Topic: Could eco-friendly pools like Terra Pool end the energy consumption discussion? (Read 229 times)

imagine you own a fruit stand. you pick 10 boxes of tomatos a day.
but at the market you only sell 9boxes. throwing away 1 box each day unsold

lets put this into money numbers. say each box is $10. with a $3cost$7profit a box
total costs are $30 total profit is only $61

however for the last 6+ years local miners have already been doing deals to buy up the final box that always goes to waste
meaning the tomato supplier is now getting $70 profit from the same capacity=14% more profit

swap tomato for electric. and you soon learn that bitcoin mining actually pays for renewable growth. along with other government climate grants

so its actually a benefit to everyone. apart from the residents who are going to see more drought

When done in larger scales and widely adopted by all pools and mining platforms, yes. But the thing is, mining isn't the only thing that's deteriorating the ability of this planet to give life. Long before bitcoin these kinds of problems are already preexisting and is basically going on since time immemorial. What we need to primarily do is to have a means for us to harness electricity in much less invasive ways, renewable resources are a good example.

if you want to compare future events of china dams effects to the environment. just look at california now

california is always in "drought' not due to climate change of carbon chimneys.. but due to them damming up rivers meaning no natural flow of water through streams to irrigate land and allow for good evaporation
of the natural water cycle. nor allowing underground aquifer refills. so californians are sucking their land dry

so yes there is a big negative environmental factor when regions only water supply is sealed in pipes and sewers leaving land to not get any saturation through natural streams

but hey... electric companies are getting rich from 'climate grants' to build these dams while blaming it on carbon

the next era of 'climate gate' will be on sea water desalination to refill reservoirs as the lands downstream dry up too much and dont allow the water cycle (evaporation and rain) to refill the reservoirs naturally

but im digressing from the topic
bitcoin mining farms are already highly renewable.

other crapcoins like doge which are mainly mined from home hobbiests are actually more 'fossil fuel' powered

I don't disagree, but I don't know enough, I'll be frank.

My own island has huge issues with megadams (bad results and very poor transparency in the environmental impact assessment that have been linked to the beneficiaries of the project) but I think many other countries like the USA and India have also had some bad dealings with that and history forgets. Clearly, merely switching to renewable for the sake of it isn't the answer either, and developed economies have the privilege of not needing as much industry to develop (and the luxury of already ripping apart their original natural environments decades ago so they can lecture others from a position of comfort). We should then also talk about not knowing enough about environmental impacts of spent solar fuels in a decade or two, and apparently wind turbines as well.

But that's probably not the focus of the current direction of discussion (from the simple pov of energy source).

China is hard to trust. They flip their opinion, plans all time. From environment, politics, economics and health issues. They are not transparent with things they are doing.

Same with Bitcoin, crypto and their regulations. It is best to see what will happen and not believe in what they announce.

China has many hydropower plants and they have so many biggest hydropower plants on Earth. Their hydropower plants and huge dams make the ecosystem along the Mekong Delta become worse.

Their neighborhood nations complain too much with their megadams and serious changes for ecosystem there. China disclaim all of accusations with their dams.

They have the a huge hydropower supply on Earth.

Hydropower mainly, yup. Cheapest form of energy in many regions there, with plenty of surplus, and for a time, easy to do really good corporate deals with the state governments. You'd definitely have to be a hobbyist or independent to still be trying out coal when there's plenty of cheap hydropower coming out from there from megadams. They switched one new megadam mid-last year, another mega one to come this July (yes, these actually also came at the expense of environment, special the 3 gorge dam project but that's the price they're paying for clean renewables).

lets clear some fud

lets take antpool
they set up their farms in renewable energy area's
their amount of blocks they solved this month is 40% higher then february.. so it seems they are not shutting down, but expanding

the chinese crypto ban only applies to farms that are in fossil fuel power station regions
and as of 2015.. yep 6 years ago mining farms in china were already positioning themselves in renewable regions

what the ban impacts most is not the farms but the isolated home hobby miners that cant just move to prefered locations

This is also what should happen, as Bitcoin is meant to be fungible. The "tiers" only are relevant for some businesses who are concerned about their image. I can imagine Tesla, for example, buying their next stash of Bitcoins from "green" miners - just to show their investors and the authorities that they're serious about the eco-friendlyness thing. Later in the "life cycle" of the Bitcoins they will continue to be mixed and used as any other Bitcoin. I also don't expect a premium much higher than 1%, but this could be still relevant as an incentive for miners.

While I agree that people give Elon Musik disproportionate importance, I consider the eco-friendliness aspect very important, and I seriously can't understand why some Bitcoiners are so short-sighted that they don't see it as the main problem of their beloved currency. It's not about being anti-Bitcoin, it's about improving it and solve its problems. Even if the 70% renewables currently are true, 30% fossil fuel is still too much.

It's true that the solution of the problem is not simple but I'm partidary of attacking it from different sides, being image/publicity one of the easiest way to improve the incentive calculation for miners.


That's the kind of incentive mechanism I'm talking about here: Renewables is already the cheapest option in many countries. The only thing is that in some countries fossil-fuel-based electricity is still cheaper, and the "quest" is to drive these miners slowly out, or even better, give them incentives to change the electricity source.

Another cite from the article:

By the way, DMG is one of the founders of Terra Pool.

Mining is an economic activity, and as soon as cheap electricity is available, mining activities will preserve it, meaning that mining activities are not focused on fossil fuels or an activity that destroys the environment, such as shale oil and others.
The more governments press for cheaper alternatives related to renewable energies, the more bitcoin mining will use them.
I also note that China may begin to reduce dependence on environmentally polluting activities by the year 2030, so we will witness a green revolution.

In general, environmental issues do not worry me because as I mentioned Bitcoin mining needs electricity regardless of its source.

I think we should forget Elon Musk's support for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and share real news about bitcoin that will improve the market.
It was a serious mistake for Elon Musk to invest in bitcoin without being 100% sure like all the great defenders like Jack, Michael Saylor and others.
Not only rich people have invested in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, there are also people who depend on bitcoin for their daily needs and with the broken market it is very hard to get it up soon, so I point out the unfounded decision of Elon Musk as very negative.
Jack says bitcoin as we know it is climate friendly. Let's learn more in the next article:

That's a big if and personally ^{[and realistically]}, I can't see it happening anytime soon ^{[perhaps in the next 10 years or so (I hope I'm wrong)]}.

I'm sure it's going to take a lot more than that to make them switch to green energy and I doubt it'll be enough ^{[short term]} to cover the cost ^{[in some cases]}.

I don't like this idea of multi tiers, and Bitcoin mining devices are energy agnostics like any other electric devices, that means they can use electricity from whatever source, coal, hydro, nuclear or even poo if someone invents such device that transforms humans feces into energy.
People will again send and mix coins from all pools, call them green or dirty and this efforts to divide Bitcoin in tiers will be futile in the end, like it happened with Marathon opac compliant mining pool.

You seem to be right about that number, although it seems not to be sales of 2020 but the complete electric car stock at the end of 2020 (see here, 2020 sales were about 3,2 million), so I will adjust the TWh consumption based on 20kevin20's figures and my own research.

- If we take 20kevin20's numbers: 4 TWh (2TWh production / 2 TWh consumption per million cars) * 10,8 we have 43,2 TWh for all worldwide electric cars.
- The other study I found, as I wrote, has higher numbers, with 6 TWh / million cars, * 10,8 =64,8 TWh.

Both numbers come already close to lower estimates of Bitcoin consumption, as the Digicoinomist Index is put in doubt by some and may overestimate power consumption. My guess is that if we're entering a bear market in BTC now, then electric cars will consume more than BTC in 2021/22, but if the bull market continues Bitcoin will consume more.

We're obviously talking about the current situation (2021, or 2020 for the lack of newer figures) and not 2030. We don't know how much TWh will Bitcoin consume in 2030, this will depend on the BTC price on that year, but it's not a very bold claim that beside of electric cars also Bitcoin will consume more electricity in that year than now. Just ...

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While I'm waiting for news about Terra pool, I found the following interesting article:

Moving to Green Bitcoin May be Moving To a Two-Tier Bitcoin

According to the article it may be possible that Bitcoins from "green" pools/miners could be sold for a (small) premium, as in theory it's always possible to track it back to the origin. This could give additional incentives for miners to move to green energy.

I am not pro researcher or writer but use your own head and think for a minute.
According to some stats just in year 2020 global electric car sale was around 10,800,000 and they all spend electricity for charging all the time, while zero electricity is spent for gasoline cars.
Just one average electric car spends 33 kWh per 100 miles, now if you multiple that with millions and billions of cars you will get some interesting numbers.
Much more electricity is spent on production of Lithium batteries, and even simple stand-by electronics we all use at our homes are spending much more electricity than Bitcoin, and that is the fact.
Looks like you love proof so here is some data comparison that you won't hear from Bill Gates and clowns like him, always-on electric devices in America are spending 1,375 TWh/yr,
that is 12 times more compared with Bitcoin network estimated 113.89 TWh/yr.
I think every house have one or more cars in modern western world, now imagine if every car will be electric by 2030... and they all spend electricity all the time, numbers go up so easy.
Source data: https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2

The problem is that there are two diverging "schools" which both publish lots of information: one side trying to promote electric cars, the other side trying to "debunk" the claim of the "promoters". According to my research the "promoting" side is closer to reality, as the other side often uses older data (e.g. about the energy mix used for the electricity to run the cars and produce batteries, where almost in the entire world is moving towards "more renewables"  - for example they still sometimes cite an old Swedish study, when even the study authors have updated their findings more recently and come to more optimistic conclusions).

But anyway, I thought you had information to compare Bitcoin with electric cars as you were pretty bold about your claim. I think the one making a claim should also try to prove it

Thank you for the numbers. Let's assume the 1.9 TWh/year consumption for all current electric cars is real.* Production (above all, the battery) makes up about half of the lifetime CO² emissions of an electric car, so we could assume, if the energy mix is the same for production than for driving/charging, that we have to double the value to about 4 TWh/year, which is much less than even the most optimistic Bitcoin energy consumption estimation (~50 TWh/year). Of course, like you correctly remark this is the current situation and we could reach Bitcoin's energy consumption in a few years.

*I've read another estimation which concludes that one needs about 3 TWh/year per million EVs, which would mean we reach 17 TWh/year for all worldwide EVs and close to 30 TWh/year if we take production into account (and if production really makes up for half of the lifetime electricity consumption). So this estimation would come already closer to Bitcoin's consumption, but is still much lower than even the optimistic 50 TWh/year estimation.

Agree with the first part. However, "actions" can help us to reach that tipping point sooner, and the whole discussion would also end sooner. The earlier we reach this point, the less it's likely that some really hard regulations (up to bans) could seriously harm Bitcoin's adoption.

Maybe the following opinion is unpopular, but it would be ideal if the Bitcoin price remained relatively low (i.e. not higher than the old ATH or at most 100K) until this tipping point is reached. I read some opinions that 100K per BTC is a price some are considering the limit when they would consider stricter regulation against BTC.

Technically that's correct, but in this discussion not everything is about technology. The communication aspect (i.e.: the possibility for mining companies to be able to advertise themselves being connected to a "100% green pool") will become increasingly important, I assume, above all for negotiations with governments. And even technically, if green pools grow, they may have a significant impact on the efficiency of the operations of their members (reward variance minimization).

I think this is a utopia that is not destined to come true in the near future. Judge for yourself - the world, despite the fight against global warming and other populist movements, will not stop using traditional resources, including coal. The point is capitalism, which will use the cheapest and most accessible energy resource in any scenario to extract nailed and environmentalists will never be able to change this. All this is just noise about nothing. Consider how green it is to make Tesla batteries and other manufacturing delights.

Green energy is projected to become cheaper than fossil fuels in the near future, and it already is in some places, so this problem will literally solve itself sooner or later. And since Bitcoin is contributing to only a tiny fraction of emissions, no action should be taken, because its impact is on the magnitude of the margin of error.

Eco-friendly pools are pointless, a pool is just a server that miners choose to connect to. They can always connect to some other pool.

It's probably not demanding more energy than BTC now, but it might soon.. Looking in-depth into the renewable-based stuff is a quite hard study to do tbh, but here are some numbers that I hopefully didn't get wrong..:

Bitcoin consumes ~110 Terawatts/year according to HBR. According to PolicyAdvice, there are around 5.6M electric cars right now (the number is probably much higher today as the article seems to take figures from 2018-2019 tho). Considering the figures Provider Power put out, the average US driver would need ~341kWhs per year to drive an EV as usual.. multiply 341kWhs by 5.6M and you get a total of 1.9 terawatts per year needed to power all EVs in the world if they all had a constant consumption of 3.3 miles/kWh.

Now let's take the predictions.. "By 2030, there will be around 4 million EVs in California alone." (taken from Policy Advice).. it means that California alone will consume ~1.36 terawatts per year through EVs in a matter of only 9 years. Now add car manufacturing electricity consumption and you have a ton of watts consumed.. the figures will also grow very fast in a short timespan. There were approximately 1.3B cars in the world and the predictions are that by 2040 under 33% of the cars in the world will be electric.. Take just 25% of 2016's approximate number of worldwide existing vehicles instead of 33% and multiply it by 341kWhs - that is 112.5 terawatts! Is that not a lot?

The renewable energy part .. it's hard to digest it, the prices we'd have to pay per kWh are (I assume) higher than regular contracts and so the transition from fossil to renewable is a hard job itself for the average human. What I'd like to know is how much Musk's SpaceX pollutes and consumes overall, because that seems like it's both intentional (when you sign an electricity contract you might not know the source of energy but Musk surely does know about rocket pollution?) and silly when you think about Musk's tweets against BTC..

I am not biased and I cannot deny facts so anyone feel free to prove me wrong. Happy to learn new stuff. But at this time, I think it's safe to say that EVs are consuming an increasingly lot amount of electricity too, and at the end of the day how many of those are charged using 100% renewable sources of energy..?

You don't have to believe my words but do your own research about that subject, internet is full of reliable information sources and research about this (I actually like electric cars btw but don't be fooled with eco promises).
Electric cars or batteries are not produced in Norway, they produce a lot of carbon, spend a lot of energy in production, and let's take an example of most hated electric car in this forum Tesla with their giga factory
in Reno, Nevada, United States and check their electricity bill.
17.5 tons of CO2 is emitted in the air by the making just ONE normal electric car battery and bigger ones are emitting more, then you need to spend more energy for charging them,
and you need to replace them and throw them in trash maybe in few years or after 100,000 miles.
You should know that those batteries are made from Lithium and please check what happened with pollution and countries that have large source of Lithium and mines, than you should also know that natural graphite needed for this batteries is also coming from China who are using coal power for that, so everything is not black and white  
One more fun fact is that 80% of Lithium batteries are coming from... China.
https://www.eartheclipse.com/environment/large-co2-emissions-batteries-electric-cars.html

I've read this is no longer the case in some regions like Inner Mongolia. I expect other regions to follow that trend. So using renewable energy is in the interest of miners in China, too, and the earlier they start, the less harsh will impact the transition on their operations.

If miners specifically demand gradually more renewable energy from renewables-specialized electricity distributors, then this sector is incentived to invest in more infrastructure to produce electricity, so miners would not be "taking away" the energy from other users (at least outside of bottlenecks). It would be even better if the miners had their own power plants, as this way they could be operating outside of the regular grid and not affect it in the case of shortages (they would then temporarily regulate them down). On a small scale this kind of off-grid mining is already happening but it would be crucial that bigger mining farms adopt that model, too.

Technically you're totally right, but in an increasingly "conflictive" situation with regulators (see the proposed mining ban in Inner Mongolia and the New York state regulation which demands miners to operate in an "eco-friendly" way) it can help improve their image and also predictability - once they're 100% green they wouldn't have to fear a ban anymore. A "green" pool would even reinforce their commitment as they would signal to support other miners with similar goals, and thus the transition to a "greener" Bitcoin overall. This can also attract more investors in their companies.


Do you have sources that prove that the production and operation of electric cars is demanding more energy than Bitcoin? I would be really interested in comparing those both sectors, and I can't really believe your claim, because for example Norway is one of the biggest electric car markets and has almost 100% renewables-based electricity. But I may be wrong

@TangentC: See the second answer to ranochigo.