Slashdot Mirror
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."
IANABP (I am not a Bitcoin Proponent, I own exactly 0BC and will not in the forseeable future), but I am interested in the idea and mechanisms involved.
If a break is ever found, suspected, or even slightly likely an orderly migration to better cryptographic primitives can be performed. If you are interested in knowing more the wiki enumerates all the known possible attacks.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Actually they already use GPUs - and there are companies making ASICs now. Dedicated Bitcoin mining boxes. The people who purchased GPUs specifically with mining in mind are apparently already annoyed, because the new computational power coming online means they are seeing less return, due to the increasing requirements as the number of mined bitcoins increases.
Electricity is not something we can efficiently transport from places where it's abundant to places where it's needed. Unused excess electricity is a waste.
A 2000km HVDC line loses about 5% of its energy to heat. 95% efficiency over 2000km lines seems pretty efficient.
A few years ago (2008?), much was made of the tidal capture planned for the Bristol Channel. The study on which the argument of both sides was based had calculated that capturing enough energy in the channel would supply the entire energy needs of England, Wales, Scotland and Eire, all the outlying islands and the North Sea Oil Rigs, and still only deplete 5% of the total amount of energy passing through the channel at any time. Capturing 100% of the energy would not only supply most of Europe, it would also result in a glass-smooth Bristol Channel. The surfing fraternity won the argument, saying that even a 5% drop in tidal energy would kill the tourism industry in the area since most of the coastal tourism in the area relied on the four foot breakers*!
*Yep, that's what was said. The Bristol Channel has a 47 foot tidal range, which is pretty much the highest tidal range of any estuary on the British coastline.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Actually you get it backwards. A commodity is something you can actually use. Gold for example is used as currency and is a commodity, since it is used to make jewelry or electronics. Bitcoin is just a currency, you can't use it for anything. If Bitcoins are complacently devalued they are not worth the "bits they are printed on". Commodity that is also used as a currency, retains value if the actual currency is fully devalued. For example after WWII cigarettes where used as black market currency. But once the situation normalized and people started to get real money in their hands and could buy something for it, the cigarettes as currency where useless, but you could still sell them as cigarettes for real money.
About the fake part of Bitcoin, it's only fake as in there is not sovereign nation backing the currency, so what? Any currency is as good as the trust it is put into it by it's users. The currencies of nations tend to devalue too, as the users lose trust in that currency. For example during the perestroika in Russia many people used USD instead of the ruble, because they did not trust the ruble to be stable.
"Isn't there a mechanism for adjusting the difficulty of mining depending on how much mining is done? Wouldn't that mean that the difficulty will go up if the price does, so that they will match?"
Yes, that is one of the things that would serve to bring the cost up to market place. While more miners will also bring the price down to the cost. (Actually, it's not "adjusted" per se. It's built in to the math. The more Bitcoins that are mined, the more difficult they become to mine.)
But my main point was that the market right now is very, very far from that equilibrium. It's completely irrational.