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Bitcoin Mining Now Accounts For Almost One Percent of the World's Energy Consumption (theoutline.com)
It is well-established established that Bitcoin mining -- aka, donating one's computing power to keep a cryptocurrency network up and running in exchange for a chance to win some free crypto -- uses a lot of electricity. Companies involved in large-scale mining operations know that this is a problem, and they've tried to employ various solutions for making the process more energy efficient. But, according to testimony provided by Princeton computer scientist Arvind Narayanan to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, no matter what you do to make cryptocurrency mining harware greener, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the overall network's flabbergasting energy consumption. From a report: Instead, Narayanan told the committee, the only thing that really determines how much energy Bitcoin uses is its price. "If the price of a cryptocurrency goes up, more energy will be used in mining it; if it goes down, less energy will be used," he told the committee. "Little else matters. In particular, the increasing energy efficiency of mining hardware has essentially no impact on energy consumption." In his testimony, Narayanan estimates that Bitcoin mining now uses about five gigawatts of electricity per day (in May, estimates of Bitcoin power consumption were about half of that). He adds that when you've got a computer racing with all its might to earn a free Bitcoin, it's going to be running hot as hell, which means you're probably using even more electricity to keep the computer cool so it doesn't die and/or burn down your entire mining center, which probably makes the overall cost associated with mining even higher.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
People are starving as people grow tulips instead of food. Meanwhile in crypto land precious rare earth metals have been wasted producing gpus and asics to feed the money factories, which will be useless when the difficulty rises again.
After the upcoming cryptocurrency crash, small energy sources all over the place will be freed up for local use. Graphics cards are already becoming available again.
Graphics card have not been able to mine bitcoin for many years. GPUs are only able to mine some alternative cryptocurrencies. And as these "alts" get popular they sometimes follow the bitcoin path and end up being mined by ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware. GPU mining is relatively insignificant compared to bitcoin mining.
The "other" significant cryptocurrency, ethereum, one that GPUs were able to profitably mine this last year, is planning on moving from a proof-of-work scheme to a proof-of-stake scheme for maintaining its block chain and rewarding the miners/forgers who do so. This is in part to avoid the power demands but also to allow ordinary users to help maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers.
Right now bitcoin has deviated from its design and its security has been compromised by not having ordinary people maintain the blockchain with ordinary computers, by no longer having a decentralized system. By evolving to an ASIC system mining has become more centralized, both in terms of large commercial operations where a 51% cartel is more plausible and geographically by have the vast majority of mining located in a single country. A country not known for a hands off approach to economic matters.
Most gold that is mined is not used. It's just stored.
What resources are used to mine the ~80% of gold which is not used?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!