Bitcoin Could Consume As Much Electricity As Denmark By 2020 (boingboing.net)

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: The numbers are very back-of-the-envelope and assume a worst case: widespread adoption of Bitcoin and not much improvement in Bitcoin mining activity, along with long replacement cycles for older, less efficient mining rigs. But even the best case [scenario] has Bitcoin consuming a shocking amount of electricity. [As mentioned in a report from Motherboard,] "The results show that in an optimistic scenario, the increase in electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network compared to now is not shocking, from around 350 MW to around 417 MW, but still on the order of one small power station. If things play out a little less favorably, however, the Bitcoin network may draw over 14 Gigawatts of electricity by 2020, equivalent to the total power generation capacity of a small country, like Denmark for example.

Comments

Energy star rated bitcoins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost 0.

Already disputed and debunked

[qubezz]

The Bitcoin mining reward halves every four years, making it less profitable in the future. Nearly 75% of Bitcoins that will ever exist have already been mined. Saying that miners will collectively be spending 30x more on electricity to mine 1/4 the Bitcoins they earn now is ludicrous.

Re:Already disputed and debunked

[supremebob]

Bitcoin really hasn't increased in value over the past few years. The price spiked at over $1,000 a coin in late 2013, and then plummeted. Right now, it's still around $400 a coin, even though it's a hell of a lot harder now to "mine" one than it was 3 years ago.

Re:Already disputed and debunked

[dbIII]

It being "mined" by malware these days so the cost gets shifted. It was obvious from near the start that such a thing was going to happen and a few people even posted here about that a few years ago. I could say "I told you so" but somebody else with far more understanding of bitcoin than I told me first.

Re:Already disputed and debunked

[religionofpeas]

It being "mined" by malware these days so the cost gets shifted.

No, nearly all bitcoins are mined by specialized chips.

Re:Already disputed and debunked

[MrL0G1C]

Whilst malware does indeed mint some coins, unless it's infecting dedicated bitcoin mining silicon then it's unlikely to be mining more than a small slice of the pie.

Re:Already disputed and debunked

[AmiMoJo]

Even the malware guys have stopped bothering to mine it now. A PC with a high end GPU set to run at 100% 24/7 (as if the owner wouldn't notice the fan noise and extreme slow-down in their games) your 100MH/sec will net you a revenue of about $0.05/year.

The only practical way to mine Bitcoin these days is with a dedicated ASIC miner.

negligible power will be used

[rubycodez]

compared to the energy draw for computation for everything else, it's not worth worrying about bitcoin cycles. Even the draw for the systems that track traditional currency will completely dwarf it.

Re:negligible power will be used

[delt0r]

MW is power, MWh is energy.

Re:So build out the blockchain on Gridcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing more socially responsible or needed than a decentralized money that exists beyond the control of special interests.

New unit of measure...

[Anonymous Coward]

From now on, we measure power consumption by the Denmark!

Re:Not much improvement in mining?

[manu0601]

Bitcoin iis designed so that mining gets harder as new bitcoins are found

Beware extrapolation

[sjbe]

The numbers are very back-of-the-envelope and assume a worst case:

Translation: We did a ridiculous and naive extrapolation and then were foolish enough to think it actually means something.

Re:Huge Waste

[__aaclcg7560]

Humanity has sunk to a new low of wasteful activity.

That should be reserved for making ethanol from corn. A tax subsidy encourages the production of more corn ethanol, despite the fact that corn isn't a surplus crop. (South Americans make ethanol from surplus sugar canes.) Farmers like ethanol because it raises the price on corn, but rising corn prices also filter through the rest of the food chain from livestock feed to processed foods. Groceries are more expensive to benefit a few farmers and ethanol producers. This is one of the reasons why Senator Ted Cruz is against the tax subsidies.

Re:CitiBank?

[TheGavster]

There are 12.4M bitcoins, valued at something like $400 each. That means that the bitcoin network is tracking something like $5B in value. This is three orders of magnitude smaller than the value tracked by the computer systems of those major banks, even if all of their computing power were needed for the task. In reality, the vast proportion of that power is spent predicting the most effective enterprises in which to invest that value. Even accepting that high-frequency trading is of dubious economic benefit, there are still real economic decisions being supported by the computation.

It just occurred to me...

[joh]

that BC is perfectly suited to outsource mining into orbit: Energy is cheap there and bitcoins are easily beamed back... A perfect product to manufacture in space. Lol.

Re:CitiBank?

[hjf]

let's be realistic: most of the power used by big banks is air conditioning and lighting for their offices...

Re: All that energy just to push around electrons

[OrangeTide]

Solving corruption in centralized banking is a topic worth of research. Issues that deeply affect society include not just health issues but can also include economics and monetary systems.

You seem pretty ready to dismiss crypto currency as having a potential benefit, and while Bitcoin probably won't be worth keeping around, the information collected through this rather large scale experiment is likely to end up in future text books.

Re:So build out the blockchain on Gridcoin

[AmiMoJo]

The problem right now is that BTC prices tend to be ridiculous. Vendors set the price by converting to their local currency plus some percentage to offset risk, which IME tends to be 200-300% or more.

What about banks?

[sad_]

How much electricity do all the banks in the world need to operate?