Topic: Bitcoin Consuming Too Much Energy? - page 2. (Read 2981 times)

The sun deposits approximately 1 kW / m^2 of power upon the earth, and somehow it gets used up (growing plants, evaporating water, melting snow, etc).  Since the radius of the Earth is 6400 km, this means the cross sectional area through which the solar power flux passes is:

    A = Pi r^2 = 3.14 x (6400 x 10^3 m)^2 = 1.3 x 10^14 m^2

Since each m^2 has 1 kW deposited, this means the total power hitting the earth is:

    P = A x F = (1.3 x 10^14 m^2) x (1000 W / m^2) = 1.3 x 10^17 W = 130 million gigawatts.  

So how does this compare to all the bitcoin miners?

Right now, when a miner finds a block he earns 25 BTC, blocks are found roughly every 10 minutes and 1 BTC is worth about $450.  So, the miners' revenue is roughly

   25 BTC / block x 0.1 blocks / min x 450 $ / BTC x 1/60 min / s = 19 $ / s

Let's imagine that this revenue goes entirely to electricity and let's assume the cost of electricity is $0.1 / kW-hr.  Then $19 would pay for 190 kW-hrs of electricity.  But this is the amount used per second so the power consumption is then estimated at 190 kW hr / s x 3600 s / hr x 1000 W / kW = 6.8 x 10^8 W = 0.68 gigawatts.

So, the entire earth gets 130 million gigawatts of power from the sun and currently uses no more than 0.68 gigawatts on bitcoin mining.  

Therefore, less than 1 part in 100 million of the total available energy deposited on earth each second by the sun goes towards  bitcoin mining.  

?

also las vegas (just one city) uses more electric. and they trade plastic chips that cant be used on the internet or in any other convenience store on the planet, only in specific places within the city.

I absolutely hate hearing this argument over and over.
Once I did the calculations on how much roughly the ATMs, in the USA alone, use more power 24/7 then the entire Bitcoin network. It was nearly 2x the amount of power.

Talk about a wasteful infrastructure!

Bitcoin is the least of our concerns.
The benefits gained w/ a system like Bitcoin largely outweigh its power footprint.

Did you know most of the easily accessible hydrocarbon energy on earth was burned away immediately in flaring? 

On the contrary to your thesis, PoW valuation will help us use energy more efficiently.  Once we realize that energy = value = money, we might just stop leaving all our lights on and burning gas to move steel round in circles on parking lots. 

1 - there are coins made to use the hash power to useful things, or be more power-sufficient. Example: gridcoin, primecoin, peercoin. Others can be designed to solve hard problems easy to verify a given solution(ex: differential equations)


2 - of course FIAT  system uses lots of energy(no idea how much), they do lots of virtual transactions, and credit card machines are electricity moved. They use also lots of paper, metals and plastic, that are energy-consuming and aggresive against nature. Bitcoin being internet-based results in less consuption of paper, metals and plastic.

3 - ASICs consumes less power to produce hash, and they can be further improved to consume less and less energy

4 - fossil fuels aren't the only option to make energy, there are hydroeletric and nuclear energy too.

Define 'big' ?  Given the amount of energy that exists in the visible universe (or even our solar system), its almost invisible.


Regulators cannot shutdown bitcoin.  Shutting down works in server-client architecture, but not in decentralized architecture. To simplify:

You could make an analogy with the government trying to restrict peoples freedom to listen certain music (this actually happens in some countries):
How you can do it? Music can be played everywhere, in a central building, in a home, in a toilet, on the street.. anyone can have portable player. Even if the government tries to take everyone music player, there would still be a black market. And music can be downloaded from the internet, stored encrypted on disks etc.

It will stay.. and likely get bigger. Governments would do better to make investments into btc.
Like they say 'if you cant beat them, join them'


 

hey guys, gridcoin is directing the network-computation to benefit scientific progress
other than PoW-coins it doesnt waste but rewards Proof-of-BOINC.

Also dont worry about fossil fuels running out.

you only need worry about our star going out.

the amount of energy incident on our planet from the sun is MASSIVE.

very efficient photovoltaics will happen right around when the fuel tails off, but until then though you best keep paying your taxes goddamit.

miners are fancy house heating systems for some.  they produce as much heat per watt as a standard electric heater. the computing power happens for "free" in a way.

of course if you're running big mining operation in hot climate and using air-con to cool miners then that's quite a folly.

i wouldn't worry about "global warming" the biosphere is hungry for more carbon and it gets gobbled up and integrated into life very quickly. you know that if you grow plants in enriched CO2 atmosphere they thrive. and of course all that oil trapped below the surface wasn't down there all the time you know, in times gone by all that carbon was above ground. some large event must have buried it because in the natural decay mechanism old dead life gets completely used and depleted of chemical energy, think chalk deposits. we do life a favor by re-integrating trapped carbon reserves into the biosphere.

If we assume the network is heading towards ~1 J/GH then we are looking at 1MW per PH/s.  That puts us at 30 MW or 263 GWh annually at current network size.  Now that might sound like a lot but the human race uses about 150 million GWh annually (all forms of energy not just electricity) making the Bitcoin network a rounding error (0.0002%) on the energy usage of the human race.

How efficient Bitcoin becomes relative to established monetary systems will depend on how large its user base becomes.  There is a non-linear relationship between the number of users and cost of the network.  The hashrate is likely to rise over time but this will be partially offset by increased hardware efficiency (J/GH).  Also as the cost of ASICs decline (and power costs dominate) we may the emergence of energy offsetting applications.  Dedicated ASIC heaters could be built specially designed for domestic heat and hot water applications.  ASIC arrays could be used on a part-time basis as power shunts to soak up excess electrical capacity instead of 100% loss waste load circuits.

I am thinking of this idea.
You guys remember folding @ home?
What if we can make a crypto algo which also simulates the folding at no big additional effort?
So you can mine coins and contribute to mankind at the same time (as such contribution requires computer running and consuming power as well)

What you guys miss is that even if you use sun power, you spend that energy on something that should not be needed.
If bitcoin used Proof-Of-Stake, the power consumption of the network would go down with up to 95%.
Instead  that energy could be used to replace nuclear power plants for the rest of society.

Let the market decide.

Look into Peercoin/Primecoin

thats where solar energy comes in

I don't think you understand what mining accomplishes.  It is not "busy work" or "wasted".  It performs a very useful function.

"A lot" is a relative term.  The entire combined power of the entire bitcoin network is "a lot" compared to the power necessary for me to make myself a piece of toast in the morning, but for a secure global currency and electronic payment system it is quite efficient.


That is an interesting statement.  What sort of regulation do you think is going to happen that will make it pointless, and what makes you think that particular regulation will happen?


You are talking about "earning" a US dollar.  You are not talking about "manufacturing" a US dollar.  Bitcoin also has jobs that you earn the bitcoin without using electricity or limited like using a computer and then doing other stuff.  Manufacturing and transporting the physical US dollars uses significant amounts of energy in various forms. Multiply that energy per US dollar by the total number of physical US currency notes that have been created in all of history, and I think you'll find that the dollar has "wasted" MUCH more energy than bitcoin.


In comparison to its value and usefullness?  No.  It is much more efficient than Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and Bank Transfers. Therefore, if you can replace all of those with bitcoin, you will reduce the world energy consumption.


I'm not sure what you are trying to ask here.  Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.  As such it is both a currency and a payment system.  Bitcoin is a concept and a protocol.  Are you asking if the exchange rate of a bitcoin is equivalent to one-twentyfifth of the value of the electricity necessary for the entire network to mine a block?


How would you shut down bitcoin?  What would you shut down?

Efficiency is cancelled by difficulty increase...

Mining will end in parity where over long term produced coins value is reaching equality to OPEX/CAPEX...

And in near future that might be a rather wasteful state...
 
OFC there is systems to offset the OPEX, like selling waste heat in cold seasons, but that doesn't change the picture much...

True question is energy/coin mined over whole lifespan...