If economists - the same people who are totally cool with infinite growth in a finite world - can't make sense out of something, you know it's real bad.
To be fair, these bags are toys for the rich due to their cost. The people who can afford these bags can easily afford overweight bag fees, and often fly in first class where you are allowed, on paper, to carry bags of infinite mass.*
*Obviously nobody has tried to pack a carry-on-sized solid billet of lead yet.
No, slightly more than 1/10,000th, but way less than 1/1000th of world electrical consumption. And again, the article cited no sources and just asserted it as bare fact, with no reference as to how the number was arrived.
Are you disputing the 0.14% number? If not, check your math. 0.14x1000=140. It's well over a 1/1000th, it's about 1/714th to be more precise. Here is how the energy consumption was calculated:
And if you're looking at horrifically inefficient and unnecessary uses of electricity, start with Slashdot. Then tackle gaming. Survive trying to kill those and you can think about restricting what people do with their resources.
Now here some numbers are being pulled out of thin air, and it's you who's doing it. But we can make educated guesses. So why would you guess a relatively lightweight site like Slashdot might use more energy than a system that pegs data centers full of GPUs and ASICs 24/7/365?
Gaming worldwide could indeed approach the total energy usage of the BitCoin network. But I don't think it's as bad because it's less wasteful. It's not crunching on insanely difficult math problems just for the sake of running a digital currency whose only notable advantage over much more efficient payment systems is an ability to jump through legal loopholes. Most of that energy goes directly into making games look good for people's enjoyment.
Is it really a decentralized problem though? Centrally controlled currencies can work well, it's the only type we've been using until very recently, they're very energy-efficient and are much more difficult to steal online.
LOLWUT stupidity: Why do you think the people that invented bitcoin allow anyone to mine? Because in addition to mining coins, the exact same mining software verifies that when someone gives you a piece of software that claims to be a bit coin, it actually is a bitcoin, rather than an encrypted copy of their fan-fic story about Spock seducing Captain Kirk.
That's not an anti-fraud measure, that's an anti-counterfeiting measure. Fraud can flourish without counterfeiting and vice-versa.
As for costs of dollar transactions, it isn't what you think. The article made the mistake of looking at the actual cost of energy per visa transaction, vs the TOTAL cost of bitcoin mining divided by the number of bitcoins transactions. Technically the actual bitcoin cost of energy per bitcoin transaction is 0, as the energy is spent on mining. You need to make a fair compairson.
To make a fair comparison you have to look at the total cost of visa transactions vs the bitcoin total, then divide each by transactions.
Total cost of VISA transactions is not just energy run by their computer but also includes every single bit of profit VISA reports, plus every single employee wage, etc. etc. etc.
To be truly fair, you should also look into economies of scale and see if VISA or bitcoin get any advantage because of their relative sizes, but that's another point entirely,
Fair points, but without all of this data I find it ludicrous to baselessly assert that a bitcoin transaction could be cheaper than a traditional electronic payment for $1000 equivalent in the face of this data about the amount of energy required just for computation in each BTC transaction.
It's a cost, but not a fee...you don't pay for that electricity yourself, it's a cost that's spread around to the entire network. If just the parties on either end of a BTC transaction had to pay for the entire energy cost of that transaction, hardly anyone would use BTC.
Mostly, yes, although there are some cryptocurrencies designed for energy-efficiency. You could also consider an MMORPG's currency system to be a more efficient example, and those can often be traded for fiat currencies.
You made a mistake in your calculations. Bitcoin uses 0.14~0.16% of the world's electricity, as calculated by others in this thread. That is a truly frightening number.
Also it's not that hard to maintain anonymity between a wallet and a person, thousands of black hats do it every day. Ransomware and darknet markets would not be a thing if Bitcoin were not anonymous.
More than 1/1000th of world electrical consumption being used on a horrifically inefficient and wholly unnecessary digital currency should indeed make us shit ourselves. Thank you for helping to make clear just how severe the problem is.
Same reason anything else can't, inertia and/or upgrade costs. But it's a gigantic waste of energy either way, and won't be a moot point until we have an excess of renewable electricity generation.
Depending on how many people load a particular browser-bogging page, one page may use more energy overall than any one BTC transaction...hey, that's a good argument for getting companies to slim down their websites! Do it for the environment!
2) The reason bitcoin mining is necessary is that we need record keeping to prevent fraud in financial transactions.
LOLWUT? Mining and the blockchain do precisely dick to prevent fraud in financial transactions. If anything, it enables more fraud.
4) You need to compare bitcoin energy costs to dollar energy costs, not merely look at bitcoin alone. If you actually do the comparison, you see that bitcoin transaction costs (per $1,000 equivalent) is CHEAPER than dollar. It wouldn't work any other way.
5) Conclusion, if we switch entirely from bitcoin to dollar, we will SAVE money and save energy.
What comparison did you do? It seems that you pulled this information out of your ass. TFA says it takes the same amount of energy to power 9 US homes for a day to complete a BTC transaction. Traditional electronic payments require miniscule amounts of electricity, cash and cheques probably use the most when they're shipped in vehicles.
You're building an international payment platform. That's real work.
There are other international payment platforms that are astronomically more energy-efficient, although they carry the downsides of having marginally higher transaction fees and being much more vulnerable to detection when used for crime.
That's a valid reason to complain about energy required to perform transactions, but not mining.
For mining, you can be either for or against pissing away horrific amounts of energy to mine BTC, but its efficiency or inefficiency is an artificial design choice that the system must follow.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it's because I'm a Gen. Y'er so I don't have excess cash to gamble with. If I did, I would've made some money this morning.
Interesting. I'm not dumb enough to try looking at the sun without eclipse glasses, but I assumed it would hurt.
And those who can remember the past are condemned to watch everyone else repeat it!
Hee-hee!
If economists - the same people who are totally cool with infinite growth in a finite world - can't make sense out of something, you know it's real bad.
For this particular story, what immediately started playing in my head was "All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel..."
I would actually like to short BTC now. At this rate of acceleration it could pop before the day is out.
To be fair, these bags are toys for the rich due to their cost. The people who can afford these bags can easily afford overweight bag fees, and often fly in first class where you are allowed, on paper, to carry bags of infinite mass.*
*Obviously nobody has tried to pack a carry-on-sized solid billet of lead yet.
I sure hope so. Have you ever seen all the predicted effects of global warming put together? Neither had I, until I saw this article:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
Here you can see for yourself:
http://geology.com/sea-level-r...
Zoom up on the coasts of the US while toggling between 0m and 2m.
No, slightly more than 1/10,000th, but way less than 1/1000th of world electrical consumption. And again, the article cited no sources and just asserted it as bare fact, with no reference as to how the number was arrived.
Are you disputing the 0.14% number? If not, check your math. 0.14x1000=140. It's well over a 1/1000th, it's about 1/714th to be more precise. Here is how the energy consumption was calculated:
https://digiconomist.net/bitco...
https://digiconomist.net/bitco...
And if you're looking at horrifically inefficient and unnecessary uses of electricity, start with Slashdot. Then tackle gaming. Survive trying to kill those and you can think about restricting what people do with their resources.
Now here some numbers are being pulled out of thin air, and it's you who's doing it. But we can make educated guesses. So why would you guess a relatively lightweight site like Slashdot might use more energy than a system that pegs data centers full of GPUs and ASICs 24/7/365?
Gaming worldwide could indeed approach the total energy usage of the BitCoin network. But I don't think it's as bad because it's less wasteful. It's not crunching on insanely difficult math problems just for the sake of running a digital currency whose only notable advantage over much more efficient payment systems is an ability to jump through legal loopholes. Most of that energy goes directly into making games look good for people's enjoyment.
Is it really a decentralized problem though? Centrally controlled currencies can work well, it's the only type we've been using until very recently, they're very energy-efficient and are much more difficult to steal online.
Answers.
LOLWUT stupidity: Why do you think the people that invented bitcoin allow anyone to mine? Because in addition to mining coins, the exact same mining software verifies that when someone gives you a piece of software that claims to be a bit coin, it actually is a bitcoin, rather than an encrypted copy of their fan-fic story about Spock seducing Captain Kirk.
That's not an anti-fraud measure, that's an anti-counterfeiting measure. Fraud can flourish without counterfeiting and vice-versa.
As for costs of dollar transactions, it isn't what you think. The article made the mistake of looking at the actual cost of energy per visa transaction, vs the TOTAL cost of bitcoin mining divided by the number of bitcoins transactions. Technically the actual bitcoin cost of energy per bitcoin transaction is 0, as the energy is spent on mining. You need to make a fair compairson.
To make a fair comparison you have to look at the total cost of visa transactions vs the bitcoin total, then divide each by transactions.
Total cost of VISA transactions is not just energy run by their computer but also includes every single bit of profit VISA reports, plus every single employee wage, etc. etc. etc.
To be truly fair, you should also look into economies of scale and see if VISA or bitcoin get any advantage because of their relative sizes, but that's another point entirely,
Fair points, but without all of this data I find it ludicrous to baselessly assert that a bitcoin transaction could be cheaper than a traditional electronic payment for $1000 equivalent in the face of this data about the amount of energy required just for computation in each BTC transaction.
It's a cost, but not a fee...you don't pay for that electricity yourself, it's a cost that's spread around to the entire network. If just the parties on either end of a BTC transaction had to pay for the entire energy cost of that transaction, hardly anyone would use BTC.
Mostly, yes, although there are some cryptocurrencies designed for energy-efficiency. You could also consider an MMORPG's currency system to be a more efficient example, and those can often be traded for fiat currencies.
You made a mistake in your calculations. Bitcoin uses 0.14~0.16% of the world's electricity, as calculated by others in this thread. That is a truly frightening number.
Also it's not that hard to maintain anonymity between a wallet and a person, thousands of black hats do it every day. Ransomware and darknet markets would not be a thing if Bitcoin were not anonymous.
You call that a non-story?
More than 1/1000th of world electrical consumption being used on a horrifically inefficient and wholly unnecessary digital currency should indeed make us shit ourselves. Thank you for helping to make clear just how severe the problem is.
Same reason anything else can't, inertia and/or upgrade costs. But it's a gigantic waste of energy either way, and won't be a moot point until we have an excess of renewable electricity generation.
Depending on how many people load a particular browser-bogging page, one page may use more energy overall than any one BTC transaction...hey, that's a good argument for getting companies to slim down their websites! Do it for the environment!
2) The reason bitcoin mining is necessary is that we need record keeping to prevent fraud in financial transactions.
LOLWUT? Mining and the blockchain do precisely dick to prevent fraud in financial transactions. If anything, it enables more fraud.
4) You need to compare bitcoin energy costs to dollar energy costs, not merely look at bitcoin alone. If you actually do the comparison, you see that bitcoin transaction costs (per $1,000 equivalent) is CHEAPER than dollar. It wouldn't work any other way.
5) Conclusion, if we switch entirely from bitcoin to dollar, we will SAVE money and save energy.
What comparison did you do? It seems that you pulled this information out of your ass. TFA says it takes the same amount of energy to power 9 US homes for a day to complete a BTC transaction. Traditional electronic payments require miniscule amounts of electricity, cash and cheques probably use the most when they're shipped in vehicles.
You're building an international payment platform. That's real work.
There are other international payment platforms that are astronomically more energy-efficient, although they carry the downsides of having marginally higher transaction fees and being much more vulnerable to detection when used for crime.
That's a valid reason to complain about energy required to perform transactions, but not mining.
For mining, you can be either for or against pissing away horrific amounts of energy to mine BTC, but its efficiency or inefficiency is an artificial design choice that the system must follow.
- Covert foot fetish scenes
- Phasers now cause gory deaths
Can't wait to see Kirk sliding down a staircase with phasers in both hands, shooting Klingons as doves fly around.