Bitcoin Forum

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020

That was a new fact to know. Its obvious that mining consumes a lot of electricity but didn't thought that it would add up to the total electrical consumption of the whole nation ( Denmark ). This is one of the draw backs of bitcoins as compared to fiat.

Well you are comparing something that is just random 0s and 1s backed by nothing, centralized and closed source, with a decentralized system backed by the biggest network on the planet.
If you want top tier security you are going to need a lot of power, it's just physics.

Well one thing is sure bitcoin is making not only the miners getting an extra income as energy companies are selling more energy ,that could be wasted,soo bitcoin bills is making the economy grow,sure china is the main taking the best fee from it,soo why people wanna to kill bitcoin,since we are supporting the economy on the last 7 years with our miners.

So how much energy does regular banking consume, again? Yeah...

Still, Bitcoin is very energy expensive. But I don't think it will increase this expense much more as difficulty rises and chips are more efficient :D

The error is comparing Bitcoin to a centralized state issued currency... this is not the right comparative. You should compare how expensive mining gold is, compared to Bitcoin. Then you would see that not only Bitcoin is a better money in all aspects than gold, but its also way cheaper and environment friendlier.

Well if they don't like that they can opt in for PoS coins anytime :). BTW maybe I'm wrong but I have the feelingthey are expecting an at least  linear growth of energy consumption with the spread of bitcoin, what make me suspect they have some odd ideas about how the bitcoin network working and what's the direction of the latest asic developments (decreasing energy consumption while increasing hashing power).

With another reward halving in 2020 and on chain transactions being limited by the development team, how much are they predicting 1 bitcoin has to worth in order to pay for all that electricity?

Correct! Which reminds me about the amounts of paper needed to print fiat...

Very interesting study.

This network of so-called bitcoin “miners” ensures the security of the system, but unfortunately also consumes a lot of electricity—currently about 350 megawatts according to my own calculations, which is roughly equivalent to the electricity demand of 280,000 American households.

 :o

I must admit I read the article and thought that maybe PoS was the future too...

I have never thought about how Bitcoin mining is affecting our environment. With the increasing difficulty comes the need for a lot more calculating power and thus increased electricity consumption. I hope researchers will find a better way to power mining equipment that is more efficient and doesn't affect the global warming situation.

Have they taken into consideration how much surplus energy are being produced at the moment and why the Chinese are subsidizing mining to get rid of the excess energy that are being generated by plants?

The current fiat system rely on massive amounts of electricity to have hundreds of ATM's concentrated in specific areas and running 365 days a year. Most of the time, these ATM's are connected to their internal

network and that consumes a lot of electricity too. If you compare both of these industries, Bitcoin still use much less electricity.

This.

Also OP 'assumes' that CO2 causes AGW - but the more i've looked into this.. the more bogus it seems.
Sorry, anything that is touched by claims of AGW is tainted.

This is bad. I don't care how anyone tries to explain it away or justify it. It's still only used by a few hundred thousand people on a regular basis.

Thanks to those who want to keep Bitcoin BlockSize limit artifcally low, single bitcoin transaction has to cost a lot of elecricity. It just show how short sighted the small blockers are, if you increase BlockSize and number of transactions in the block, the electricity consumption stay the same whether you mine 1 MB or 10 MB blocks...

Electricity consumption increases only if Bitcoin price increases more than 2x every four years. If not, electricity consumption has to decrease instead. Considering the same price for electricity worldwide and over long periods.

Its time to make Bitcoin Eco-friendly. :)
Bitcoin price is (in my terms) cost of electricity to produce it.

4 years for banking system means nothing (or just another crisis), but for bitcoin it's whole era. So many things could happen and there are lot of possible factors to have impact on whole bitcoin ecosystem.

I agree with this. But the small blockers have their own agenda - they arn't interested in scaling nor in the environment or anything else. I honestly feel that after the halving we'll see a dramatic decrease in price as people start voting with their wallets.

There are dozens of more efficient chips being built as we speak to counteract inefficiency as it relates to power consumption

So we should start to see energy consumption levels drop over the next few years ;)

It's really possible cause power for mining rising eveytime and after 2020 power in sum will be so huge. I belive that amout of electricity can be compared to Dansih.

No, energy consumption stays the same but hashpower goes up. What determine energy consumption is basically cost of mining Bitcoin instead of buying Bitcoin, thus only Bitcoin price, mining rewards and price of electricity determine rational energy consumption of all Bitcoin miners. So investment to new ASIC units (or running the existing ones) makes sence only if there is money to be made, ie cost of mining Bitcoin (electricity) is lower than just buying the Bitcoin instead.

It does not matter how efficient the chip or the machine is. The cost of electricity to mine one block is similar to the value of one block.

Bitcoin also provide value to the mass. It helps people move money around the global more efficiently.

I think it is highly irresponsible of the Danes to use as much electricity as Bitcoin.
I am sending an e mail to the United Nations right now.

I have the solution to this problem, check it out in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4KFH6Iz0g

Big blockers always manage to move whatever topic to yet another excuse to FUD about how block size is artificially low, Bitcoin is going to explode because block size is to small etc...
When will you understand that node centralization is a problem, and if you want node decentralization raising the block size right now is just stupid because it wouldn't solve the scaling problem at all, and would only help to centralize the nodes? There's a lot of people having problems to run nodes in certain areas, and decentralization means nodes all over the world, not only in a couple of developed places.
Please let experts (Core team) do the job while amateurs waste their time paying VICE for FUD articles.

People try to reduce the usage of oil by using electricity but we can't do anything, the next big thing is getting the electricity by solar panels and the mining will be more efficient. More difficulty need more power.

Hey, banks have huge servers too! And I've used e-banking for many years. You also need electricity for printing banknotes in highly secured factories with big trucks to move them to banks which are also highly secured with cameras and plenty of energy-consuming stuff. So the cash I have in my pocket doesn't use any energy, but fiat is energy intensive too.

New unconventional sources of energy need to be generated to fuel bitcoin mining.Almost all of our technology is highly energy consuming why single out Bitcoin?I hope with time we would have less energy consumption mining hardwares

Although the article had interesting points but the method of calculation can't be measured since as years pass by, more efficient chips are being developed that are being used one after the other with less consumption of electricity so what were using now and simply multiplying it by some calculated numbers towards future, can't give a possible range outcome and things surely changes as we go on.

Wow, that is a significant downside to bitcoin compared to fiat currency-electricity usage... That would probably be a reason, if bitcoin never goes mainstream, why it doesn't. Too much usage of electricity...

now we can use solar panels to generate electricity as it is the cheaper one compared to others.. by 2020 more advanced methods to generate electricity will be found... so electricity won't be a great problem...

too much stupid in the opening post

u cannot attack anything in such a one dimensional way

and expect anyone to believe u have a brain or where not

just paid to make a troll piece

Hahahahahaha... yeah right. Have a think about gold credit cards and banks... bitcoin 'could' potentially replace all of that with one network...
Bitcoin pales into insignificance when held up beside those three.
Electricity stopping bitcoin going mainstream?? I really really doubt that.

Gosh, the bitcoins are conquering the Universe! I can't believe it's all so interconnected - the energy and the web-coins. However, we all should be honest with that: there should be some damages to the world with what we earn and how we do it. Web-money is yet on its way to show the full power of our life. That's why I try being more old-fashioned and pragmatic with my finance. The making money on the Internet is very easy and cool work because you have such excellent opportunity to dispose of your time such as you need, and have a lot of time for your friends and other important deals! :) I’m experienced freelancer and know about such kind of this perfect work enough. The main in it – right and reliable payment system, because thanks to the superb payment service you will sleep well not worrying about the safety of your money. From my personal experience, I can advise to all of you this amazing ‘Worldcore’ https://worldcore.eu/ (https://worldcore.eu/) which will please everyone with the high-quality service and incredible perfection. So I wish to everybody great good luck and large successes in all your beginnings! :)

As the time pases, Miniing gets difficult and consumes more electric power, this in fact use more electricity but but i still doubt this statment.
Bitcoin could consume as much electricity as Denmark by 2020

So, I did some math on that prediction, and if all mining is done in China with an average of 80 dollars per MWH, just to pay the electricity one bitcoin has to be worth 15573,33 USD, this is with no profit.

I wouldn't mind such a thing but I think the author is being way too optimistic.

Big blocks don't scale at all, so your argument is literally complete nonsense. It's laughably ironic that you claim an interest in scaling and the environment, yet display gaping ignorance on both topics. So, here is the reality on big blocks and anthropogenic climate change (aka "the weather" lol)


Anthropogenic climate change is a scam, perpetrated by the big oil/energy corporations that intend to sell you the carbon credits that they will be the sole vendors of. You can buy that if you want to Alyssa, but I'm not that foolish.


Big blocks literally do not change the scale that the Bitcoin network operates on, it increases the throughput, but not the scale. Your words are reckless, badly informed and malign the expertise of those that actually have some. Because, as has been discussed before, the big holders of Bitcoin decide the fate of BloatedBlock forks in the markets, and guess what? Your BloatCoin fork will get short sold right into the dirt.

Who cares? It's just an arbitrary comparison. Who's to say Mcdonald's doesn't consume more electricity worldwide than they use in Denmark? That's what makes bitcoin worth something. No miner is going to sell at a loss, or if they do they'll stop mining!!

There is broad scientific consensus that athropogenic climate change is real. Solve by inspection problem if you look at any ice cores covering past 20k or so years.

That said, the contribution of Bitcoin to anthropogenic climate change is entirely trivial. Removing Bitcoin will NOT solve or substantially reduce the scope of the problem. Moving to renewable energy sources for electricity generation is the answer. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, etc...

All energy's gonna have to switch to renewable for miners to do the same unless they can find a source that's alot cheaper than normal. I don't think they give much of a shit about their carbon footprint.

A significant minority of miners already source renewable electricity from places like Iceland, Sweden and Washington state. You clearly know little about the mining market today, let alone the future market.


Neither do I or the rest of the world's thinking apes. If you want to pay money to Big Oil for the privilege of being able to breathe air, that's your problem.

Lol @ "significant minority," wtf makes it significant?
Most mining is done in China. "80 percent of [China's] electricity production come from coal" (http://www.chinafaqs.org/blog-posts/what-future-king-coal-china) :)

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/assets/11416106/pollution.jpg

Big Oil nowadays is more like Bankrupt Oil. Perhaps we should change the name to reflect the fall from $150 down to $40 a barrel.

They're not bankrupt yet, most of the countries with massive oil exportation businesses are siting on top of piles of money, they might just be downsizing for the interim while the value of Bitcoin is low.

Being more than single digits in percentage terms is a rule of thumb for a valid significant minority. Extra-Sino mining is about 40%. Why you're quoting figures about how China's electricity sources break down I don't know, what I said depended on China using mostly fossil fuels for power and constituting 60% of the BTC mining market. You have proved precisely nothing.



Exactly. All the changes to the energy market have been broadly predictable for the past 40 years, and these big corporations aren't just going to pack up the shop and go home. And what a big surprise that the more they run out of profitable assets to sell, they try to sell the one thing they have left: bullshit

i never think about it. i think its not more than a usual bank cosumption. it nothing in term of business, marketing, so think its not such a big issue to discuss it so deeply. therefore no need to worry that it will effect the atmosphere

It is a problem and with countries like china/india working very old factories, but also the US with their oil consuming cars, it will be devastating if this will not come to an end. I am positive we will feel it.

>Extra-Sino mining is about 40% <==source?
>Being more than single digits in percentage terms <==source?

And those "Extra-Sino [sic & lol, dig the big brain on Carlton :D] mines? They're mostly fossil fuels too :-\

What has this place come to, even the trolls are low rent these days. Come back Franky, come back jonald fyookball, we miss you :P

Been a few energy source related threads talking about how power is to intensive and draining the grids.
The innovation is not lacking and I think we will be able to jump this hurdle as it comes closer. Musk has batteries that are going to change the whole system for good,its going to be a world changer!

Bitcoin is a big currency.

The findings show that the more optimistic scenario, the increase in the consumption of electric energy Bitcoin network will increase from 350 MW to 417 MW. If the development goes a pessimistic way, by 2020 cryptocurrency network will spend about 14 GW Power.

We arranged so that it is difficult to assess any large-scale processes and compare them with each other. However, the world around us is something that people do every day. They buy iPads include dishwasher, leave your TV on so the cat was not alone when they are not home. And they Mein Bitcoins. And I'm quite difficult to find the cause for which they are doing all these foolish things and thoughtlessly wasted wasting the resources of our planet around the world, with all of this mass action is isolated and it is Bitcoin show a finger on it at him.

Besides, these days Bitcoin - is not the only model, which requires more and more energy. Peoples Daily use smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices that need to be regularly recharged. Electricity consumption is growing worldwide, and Bitcoin considered too energy-intensive - is to think limited.

PS
Do the same calculation for banks, as there is spent on maintenance of electricity infrastructure.
Bitcoin after that will seem "green technology"

selfish miners and people who keep consume big power or electricity will said that,dont care about anything they spent,but i'm sure many people care about this,and power resource should be can renewal,because we will not life forever,we have child in fuure who need use this power too.