Topic: bitcoin can be made efficient and less energy consuming? (Read 501 times)

There are two types of proof that we need to study so that it makes us understand further the greatness of Satoshi Nakamoto in creating Bitcoin, namely proof of work and proof of stake.
I think there are many references that we can read if we are willing to browse them in the browser.

In short, proof of work or abbreviated as POW according to the knowledge I read was first published by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1993 and to the best of my knowledge Bitcoin was the first to implement the idea before it was followed by other cryptos.
I found this explanation thanks to my reading on the internet so I can tell you this but I can't cite the source.

If we know the basic knowledge about the two proof, then we will know the function behind the transaction arrangement.

It is correct that we can't have it both ways like mikeywith said, the only positive thing we can keep expecting is a better Asic miner, with more hash rate power at 3,500watt, this will make it profitable to run, there are new less power consuming chips been build today and we are seeing APUs getting better with lower nm onboard but Bitcoin difficulty will keep increasing and Bitcoin block reward is also going to get lower after the next Bitcoin halving, this will make Bitcoin more extremely scarce and mining will be more difficult to endure for miners, but the future value of Bitcoin is what will determine.

alas, this is because some people think "less energy consumption is better", if you really think so then you need to be against Bitcoin mining, if less is better then Bitcoin mining should be banned, the moment you surrender to the climate activists who want us to use less of everything, you will be forced to oppose bitcoin, it's funny that some members here support the idea of using less power and yet want BTC to grow, you can't have it both ways.


Bitcoin mining generates value, value doesn't have to be a tangible product that you can wear or eat, as of the last 24 hours, Bitcoin miners created a value of $27,000,000, it's up to every individual to think that number is useless but their opinion doesn't matter because there is enough appreciation from the free-market that keeps miners doing what they do.

In the making of that 27 million dollars a day, tens of thousands of jobs were created/improved, it's indeed good for the economy in every aspect.

Good on economy? Well, actually there is no product created, your miner can't generate food or create any usable product but in poor countries where people face low-paid jobs and usually are lost in vein because of that, can actually benefit from mining but at the same time crypto mining can make them lazy and not centered on personal development.
Definitely you mine and then sell in high price, enough to give you some % profit and it benefits economy but actually in a different way.

But I don't understand how is it good for the environment? It's negative affect is slight, very unimportant and nothing to worry about compared to other industries but positive? What way? And what national security has to do here too? Blockchain technologies would make a sense in this case.

It is an interesting fact that Bitcoin, which has been accused of being the biggest energy user, even has many benefits when demand is high.
The Bitcoin mining industry has always been the target of slander and the energy consumption used is very large, even though Bitcoin is currently able to use renewable energy to run mining operations.

Critics who oppose Bitcoin always attack the "Large Energy Consumption" part when they do not fully understand Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin mining is a new industry that is good for the environment, economy, and national security.
Even the US is starting to protect Bitcoin miners because data from the US Digital Chamber of Commerce reveals that 60% of Bitcoin's energy needs come from renewable sources.

GLOBAL BITCOIN MINING DATA REVIEW
Q4 2021

https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022.01.18-BMC-Q4-2021.pdf

I don't, enegery is enegery, there is no evil enegery.



You are looking at the wrong data that fits your narrative, your chart shows "energy usage per person", in the same website you quoted, there is a chart that shows the general energy consumption

demand for energy went from 40,000  TWh to  165,000  TWh in the past 50 years, actually, this is common sense I don't even know why you had to go dig for such information, does the world today use less energy than it did 50 years ago? did we have more factories in the 1950s than we do now?



Alas, this is not true, only a few countries managed to grow their economy without increasing their energy usage, mostly those rich countries that discovered national resources where the energy needed for production was less than the economical gain, aside from that, the general trend of power consumption for the whole world is in an uptrend




These are some hard facts, and you don't need to like them, Bitcoin mining increases the demand for energy, and demand for energy is good for the economy, you could argue that it's bad for the climate but that's a different topic, it's is why I asked  (why do you think "less energy usage is better"?), which you still did not answer by the way.

Let's understand the fact that Bitcoin itself isn't energy consuming. Bitcoin can run off a thousandth of its current energy use, or a 1000x its current energy use. It is the economy created by Bitcoin, specifically here talking about the mining economy, which is part of the overall bitcoin economy, that creates the demand for energy consumption. So bitcoin mining only uses as much energy as the economic growth of Bitcoin allows. Energy in -> bitcoin out. If the "bitcoin out" doesn't provide enough economic growth for the "energy in" then mining falls and the difficulty drops to accommodate this and bring things back into balance.

In terms of the protocol itself, I don't think it's possible to make it more efficient. It's designed to perfection.
In terms of using less energy, well that would just involve Bitcoin becoming less popular. But because Bitcoin is such a valuable thing that isn't going to happen, and we wouldn't want something as good as Bitcoin to be less popular, we want it to be more popular so that it is more useful to society.


That said, there is a way to make things more efficient in certain ways, though not actually amount of energy consumed, and that is simply the maturing of the mining industry.
Mining naturally seeks out the cheapest sources of energy. Eventually that is going to be pretty much all either stranded or purpose-built renewable energy (because unlike fossil fuels you aren't paying a streaming cost for the resource but rather just pay an upfront cost and then very low continuing costs, making renewables) or using the excess energy directly at renewable power sources. Power plants have to have enough capacity to meet power surges so they have to have more energy production capacity than they need during lower demand times. Miners set up at renewable power plants where the energy is essentially free because it is coming straight from the elements, are going to be able to be purchased at very low costs while giving the power producer extra income. Then they turn off during the times when on-grid demand is high.
All this doesn't mean less energy used, but it means cheaper energy used, wasted energy used, stranded energy used, it doesn't conflict with on-grid consumer use of energy and instead of putting upward pressure on energy cost for consumers it actually puts downward pressure on it, and through this maturing of the industry renewables will be naturally more favorable to mining than fossil fuels because they'll be cheaper.

So the simple maturing of bitcoin mining makes the industry more efficient in several ways, while solving the major issue of mining (that it often competes with consumers for electricity), but also strengthens the power generation industry which is a huge plus for society, and because it naturally favors renewables it helps us move toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels. But all of this is without consuming less energy, because the energy consumption is purely a factor of how strong the bitcoin economy is, and so we should not only expect that to grow, but we also in fact want that to grow. We just want it to grow in a sustainable way, which will happen as the mining industry matures as outlined here. Only thing that could mess with the mining industry maturing is if govts make anti-mining rules that stop mining from seeking out the best sources of energy, and in doing so such rules would hurt society in a lame attempt to attack mining.

Think of this: for renewables to become placed in every house, they can come with a Bitcoin miner. Curtailment occurs when the supply of renewable energy exceeds the demand for it, but that cannot happen with the Bitcoin miner. If you use the excess energy to mine bitcoin, then you earn an income, which ultimately results in cheaper energy. So, incidentally, more energy usage results in stronger economy, under certain circumstances.

This is just my thought, mikeywith can formulate it otherwise (as he did now that I'm reading his response).

Oh, I see now where you're coming from Sorry, I'll not discuss most of these issues, what you wrote has been debunked decades ago and it's really off topic here. If you stand on the point of view that "renewable energies are evil" then even the advantage of a higher miner energy consumption I mentioned in the last sentence doesn't hold anymore ... d'oh!

The only issue which is worth discussing in this thread is your hypothesis of "more energy = more jobs = better for the economy", and how it applies to Bitcoin.

This hypothesis can be debunked actually very easily: take the energy consumption of major industrialized countries over the past decades and their economy's growth:

- The US reached the maximum energy consumption per capita in 1979. It's only going downhill from there.
- The UK and Germany had a double peak in the late seventies and in the early 80s, then it's also going downhill.
- France and Italy had later peaks in the early 2000s, but then also significantly reduced their per capita consumption.

(Source: Our World in Data)

You can compare now these figures with GDP growth:

GDP per capita

As you see, 1979 wasn't the peak of the US's or any other country's GDP. Only in Italy there is a correlation of the economic peak with the energy usage peak, but when the country recovered later from a mid-to-late 2000s crisis, the lines diverge again.

The conclusion is: all countries are becoming more efficient in energy use, and it seems to affect the economy positively. Thus the equation is wrong. EOD.

This is what you think, it isn't necessarily correct.
 

Let me explain myself again, demand for energy increases the value of the economy and has many benefits including more jobs, it doesn't matter what that enegery is used for, the making of that energy itself does that, when you consume a certain amount of energy, someone has to extract that energy, when you fire a gas plant to use for mining or anything else, you are adding value to the economy, the power plant is going to make money and hire people, the company that extracts gas is going to have more jobs, the pipes company is going to prosper, all the way to the chefs who make food for everyone involved, and every piece of value that was extracted in the process of making that engery is going to recirculate back into the economy,  the barbershop next door is going to start making more money because the guy who works as a personal driver for one of the engineers that maintaine the main turbine in that power plant is now making more money and can afford to have a weekly haircut.

I don't know how less energy consumption is better, it's against the basics of a simple economy, this theory of yours only existed when climate activists got the means to talk about how we should ration power demand.


More energy = better economy,  energy consumption is directly related to how much the country makes, poor countries use less energy and the opposite is correct, if your demand for energy is decreasing it means your economy is losing strength and value.


And now what? they import the same stuff from Norway and the U.S. at 2-3x the price, and not buying gas from Russia did not solve any issues for Europe, Europe has a large economy that needs a ton of power which is only possible through means of traditional power generation.



So you do agree that demand on energy upscales production, why is that true for wind turbines that kill nearly a million birds yearly in the U.S. alone, and it's not true for gas, oil, and coal?

Of course "less energy consumption" is better.

Your argument makes not really sense, because avoidable energy consumption is not correlated with "job creation" or "economy strength". Jobs can be created even with technology that leads to a lower energy consumption (i.e. creating more efficient automobiles and housing with less heating requirements). I'm convinced the strongest economies will be those with the most sustainable and efficient energy consumption habits. They have less dependencies on other countries (see the problematic relation between Russia and Europe), less needs for subsidies in the case of high energy price bubbles, less import costs, etc.

The only way there is a correlation is the other way around: you can of course create jobs which lead to a consumption of energy. But in Bitcoin mining this is not the case: mining farms are mostly automated.

There is one positive effect of Bitcoin mining which can be beneficial and has been cited: if they use mostly renewable sources, then that can help to upscale renewables equipment production, e.g. the solar cells and wind turbines industry. But I think this effect is minimal, there is so much energy demand for other uses, and CO₂ certificates price rise all the time, so the demand for renewables is growing in an accelerated pace even without Bitcoin's intervention.

You are going to need to define what "better energy consumption equation" actually means!  is "less" better? I could argue that more is better, economies grow and prosper due to demand and not lack thereof, Bitcoin's need for energy creates demand, creates jobs, and overall strengthens the economy in a lot of ways, so the more energy Bitcoin uses the better for everyone.

The idea of Proof Of Work is to have as decentralized system as possible. We have an alternative called Proof Of Stack. While PoS is more efficient, fast, eco-friendly, it's still not a good solution because the way PoS works is that those who are an early adopters and have more money, control the game.

I think that proof of work has more benefits outside of bitcoin too. PoW lead to development of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, i.e. to development of part of science because ASIC chip production requires research and hard work.
Also, you can't just sit with your money and control the game. It requires a lot of work and activity to develop & produce mining equipment, to sell/buy them, to host them and then take care of them. This process at some points keeps you in shape and instead of sitting with full wallet, you have to actually work to achieve it. At least that's how I see this process.

By the way, Bitcoin isn't something that kills nature. If we think this way, then we have to admit that website hosting produces a lot of co2 which is dangerous for our environment, let's say no to web hosting and online business and move in real world. It's okay if you go by bicycle and buy your flight ticket in station. Let's say no to online banking, delete your app and move by bicycle in your bank and do transactions manually from their office.
Let's don't play video games on your PC and gaming console because GPU & CPU produce a lot of carbon dioxide.

Let's be frank, deal is not to shut down everything, we have to find a solution. I would say that bitcoin can be made more efficient and less energy consuming, I can say the same about everything that consumes energy, there may come time when we will reduce energy consumption or we will find a better solution.

Nikola Tesla was against centralized coal-fired power stations that emitted co2 and I genuinely believe he had a solution but in a capitalistic world only money matters.

We are aware that the proof-of-work algorithm's claimed energy consumption is disputed and overstated. Because they are working so hard to trash bitcoin, I personally do not believe the data from Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), Digiconomist,  or International Energy Agency (IEA). However, I believe that cost-effective alternatives that can greatly lower the energy consumption of the proof-of-work algorithm include biomass, solar, wind, and geothermal energy.  There are various more advantages to these alternatives, both for the environment and the proof-of-work.

I have a slightly diverging opinion on this issue.

First, like all others who posted here, I believe PoW to be the best, and above all, the most "objective" method to mine blocks and protect from double spends. And I believe Bitcoin can prevail using only PoW, hopefully driving miners progressively into renewable energies.

But the algorithm could, in theory, probably be improved adding other elements. The big problem of PoS and other "alternative" methods like Proof-of-Capacity (PoC), the nothing-and-stake problem, means essentially that we can't calculate the security they deliver properly (even if shitcoins like Cardano claim so) due to different attacks with a cost which is difficult to measure (node/min[t]er bribing, min[t]er collusion, liveness attacks), above all if we take potential profits into account (i.e. by short selling a PoS currency).

That these methods do generate some security, however, is without doubts - PoS and PoC currencies seem widely doing well. Most of them have centralization problems, but not all (Peercoin, Signum, Blackcoin and Slimcoin are highly decentralized cryptocurrencies with at least some PoS or PoC component). The problem is, again, that we don't know how much it would cost to attack them if we take bribing, long-term and short-term N@S, and attacks on PBFT via miner cartels into account.

Where I'm heading to - I believe a slight PoS contribution to a Bitcoin-like PoW algorithm (what we know popularly as "PoW/PoS") could, in theory, deliver a better security/energy consumption equation. Ethereum had planned that for some months, but they ditched the idea to switch to a pure (PBFT-)PoS algorithm.

I however believe that it's too late to change Bitcoin's algorithm, and such a change would be highly controversial and most likely generate a fork. So, as I wrote above, this is a purely theoretic opinion, no drama necessary.

OP, and to add to this, let's see yet another standpoint.
One of the properties of hard money is that the ratio of new Bitcoin coming into circulation must not be significant when compared to the one already in circulation. Or yet in other words, it must be hard to get new Bitcoin into circulation so that the existing Bitcoin doesn't lose value with the new Bitcoin entering the circuit! If not, flooding the market with easy "harvastable" Bitcoin would deflate the whole thing and we would be in the same situations as with fiat.

So, to be hard/costly to get new Bitcoin, is a feature and we need to keep it that way. And if in the future we can think of a way of shifting from energy to some other resource, the hardness of harvesting that new resource must be kept.

But it's not because they're poor. Usually it's due to subsidy or large supply of energy source.


Rather than best way, PoW is the only option with current Bitcoin protocol.


Wrong, any serious/knowledgeable Bitcoin enthusiast know transaction verification is performed by all node where miner decide which transaction should be included on block they'll mine.

Bitcoin is already an energy-efficient, and  the best way to mine Bitcoins is through proof of work. Any serious Bitcoin enthusiast would never consider any other method to verify transactions. It is the most reliable and efficient system in the market for validating transactions, and it uses energy for a good cause. The energy that some may try to conserve will ultimately be wasted in one way or another. It is better to utilize that energy for a good purpose such as the mining of Bitcoins.

Another mechanism to validate transactions is Proof of Stake but it is not suitable for everyone. This method favors those who already have a plenty of coins can benefit from staking those coins to increase their amount. However, it does not offer any significant advantages for those who would use their available electricity to mine coins. Undoubtedly, proof of work remains the optimal choice for the majority of Bitcoin users..

It even benefits poor countries because they usually have cheap electricity. For example for rich parts of Europe you can basically not mine bitcoin for a profit, so people will not do it. Because of this people in poor countries can mine more bitcoin than they would usually mine, simply because they are favored by electricity costs.

Why do we need another way when the current one is working very fine, and the network is very secure with it. Do not fix what's not broken, there is no serious, lives threatning or universal endagering problem with pow, what you see online about pow destroying the enviroment is just propaganda. It does not use more energy than many other sectors, but it does far more good than most of them, so we should ask ourselves if the fingers are being pointed in the right direction.