
Bitcoin Mining Now Consuming More Electricity Than Many Countries - myroon5
https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/
======
mrb
I've conducted the most detailed and precise energy estimate of Bitcoin miners
and bounded it to 5.61-10.93 TWh/year as of 28 Jul 2017:
[http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-
consumption/](http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/) Today
it's probably closer to ~15 TWh/year which represents ~0.01% of the world's
energy consumption.

However this article claims 29.05 TWh/year, basing it on Digiconomist which is
the work of an _amateur_ and known to overestimate by ~2×:
[http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-
beci/](http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/)

~~~
erikpukinskis
Why are you and the article using TWh/year? Why not just use watts? By my
math...

    
    
      15 TWh/year
      = 15000 GWh/year
      = 41 GWh/day
      = 1.7 Gwh/hour
      = 1.7 GW
    

Which is approximately one of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_coulee_dam_aerial_2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_coulee_dam_aerial_2.jpg)

~~~
Banderly
Or put another way, approximately enough to power 110 of the most powerful
supercomputers in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight, that would give a combined
performance of 10 exaFLOPS.

[https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1](https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1)

Given bitcoin's current throughput that's about 1 exaFLOP equivalent per
bitcoin transaction.

There is no wealth being created here, merely a lot of wealth being rapidly
redistributed with a great proportion of that literally turned into heat.

This will not end well.

~~~
Itsdijital
Although I'm a bit of a biased (dumped btc) hypocrite (made good money from
it), bitcoin kinda needs to die. There are vastly superior alternatives that
improve on btc in pretty much every way. Bitcoin has got the name though, so
people keep buying it.

------
zby
I totally agree that this is insane - but it is not much more insane than what
we do with gold, we dig it from the ground and then put it back to sit in
underground vaults. Still I guess gold is much more reliable as a store of
value:)

[https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-
work-8d8265def194](https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194)

By the way it is important to note that with each block halving in a
simplified model (ignoring fees) should reduce the hash power by half.

Proof of Stake might help us here: [https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-stake-
can-be-cheaper-than-p...](https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-stake-can-be-
cheaper-than-proof-of-work-da14223a965) \- but it is not entirely clear that
there are no holes in the PoS systems design.

~~~
igorgue
Or fracking that makes us drink contaminated water.

But the HN community wants something like "Proof of planting a tree" or
something like that...

Take a look at "Proof of Space" and "Proof of Time" by
[https://chia.network/](https://chia.network/)

~~~
mort96
Can you link to anyone at all on Hacker News claiming that cryptocurrencies
should be based on proof of planting a tree, or were you making a strawman
argument?

~~~
DonHopkins
There were a few green proof-of-delivering-marijuana start-ups, but I can't
remember any green proof-of-planting-a-tree ones.

------
wyldfire
I've always touted the line about comparing the energy consumed to the value
produced. And while I still think that you must normalize the numbers, I also
start to grow concerned that its continued growth seems like it might actually
be a problem.

Oh, wow, -- lightbulb -- I didn't notice this until I started to write this
post. I was going to ruminate about what PoW could we possibly do instead
(presuming we need PoW for a good cryptocoin).

Now I'm thinking that _this_ is the correction that will finally level off
speculation?

Bitcoin's value is bounded: it can't be worth much more to humanity than the
sum of all global financial services (likely worth much less). But its energy
consumption is only bounded by the perception of its future value. Hash rate
growth is fueled by speculation in continued growth in the bitcoin exchange
rate.

At some point the energy consumption may grow fast enough to damper excitement
about future gains. Then again, with each halving the inflation rate slows. So
it's calibrated to keep increasing.

I wonder if the next Bitcoin community crisis will be different approaches to
difficulty or reward. Those seem much more "untouchable" than block size, so
hopefully not.

~~~
runeks
> But its energy consumption is only bounded by the perception of its future
> value. Hash rate growth is fueled by speculation in continued growth in the
> bitcoin exchange rate.

How do you figure? Miners mine bitcoins and sell them at the current exchange
rate -- not a future one.

Mining to speculate on future price increases make no sense. If you believe
the price will rise, just buy bitcoins now (no reason to mine them at a loss).

~~~
nhaehnle
Are miners actually selling all earned bitcoins immediately? If so, that means
there must be at least 20 million USD "entering" Bitcoin every day in net
terms. That seems like a lot, certainly much more than could be supported by
actual economic activities in Bitcoin (including illegal ones).

How many people are there who are willing to use, say, 10k USD of their own
money for gambling? How many greater fools?

Then again, some of those "greater fools" could be people holding Bitcoin that
they collected from ICOs, so who knows.

As they say, the really tricky part of attempting to profit from the bursting
of bubbles is the timing.

~~~
killjoywashere
20M USD/d * 365 ~ 7B USD. I suspect people are trying to evacuate north of 1T
USD from China alone. This will go on for years.

------
leot
Hypothesis: bitcoin is well-modeled as an emergent superintelligence
optimizing for btc instead of paperclips. If so, we've got a problem.

~~~
visarga
Just like any meme, it is optimized to self-reproduce and grow.

~~~
leot
Most memes lack the ability to self-modify while preserving the thing they're
optimizing for.

~~~
bduerst
What is the thing Bitcoin is optimized for again?

~~~
visarga
Mining coins (and hype).

------
JohnJamesRambo
Ethereum's Proof of Stake will probably render all this moot eventually. For
now, Bitcoin's Proof of Work electricity usage sounds high but how much
electricity and resources are used by brick and mortar banks, armored trucks,
etc.?

~~~
runeks
Proof-of-stake is not a replacement for proof-of-work, because PoS doesn’t
solve the problem of which valid chain is the canonical one. That is, when
given 50 different, valid chains, which is the right one?

With PoS, the only way to agree on this is through voting (how many nodes
present the various different chains — which is fragile, since bringing up
additional nodes is cheap), and through centralization (central coordinator
telling you which chain to choose — which adds nothing, since the double spend
problem is easily solved using a central party).

Fundamentally, PoS solves the wrong problem: the difficult problem is not who
gets to extend the chain, it’s deciding which chain to extend in the first
place.

~~~
wcoenen
The idea is to vote not by bringing nodes online, but with a stake. Meaning
you sign with a private key which is linked to a certain amount of
cryptocurrency.

To make sure that something is actually at stake and you don't just vote 50
times on 50 different valid forks, anyone can submit proof to the chain (or
rather, any fork of the chain) which shows that a certain stake voted for
multiple conflicting forks. In that case the stake is destroyed in all of
those forks. Part of the stake may be given to the reporter as incentive for
such reporting.

The result is that stakers need to pick one fork, and the one with the most
votes (weighted by the amount of currency behind them) wins.

~~~
runeks
> Meaning you sign with a private key which is linked to a certain amount of
> cryptocurrency.

This requires that the 50 different chains each use the same private key for
the stake.

What if 50 different chains are presented in which no private keys are the
same?

Why would an attacker reuse the same private key for a new, but valid, chain?

> [...] anyone can submit proof to the chain which shows that a certain stake
> voted for multiple conflicting forks.

How does this solve the problem when the miners (who may have mined on
multiple chains) are the ones who need to include this proof-of-fraud in the
chain? What will make them include a transaction proving they've committed
fraud?

~~~
wcoenen
> What if 50 different chains are presented in which no private keys are the
> same?

The chains share state right up until the fork point. Each fork gets resolved
by the signatures linked to stakes that were already established in the last
shared block.

> What will make them include a transaction proving they've committed fraud?

A staker/miner can chose to not include proof of his own wrongdoing, but that
will not prevent others from creating an alternative fork which does have that
proof.

~~~
runeks
> The chains share state right up until the fork point.

I’m not talking about forks. I’m talking about completely different, but
valid, chains.

> A staker/miner can chose to not include proof of his own wrongdoing, but
> that will not prevent others from creating an alternative fork which does
> have that proof.

This brings us back to the initial problem: how do we agree on which chain is
the canonical one?

Also, what’s the timeout on this event happening? Unless there’s a timeout —
at which point a fork changing history is ignored — some transactions in the
chain remain unsettled because a fork might appear which invalidates them
(because they originated from coins that were staked by a now-proven-
fraudulent staker).

~~~
topmonk
> I’m not talking about forks. I’m talking about completely different, but
> valid, chains.

Typically block zero is signed by the developer of the client, so there is no
such thing as completely different, but valid, chains, as there is always a
fork point.

------
macawfish
"If it keeps increasing at this rate, Bitcoin mining will consume all the
world’s electricity by February 2020"

~~~
imartin2k
In theory, everyone involved with BTC should stop what they are doing.
Obviously, no one will (including me). How can this be solved? Should one
actually hope for a massive crash, just so the planet can be saved?

~~~
alexasmyths
"Should one actually hope for a massive crash, just so the planet can be
saved?"

Yes, and for many other reasons, rooted in the fact that especially since BTC
is not really used as a currency, the effort is de-facto wasted and that we
should likely be putting the energy to better use.

You know the about the Pacific Island, similar to Easter Island, that depleted
all of their resources building massive stone heads?

~~~
Jach
What is BTC used for that keeps every block chock full of transactions?

~~~
alexasmyths
Volume is probably due to the fact some people think of it as a 'store of
value' , even though it's really just the opposite - a 100% purely speculative
instrument, perhaps the most speculative thing one can possibly buy right now.

~~~
gonvaled
It stores value if properly managed: a BTC stays a BTC forever, can not be
stolen, does not degrade, can be stored easily, ...

How much sugar a BTC buys you on the long term is anybody's guess.

~~~
alexasmyths
"a BTC stays a BTC forever, can not be stolen, does not degrade, can be stored
easily"

You've very well illustrated the fundamental problem with Bitcoin: it's
thought of as a technology, when really it's a financial instrument.

The 'storage' you've described is mechanical, technological - and has nothing
to do with the concept of a financial store of value.

A good financial 'store of value' is somewhere you can park some money, and
know that you can go back in 50 years (or some time frame) and it will still
have value. Hopefully a little more.

BTC is extremely volatile, and because it's not backed by anything - it could
go to 0 tomorrow. Probably not - but it could.

Think: will BTC be around in 100 years? Heck, in 10 years?

Maybe.

Will real-estate in London be worth at least something in 100 years? Almost
assuredly.

Real-estate is generally a very good store of value though obviously it
depends upon which regime that real-estate sits.

BTC is a very interesting thing, but it's not really a currency, and not
really a store of value ... so then what is it?

~~~
gonvaled
All actives have relative value. It depends on lots of things. Real state in
London in 100 years? Anybody's guess.

And you will have big costs maintaining that particular store of value (taxes,
maintenance, ...)

Bitcoin storage will cost you zero. And yes, it could be worthless in two
years.

~~~
alexasmyths
"Real state in London in 100 years? Anybody's guess."

Ahh - but we can 'guess' \- and given how we know the world works, there is a
very high likelihood that London property will have value, and probably more
than it does today.

BTC - there's a decent chance it could be worthless.

Though BTC does own the 'upper end of value spectrum' \- i.e. investing in BTC
could make you 1000x richer in 100 years - and London property will never do
that - BTC also owns the lower end of the spectrum, i.e. with a range of
probabilities at zero, or near zero. Meaning - not a very good store of value.

In fact - as a 'store of value' BTC can't even be remotely considered when
there are so many better options.

Speculation? Sure. BTC is might be a good bet actually. Store of value? Bad
bet.

~~~
gonvaled
Agreed!

With one small caveat: the world is in turmoil at the moment (as usual, more
than usual, not sure?), with big events hitting the economy worldwide: climate
change, AI, self-driving cars, automation, ... you name it.

What is the chance of any one of those events to nuke your "London Real State
in 100 years" strategy? Low. The combined chance of all those forces? Not so
low.

What is the chance that real state in London will be wiped out (as a store of
value) and bitcoin will not, in 100 years? The balance is tipped on the side
of London, but not so much as you would think.

Interesting times ...

------
kumarski
Sure bitcoin mining consumes a lot, but let's compare apples to apples.

I'd be willing to spend 200 to 300 terawatt hours a year to really make crypto
work.

Great civilizations are built off:

1/ Rule of Law

2/ Enough electricity to produce nitrogen, steel, and operate telecom.

#1 is worth a lot. Look at India's demonetization and the crisis it caused.
[link: [https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-
demonetiz...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-
demonetization-policy-consequences-by-shashi-
tharoor-2016-12?barrier=accessreg)]

[https://medium.com/@datarade/sure-bitcoin-assumes-a-lot-
of-e...](https://medium.com/@datarade/sure-bitcoin-assumes-a-lot-of-
electricity-but-f05de54e85f2) \- The banking industry fretting over
electricity consumption of bitcoin is out of whack in comparison to the sheer
size and volume of bank electricity consumption at a federal and local level.

I'm very okay with a future in which ethereum smart contracts and bitcoin
mining consume a 10% of global energy production given the alternatives.

------
Fej
People here are comparing the energy use of Bitcoin to that of banking
institutions, but that's missing half the point. The energy here is _wasted_
because Bitcoin does almost nothing of value. The single overwhelming use of
Bitcoin is for speculation.

All of this energy is consumed just so that investors can hopefully get a
return on investment. It appears rather decadent.

Yes, there are other uses for Bitcoin. They are miniscule in comparison to its
use as an investment product.

~~~
jlft
> The energy here is wasted because Bitcoin does almost nothing of value.

You can also argue that mining gold is a waste of resources because gold does
almost nothing of value.

> Yes, there are other uses for Bitcoin. They are miniscule in comparison to
> its use as an investment product.

What about gold? Aren't its uses minuscule in comparision to its speculative
investment value?

The point is: The market decides. One can argue that Bitcoin characteristics
(encrypted, pseudo-anonymous, open source, decentralized, global, scalable,
deflationary, stateless, etc.) justify its speculative price.

~~~
PeterisP
We're not spending country-scale amounts of power or resources to mine gold,
that's a comparably small industry. _That_ is the point, it's so out of
proportion to allocate so much resources to simply validating transactions.

------
flowctrl
This is silly:

"Comparing Bitcoin’s energy consumption to other payment systems

To put the energy consumed by the Bitcoin network into perspective we can
compare it to another payment system like VISA for example. Even though the
available information on VISA’s energy consumption is limited, we can
establish that the data centers that process VISA’s transactions consume
energy equal to that of 50,000 U.S. households. We also know VISA processed
82.3 billion transactions in 2016. With the help of these numbers, it is
possible to compare both networks and show that Bitcoin is extremely more
energy intensive per transaction than VISA."

1\. I have read that with every VISA transaction, transactions move between no
less than 5 separate institutions. What is the net energy used in all of that
deliberate inefficiency? All buildings, vehicles, and energy use of people who
work for VISA must also be taken into account. And for all other credit cards
and payment systems.

2\. Bitcoin isn't really a "payment system", so comparing it to VISA is apples
to oranges. It is more of a store of value, like a bank. So it would more
properly be compared to the net electricity consumption of all banks,
including all buildings, armoured trucks and all vehicles used to ship people
to and from banks around the world.

~~~
cryptodogemoon
Banks offer many services in addition to secure and insured deposits. The same
cannot be said for wallet software made by anonymous internet devs with a
lower barrier to implant obfuscated back doors to steal user funds
irreversibly.

Bitcoin is in a competitive market so energy usage will be more relevant to
compare against the decentralized services offering identical functionality
with alternative algorithms, like litecoin, monereo, ethereum, and so on.

------
ced
I live in a cold climate. In the winter, I heat up my house by passing
electricity through the resistor in my radiator. This is dumb; the electricity
could be doing something useful instead. Why couldn't we have BTC-mining
radiators, that emit heat as a by-product of their computations?

~~~
jokoon
I still wonder if heating a house with transistor is efficient. Gotta ask a
scientist I guess. I mean there must be energy spent switching transistors
back and forth.

~~~
majewsky
What do you mean by "efficient"? That word is usually used to describe the
fraction of energy that goes into a machine and is then _not_ lost to heat.
Since the purpose of a heater is to produce heat, it's pretty much impossible
for it to waste energy.

~~~
anonfunction
Some things produce more heat than others.

~~~
PeterisP
For passive heating, _anything_ puts out exactly as much heat as it consumes
electricity; there's no way around thermodynamics to gain or lose power there.

Yes, there can be heat pump systems with e.g. underground connections, and
_pumping_ heat can be more effective than _generating_ heat; but for pure
heating, generating heat, the simplest resistor heater is just as 100%
efficient as any complex electronic device, all the electricity spent results
in just as much heat.

------
aserafini
Isn't the more interesting statistic in the article that 2.4 million Americans
consume more electricity than 159 countries?

~~~
terryf
I live in a country with 1.3 million people total. So, not really :)

------
sillysaurus3
There was an article pointing out that if BTC reaches 2 trillion GWP, it will
require about 2% of the world's energy. I haven't been able to find it, but
what are some persuasive arguments against the idea that 2 trillion GWP is
worth 2% of our energy?

~~~
randywaterhouse
I recall seeing this comment as well. Measuring BTC in GWP is an odd concept -
maybe I misread - but I take it that means 2 trillion worth of global world
product is made in BTC? Or just that BTC price X coins in existence = 2
trillion?

Apparently today we consume 100% of our energy (hah!) for GWP of 78 trillion
(nominal) [1]. So 2% for 2 trillion would actually appear to be more
efficient. But again, I am not sure if this definition is even real, nor does
this math apply.

Maybe this is up there with bitcoin "market cap" or "price to earnings"
terminology... :|

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

~~~
mikeash
I'm not sure if that math makes sense. Most economic activity involves
actually doing useful things, not just shuffling numbers around. Obviously
there is a segment of economic activity which is, but the vast majority is
other stuff.

If you get $2 trillion of economic activity denominated in Bitcoin, that
activity is going to use a lot of energy in its own right. The energy used for
transferring the Bitcoins around goes on _top_ of that. If the network
_itself_ uses 2% of worldwide energy usage, that doesn't leave much for the
economic activity it represents.

------
nonbel
I posted this on a similar topic:

    
    
      # 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.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614966)

\-----END-----

Has anyone actually tried doing one of these comparisons yet? I mean going
beyond just back of the napkin? Can we get estimates so about whether credit
cards consume more electricity than many countries? Without that this type of
article falls flat. Actually it is interesting that it is so easy to estimate
the total energy consumption in this case.

~~~
mikeash
Using the same amount of energy as nearly 60,000 office buildings to perform
~300,000 transactions per day seems catastrophically bad. That's about 5
transactions per day per office-building-equivalent.

MasterCard, for example, averages something like 2400 transactions per
_second_. That's around 600 times more than Bitcoin. I don't know how many
office-building-equivalents MasterCard uses, but I doubt it's anything like
the 60 million that would be implied by equivalent efficiency to Bitcoin.

The US banking system as a whole does something like 4 million transactions
per second. Using half the energy that these banks use in order to do 3
transactions per second doesn't sound good at all. Even if your estimate for
bank energy usage were 1000 times too low, it would still be ridiculous.

~~~
lowdest
Only a tiny fraction of the power goes into performing transactions; the total
power consumed is independent from transaction rate. Bitcoin in 2009 used
vastly less power than today yet had the same transaction capacity. The power
consumption scales with the price of Bitcoin[1], which is determined by demand
and most of the demand right now is driven by future price speculation.

Interestingly, the new cash-settled CME Bitcoin futures contracts, due to
start trading in December, will allow speculation on the future price to take
place without requiring possession of actual Bitcoin. These futures may both
increase Bitcoin adoption and reduce the upward pressure of speculation on the
price.

[1] More accurately, the value of power consumed for mining Bitcoin approaches
the value of the block reward plus transaction fees.

~~~
mikeash
You could say only a tiny amount of the power is used for transactions. But
given that the transactions are the entire point of the network, all power
used by the network ought to be counted towards the transactions, just like
we’d count the power used by the lights in a bank towards their transactions
even though the lights don’t directly do transactions.

The fact that the power used by Bitcoin is essentially independent of the
number of transactions is interesting, but it’s not a plus for Bitcoin, since
the network is at capacity already.

------
markkat
Perhaps this solves the Fermi Paradox.

~~~
cel1ne
And it does so quite efficiently.

~~~
guscost
Well, I guess you figured out the universe. Not much to do now except wait for
the end, eh?

~~~
cel1ne
It was a joke on my part. There is a lot to do actually. Deal with climate
change foremost.

------
indubitable
In some ways I think the lack of an energy demand is playing a role in the
relatively slow uptake of things like solar. Why swap over when your current
plants are meeting demand just fine? It's certainly no coincidence that China,
who has some of the most rapidly rising demand of energy in the world, is also
installing orders of magnitude greater solar installation than the rest of the
world. In particular China is expected to add about 50GW of _additional_ solar
capacity in 2017 alone, which is more solar than any other nation in the world
has - in total (as of 2016).

Aside from that, the imagination is the limit to things we could do if we had
orders of magnitude greater energy than we do today. Propelling spacecraft by
lasers, charging electric vehicles wirelessly as they drive, conveyor style
road systems, and certainly many things we cannot really even imagine today.
Massive energy availability would create an entirely new field of industry.

------
mjfern
We are expending limited natural resources, producing vast quantities of CO2,
and accelerating global warming just to mine made-up digital coins. Think
about that...

------
knolan
From what I understand a lot of power stations produce excess electricity at
low demand periods because it’s too costly to completely shut a generator
down. So they dump that excess into huge resistor banks. Why not use it to
mine crypto currency?

~~~
stale2002
That's actually literally what people do!

Specifically, miners in China are often located right next to hydropower
plants and buy energy from them when it is cheap.

This is because you can't exactly say that shut off a river, because it rained
too much yesterday, and is producing too much power.

~~~
philwelch
But you can store hydroelectric energy quite easily:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

~~~
stale2002
Not everyone has giant dams and space lying around to create literal lakes of
water to store energy.

Pumped water isn't a great solution as evidenced by the fact that it has been
around for a while and people don't use it right now.

------
knowThySelfx
Couldnt Hashgraph replace Blockchain as a more viable tech?

[https://hashgraph.com/](https://hashgraph.com/)

[https://breathepublication.com/blockchain-just-became-
obsole...](https://breathepublication.com/blockchain-just-became-obsolete-the-
future-is-hashgraph-de4948609cbf)

[https://hackernoon.com/demystifying-hashgraph-benefits-
and-c...](https://hackernoon.com/demystifying-hashgraph-benefits-and-
challenges-d605e5c0cee5)

------
Stenzel
Usually not a big fan of regulation, but in this case I wish for gouvernements
to stop this madness in a smilar way they stopped use of incandescent light
bulbs.

------
raverbashing
This is not sustainable

And more than that, do they expect "card processor" speed and scale with this
amount of resources being needed at current scale?

There must be a better way

~~~
exit
scale and speed will come from layer-2 solutions:
[http://lightning.engineering/](http://lightning.engineering/)

------
3cham
According to:
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1253/report/OF11-1253.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1253/report/OF11-1253.pdf),
the approximate energy consumption for mining gold in South Africa was already
26 TWh * 65% = 16.9 TWh in 2005. Bitcoin still has its future ahead :/

~~~
Havoc
Which isn't saying much. The entire South African grid is sub 40 GW. Roughly
the same as California.

And only a small part of the SA grid goes towards gold mining.

~~~
3cham
It says that mining bitcoin is still cheaper than mining gold

------
jlavine
It seems this problem should be addressed by more energy-efficient Bitcoin
mining rigs and changes to the Bitcoin system to improve efficiency over the
next 1-2 years.

A related very recent announcement:
[https://halongmining.com/](https://halongmining.com/)

>Announcing the DragonMint miner series: The DragonMint 16T miner is the
world’s most efficient Bitcoin miner, running faster and cooler than any
competing miners. It’s the culmination of over 12 months research and
development which has resulted in major advancements in mining technology
including a brand new generation of ASIC mining chips. The DM8575 ASIC runs at
a staggering 85GH per chip with power efficiency of around 0.075J/GH.

~~~
pjc50
The Jevons Paradox applies brutally here: more efficient miners just increase
the value of bitcoin, potentially drawing in more users and even resulting in
a net increase in consumption.

~~~
philwelch
The trick is to make it happen suddenly enough to trigger Bitcoin
hyperinflation.

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tudorconstantin
Consider translating the energy consumed into money (one can easily sell and
buy energy). Then compare the rapport between the total value exchanged in btc
and the total cost of energy with the rapport between the total value
exchanged in fiat and the total costs incurred by the financial institutions
and people to have that (the cost of buildings, the cost with employees, with
their servers, with transporting and securing physical money, etc). That would
be a much fairer comparison in efficiency.

And if bitcoin wouldn't be more efficient after the abive computations, the
fact that people keep using it means it brings them some extra value for which
they're willing to pay the premium costs.

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idibidiart
Amazed that no one can see that Net Neutrality going away could very well mean
the death of Bitcoin. Block the port and/or type of traffic -/ or even easier:
eliminate P2P: everything must go thru a centralized service.

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latchkey
We are scrypt mining in Saigon at a fairly large scale. This is definitely
something we've been thinking a lot about. As we grow, we will likely move to
Iceland, where the power is mostly based on renewable sources.

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th-ai
If PoW energy use grows 10x year over year, in 9 years by 2026 PoW will burn a
billion times more energy than today. More than all countries combined, right?
By what year will PoW double global electricity use?

~~~
th-ai
> Bitcoin mining will consume all the world’s electricity by February 2020

TFA infers by Feb 2021 PoW will double total human electricity use. 38 months
from now. By early 2024, we can burn 1,000x more. In 9 years we can burn
1,000,000 more joules per second than we do today. Hot. The idea is to make
our world a more safe and secure place to store value?

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aqsheehy
Could just end the war on drugs and stop this environmental disaster

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coldcode
Is it theoretically possible to mine bitcoin using a quantum computer, or is
the math not amenable?

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Entangled
Honest question, what's holding the development of cryptocoins without mining?

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mmatoscom
I would like to ask something.. cant we have estimates or analogies of same
type like "internet servers now consuming more electricity than China" for
example? I mean, its obvious! Any system wide available and requested, as
internet or blockchain nodes to process transactions, based in computing which
uses computers which are powered by energy, will spend energy to work. You
guys are smart and I cant even comp to those maths on kilowatts etc, but
really... I only see this electricity consumption GROWING as we are powering
more and more systems, to be datacenters, vms, containers for the internet,
same way to feed blockchain systems around the globe. I don't know if the
point here is like "bad bitcoin it consumes energy" or just a pure analysis.
cheers folks

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bweis
Which is one of the many reasons Ethereum's proof of stake is so interesting.

~~~
cryptodogemoon
Proof of Steak mearly gives power to whomever has established wealth.

It is a marginal improvement over PoW, when the PoW algorithm is not
computationally useful outside brute force hash lotteries and capital
infrastructure race speculation.

Both PoS and PoW implementations should have heavy scrutiny on the
distribution and minting rules for the base supply.

~~~
alanfalcon
I like the idea of Proof of Steak. He who controls the Filet Mignon controls
the world!

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rb808
Does anyone know which countries most of the electricity is used?

~~~
6nf
Almost all of the minin happens in China in areas with very cheap electricity

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maerF0x0
I'm sure so do hair dryers. So what?

There's nothing wrong with humanity using electricity for whatever its best
compensated to use it for.

~~~
c_shu
Yes, human beings always do what's good for themselves.

There is a saying: Never underestimate the power of human wisdom!

They would never do negative-sum games or disastrous things like wars, arms
races, environmental pollution, vicious competition, financial crisis, large-
scale propaganda or persecution.

------
ISL
How much energy is expended annually in mining, refining, storing, and
allocating gold/precious metals?

~~~
saalweachter
A quick google says about $900 / oz, with about $600 / oz being "direct mining
costs" and the rest being things like "mine exploration and development".

If all 900$ were going to crude oil, that'd be about 15 barrels / oz and 25
MWh / oz. Given that we mine about 100M oz / year, that places the upper bound
at about 2500 TWh / year. Given that global energy production was about
170,000 TWh, that's actually a possible figure, although I'd be surprised if
the energy consumption was actually half that (there have to be _some_ non-
energy costs involved, right?).

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scotty79
Will next bitcoin halving help with that?

I guess bitcoin just attracts money too fast driving up the price.

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stock_toaster
Bitcoin, a product of the energy concerns in an effort to sell more energy?

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Cyberdog
Headline clarification: Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than the
electricity consumption of 159 _individual_ nations, not 159 nations
_combined._

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the title to clarify and de-clickbait.

~~~
Cyberdog
Still has the same ambiguity in my eyes. =/

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celticninja
If you click through to where they discuss how they estimate it you can see
that they make some assumptions so that it looks higher than it likely really
is. One of the reasons for this is because it is used as a source for articles
and drives traffic. Each of the listed articles talk about how inefficient and
wasteful it is, so the site does have a reason to make it look as inefficient
as possible.

