bitcoin stealing energy from who needs it the most, as it is utter baseless nonsense that just betrays total ignorance on the simple concept of supply and demand, and why things are priced a certain way.
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoThat doesn't change the extreme: "Taken to the extreme it is an accelerated track to causing a black hole given the incentives of the network and the requirement of computational space having a physical necessity to provide the substrate for it to continue."
- jerb 3y agoDefine “waste”. Then explain why your opinion should trump a free market. Then tell me how much coercion will be required to enforce it.
- niceice 3y agoIt's too complicated to be articulated in soundbites, which is what dominates the discourse. If you're opening to understanding why it may not be bollocks, read this https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/
- TheHiddenSun 3y agoI'll play the devils advocate. 1. Ownership and Security Bitcoin is the only solution to really "owning" your money. Everything in your bank account can be stolen / frozen / or made "inaccessible" at a moments notice because of some vague bullshit reason like supporting right extremists or terrorists - even if you donate a single dollar - like it happened in in 2023 Canada / freedom convoy. Everything a bank claims to be secure/safe goes away like a poof of smoke if it really comes down to it. The can't be any safety in our increasingly multi-polar world the political boundaries are redefined daily. Today Russia/China is the enemy, tomorrow it's some other country that will suffer economical sanctions. Or your own country decides to apply punitive measures against some minority group because of political opinion - all the control mechanisms are there and politicians are itching to use them. 2. It's less than our current banking sector Yeah, consuming this much natural resources / electricity sucks. That's the alternative? Do you count how much money is spend on the banking spector as a whole? I assure you it consumes much more then the 2% in capital expenditure - so indirectly it's more (you could have build renewables with the same money) . 3. Scalability About the famous argument that bitcoin does not scale: the 7 transaction per second argument -> this problem is completely solved by the lightning network. Lightning protocol does the same with much lower transaction cost and much less energy usage - something like 100x less. Yes support at major vendors is still a bit lagging behind but that's only temporary. Need a 100% confirmation? Do full transaction (for example for accounting purposes). Small sums and personal funds -> can be completely handled by a lightweight lightning network transaction. Bitcoin is a highly technical solution and there are myriad ways things can be improved upon if scalability really becomes an issue - even if the lightning network would become saturated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]