Topic: Economists say each BTC transaction causes 272g of waste - page 3. (Read 376 times)

Well, if we keep the ratio it couldn't even work as it would require 14 times the world electricity if they would have the same power requirements per transaction. If bitcoin would have stayed at 3k so would have consumption, if it goes to 300k by December assuming we will have enough Asics to plug in it will probably consume more than the entire banking sector in the world. Then, the halvings will do their jobs but till then

At the same time, it's understandable for some to look at those numbers and wonder why this..
There are 10 million people in the Czech Republic who do on average 6 million payments daily, go to work, play games, have sex, ride the metro, bake, have sex, print, and cook, visits malls and so on and so on,....and yet all those people with all their activity will consume less energy than the 2 million Asics securing bitcoins' network. Of course, it would look weird to anyone, and a lot will obviously ask, can't this be done in another way?

Well, not that I'm aware of any solution that wouldn't be just as problematic.
Right now the chip and gear shortage, rising energy costing, and the situation in China has put a hold on the increased consumption, I doubt we will see any spike unless the price goes nuts so long-term the problem will be somewhat solved.

Anyhow, the focus should not be on comparing consumption, but on what this consumption achieves differently than others.


You have $40 million a day in rewards going to miners, of course, the numbers would be insane, even assuming the most efficient gear on the market right now you would need about 17 000 tons of those. That's about 100 million iPhones mini.


Probably it will stop something between 0.004 or 0.007 of them!

It would be very interesting to be able to read the full paper rather than just the abstract.
There may well be some/ lot of bias against Bitcoin , especially as one of the Authors is an employee of - De Nederlandsche Bank !!

What factors and parameters were used ?
Any members have free access to the paper ?



On a personal level - one very good friend was interested in Bitcoin , but has decided to go very anti bitcoin due to supposed environmental issues . I’ve tried to have a gentle discussion , but he is adamant it’s bad for the environment and we’re all killing the planet blah blah etc etc ! We have agreed to disagree 

Opponents of Bitcoin seem to have begun to change the narrative by which they will continue to try to discredit what they do not like. The OP cited some parts of the article, but I missed one comparison that literally shows how pointless it is to show BTC transactions in such a bad world - compared to other transactions.


It means hundreds of billions of transactions versus just over 100 million when it comes to BTC - so I would ask how much of that is a waste if I were to express it in the iPhone 12 minis?

Furthermore, everyone remembers comparing the energy consumption of BTC mining with the consumption of a country like Ireland, the Czech Republic or maybe Argentina, so that now great geniuses will discover a new way to show how Bitcoin will bury the country with garbage.


Should it be mentioned that the author of the article finally looks at some altcoins as alternatives to Bitcoin and states that the only salvation is to implement "proof of stake".

No. I don't think so. I am wondering why the calculation is too tight when it's come for Bitcoin. Are wasting and pollution only coming from Bitcoin? There are many sectors still alive that are generating a lot of wastage. Is all this business going to stop? If not, then Bitcoin investors shouldn't stop as well from investing in Bitcoin. And I don't think Bitcoin investors are thinking about wastage before investing in Bitcoin. Same as when you are buying a company share you don't consider how much waste is generating from this industry.

Here is an interesting article from The Guardian UK: Waste from one bitcoin transaction ‘like binning two iPhones’. Whereas the carbon footprint issue has been debated in the forum this article puts a different spin on the impact of mining.

According to the article, the Bitcoin network processed 112.5m transactions meaning that each individual transaction “equates to at least 272g of e-waste" which is the equivalent of two mini iPhone 12 handsets because ASIC miners have a limited shelf life of just 1.29 years. If the calculations are true, those are mind-boggling numbers.

Will statistics such as these (though debatable) affect the way investors continue to invest in Bitcoin and crypto in general?


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/17/waste-from-one-bitcoin-transaction-like-binning-two-iphones