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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.
"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." Not quite. No one is using their computer to mine bitcoin. That hasn't been profitable in many years. People are using dedicated highly specialized hardware that can do nothing else except mine, ASIC, application specific integrated circuit. This isn't really donating your computer power since these ASICs can do absolutely nothing else. "Computing power" implies something a little more general purpose.
First: "Gigawatt" is not a quantity, it's a rate. You don't use "gigawatts each day". You probably mean GWh (gigawatt-hours).
Anyway, there are really two inputs to the mining equation. The first is electricity cost per hour of mining operation and the second is cryptocurrency value produced per hour of mining operation.
Making mining more efficient will *increase* mining activity, at least until the market adjusts. (Because, the value of cryptocurrency produced per hour is directly influenced by how much mining hardware is in use network-wide). More efficient mining equipment reduces the electricity cost, therefore mining is more profitable, therefore it is done more. In no way would making mining equipment more efficient make the network use less electricity.
Besides, there's a fundamental limit at work here... the reason that mining is electrically and computationally expensive is explicitly intended. The only reason the network works is because it is expensive and time-consuming to mine. That's the security mechanism that makes the thing work, and the core concept behind the blockchain.
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.
Narayanan estimates that Bitcoin mining now uses about five gigawatts of electricity per day
I've been searching all my life, and I have yet to find a single news article from any source that manages to discuss the fundamental physical concepts of energy, power and time without erroneously jumbling them all together.
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!
I can transfer money from my bank to anyone else in the UK with a bank account quickly and for free. I can withdraw cash from thousands of cash machines for free. I can buy from millions of merchants for free.
Bitcoin - Free? Fast? Energy efficient? Decentralised?
No, no, no and no (blockchain size).
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
No commodity that constantly rises in value can be used as a currency.
Cryptocoin don't constantly rise in value, they constantly jump madly around like giant random number generator (due to a too weird and completely unregulated market - that last part is the whole point of their decentralized system).
This make them hard (or more precisely: risky) to hoard, as in keeping them as an investment.
This don't prevent them to be used as form of payment (more precisely: a payment-over-internet-without-a-central-autority <- the whole point of their invention).
You use which ever way you want to convert you stable fiat USD into bitcoins (e.g.: you might be using a coin processor like bitpayment, but you might as well be trading them on IRC), and the marchant your buying stuff from will use which ever stuff he wants to convert them into their local stable EUR (usually some payment processor. Let's say coinbase this time, for the sake of variation).
You use only stable USD.
The marchant only use stable EUR.
the volatile BTC are only used during the transaction.
The fact that these BTC were valued at some completely different exchange rate yesterday, and will tomorrow exchange at yet another completely random rate, depending on the ups and down of that crazy market doesn't absolutely affect neither of you.
It only concerns those who are into actually trading them (payment processors, exchange platforms, traders that inversts into them, etc.)
It's still useful as a payment system over internet, and unlike old-school internet payment, there isn't a single or a few company that act as central chokepoint (unlike Visa, MasterCard, Paypal), in theory there isn't a central Bitcoin Inc. (though in practice, some mining pools are dangerously close to be able to achieve that).
It's a bit similar to what systems like SEPA/IBAN have achieved between banks (and the various system that rely on that, like the swiss Twint) : as long as both endpoint follow the same protocol, you're free to choose any endpoint of your liking, and so do the merchant. (You don't need to both be registered at paypal, or both use MasterCard).
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