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Topic: How Eco friendly is our money and is there an alternative? (Read 440 times)

member
Activity: 314
Merit: 20
Wow very detailed write-up. It was indeed expensive to print or create our currency nowadays and BTC is currently on the top of the list. Hopefully  with the current energy revolution, which is harnessing the natural resources rather than fossil fuel will help us as lot with energy supply.
sr. member
Activity: 644
Merit: 261
Quote
The main point to be made here is that money should increase efficiency, no matter what trust model the currency uses. It needs to be efficient in order to have a chance of being widely adopted and functional for us all and the planet Earth.

Great article OP! With all the comparisons and references, we cannot just simply ignore the fact that bitcoin is indeed consuming a lot of electricity compared with other cryptocurrencies and even higher than some countries. I am not that familiar with Lightning Network but I am getting that it would make bitcoin more efficient and will have lesser transaction cost so I hope it would be implemented in the near future. Other cryptocurrencies has the advantages compared to bitcoin but bitcoin is still the most in demand among all of them because it is the most famous and has actual usage in real world.
hero member
Activity: 1890
Merit: 831
Well that's an amazing write-up you have got there , reading it we could see how much hardwork was put into it.

But I do think that leaving Bitcoins won't be a solution but we could change how minning works ... How incredibly fast it consumes electricity on such a large scale.

Because minning will anyways take place even if one person is holding them all..
newbie
Activity: 210
Merit: 0
Good post man, very informative. Interesting to see that Ethereum is still way below Bitcoin in terms of energy consumption. Maybe in the future we`ll see the trend shift from PoW to PoS to be more environment friendly (would be good to see some data on this one with just nodes running to stake).
I got to read your article and it was a good read. I get your point on having an efficient money to circulate in the world. These digital cryptocurrencies is included as an option to be acquired on almost all country if it got its permission, of course, this is per country basis. And in line with every country decision on what medium of exchange they prefer most must top the efficiency of the money.

I think this
Good post man, very informative. Interesting to see that Ethereum is still way below Bitcoin in terms of energy consumption. Maybe in the future we`ll see the trend shift from PoW to PoS to be more environment friendly (would be good to see some data on this one with just nodes running to stake).

I think it is more eco-friendly than having a paper money since our money now is made from paper so that means it came from the trees. So if we use the electronic money, the government or the central bank doesnt have to cut a lot of trees, so we save a lot of trees and save mother nature.
member
Activity: 126
Merit: 11
One of a kind
I got to read your article and it was a good read. I get your point on having an efficient money to circulate in the world. These digital cryptocurrencies is included as an option to be acquired on almost all country if it got its permission, of course, this is per country basis. And in line with every country decision on what medium of exchange they prefer most must top the efficiency of the money.
newbie
Activity: 121
Merit: 0
Good post man, the increase in price of Bitcoin will drive the increase of electricity consumption. the more bitcoin price increases, the more peple will flock to mine it. it is an estimation that 70%-80% Bitcoin price will go to electricity. That means Bitcoin will consume electricity worth of billions a year.
sr. member
Activity: 868
Merit: 259
Bitcoin is the future's money and in the future we will have more renewable energy disponible. It surely consumes a lot of energy, but that is the price of decentralization at this moment. As technology advances we can have more powerful energy sources that don't harm the nature and at same time we can have more developed machines that don't consume so much electricity.

Ecology is important, but we can't stop the progress because of it, to say the truth, the ecology benefits itself when we have progress in the world (that can harm the ecosystem for some time or not).

If you are waiting for all the world's power source to come from renewables, then you are not in luck. Thats more than 50 years away. Its more practical for the community to come to consensus to fork BTC to a new PoW algorithm.

Proof of Capacity could be a good replacement.
hero member
Activity: 1190
Merit: 525
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Bitcoin is the future's money and in the future we will have more renewable energy disponible. It surely consumes a lot of energy, but that is the price of decentralization at this moment. As technology advances we can have more powerful energy sources that don't harm the nature and at same time we can have more developed machines that don't consume so much electricity.

Ecology is important, but we can't stop the progress because of it, to say the truth, the ecology benefits itself when we have progress in the world (that can harm the ecosystem for some time or not).
sr. member
Activity: 868
Merit: 259
How fast do you guys can we move towards mining purely through renewable energy sources that leave little environmental impact?

From my perspective, not fast enough. All the countries around the world cant agree on how much reduction on they can do in their own carbon foot prints, we also have the US who has removed itself from the Paris Accord. In short, we all depend on the government and the power companies, so its really out of our hands.

But what you should do is support a greener and more environment friendly cryptocurrency.

newbie
Activity: 163
Merit: 0
How fast do you guys can we move towards mining purely through renewable energy sources that leave little environmental impact?
sr. member
Activity: 700
Merit: 275

I think crypto currencies are still have lot of differences than the real world currency. IF this situation continues then why would any government will allow the operations of mining throughout the world.


In ever thought that currency can be priced according the energy consumption they have but your article says it all. But what if we go into green energy channels and try to mine with the green energy on full level, then may be the situation can be altered.


Plus, you are considering the bitcoin currency as whole, which is global currently but the USD is just limited to the USA country. I mean to have real comparison you may need to cover the cost of energy consumption for all the currency in the world altogether. That would be global comparison and I’m sure bitcoin will look like very eco-friendly at that time.   
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1003
Even though ETH might be lower in power consumption than BTC, you have to realize that both of them consume a hugely diminished amount of energy compared to most other forms of money production, especially most fiat forms. If you are prioritizing the energy consumption and ecological impact of probably one of the least impactful currencies to have existed you don't have the right priorities going for you, no matter how interesting the paper may be. If the paper was made merely out of research and curiosity, then it achieved the purpose of being informative.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Not according to this!  I was shocked that each transaction (an average) uses 276kWh!  I use that much electricity at home in 2 months!

Bitcoin is shockingly wasteful with electricity, we don't see it so we don't really care, but it is still there and happening.
An average google search also uses quite a bit of electricty, but that is nothing compared to Bitcoin.

The sad part is that it is unnecessary, it's just greed causing the increase, but the charts show that it will only get worse.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Woah, the article from docdroid about Eco-friendly-money.pdf open my eyes on that huge problem. But what is more I am strongly surprised with the Ripple specifications and other things connected to that currency. To be honest I have known its from the general informations and news heard somewehre here... Very usefull, I thing it should be visible for more people interested.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
The first time I know it, i was also shocked and surprised how this Blockchain technology transaction works and its electricity cost. But as I have researched most mining farms are located on a specific country with low electricity cost and more environment friendly facilities. I don’t bother to make a statement out of concern as an environmentalist as myself care much for nature.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1007
Even though ETH might be lower in power consumption than BTC, you have to realize that both of them consume a hugely diminished amount of energy compared to most other forms of money production, especially most fiat forms. If you are prioritizing the energy consumption and ecological impact of probably one of the least impactful currencies to have existed you don't have the right priorities going for you, no matter how interesting the paper may be. If the paper was made merely out of research and curiosity, then it achieved the purpose of being informative.
sr. member
Activity: 658
Merit: 260
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Okay interesting read.


I never thought that ripple is so much cheaper to produce but I think its all because it is centralised and there is control over the emission rate of those coins. This replicates both characteristic of USD token production and the crypto token production.


But this also explains why the ripple prices are not much volatile and they have fixed face value at any time I look at them.


No doubt why bitcoin is consuming almost 118Kwh of energy as it is being mined at alarming rate while ripple stands at the deepest with almost 0 emission rate. This is very extensive comparison and thoughtful article. Looking at the conditions like this bitcoin should be reaching to costly affairs real soon. :-)

full member
Activity: 364
Merit: 118
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I couldn't agree more, It's just surprising that BTC Mining is profitable and yet at the same time it's very costly and yup not that Eco friendly. Well, this is an issue that should be tackled by the Bitcoin Developers, we just hope that someday there will be a solution for this.

Regarding the envirement issue, as long as there is renewable energy available in the mining process, i dont think there are big problems related to the envirement and cryptocurrency.
Yup, but not all miners uses renewable energies.

sr. member
Activity: 868
Merit: 259
Good post man, very informative. Interesting to see that Ethereum is still way below Bitcoin in terms of energy consumption. Maybe in the future we`ll see the trend shift from PoW to PoS to be more environment friendly (would be good to see some data on this one with just nodes running to stake).

Do you want a real environment friendly cryptocurrency? Check Burst's website. The coin can be mined using your hard drives. The power consumption per transaction is very much lower than that of BTC. BTC consumes 205 KWh of electricity per transaction, Burst can do that with only 0,5 KWh.

It has not been having the attention it deserves from my perspective. But maybe soon it will, once the PoCC starts announcing their new proposals and updates.
legendary
Activity: 896
Merit: 1000
Regarding the envirement issue, as long as there is renewable energy available in the mining process, i dont think there are big problems related to the envirement and cryptocurrency.
sr. member
Activity: 994
Merit: 257
Wow, Bitcoin consumes more power than many multinational companies combined and more power than a whole country of Ecuador. Eh, certainly BTC is not power efficient I think we all can agree on that.
Well, That's a very good and informative article.
One of the many dreams of bitcoin users is that bitcoin is used all over the world so it is obvious that bitcoin is going to use a huge amount of energy, but as we know bitcoin mining most of the time happens in china and most of the miners are close to hydro plants so bitcoin is powered by green energy already and for many small mining farms they only use excess energy created by those plants so bitcoin is not as bad for the environment as many people think.
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 3391
The problem with these claims that Bitcoin uses X times as much energy as Y is that they don't compare total energy usage. For example, this article quotes data center usage for some big companies but that is only a small part of the company's footprint. What about manufacturing, or even the energy cost of employees driving to work?
hero member
Activity: 1050
Merit: 529
Wow, Bitcoin consumes more power than many multinational companies combined and more power than a whole country of Ecuador. Eh, certainly BTC is not power efficient I think we all can agree on that.
Well, That's a very good and informative article.
hero member
Activity: 1834
Merit: 759
Woah, excellent write-up man! Incredibly detailed.

Bitcoin being insanely inefficient in terms of power consumption isn't a new subject, but I have never seen it compared to other cryptos, and even USD. It's not a good look for us with the numbers being as lopsided as they are. It's still a rather obscure issue, and until it makes it to the foreground, it can never be addressed. People who are against Bitcoin are going to have a field day with your article, but that may be necessary to push innovation.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100
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Good post man, very informative. Interesting to see that Ethereum is still way below Bitcoin in terms of energy consumption. Maybe in the future we`ll see the trend shift from PoW to PoS to be more environment friendly (would be good to see some data on this one with just nodes running to stake).
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