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Topic: Bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity. Is that sustainable? (Read 13938 times)

member
Activity: 532
Merit: 15
those are estimated data, no solid facts, I seriously doubt those data.
hero member
Activity: 1395
Merit: 505
When Bitcoin hits the coin limit, which won't be for a long time, mining will still be necessary to process and secure new blocks of transactions. Unless they switch to Proof of Stake, which has a host of issues, there is no viable alternative. If Bitcoin isn't popular enough to generate fees comparable to what current miners get in rewards, that coin limit will need to be increased.
member
Activity: 420
Merit: 10
“Tackling Climate Change Using Blockchain”
For as long as the means of achieving something good does not weigh more than what good we can get out of it, then it can still be considered bad. For what use would it be if we will in the end be part of our own destruction? So there should be some other way to do things around. Perhaps some solutions with using bitcoin can be implemented so as to minimize the use of electrical power. Humans are intelligent and I believe we can solve this problem in the future.

full member
Activity: 1554
Merit: 116
0xe25ce19226C3CE65204570dB8D6c6DB1E9Df74AC
Not to forget most of the mining farm concentrate on the same country, I think the consumption per capita will be vastly biased too.
full member
Activity: 714
Merit: 114
In addition, bitcoin mining will not last forever due to its limited amount.

That is not true. Bitcoin mining is an integral part of Bitcoin. It will continue forever, even after the subsidy goes to 0.

The guy above you means that mining wont last because the supply of btc is only limited to 21 million  but you are right mate even if the supply runs out mining wont still end because btc will still circulate  due to the reasons that people constantly buy and sell a btc  .

Btc itself isnt also consuming electricity . people only uses electricity when they turn on their gadgets and process a transactions  , as well as mining  .
member
Activity: 349
Merit: 10
Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy for mining, you can not argue with that. But if you are really worried about this, then you should be reassured by the idea that bitcoin mining is not infinite, so sooner or later it will stop.
Consumption of electricity is very large in the use of bitcoin, especially mining, as evidence that bitcoin is one of the most attractive income for many people.
Advanced business is synonymous with large electricity consumption, and it is an attraction for energy investors to develop renewable technology which means saving the earth from energy shortages by recycling very positively.
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 3391
In addition, bitcoin mining will not last forever due to its limited amount.

That is not true. Bitcoin mining is an integral part of Bitcoin. It will continue forever, even after the subsidy goes to 0.
member
Activity: 406
Merit: 10
Bitcoin does consume enough energy for its production, but it seems to me that in the context of total energy consumption worldwide it is just a drop in the ocean. So I don't think this is a serious problem that we have to deal with. In addition, bitcoin mining will not last forever due to its limited amount.
member
Activity: 226
Merit: 30
so.. hru?
It's not sustainable at all. It's pretty much going to destroy the planet if bitcoin experiences exponential growth in mining because there will be so many miners. I think in the future the bitcoin devs/team should consider switching to something more eco-friendly than PoW. For example like PoC coins like BURST whos mining is mostly on HDDs.

Look at PoS coins too, maybe some of their features are flawed, but most of the coins you can earn by just keeping the wallet open, so you can just basically use a Pi to power your wallet instead.
As the future gets more green, the future of bitcoin looks more grim as it just uses too much power unless they change that.
full member
Activity: 387
Merit: 106
I guess that after the price decline and hashrate drop now Bitcoin's electricity consumption has been considerably lowered. A temporary relief. But this point remains crucial for the future, anyway: in a closed system like Earth with limited resources and climate change problems PoW cryptocurrencies are not sustainable and have no long term future. End of period.
hero member
Activity: 994
Merit: 502
Large mining farms open in those regions where the energy balance is excessive and where electricity is cheap.
At the same time, there is no reliable method for estimating energy consumption for mining. In order to carry out the calculations correctly, you will need reliable data from data centers obtained from the miners themselves. But analysts have no such data. Therefore, no one can reliably assert.
Yes, mining really consumes very large amounts of electricity. But some mining companies use renewable sources for electricity production.A HydroMiner startup gets electricity from a hydroelectric power station. At the same time, the company pays only 4-6 cents per kWh, and earns $ 300,000 a month.
And energy costs all over the world are growing every year, so it’s not fair to blame only the work of miners o for all the troubles.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
more electric is used to keep bottles of soda chilled, than bitcoin uses

cocacola have 10million coolers.
and thats before you count the other brands

32exa bitcoin hashrate is only 1.1m S15 or 2.2m S9's
3 coolers = 1 s9
so if bitcoin was only mined using S9's would need 3.3m S9's just to match cocacola
or
4 coolers = 1 s15
so is bitcoin was only mined using s15's would need 2.5m S15's just to match cocacola

again. this is just the coolers of cocacola. its not including the non branded coolers fastfood/grocery stores buy themselves
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola trucks used to deliver the bottles and cans
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola warehouses before delivery

this is not including the other brands (pepsi, etc) branded coolers either



You seem not to realize that the adoption rate among the population of coca cola and other branded coolers is astronomically higher that the one experienced by Bitcoin. Should every coca cola drinker adopt Bitcoin and perhaps start to mine it too, there would be barely electricity left on Earth for anything else.
hero member
Activity: 1582
Merit: 759
To be fair, I'm sure if you compared to the current banking infrastructure, that may be using quite a bit of power as well in contrast.
It may not be at 1%, but it may be quite a large amount.

I don't think it's sustainable, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years something changes with regards to this. Either power generation will become easier (plausible?) or Bitcoin *(and other cryptos) will have to adapt.
legendary
Activity: 4270
Merit: 4534
more electric is used to keep bottles of soda chilled, than bitcoin uses

cocacola have 10million coolers.
and thats before you count the other brands

32exa bitcoin hashrate is only 1.1m S15 or 2.2m S9's
3 coolers = 1 s9
so if bitcoin was only mined using S9's would need 3.3m S9's just to match cocacola
or
4 coolers = 1 s15
so is bitcoin was only mined using s15's would need 2.5m S15's just to match cocacola

again. this is just the coolers of cocacola. its not including the non branded coolers fastfood/grocery stores buy themselves
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola trucks used to deliver the bottles and cans
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola warehouses before delivery

this is not including the other brands (pepsi, etc) branded coolers either

full member
Activity: 234
Merit: 100
I do not think that this can be attributed to serious global problems. Now the number of environmental problems is growing, and the use of electricity for the extraction of such a useful resource as the cryptocurrency is not the worst thing that exists now. So I don't think we should make a problem out of it.
full member
Activity: 364
Merit: 100
Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy for mining, you can not argue with that. But if you are really worried about this, then you should be reassured by the idea that bitcoin mining is not infinite, so sooner or later it will stop.


hero member
Activity: 1098
Merit: 500
I also believe that bitcoin is not the worst thing we spend energy on. This benefits society, so such use of natural resources is necessary. In the world, a huge number of useless items that people spend electricity on, and bitcoin is the least of the evils.

full member
Activity: 279
Merit: 105
Bitcoin does consume a lot of electricity, but we should just accept it. A lot of objects in the world consume a large amount of electricity - shops, advertising signs, houses and so on. So there's nothing we can do about it, not to stop do we get bitcoin?

legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 3391
bitcoin is sustainable entergetically? my answer is: yes. Based on a research, almost 80% of the energy used to mine bitcoins comes from renewable sources
sources: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf (page 9)
You forgot to remove your blinkers  Wink  instead of bitcoin mining, this green energy you talk here, could replace some coal power plants for real world electricity needs instead  Angry  its useless, don't try to greenwash bitcoin, it is not sustainable. point.

I agree that the source of power for Bitcoin mining is irrelevant, which is why Bitcoin mining itself doesn't have a carbon footprint.

However, your point appears to be that Bitcoin is not worth the amount of energy spent on it. What about the amount of energy spent on entertainment: video games, youtube, netflix, music, automobile racing, driving to a football game? Are those activities sustainable? Surely, all the energy spent on those activities is wasted, too.
hero member
Activity: 2352
Merit: 905
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We have also to consider that some percent of this energy is green energy. Bitcoin changed life of a lot of people, personally I think we can't blame miners because they consume so much energy. Some may come and say what the hell is bitcoin, why is electricity wasted in such a shit but they don't know economy well, have no imagination what is crypto, what is decentralized system and what is blockchain.
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