Guards have salaries to be paid. They also need to sleep, go home, live their lives after their shifts. Arming them requires training, firearms, paperworks, documentation, accounting, offices, insurance, taxes, etc.
Miners just need a little bit of security, cooling, and electricity.
Topic: Next difficulty ~4,000,000,000? Tracking difficulty since 145,000,000. - page 12. (Read 32518 times)
October 15, 2013, 04:54:14 AM
October 15, 2013, 02:13:18 AM
And how much time, energy and wealth do you think is wasted guarding banks, ATMs and gold reserves? Orders of magnitude more than it would take to secure the bitcoin network.
So guarding ATMs, banks and gold reserves consumes 10x more electricity than the US produces? Did you even read what you quoted?
October 15, 2013, 02:10:53 AM
Once again my prediction was too conservative.
LOL
go miners!
LOL
go miners! 
October 14, 2013, 07:56:54 PM
I just think it's silly to complain about energy waste of bitcoin mining when it would actually save energy if gold and paper fiat currency were replaced by bitcoin.
Stating that as fact doesnt make for one.
If only US dollar would be replaced by bitcoin, how much would 1 bitcoin be worth?
Lets assume very conservatively there are only 10 trillion dollar. Divided by 21 million bitcoin gives ~$500K per btc.
So hypothetically, how much energy would be consumed by the bitcoin network once it would have stabilized? As much as it would earn in mining.
Per year we would mine ~1.3M BTC or $657,000,000,000 worth of bitcoins.
Assume $0.15/KWH that works to 4,380,000,000,000 KWh or 4,380 TWh
Thats 5x more than the US produces in nuclear power. and almost exactly equals the total electricity production in the US (4300 TWh). Funny coincidence.
Yeah, lets replace the dollar with bitcoin to save the environment
To use crypto as a currency for goods and services you would do it in parallel to USD, like is happening atm, and gradually cut over, you wouldn't focus on exchange. BTC exchanges only account for about 3-4% of daily transactions.
The point being is that electricity priced in BTC may not be anything like electricity priced in USD because USD is so inflated that the utilities would have to rethink their pricing model.
Next difficulty is in 337 blocks, and it looks like going over 250mill.
October 14, 2013, 07:33:17 PM
And how much time, energy and wealth do you think is wasted guarding banks, ATMs and gold reserves? Orders of magnitude more than it would take to secure the bitcoin network.
Stating that as fact doesnt make for one.
If only US dollar would be replaced by bitcoin, how much would 1 bitcoin be worth?
Lets assume very conservatively there are only 10 trillion dollar. Divided by 21 million bitcoin gives ~$500K per btc.
So hypothetically, how much energy would be consumed by the bitcoin network once it would have stabilized? As much as it would earn in mining.
Per year we would mine ~1.3M BTC or $657,000,000,000 worth of bitcoins.
Assume $0.15/KWH that works to 4,380,000,000,000 KWh or 4,380 TWh
Thats 5x more than the US produces in nuclear power. and almost exactly equals the total electricity production in the US (4300 TWh). Funny coincidence.
Yeah, lets replace the dollar with bitcoin to save the environment
I just think it's silly to complain about energy waste of bitcoin mining when it would actually save energy if gold and paper fiat currency were replaced by bitcoin.
Stating that as fact doesnt make for one.
If only US dollar would be replaced by bitcoin, how much would 1 bitcoin be worth?
Lets assume very conservatively there are only 10 trillion dollar. Divided by 21 million bitcoin gives ~$500K per btc.
So hypothetically, how much energy would be consumed by the bitcoin network once it would have stabilized? As much as it would earn in mining.
Per year we would mine ~1.3M BTC or $657,000,000,000 worth of bitcoins.
Assume $0.15/KWH that works to 4,380,000,000,000 KWh or 4,380 TWh
Thats 5x more than the US produces in nuclear power. and almost exactly equals the total electricity production in the US (4300 TWh). Funny coincidence.
Yeah, lets replace the dollar with bitcoin to save the environment
October 14, 2013, 05:40:36 PM
More energy efficient designs will be slightly profitable while old models probably not anymore. Considering the same electricity cost of course
Thats true for the individual miner, but the network doesnt care. Inefficient miners that are no longer operationally profitable will shut down, the resulting decrease in difficulty will enable the more efficient miners to add more hashrate profitably to the network. The net result is a higher hashrate, but the same energy consumption, assuming everyone pays the same price per KwH.
The only way to make energy consumption lower is if somehow the hardware would become much more expensive compared to the electricity they consume. That is still the case today, a KnC or HF machine costs way more in purchase than it will likely ever cost in electricity. But thats only for now, in the long run those asic prices will drop dramatically and as the network increasingly stabilizes, miners can invest longer term up to the point where writing off the hardware over 10 years (or whatever) is completely insignificant compared to their electricity bill, and the latter will determine profitability, and therefore equal mining revenue.
October 14, 2013, 05:40:02 PM
Energy efficiency of these asics doesnt matter for the overall picture. More energy efficient designs would just lead to a much higher network hashrate, but at the same overall power consumption as a very inefficient (but comparably cheap to produce) asic. Only electricity price and the bitcoin value (and perhaps transaction fees) will determine how much electricity the network will use. And its not gong to be very green, especially if bitcoin value rises to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars as some think.
More energy efficient designs will be slightly profitable while old models probably not anymore. Considering the same electricity cost of course
October 14, 2013, 05:27:04 PM
I just think it's silly to complain about energy waste of bitcoin mining when it would actually save energy if gold and paper fiat currency were replaced by bitcoin.
Stating that as fact doesnt make for one.
If only the US dollar would be replaced by bitcoin, how much would 1 bitcoin be worth?
Lets assume very conservatively there are only 10 trillion dollar. Divided by 21 million bitcoin gives ~$500K per btc.
So hypothetically, how much energy would be consumed by the bitcoin network once it would have stabilized? As much as it would earn in mining (see https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3338966)
Per year we would mine ~1.3M BTC or $657,000,000,000 worth of bitcoins.
Assume $0.15/KWH that works to 4,380,000,000,000 KWh or 4,380 TWh
Thats 5x more than the US produces in nuclear power. and almost exactly equals the total electricity production in the US (4,300 TWh). Funny coincidence.
Yeah, lets replace the dollar with bitcoin to save the environment
October 14, 2013, 05:05:02 PM
Energy efficiency of these asics doesnt matter for the overall picture. More energy efficient designs would just lead to a much higher network hashrate, but at the same overall power consumption as a very inefficient (but comparably cheap to produce) asic. Only electricity price and the bitcoin value (and perhaps transaction fees) will determine how much electricity the network will use. And its not gong to be very green, especially if bitcoin value rises to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars as some think.
More energy efficient designs will be slightly profitable while old models probably not anymore. Considering the same electricity cost of course
October 14, 2013, 04:58:55 PM
You want to talk about a waste of electricity? Bitcoin mining is nothing lol, just a tiny drop in the ocean of wastefulness for the sake of our phoney economy.
Only about the output of a small nuclear power station, and increasing as the difficulty rises.Like I said, it's nothing compared to other stuff. We consume over 140,000 TWh each year. Do you know how much power the entertainment industry consumes? Or the IT industry? Or gold mining besides the environmental damage it does? Even the minting/transport of our fiat currency costs more in power than bitcoin mining does. Do your homework please.
So you are suggesting that crypto miners should do nothing about energy waste because other industries waste more? That's kind of pathetic really.
What do you want them to do about it? GPUs are less energy efficient per $ than Asics are, and new Asics are only becoming more efficient because nobody wants to mine and pay a lot in electricity. I just think it's silly to complain about energy waste of bitcoin mining when it would actually save energy if gold and paper fiat currency were replaced by bitcoin.
October 14, 2013, 04:51:00 PM
You want to talk about a waste of electricity? Bitcoin mining is nothing lol, just a tiny drop in the ocean of wastefulness for the sake of our phoney economy.
Only about the output of a small nuclear power station, and increasing as the difficulty rises.Like I said, it's nothing compared to other stuff. We consume over 140,000 TWh each year. Do you know how much power the entertainment industry consumes? Or the IT industry? Or gold mining besides the environmental damage it does? Even the minting/transport of our fiat currency costs more in power than bitcoin mining does. Do your homework please.
So you are suggesting that crypto miners should do nothing about energy waste because other industries waste more? That's kind of pathetic really.
For starters it effects profits, and secondly there is nothing physical been produced.
October 14, 2013, 04:50:36 PM
Like I said, it's nothing compared to other stuff. We consume over 140,000 TWh each year. Do you know how much power the entertainment industry consumes? Or the IT industry? Or gold mining besides the environmental damage it does? Even the minting/transport of our fiat currency costs more in power than bitcoin mining does. Do your homework please.
You do have to contrast it to the number of people it serves. Bitcoin is used by like 0.005% of the population and even then perhaps only 1% of the time compared to fiat. Comparing that with gold or fiat is disingenuous. If bitcoin ever achieves anything close to the popularity of fiat or gold, its value will skyrocket and as a result, so will electricity consumption for mining as the two are linearly correlated.
October 14, 2013, 04:46:14 PM
You want to talk about a waste of electricity? Bitcoin mining is nothing lol, just a tiny drop in the ocean of wastefulness for the sake of our phoney economy.
Only about the output of a small nuclear power station, and increasing as the difficulty rises.Like I said, it's nothing compared to other stuff. We consume over 140,000 TWh each year. Do you know how much power the entertainment industry consumes? Or the IT industry? Or gold mining besides the environmental damage it does? Even the minting/transport of our fiat currency costs more in power than bitcoin mining does. Do your homework please.
October 14, 2013, 03:34:32 PM
Just use www.allchains.info - it has the most reliable method.
Currently predicts 243,000,000 for next adjustment.
Currently predicts 243,000,000 for next adjustment.
Not impressed by it. Its now predicting 254M, and thats most likely still 10M lower than what it will be.
Dot-bit has been fairly consistently predicting around ~265M for some time now. It seems like allchains is using the old algorithm that dot-bit used and ditched:
"New used algorithm to estimate next difficulties is more accurate than traditional estimations, especially in cases of great difficulty change.
Old estimations are still available on the old difficulty page."
http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php
Their old algo gives the exact same result as allchains.
October 14, 2013, 12:55:42 PM
With efficiency 7w/gh/s whole network uses somewhere between 10 and 20 MW. And most of asics are more efficient than that. That's nowhere near small nuclear power plant
Isnt it ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_nuclear_reactor_designs
And its only going to get worse, much, much worse. CPU's, GPU's and FPGA's were inherently expensive because of their complexity and different target markets; that cost (to the miner) limited overall hashrate to well below its electricity cost. Bitcoin asics are dirt cheap to produce, and have no value other than for mining, so in the long run, their price will come down to the point where its irrelevant and nearly all mining revenue will be spent on electricity.
Energy efficiency of these asics doesnt matter for the overall picture. More energy efficient designs would just lead to a much higher network hashrate, but at the same overall power consumption as a very inefficient (but comparably cheap to produce) asic. Only electricity price and the bitcoin value (and perhaps transaction fees) will determine how much electricity the network will use. And its not gong to be very green, especially if bitcoin value rises to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars as some think.
October 14, 2013, 12:36:26 PM
With efficiency 7w/gh/s whole network uses somewhere between 10 and 20 MW. And most of asics are more efficient than that. That's nowhere near small nuclear power plant
You are pulling energy figures out of the air, earlier this year they were talking about 650watt per GH/s with all the GPU miners.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html
However I look at it this way, we are currently mining about 5,000 coins per day, each one worth around $140 and people will keep adding gear until almost all that money goes in electricity/aircon bills. At 15c per kWh that's a lot of electricity.
October 14, 2013, 04:41:20 AM
With efficiency 7w/gh/s whole network uses somewhere between 10 and 20 MW. And most of asics are more efficient than that. That's nowhere near small nuclear power plant
October 14, 2013, 04:24:32 AM
KnC has 1000 units left to ship = 500Th = 71mil diff till end of october = next jump 220mil, my guess
You think BFL stopped shipping all of their ~3000TH backlog ? Bitfury stopped shipping and expanding (~+100TH or so in their private mine alone this month so far)?
You sure asicminer will not deploy zero of the 500TH this month as friedcat claimed? Then there is the slim chance Hashfast would actually deliver on their promise.
We already looking at 240-260M next week without any of the above. Good luck betting on 220 by the end of the month
HashFast - already stated that in BEST case scenario shipping starts first week of november.
ASICminer - dont know
Bitfury - few TH
BFL
- few TH (with they babies 5,25,50)EDIT: im betting 220 for next jump not the end of the month!
Things are starting to get really ugly for the big expensive data center based farms. ASICminer are only about 2% of the nethash atm, if Hashfast ship on time the 1,000 diff in December is a reasonable guess.
I don't think the net hash growth is going to slow much before 5PH/s is reached, it's all one classic waste of electricity right at the time the climate doesn't need wasted energy.
You want to talk about a waste of electricity? Bitcoin mining is nothing lol, just a tiny drop in the ocean of wastefulness for the sake of our phoney economy.
October 14, 2013, 04:17:37 AM
Anyone worked out how many kWh per BTC? I guess the average power consumption would be over 2watt per GH/s atm. must work out to well over 500kWh per coin when you factor in dater center aircon.
RIght now hardware cost is still a far bigger cost than electricity, but given the nature of asics, that wont last very long. At some point, the electricity cost to mine a bitcoin will pretty much equal its market value. As long as it considerably cheaper to mine than buy, more people will join the network, its that simple.
October 14, 2013, 03:58:55 AM
KnC has 1000 units left to ship = 500Th = 71mil diff till end of october = next jump 220mil, my guess
You think BFL stopped shipping all of their ~3000TH backlog ? Bitfury stopped shipping and expanding (~+100TH or so in their private mine alone this month so far)?
You sure asicminer will not deploy zero of the 500TH this month as friedcat claimed? Then there is the slim chance Hashfast would actually deliver on their promise.
We already looking at 240-260M next week without any of the above. Good luck betting on 220 by the end of the month
HashFast - already stated that in BEST case scenario shipping starts first week of november.
ASICminer - dont know
Bitfury - few TH
BFL
- few TH (with they babies 5,25,50)EDIT: im betting 220 for next jump not the end of the month!
Things are starting to get really ugly for the big expensive data center based farms. ASICminer are only about 2% of the nethash atm, if Hashfast ship on time the 1,000 diff in December is a reasonable guess.
I don't think the net hash growth is going to slow much before 5PH/s is reached, it's all one classic waste of electricity right at the time the climate doesn't need wasted energy.
You want to talk about a waste of electricity? Bitcoin mining is nothing lol, just a tiny drop in the ocean of wastefulness for the sake of our phoney economy.
Jump to: