Bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity. Is that sustainable? - page 6.

SexForCryptos

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Quote from: franky1 on September 06, 2018, 12:48:56 AM

Quote from: Photographer on August 30, 2018, 05:34:16 AM

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.

1%,,, did you do the math...
average home uses 0.3kwh
1.2bill homes
=4,246,575,342kw/h (~4.25billion)

14nm asics are 14 terra
hashrate this week is 50,000,000 terra
=3,571,428 asics
each asic is 1.3 kwh
=4,642,857kw/h (~4.6million)

bitcoin uses 0.109% using 14nm rigs

now with 7nm
50 exa with 28terrahash rigs =
1,785,714 asics
each asic is 0.8kw/h
=1,428,571kw/h (~1.23mill)

bitcoin uses 0.0289% using 7nm rigs

yep we are somewhere in the area of between 0.029%-0.11% no where near 1%
and as i said the 0.029% is the next gen electric usage at this weeks hashrate. so the electric per hash is going down.

now imagine how much electric would be wasted if we stuck with GPU.. but the hashrate was still 50exahash
ill give you a hint. it would be 1177% of household electric

..
back 5 years ago yea the hashrate was 250000x lower.. but the kw per hash was higher using GPU
..

anyway over all we are at 0.1% household use if we use the old ASIC measure

and if we transition to 7nm rigs. we could go upto a hashrate of over 150exa and still be at 0.1% household electric.

this means we can go to 1500exa and finally get to the 1% of household electric this topic is at.

summary:
so give it a while. we are not near a 1% household electric barrier yet.. but pencil in 1500exa into your hashrate calender, then the OP can repost and finally be right

Thanks for this calculation. It was indeed sounding strange such an enormous figure. Your estimate is much more reasonable. However, so some extent the problem remains, even though not that big.

quandrel

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crypto moneys take up little space on the earth and the percentage of energy they consume is too much. I think countries are worried about energy and therefore they do not accept crypto currencies.

lubah

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Quote from: Satosho Kakamolto on August 29, 2018, 03:24:59 PM

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

I believe that it would be possible to consider the heat energy that miners produce and direct it in the right direction, for example, for heating residential buildings. Thus, mining would become one of the few sources of heat, along with a heat station that spends electricity or fuel on heat. And consume electricity and they are too many, and even cause harm to the environment with their emissions.

franky1

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Quote from: Photographer on August 30, 2018, 05:34:16 AM

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.

1%,,, did you do the math...
average home uses 0.3kwh
1.2bill homes
=4,246,575,342kw/h (~4.25billion)

14nm asics are 14 terra
hashrate this week is 50,000,000 terra
=3,571,428 asics
each asic is 1.3 kwh
=4,642,857kw/h (~4.6million)

bitcoin uses 0.109% using 14nm rigs

now with 7nm
50 exa with 28terrahash rigs =
1,785,714 asics
each asic is 0.8kw/h
=1,428,571kw/h (~1.23mill)

bitcoin uses 0.0289% using 7nm rigs

yep we are somewhere in the area of between 0.029%-0.11% no where near 1%
and as i said the 0.029% is the next gen electric usage at this weeks hashrate. so the electric per hash is going down.

now imagine how much electric would be wasted if we stuck with GPU.. but the hashrate was still 50exahash
ill give you a hint. it would be 1177% of household electric

..
back 5 years ago yea the hashrate was 250000x lower.. but the kw per hash was higher using GPU
..

anyway over all we are at 0.1% household use if we use the old ASIC measure

and if we transition to 7nm rigs. we could go upto a hashrate of over 150exa and still be at 0.1% household electric.

this means we can go to 1500exa and finally get to the 1% of household electric this topic is at.

summary:
so give it a while. we are not near a 1% household electric barrier yet.. but pencil in 1500exa into your hashrate calender, then the OP can repost and finally be right

Payme21

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Activity: 252

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I percent of the world's energy consumption? That's quite crazy but I'll like to say that in terms of pollution and the environment in general, bitcoin will be more friendly because it will move to safer alternative sources of power

figmentofmyass

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Quote from: hachiman13 on September 05, 2018, 11:40:59 PM

I'm fairly concerned about this. At this point, bitcoin couldn't even dare to compete with the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is already consuming that much energy at this level of adoption, what more if its transaction reaches the banking level, that is, several thousand magnitude more than all cryptocurrency combined?

there's a few angles to consider here.

first, the answer to that depends on whether electricity generation averages towards green/renewable energy sources rather than conventional polluting forms.

second, there is no direct relationship between energy consumption from mining and adoption. ideally, upper layer applications like the lightning network, drivechains, etc could allow exponential transaction growth---but off the main blockchain. miner investment into hardware will ebb and flow according to market value and long term speculation; exponential transaction growth doesn't equate to exponential growth in energy consumption.

hachiman13

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I'm fairly concerned about this. At this point, bitcoin couldn't even dare to compete with the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is already consuming that much energy at this level of adoption, what more if its transaction reaches the banking level, that is, several thousand magnitude more than all cryptocurrency combined?

RandyGamage

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I don't find this is as a big issue in long run because already there are project that emerging to find solution for this matter. I saw recently a crypto project that aims to build up crypto mining stations which use green energy from wind, water etc...

Ausgewielt

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Even if Bitcoin consuming 10% of electricity, bank is consumes more. Bank's office need electricity, maintaining of fiat money also need electricity (they burn old fiat money to create new one), transferring money also need electricity. We can make a conclusion that banks expenses more resources than bitcoin.

Cruxer

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Bitcoin FTW!

Quote

Bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity. Is that sustainable?

yes because there is economic reason for sustaining it, it pays its electricity bills and earninig money for miners
so there will be build new power plants if miners will need it
look at that perspective, its amazing

Satosho Kakamolto

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Quote from: d5000 on August 30, 2018, 09:35:39 PM

What we should compare, instead, is the hypothetical Bitcoin consumption if it becomes used at least as much as SWIFT, for example. If we now have about 0,5 %, then if the price is 1000 times (3 orders of magnitude) higher, then we can assume that Bitcoin would consume a very significant part of the world's electricity.

This is exactly the point, and such numbers are clearly unsustainable. This leads to the conclusion that something has to be changed in the way of Bitcoin to work, or it will change by itself in a more catastrophic way at some point. That's plain logic.

Photographer

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Quote from: odolvlobo on August 30, 2018, 01:26:25 PM

Electricity is not a finite resource, so it doesn't matter whether Bitcoin mining is 1% or 10% or even 99% of the total consumption.

The real issue is the effect of power generation on the environment, and at only 1%, Bitcoin cannot be considered to be a significant contributor to that problem. Furthermore, there are better ways to address the environmental problems than to prohibit certain types of consumption.

"at only 1%, Bitcoin cannot be considered to be a significant contributor to that problem" is a funny statement, considering that the remaining 99% of consumption is what makes the whole human civilization possible and it's what is keeping 7 billions of people alive. If of course the 1% is correct.

rasulibragimavic

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I believe that this figure will not grow anymore and now there is a decline but if the gold rush goes again on bitcoin then it will spend more energy !

tsinelas

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Quote from: dewildance on August 29, 2018, 03:52:00 PM

The biggest obstacle to increasing bitcoin prices is mining and energy consumption. I think it is not possible to go far without finding a solution to these.

There are many alternative source of power that can help us sustain the need. There is geothermal, hydro, wind and solar, each miners should have( i suggest) s have individual source so that the needs of the people will not be affected. We are the new technology.

Crypto24hrs

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That is not a problem because a lot of organisations are currently working on providing the world with an alternate source of power supply that is even air pollution free and environmental friendly using blockchain technology see WPP ENERGY for more details

d5000

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Decentralization Maximalist

Quote from: bitcoindusts on August 30, 2018, 04:28:23 PM

But as others said, i doubt bitcoin's carbon footprint is more than the consumption of all banks globally put together. You see, it became easy to declare the consumption of electricity for bitcoin because the nodes are all visible. Whereas it would be difficult to calculate the same for all the banks. And i am merely basing this comparison against the banks because it is the sector that bitcoin is up against.

We have already discussed that in this thread.

And the problem is: Banks may consume more today, but they have also a much higher transaction volume.

At least according to this stackexchange post, SWIFT alone handles 11,5 millions of transactions per day, with a transaction volume of 1,25 quadrillions of dollars per year.

Bitcoin handles less than a trillion per year (~2 billion daily, with peaks up to ~5 billion during the last bubble). So SWIFT's transaction volume alone is no less than 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin's.

What we should compare, instead, is the hypothetical Bitcoin consumption if it becomes used at least as much as SWIFT, for example. If we now have about 0,5 %, then if the price is 1000 times (3 orders of magnitude) higher, then we can assume that Bitcoin would consume a very significant part of the world's electricity.

Onah

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I just feel bad about this situation.
Cryptocurrency is good, but the fact that it is heating our globe everyday is just sad.
This is also a reason why I dont like mining, and I also think we need better mining algorithms that help us with the situation. Algorithms that dont require much energy but still have the same functionalities, security and efficiency to contribute to blockchain world.

Raggie

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Quote from: Satosho Kakamolto on August 29, 2018, 03:24:59 PM

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

Why do you think bitcoin is not sustainable ? It would be gone if bitcoin was not sustainable from the start.
we know the whole world not just only mining bitcoin, we are mining many cryptocurrency coins.
but i think we still can sustain the crypto mining, as long it still profitable to do.

bitcoindusts

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Point well taken there, and we can not shy away from the truth that bitcoin does consume a lot of electricity.

But as others said, i doubt bitcoin's carbon footprint is more than the consumption of all banks globally put together. You see, it became easy to declare the consumption of electricity for bitcoin because the nodes are all visible. Whereas it would be difficult to calculate the same for all the banks. And i am merely basing this comparison against the banks because it is the sector that bitcoin is up against.

Besides, imagine how many trees bitcoin saved as it never needed any printed material to denote its value unlike the endless printing of fiat currencies.

d5000

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Decentralization Maximalist

Quote from: Satosho Kakamolto on August 29, 2018, 03:24:59 PM

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

The Digicoinomist Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index has often been critisized as "flawed". It is based on annual mining revenues - so it's largely based on the average Bitcoin price in the last 365 days. If price goes up, it will grow - until the next halving.

A better estimation, in my opinion, is this one, based on data about mining hardware. Unfortunately it is outdated. But it regularly had results of between a third and half of the consumption the Digicoinomist index claims.

Imo, it's not a topic that we should ignore, but it has solutions. Other posters (here and in another related threads) have already mentioned renewable energies. Solar energy costs of planned plants in Mexico and Chile are estimated to be as low as 0,02 USD per kWh, so it is very likely getting competitive with Chinese coal-based electricity. Probably soon we'll seen a massive shift to renewable-based mining.

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