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Is Bitcoin Mining a Real-World Environmental Problem?
First time accepted submitter HeadOffice writes "Mark Gimein points out that Bitcoing mining uses a lot of power, enough that it is a real world problem: 'About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact. That’s enough to power roughly 31,000 US homes, or about half a Large Hadron Collider. If the dreams of Bitcoin proponents are realized, and the currency is adopted for widespread commerce, the power demands of bitcoin mines would rise dramatically. If that makes you think of the vast efforts devoted to the mining of precious metals in the centuries of gold- and silver-based economies, it should. One of the strangest aspects of the Bitcoin frenzy is that the Bitcoin economy replicates some of the most archaic features of the gold standard. Real-world mining of precious metals for currency was a resource-hungry and value-destroying process. Bitcoin mining is too.' However, not everyone is convinced that virtual mining is as bad for the environment as the real thing."
Considering that most people pay for their electricity by the kilowatt hour, the megawatt hour is not a bad unit to be using. It lets me say, for example, that it's about 200,000 times my average daily electricity usage (5 kWh on my last bill, probably because of the air conditioning). Much easier to compare scales.
Mind you, megawatts aren't bad either ... they're just not as intuitively transformable to real-world scenarios for most people.
In short, my considered advice to anybody looking at bitcoins as a way to get rich quick:....steer clear.
That's good advice for pretty near any way to get rich quick. Especially if someone is trying to sell it to you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In my opinion, no.
Reporters use the units of energy, so that the total would look much bigger than it is. 982MWh/day - I only use 1.2MWh in a month wow that's a lot, but remember that this is for the entire mining network, not for an individual miner. On the other hand, 41MW - that's not a lot, a hydroelectric power plant in my city is 100MW - that single power plant could power two bitcoin mining networks - I bet Google's servers use more power than this...
After that there is exactly ZERO point or need for mining.
Incorrect. Mining is the process that adds transactions to the block chain. If there is no mining, then the entire system grinds to a halt, and existing bitcoins cannot be spent.
The mining reward serves two purposes: 1) Gradually introduce bitcoins into the system over a period of time. 2) Provide an incentive for people to mine while the system is still young and not yet widely adopted. Once the mining rewards dwindle to zero (i.e., all of the bitcoins have been created), then transaction fees remain as an incentive to miners. Many current miners will probably drop out of the pool by the time the mining reward is reduced to zero, but mining will still be necessary to make the system work.