
One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week - mortenjorck
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change
======
matt_wulfeck
Well, since bitcoin only supports a maximum of 3.5 transactions-per-second [1]
we at least have an upper boundary on its excessive waste.

1\. [http://www.altcointoday.com/bitcoin-ethereum-vs-visa-
paypal-...](http://www.altcointoday.com/bitcoin-ethereum-vs-visa-paypal-
transactions-per-second/)

~~~
BLanen
That's not at all how it works...

3.5 Tx/s stays steady and the price increases the power it takes will only
increase because miners will turn on more machines but due to increased
difficulty will mine the same amount of bitcoins.

A clear example of tragedy of the commons. Where the commons is new blocks.
And the tragedy is the waste of electricity and labour.

------
blunte
Their approach of attributing cost per transaction doesn't really make sense
for bitcoin. I don't know the edge case of zero transactions within a block
timeframe, but for 1+ transactions, a block will certainly be generated. And
the generation of that block has very, very little energy cost associated with
transaction validation. The vast majority of time spent is on hashing over and
over until the outcome has the lucky leading zeroes (and thus winning the
privilege of writing the block).

Whatever throughput solution is devised, unless the fundamental block-writing-
lottery rules are changed, energy use will not change significantly.

Also, you can't just sum up all bitcoin mining energy costs and project how
that energy could otherwise be spent. Energy transmission is complicated and
wasteful over great distances. If some mining operations are in areas of low
habitation, then they aren't necessarily taking from what could otherwise be
given to more productive uses.

Finally, assuming _some_ mining is done with local renewable energy, then that
energy is not necessarily being wasted any more than sun that falls on unused
dirt is being wasted.

~~~
thisisit
While I can't comment on the exact stats they are pulling up but I don't
understand your logic here. Transaction is not "valid" until it is part of a
block. So, validation is not separate from block generation, it's a part of
it.

A good read on this topic:
[https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/49531/concept-
of...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/49531/concept-of-
validating-transactions)

~~~
blunte
Correct, validation is certainly part of block generation. But the act of
validating a transaction is a minimal effort compared to the (many times of)
hashing that goes on as part of the proof of work.

My point is that for all practical purposes, the transaction validation is so
insignificant that it makes little sense to try attribute the energy cost of
making one block to the transactions within that block.

Stuffing more transactions into a block doesn't change the fact that a new
block will be created about every 10min, and that the energy cost of writing
that block will be about the same. Seeing this cost from a per-transaction
perspective is questionable. The reason this whole process is so expensive is
because of the design goal of relative immutability and the proof-of-work
scheme that aids in this reaching this goal.

~~~
thisisit
A transaction needs to be part of a block to be valid. So using transaction
_validation_ is a red herring. The validation uses same amount of energy it is
required to be included in the block.

But, I see your point. So let's see how this thing will unfold if we talk
about blocks (assuming all data is correct):

From the article:

> This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by
> miners for each Bitcoin transaction

So, as per the article a house needs 215kwh per week.

Data Source for the article here: [https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-
consumption](https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption)

Energy consumption for yesterday shows as 24.25 Twh. Block is generated every
10 mins so 144 blocks in a day.

24.25/144 = 0.17 Twh ~ 168 MWh or 168000 kwh for each block.

When divided with _per house per week_ from article - 168000/215 ~ 781 houses

So the apt headline, as per you is -

"One Bitcoin _Block_ Now Uses as Much Energy as more than _750_ Houses in a
Week"

I am sure people will love to talk about consumption per transaction if that
was the headline.

------
glenstein
I have no problem with itemizing the electricity usage of various things
computers do. But is there any particular reason to single out the energy
usage of Bitcoin as opposed to say, email, or Google's ad network, or Clash of
Clans, or the estimated average electricity usage generated by a single Trump
tweet?

By all means, let's scrutinize electricity usage, but I don't know what
coherent set of priorities puts Bitcoin at the top of the list for scrutiny.

~~~
swalsh
It makes sense, People will keep buying and adding computational power until
the return on running the machines is lower than the cost of electricity. when
the "cost of a bitcoin" rises faster than the cost of electricity it can
directly lead to an increase in use. So unlike any other thing we run on
computers for profit... bitcoin has a direct cause and effect relationship.

~~~
glenstein
People feel their computers return value in all sorts of ways that have zero
connection to a monetary return on investment. The value of being able to
communicate, to do research, to store their cat pictures, etc. No one is
isolating out the marginal added value of additional cat pictures and
measuring it against the cost of electricity.

And even for the small subset of computer users just interested in bitcoin
mining, they just have to know their own electric bill, not the resource usage
across the entire network.

So I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about.

------
prostoalex
He's right to question the environmental footprint, but "worldwide Bitcoin
mining could power the daily needs of 821,940 average American homes" only in
the world where high-power lines cost zero to build, span enormous distances
across oceans and mountain ranges, and are fairly reliable to allow for zero
maintenance costs.

In _certain_ places of the world the electricity costs are approaching zero
(or negative).

------
tananaev
It would be nice to have an estimate on how much resources would be used on
the same bank transaction.

~~~
nonbel

      # kilowatt-hours per transaction
      # https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change
      btc = 215 
    
      # Transactions per day
      tpd = 3e5
    
      # convert btu to terawatt-hours
      # http://www.dvirc.org/how-much-energy-does-an-office-building-consume/
      officeEnergyPerYear = 1.4e9*.293071/10^12
    
      # https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/05/24-7-wall-st-banks-with-most-branches/16648133/
      nBankBranchUS = 94725
    
      # Convert to kw-h to tw-h
      btcEnergyPerYear = btc*tpd*365/10^9
    
      >   btcEnergyPerYear/(officeEnergyPerYear*nBankBranchUS)
      [1] 0.6057412
    

I have no idea if the source numbers are correct, but this is a better
statistic. Mining uses the same amount of energy as used for ~58k average
office buildings. So the worldwide bitcoin mining energy consumption is about
half of that currently used for banks only in the US. This is assuming banks
are "average" (probably higher due to security concerns) and of course that
banking doesn't consume energy in any other way.

------
ephimetheus
What amazes me the most is that the average household sits at 900kWh per
month. That's about what I use per YEAR!

------
harpiaharpyja
The title of the article is incredibly misleading. According to the content of
the article, you could use, "as much energy as your house [uses] in a week,"
to mine a bitcoin and still make a profit off of it due to the current price
of bitcoin.

That's a very different thing from a single transaction using that much
energy.

~~~
ajross
No, that's not what it's saying. Here's the quote:

> [Bitcoin total power consumption] averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-
> hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are
> currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American
> household consumes 901 KWh per month,

I didn't go to primary sources to confirm those numbers, but if they are
correct the title is accurate.

The bigger point here isn't the price per transaction, it's to point out the
absolutely absurd liquidity mess that bitcoin has become. To first
approximation, no one uses bitcoin to buy anything anywhere, ever. They just
park coins as investments, hoping to cash out at some point in the future.

Except of course that won't work, because when it comes time to cash out,
everyone will realize that _there is no one out there to buy your coins_. The
crash, when it comes (and it will) will be catastrophic.

And also, yeah, it's wasting a ton of energy.

~~~
danbruc
No, you got it wrong, the Bitcoin total power consumption is unknown but it
can be bound from below by the hash rate and the most efficient mining
hardware available and from above by the price, block reward, and energy costs
assuming nobody is mining at a loss. Reread the paragraph before your quote.

 _[...] estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be
profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of
electricity annually [...]_

~~~
ajross
All estimates I've seen are that bitcoin mining in practice is extraordinarily
efficient and that new capacity comes online to track price increases quickly.
You have evidence to the contrary that miners are leaving money on the table?

~~~
danbruc
If that is true, then the actual energy consumption would closely track the
theoretically expected maximum. This shifts the question to how accurate the
discussed estimate is but it still does not give the total energy consumption.
But we could probably agree that it is probably on the same order of
magnitude.

------
vinniejames
The fundamental flaw in the argument in comparison to Visa or MasterCard is
the fact they don’t take into account the energy consumption of the entire
organization.

Visa/MasterCard employ tens of thousands of employees (maybe more). Each of
those employees have to drive to work everyday, consuming energy. Then sit in
brightly lit office buildings, each running a computer sucking down power.

Those buildings have to be built, using time energy and resources.

Without taking into account all of the energy overhead required for these
organizations to function the argument is meaningless.

If cryptotocurrencies continue down this path, it’s quite likely these types
of organizations could cease to exist. Resulting in a huge energy savings.

It’s also extremely likely crypto currencies will reduce energy consumption by
moving to more efficient transaction validation methods like Proof of Stake

~~~
genericacct
..Because crypto miners do not operate in buildings that have to be built &
lit, right?

~~~
gonvaled
Do you have any indication that bitcoin is as labor-intensive as traditional
banking?

~~~
dmitriid
What Bitcoin offers is a fraction of what "traditional banking" does. A lot of
"labor intensiveness" in banks comes from various forms of what can be
described as customer support.

Consider just one thing that Bitcoin doesn't offer: applying for a house loan.
Even in an internet-only bank (such things exist) there will be a live person
handling your case who will guide you through various processes.

