They're only estimating the energy cost of 240W on the GPU which is certainly an underestimation but even at say 500W for total system power draw that's only $1.20/day at $0.10/kWhr
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Bitcoin Mining Energy Consumption Surpasses Energy Consumption of (Another) Country
- Thread starter Caz
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US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries – shrinking this war machine is a must
If the US military were a country, its carbon emissions would rank between that of Peru and Portugal.theconversation.com
I'll be the last person to justify the US' absolutely insane military industrial complex, but just to put things in perspective and according to each respective article:
- Bitcoin mining energy consumption is comparable to Argentina (125,000 GW*h per year).
- The US military is comparable to Peru (47,000) and Portugal (48,000).
Yes, you read that correctly: Bitcoin mining (that's Bitcoin alone, not including any other cryptocurrency) consumes two and half times as much energy as the entirety of the US military. That, uh, kind of makes a pretty strong argument in favor of banning the former, especially given the relative difficulty of it vs dismantling the latter.
That is crazy, yes. What would it take to ban bitcoin, do you think?
Actual concern about climate change from world leaders, rather than lip service while keeping in place the same old unbridled capitalistics systems that are driving the planet to ruin because they're popular and they have a vested economic interest in maintaining the status quo.
In other words, expect nothing until it's far too late.
Thus the 'secure' part. But yeah, I also have no clue whether or not the problem could be or could've been swapped for one that focused more of the computational work on solving other meaningful problems.
Renewable energy is expanding pretty fast though, especially in the electricity sector.
No where near fast enough especially when there are new emerging energy sinks like this
The waste in crypto just drives me fucking crazy. I'm pretty anti-crypto in general. I'm done with calling it "Cryptocurrency" because none of them are a currency, and it's been 10 years and none of them have become a currency, and even in the last 5 years of Bitcoin becoming very common it hasn't become any more of a currency than it was 5 years ago. But the energy waste is just infuriating.
Bitcoin really is incredibly power inefficient compared to other crypto currencies. Unfortunately it's the most well known, and thus the largest. And the developers don't seem too interested in changing the mining method away from mining towards stuff like staking.
Just put money into Cardano. People (the mass) don't know about it. If it becomes the next Etherum you could make insane money. I'm putting big money into it now hoping for an amazing payout in the future.
I would be interested to see a comparison to the annual energy consumed and environmental impact of the entire industry creating real estate solely for investment purposes. One of Bitcoin's goals, debatable whether it has achieved them, is to store value to protect against inflation. Real estate has been the largest vehicle for that purpose so far.
Is it better to power Bitcoin, or spend all those resources to build real estate that's primarily used to park money?
I'm not talking about real estate for people to actually use, but real estate targeted primarily at investors. I don't know what the impact of that is worldwide, but I suspect it far surpasses Bitcoin.
That said, there are ways to secure something like Bitcoin that are more energy efficient. Hopefully Bitcoin adopts one of those someday.
Is it better to power Bitcoin, or spend all those resources to build real estate that's primarily used to park money?
I'm not talking about real estate for people to actually use, but real estate targeted primarily at investors. I don't know what the impact of that is worldwide, but I suspect it far surpasses Bitcoin.
That said, there are ways to secure something like Bitcoin that are more energy efficient. Hopefully Bitcoin adopts one of those someday.
Yeah it's good to do some research and see what you think. People around seem fairly positive on it.
I think we can all agree that this is worth doing if it makes a small group of libertarians rich
BTC is still in it's infancy. It takes time to disrupt what we know as currency.
When I was mining Ethereum for shits and giggles, my graphics card was hit pretty hard. One of the reasons some people advised against getting a second hand graphics card after the first crypto mining craze is because that shit is brutal on the hardware.
Again, the question was if the work done was useful in any way, or discarded. The answer is that it's not useful at all, and it's indeed discarded. It's entire purpose is to prevent a distributed attack much like captcha* does; that's all.
*Ironically, unlike Bitcon, captchas can actually be used to do useful work. Google used to have a widespread captcha system where two words were presented: a known one, and a scanned one from their text digitalization project (from newspapers, I believe) that the AI didn't recognize. The known one was the actual test, while the input of the other was used to "scan" the word and improve the AI. I believe similar tests are currently used to train AIs to recognize e.g. vehicles.
Renewable energy has been "expanding very fast" for as long as I've been alive (which is over four decades), and here we still are. There's zero guarantee there'll be a meaningful transition before it's too late to turn climate change around.
For sure, establishing currencies take time, the USD took well over a century and it had a lot more going for it than a nascent techno-wanna-be-currency. I'm just not sure if Bitcoin will ever become a currency, as opposed to just being a temporary fad pushed by techbros, financial speculators, and libertarian/anarchists.
I used to be open to crypto evangelism ~5 years ago. Took a course on blockchain, did some small time development/expirimentation, but I come to look at the arguments I used to make trying to justify the existence of crypto'currency' and... I think it was just that, evangelism, not different from evangelizing a nascent religion to people who I think need saving. The problems I dreamed up for traditional currencies or traditional means of exchange on the internet aren't really problems, or, at least, aren't problems in a way that bitcoin is a solution to them.
I think as a tool of financial speculation, sure, it makes sense. People will pour money into anything that they think they can make "real" money on via speculation. But in terms of a currency, y'know, something that regular people can easily exchange for something else, I think it's more likely that it never becomes normal. Not just a vehicle for financial speculation, but a practical currency (which it always hoped to be).
I had jumped out of the bitcoin/crypto/blockchain evangelism society a couple years ago, but was still kinda on the fence, and now I think I'm firmly anti-crypto haha. This interview by Kara Swisher of Ajay Banga helped me put words into a lot of the thoughts I had about crypto:
Opinion | Your Card Payment Has Been Declined (Published 2020)
Mastercard’s chief executive oversees $6.5 trillion in transactions. That gives him unique insights into our economic recovery, and power over companies like Pornhub.
Well, the reason was less that Mining Crypto is hard on the hardware. And more that people who mine Crypto dont generally give two shits about things like proper airflow, cooling, power efficiency and cleaning out the cobwebs. Thus nailing the system unnaturally hard from all items at once.
Remember, all Crypto Mining is, is your Graphics Card running calculations. Something it does all the time. You'll hit your system just as hard as if you were playing a game at 4-8k at Ultra Settings with Full Ray Tracing. The only difference being that you probably take good care of your system, only have one Graphics Card and aren't straining your system 24/7/365.
There is no other existential purpose or goal other than providing the value for the currency through security. It's not like "folding" -- the 'fad' 10 years ago of providing your unused processor power to help expand our knowledge of the human genome, or help accellerate gene discovery for rare diseases (I'm sure it might still exist today, I just remember it being a big thing 10 years ago like ... "Donate your unused processor power to help find cures for cancer!" and stuff, it doesn't have the same viral attention it used to have)
My current thinking is that crypto is one of the best examples of coming up with a "solution" for a problem that didn't exist. Or, better put, conjuring a problem that needs solving, and then coming up with an insanely inefficient, destructive way of solving it.
I find the justifications for this massive waste, like country-scale waste, are all copouts that make the "problems" that bitcoin are trying to "solve" bigger than the actual problems that 'mining' is introducing. Like, the justifications seek to turn these things that really aren't problems -- trust with financial transactions, anonymity on the internet, secure anonymous ledgers, etc -- into things that are bigger problems than, say, global climate crisis ...... Which is a real problem. I think evangelists for bitcoin, blockchain, crypto, or whatever, tend to conflate public societal problems with individual financial opportunity ... which is appropriate, most of the evangelists are techbros and that's an axiom of tech culture.
And the people that believe those things believe them because it's religious for them. They heard someone say "anonymous secure financial transactions are a problem that needs solving," and they've come to believe that as a matter of faith and people who challenge that faith are like, worse than skeptics, they're haters or they don't get the problem or something. I don't see it as that different than evangelical proselytizers of a controversial new religion.
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It's absolutely insane to compare traditional banking' 150 TWh/y that services millions of people, provides a huge range of services besides just moneykeeping, and employs thousands of people, to 120 TWh/y just for mining bitcoin alone.
I didn't wake up this morning expecting to "defend" banks, but then again, I didn't expect Bitcoin to be peddled as the fucking green alternative to traditional banking. Please lay off the hallucinogenic Kool-Aid.
Difference is that renewable energy actually makes up a big part of the electricity grid as of today + it's already cheaper to use renewable energy than fossil fuels for new projects.
Granted, other sectors like transportation, heavy industry and buildings are going to take a bit longer because of some struggles (mainly batteries / energy storage).
I think you're underestimating the progress we've made in the last few years. This is only going to accelerate even more as prices for renewables are plummeting and efficiency increases.
We can't know with certainty, because Bitcoin's original creator(s) is/are basically anonymous, but the original white paper founding the concept suggests that it was more or less just intended as a proof of concept for implementing blockchain as a currency. Since it was developed in 2008, a time when general GPU programming didn't exist and the idea of rapidly developing dedicated ASICs for something that specific would have sounded crazy, I find it difficult to believe that the volume of computing power used in mining today is anything but an unintended consequence.
There was certainly a spectrum of possible futures between "nobody ever hears of Bitcoin" and "a few Bitcoins can buy you a house". I don't think even most optimistic of Bitcoin advocates back then expected the latter. I still remember when the enthusiastic Bitcoin-head at work excitedly told me one morning that it had finally broken $100.
Yes. Bitcoin's code can be updated if a majority of miners switch to the new code (I think). So it's an issue of getting everyone to agree and coordinate.
A friend of mine recently told me his electrical cost broken down to single digits. His Bitcoin income is $7 for every $4, so he is making $3 in profit for every $4 in electricity he uses when broken down.
+1 to this. Seems to be better in a lot of ways. Be interesting to see who takes the place as a potential global currency with Bitcoin scalability forcing it to be more a store of value.
There you go. Renewables under a capitalistic society still negatively impact the environment. If you are under a growth imperative economy then you aren't going to use renewables to make for a more ecologically sound environment, you are going to exploit it to grow the market. Renewables aren't replacing traditional means of energy production, they are stacking on top of them, because of the growth imperative of capitalism. Some have realized this and don't care, others are ignorant and chase the renewable energy carrot like it is going to somehow fix infinite growth capitalism, with no evidence for decades of that happening.
Nano and Ada are my sincerest hopes for the future. Both are really interesting and better in every way than ETH/BTC.
Exactly. Thinking renewables will magically fix the monstruous damage that capitalism does to the planet (and therefore the latter won't ever need addressing) is wishful thinking at best, a mental sweep-under-rug at worst. It's bad enough to see old politicians that know they won't live to see the consequences peddle this bullshit, but of course crypto fans would also use it to deflect the elephant in the room and environmental disaster that is Bitcoin and proof-of-work crypto.
Yeah, the 240w probably refers to something like a 3080 at 60-70% power limit, with lowered core clock, but overclocked memory clock. This is how you mine ETH nowadays.
To address some points that were made here:
- BTC's development is sort of controlled by the Bitcoin Foundation, the currency itself is not
- BTC is open source and anyone can fork it to create their own currency so BTC's dominance only exists due to its mindshare and first-mover advantage
- BTC is not as anonymous as it seems. You always leave behind a transaction trail in public that can be traced retroactively
- The smallest unit of BTC is a so called Satoshi (0.00000001 BTC). It's currently $0.00045. So while BTC is deflationary, it's not really an issue and could also be addresses in the future
- However, the transaction costs and times are clearly more of a problem. This could and is supposed to be addressed in the future, but as many have already stated here: BTC is sort of like gold or a reserve currency in the fiat world
- Proof-of-Work coins with a reasonable utilization of the work do exist, but people don't seem to really care. E.g. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/curecoin/ or https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/gridcoin/
- Some cryptocurrencies have started off with free airdrops and near equal shares for everyone involved (in the early stages). A recent example that is often mentioned on Era is Pi
- The scope of use cases for blockchain tech. outside of digital money is very narrow and yes most currencies try to solve non-existing problems to generate hype and become rich quickly
- My favorite use case are initial coin offerings. Regulated and done right they seem like a great way to kickstart businesses and allow outsiders to grab a shares early instead of them going to insiders and venture capital
- With the recent WSB and Robinhood (and other neo brokers) debacle there is a case to be made for cryptocurrencies and decentralized exchanges. A p2p decentralized exchange cannot be stopped as easily
- The fact that governments and financial intermediaries can lock you out of commerce may be scary to Westerners, but is quite normal for people in autocratic countries. Another issue is hyperinflation. Crypto can help and is helping in both cases
- Governments and big corporations will inevitably transition to / break into digital money and it's certainly interesting to see open alternatives develop side-by-side with that. In 2050 I'd rather pay with dogecoin than FAANG bucks. How about you?
The manufacturing of luxury constantly recalled electric cars will offset the Bitcoin energy consumption. It's ok folks
please be dogecoin......i got like 200 shares for literally nothing and am sitting positive atm. I'm just letting it ride lol
This is why I say if we had fusion energy we'd consume all resources at record speed and then we're screwed. Energy is used to transform matter. You can do it to make endless porn, or to solve problems. Nothing guarantees we would use it for useful things, not anymore than winning the lottery doesn't stop drug addiction.
Yep, this is some basic needs satisfaction and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theorizing. I would prefer if we decolonize the world and provide everyone with their basic needs before we decide how much energy it will cost. Because I feel that it will probably be less than we expect, and the collective consciousness of a healthy+educated population will probably democratize better solutions than I can postulate.
In a better society, we wouldn't require a new phone and dishwasher every fiscal cycle, planned obsolescence would be eliminated as ridiculous and we would use what is ecologically necessary.
This is sensationalist.
A more fair comparison would be comparing the energy consumption to banking or to other industries.
A more fair comparison would be comparing the energy consumption to banking or to other industries.
it varies, but for some mining coins, they can undervolt the GPU and not lose enough mining speed vs energy costs. in general, i would say they dont push the GPU to get more performance as its more effective to undervolt them for less loss than the energy consumption needed to mine faster.
but its doesn't actually do any banking yet....(except for money laundering), people arent using the coins to make transactions, they are using it to hoard wealth and store it, and gain value from it being in their procession.
If anything is sensationalist it's the tweet your quoting considering the overall banking system is atleast 100x bigger than Bitcoin but Bitcoin make up more than 1/10th of its energy consumption