
You should really stop worrying about how much energy Bitcoin uses - iafrikan
https://www.iafrikan.com/2018/08/22/you-should-really-stop-worrying-about-how-much-energy-bitcoin-uses/
======
Scarblac
> If bitcoin technology were to mature by more than 100 times its current
> market size, it would still equal only 2 percent of all energy consumption.

As if using 2% of all energy consumption is reasonable for a payment system.

And at 100x current market size, it'd _still_ be hardly used.

And it can't really start using less energy as it matures, because its insane
energy use is its defence against hostile network takeover.

~~~
Rallerbabs
It is most certainly a reasonable consumption for a payment system. Every
society with inflationary money eventually grinds to a halt and crumbles. The
world must absolutely have the best implementation of money that it can get
its hands on.

Energy use is not its defense against attacks. Distributed hashing is. The
hashrate can be much lower and Bitcoin would still work. The difficulty would
adjust downward.

Obviously, the hashrate will top out at some point in the future. From that
point on, it can dwindle and that won't be a problem. Just so long as a
certain minimum amount stays around to keep the network running. That won't be
a problem in a future where Bitcoin has become the new global currency.

~~~
dj-wonk
Re: "Every society with inflationary money eventually grinds to a halt and
crumbles."

Would you like to support this claim and/or clarify what you mean?

------
dj-wonk
Re: "So perhaps people should quit criticizing bitcoin for its energy
intensity and start criticizing states and nations for still providing new
industries with dirty power supplies instead."

Three responses:

(1) The author has introduced another unrelated claim, presumably to distract
from the main point. See the informal usage of "non-sequitur" at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy)

(2) This is a false choice. The two arguments are separate.

(3) There are better alternatives when it comes to energy efficiency: (A) in
the current cryptocurrency space; (B) in the financial transaction space; (C)
in the (open-ended, what might the future hold) software design space.

...

The article misses the point. If we're talking energy, the main criticism of
Bitcoin is its efficiency. I mean "efficiency" as defined in the engineering
sense: useful output / input. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency)

If we define useful output as one Bitcoin transaction, how much input energy
does that require?

According to [2], "Because of all that calculation, the energy cost of Bitcoin
is high in comparison with that of conventional financial transactions. For
example, according to one estimate, processing a bitcoin transaction consumes
more than 5,000 times as much energy as using a Visa credit card."

According to [3], "Bitcoin's power consumption is extremely high compared to
conventional digital payment, and one transaction now uses as much energy as
your house in a week"

[2] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/the-ridiculous-
amoun...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/the-ridiculous-amount-of-
energy-it-takes-to-run-bitcoin)

[3] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-
mi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-
electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change)

...

Finally, here's my personal perspective. I have relatively little confidence
in a simple, generalized idea of cryptocurrencies. As far as the basic
computer science, I like blockchain technologies roughly as much as I like
Merkle trees. I'm also open to see where alternative forms of transactions can
go.

That said, these forms have design constraints that the technologies must
address. I would like to see particular innovation in the design of particular
cryptocurrencies that make them suitable for particular uses. For a system
that hopes to scale up transactions for a broad user base, I think per-
transaction energy efficiency is an important metric.

