Topic: Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument. - page 7. (Read 5220 times)

1. There is no "green power". Have you ever seen the pollution of land of windparks, solar parks and even worse water power. and the arguement its not used, if ever truth. Make green H2/hydrogen from it. It can be used in any way you want

2. There nothing secure about higher hashrate since the Antminers go better every few months. So the only possibility to make the network safer is more energy consumtion. Where you wanna end?

3. The changing Miners due to rising hashrate makes much electricity pollution since the old miners can not be used profitable and its the only way to use it

Solutions:

1) Make CPU Mining the only way to produce BTC. So point 3 is obselet, you could mine as running the computer and it gets more decentralised since its hardly possible to make a mining farm

2) Use an Algo that uses the power for SETI or something like that. But thats extremly tricky and currently not an option

3) the one you hate most: 18 Million have been distributed to miners over 10 years. Why not change to POS with a annual ROI of 3% or so. The argument you make the richer more rich is rubbish then because its lower then other assets and with having multiplicated 30% of the invest in 10 years is not too much. And simple keeping the coin so hodl you support the network.
Miners who sell their coins have the same support or even less

my numbers were based in a high average of 180exa (more relating to their Q4 end of year average). but taking the actual hashrate of the 365 days its more like 160exa average, so the electric rate is a few TWH less.

but yea 0.0X% or 0.YY% of consumption is still low which is why i dont think the BMC minded using 220 inflated number


well the way my cynical mind works
i imagine the BMC telling governments "bitcoin WASTES 220TWH". get them to implement a green bill. then go back to them and say, ok we have changed the industry, we now only consume 50TWH, now give us our green grants for complying by reducing TWH by 4x

much like the BMC is pretending that only 56% of asic farms in the US were set up in renewable area's. where as its been a known detail even as far as 2014 that asic farmers actually set up in renewable area's on purpose.
EG 90% of chinese asic farms were in renewable area's but the BMC said last year that china is only <20% renewable so pretended that chinese miners were only <20% renewable

all done so later they can be audited and seen as actually being more like 90% and tick a 'green box' to get grants awarded

Well spotted.
Of course, the difficulty is increasing week after week, and presumedly energy consumption too.
So I didn't run the numbers as you did, but it seems rational to me that they added a "comfortable" buffer in estimated consumption.
What's the difference between 0.14% and 0.05% of total consumption, after all?

over 220TWH/year.... um no.. just no

lets average the hashrate at 180exa for the period (makes math simple)
a. lets use the 110thash asic at 3.25kwh
b. lets use 14thash asic at 1.4kwh
hashrate in thash
180000000

a. asics running      
1636363.636   
power draw per hour
5318181.818   kwh
   5318.181818   mw/hour
   5.318181818   gw/hour
   127.6363636   gwh/day  (above * 24)
   46587.27273   gwh/year (above * 365)
   46.58727273   twh/year

so that is 46.58twh.. not 200

b. asics running      
12857142.86   
18000000   kwh
   18000   mw/hour
   18      gw/hour
   432      gwh/day
   157680   gwh/year
   157.68   twh/year

so that is 157.68twh.. not 200

because the 158 is the least efficient asic
because the 47 is the most efficient asic

the number is somewhere in between
im guessing that the amount of farms still using old tech(s914thash from 2016-17 is now obsolete(most migrated during the bsv purge of 2018 where many were sold or destroyed. giving opportunity for the s17 range to be used and then later the s19 range))
id say the number now is far far far closer to 47. and way below 158.. certainly not anywhere near 200

lets pretend every asic was the old tech s9 at the 158TW i mathed out..
basically its a difference of about 28%. so to achieve a 220TWH consumption for the year entails needing a hashrate 28% higher than the 180exa i averaged. meaning the hashrate would need to be a constant 250exahash for the whole year to then 'spend' 220 twh for the year

lets pretend every asic was current tech s19 pro at the 47TW i mathed out..
basically its a difference of about 79%. so to achieve a 220TWH consumption for the year entails needing a hashrate 79% higher than the 180exa i averaged. meaning the hashrate would need to be a constant 842exahash for the whole year to then 'spend' 220 twh for the year

emphasis my facepalm...   220 twh!!(facepalm) sorry folks but thats just not what is happening in reality

..
if i would have a guess. i would say they want to say a huge artificial number now(220). so that it immunises the politics to how small that number is compared to world wide other industries while also allowing for 0.3x(oldtech)-4.6x(newtech) growth without actually going over a 220twh (because shhh dont tell anyone, the 220 is inflated as a buffer)

Another example of a rational approach to bitcoin mining is shown by the Norwegian Bitcoin mining company Kryptovault, which uses the heat from bitcoin mining to dry wood and provides this opportunity to local loggers for free. The amount of heat produced by mining plants is enough to achieve complete drying of wood in just a few days, despite the fact that the drying process takes place outside, often under snow and rain.

The company is also conducting preliminary negotiations on the drying of seaweed for a local company, by the way, Kryptovault had to spend about £1.5 million on noise insulation only to reduce the noise created by asics after complaints from neighbors.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/09/can-bitcoin-be-sustainable-inside-the-norwegian-mine-that-also-dries-wood



   

I hope that at least someone will see this information in that congressional hearing because even if they have trouble reading, pictures speak more than a thousand words. It seems incredible that as much as 50 000 TWh is lost, and that the energy consumed by BTC is just a drop in the ocean.

The Bitcoin Mining Council Released their Q4 Mining Data.




They updated their data on the global Bitcoin Mining Consumption:


And the energy Mix supporting the network:




Click here for the Press release


Video of the Bitcoin Mining Council Q4 2021 Briefing:

Next week there will be an important hearing at the congress about the Bitcoin’s power usage.

It will be an important event to assess the impact all the reasoning about this topic, much of whose we analysed on this thread, will have on the regulators.

I opened a thread about this:

Congress Hearing On Bitcoin’s Energy Use

This is a very good topic. I have bin reading the replies since and all of them are great. But I did not read all the reply in this topic. The person that start this topic try so much to analyse the arguments and the defence.
After I know how much energy bitcoin consume I begin to research why the amount is high. I understand that why the energy is high is not because of number of transaction. It is for security of bitcoin network.
Since then I check what order cryptocurrencies use to secure thier own network. Then I understand this two things.
PoW and PoS
Bitcoin which is using PoW was good from the beginning when only Satoshi and his team were mining in one room. But I think Satoshi did not know that Bitcoin will grow so big within short time.
I begin to think that all the miners using higher computer struggling to solve one and the same problem that can only be solve by one person at a time is waste of energy. I was not sure until I saw it where one person say it on internet.
I know the bitcoin network is now so big to change the whole protocol. But I saw another solution that was said by FORBES ADVISOR But what I don't know is weather the solution will work because bitcoin is not mined in one country alone.

Read more from Forbes

The El Salvador project so far has been quite consistent, especially since I heard that mining uses environmentally friendly energy sources so that companies that have been constrained to enter this segment can learn from the success of El Salvador later.  But we understand each other, why so far it has been difficult to access BTC because of political interests that are not in favor of users so that disinterest can lead to interest.  Even the issue of the pro-Bitcoin El Salvador government is that the government wants to corrupt through this project so that it cannot be traced.

Mining bitcoin with renewable energy sources.
A dream came true in El Salvador with their infamous Vulcanode.

The guys of Bitcoin Italia Podcast released a very interesting long post and video (English Subtitles) of their visit.




This is part of a broader project, telling the story of a trip to El Salvador:

Missione El Salvador
( English translation available)

funny thing is stompix debunks himself
he admits that with higher efficiency means instead of burning $7 of electric to get $10 of reward, you burn only $5.

but what he also hints at as his rebuttal is people add more rigs..
the thing is. even if there was no efficiency, people still add more rigs.
so their $7 becomes $14 becomes $21 without efficiency
yet its $5 becomes $10 becomes $15 with efficiency.

if we still remained on GPU where the hashrate would still accumulate over the years, the amount of GPU's would accumulate over the years. but the amount of inefficient watts/hash would mean the network is less secure but burning MORE electric than today

if people are willing to spend $8k on a 110thash efficient asic. but it was a scenario of only GPU mining
people would have bought $8k of motherboards and GPU and PSU..
which calculated would be more then 3.25kwh. but way way way less hashpower to protect the network

Apparently I missed this article by Nic Carter:

Bitcoin Mining Is Reshaping the Energy Sector and No One Is Talking About It



It quite old, but still valuable!

Weird...seems like a lot of guys were getting something called an S9 before September 2017..
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitmains-released-antminer-s9-worlds-first-16nm-miner-ready-to-order-1493601
Get your story right next time! And do a bit of research before showing over and over to everyone you don't have clue what you're talking about.

its soo funny

he is showing a 15x multiple since the S9 release
which was september 2017..
ofcourse the hashrate is going to rise OVER 4 YEARS!!

but here is the thing.
from september 2017 to say may 2020 when s19's came about.
the hashrate still rose.. because thats the nature of bitcoin security
periodic small increases over time no matter if new gen are created or not
in that period of 65 difficulty jumps/hashrate rise..
it went from (your underestimated 6exa) to 120exa.. so for your benefit lets call it 20x

but each fortnight period of just s9's was not 20x it was it was 0.3x
now again your belief is that next gen asics offer the oppertunity to ramp up hashrate
so from may 2020 to may2021 26 periods it went from 120exa-176exa
this again is not some 15x or 3x or even 2x heck its not even 1.5x
its actually even LOWER fortnight growth rate than the 3 years fortnight-rate before the next gen was an option

thus again proving that next gen evolution does NOT cause extra growth beyond the normal growth

so please stop with the rhetoric that next gen efficiency means more asics beyond the norm

the actual reality is when they take off hundreds of old gen, they only put in a few dozen new gen
because.. and this is important
they dont want to shoot themselves in the foot by ramping up difficulty/hashpower too fast

oh and i actually do have an asic. i now use it as a foot stool. i have also visited some asic mega farms prepandemic too. so go take your chest beating hypotheticals to some place where your trash ends up and then try to do the math before acting like a know-it-all, because its getting real easy to debunk your hypothetical assumed guesses.
even if you quote websites (which have a small print that say the words hypothetical assumed guesses.)

as for stompix [his reply below] trying too hard to thump his chest thinking he can climb some non existant bitcoin social hierarchy.. . lets just debunk him one more time
the s9 v1 was short lived. most people went for the s9SE or the s9i which offered a few extra thash for the same kwh. the real efficient s9(SE) wasnt released until september.
but hey it now seems stompix doesnt want actual details. he just wants to create social drama.
just a shame his posts come with small print of assumptions guesses and hypotheticals
(and to pre-empt stomix.. the limited amount of hobby miners may have had the 13thash first version. but majority of farms had the more efficient higher thash version of the s9(released later))

anyways, moving on.. have a nice day folks

Franky being franky again, talking about mining when he hasn't seen miner in his life
You do realize that for the hashrate to grow you don;t just need efficient gear, you need those miners to pe produced and delivered.

You obviously ignore a simple fact, that the hashrate is continuously growing, even as we speak without anything more efficient being released, and it will grow a lot since the main thing that determines the hashrate is the income per th.
If you would have bothered to do even the smallest research possible you would have known that right now even with this dip the profit per th/s is 30 cents, 3 times more than it was a year ago, which means a lot more ger is coming online.
If you would have bothered to actually research, you would have known that only US companies excluding Riot and Blockstream have 60 exa of orders to be filled in 2022.

Again, if you would have bothered to look at actual data you would have known that one year after the launch of the s9 the rate was about 4 exahhash, which means 300k machines of 1300w mining.
Right now, even if we assume the best gear in the world you have 1.5 million 3300W machines mining.
What's the difference? Oh well, just a x15 increase in power consumption.


So, with 40 million addresses with a balance in the blockchain and with the current hahsrate that could be at maximum consisting of 10 million near obsolete gear, you can picture 6 million individual miners?
Again do a little research before throwing bullshit around.

not true at all
mining pools dont want to shoot themselves in the foot ramping up mining and jumping the difficulty up by 2X+ as soon as they upgrade their farm with next gen asics

no matter if its an upgrade or just a passage of time using current asics. mining pools will always only want to increase the difficulty by a few percent per fortnight.
emphases they still want to increase hashrate even if the asic generations dont change

by having more efficient asics does not mean hashrate jumps. because again for emphasis they want to keep a low hashrate progress to not making the difficulty spike

what you do find however is if we were to be on GPU mining and asics were not invented. the electricity usage right now would be much much higher. so infact ASICS has helped reduce energy usage.

this is proven by the recent upgrades from the s9 to the s19
s9 uses 1.4kwh and s19 uses 3.25kwh..

when an asic farm upgrades and say (easy math numbers) takes 232 s9 offline (325kwh)(3248thash)
they did not put on 100 s19 (325kwh)(1100thash) to have same electric bill
because if they did the hashrate and difficulty would jump by 3.38x

no where within the whole history of the last 2 years has the hashrate/difficulty jumped by 3.38x of the hashrate/difficulty of 2 years ago

so if your theory even had a small chance of being correct. you would see 2 things
1. difficulty changing from 13t to near 44t
2. hashrate changing from 94exa to over 310exa

well that never happened.
the max we have seen is, difficulty 25t and hashrate 176exa

so your theory is busted

also
if you think that there has every been a scenario where people could home hobby mine.. you are limited in your scenario thinking.
heres a thing you are missing
the reward is only 6.25btc.. meaning only 625,000,000 shareable units per block

with transaction fees being over 100sats that means you can only really split a block reward with under 6 million people. just to give someone 1 free unspent sat. when they want to move their value after receiving it

 even if you want to pretend that a pool accumulates 100 blocks before paying out a combined transaction. people will only get 100x of the fee(translates: pay 1% fee to receive reward). so its still not worth it for more then 6 million people to be mining at any one time as it will cost many %
it has and always will be the case that not everyone will get to mine. there just isnt enough slices of a cake to share with everyone at the party
 
so please give up the notion that there ever was a chance that home hobby miners could have been a thing for everyone to get involved in. (therre is never going to be an 'all invited' party with unlimited cake for all)

and one last thing. its not a 'datacentre' thing. asics hold no data. . its a asic mining farm
yep mining farms are going to remain.. thats life. accept it
have a nice day

Yes, throughout the progress in reducing the technological process, we are only seeing increasing energy consumption, since everyone has started using the concept of energy efficiency. Since the production of the first BTC, the technological process from 32nm has reached the production of 2nm chips, for Asic, the start of production was based on 130nm chips, now it is already at 5nm, but now for the production of 1 BTC per day we approximately need to use 1600 S19 Pro or more, while we need to spend 5.2 MW. The same applies for video cards, with each transition to a new process, we see an increase in size and power consumption.

Not so long ago, Tesla developers presented a computing tile for AI with a computing power of 9 PFLOPs to build clusters of 1.1 EFLOPs, but judging by the presentation, only one tile consumes up to 15KW, so yes, soon an autonomous nuclear reactor will be needed for a separate competitively capable data center.

Before clicking the link I was thinking of something more like Kentucky Fried Bitcoins or McBit as those things really do work sometimes a full day but those ovens of yours...yeah, nice...30k...they would better come with a cook and a maid in that price. 


Bitmain and MicroBT are slowly killing that dream
The direction of ASICs is up, up and up, 1000W, 2000W, 3000W, the more chips you can cram into that miner the more efficient it gets costswise, it's almost impossible for something that has only 1/10 of that hash rate and on top of that needs to be integrated with something else to achieve the same efficiency and profitability.

Unfortunately rather than seeing mining coming back to small home hobby mining I see it going the way of datacenters, which brings us..


My second website was hosted on my desk, with a P3 processor as at that time storage was a killer for anything around here, if you wanted more than 10GB it was expensive as hell. At that time there were a lot of small business in hosting, nowadays can you even dream of competing with large data centers? 99% of the ones doing this are just resellers from the big guys.

Just because you can get 30x cheaper computing power from 20 years ago it doesn't mean you're going to have an advantage now, your 50$ PC would still behave 1% of the computing power of even a medium gaming rig, imagine your toaster brought 3 years ago had the efficiency of the BM1385 chip, it would be useless.
No, unfortunately, home mining will probably be completely dead in 2-3 years and appliances will never manage to make even a dent on the global hash rate.

https://www.fi.se/en/published/presentations/2021/crypto-assets-are-a-threat-to-the-climate-transition--energy-intensive-mining-should-be-banned/

 

* The reason Ethereum is switching to PoS, because every adult knew the PoW bans were coming since 2013. *