Bitcoin Forum

It appears that mining costs and the creation of crypto currencies consumes a lot of resources :'(

We have very little resources remaining in the world for each other and future generations. Does it make sense to waste resources like this? Could we do this in a cheaper and more economically friendly manner? And does the value of bitcoin directly correlate to the amount of resources and man hours that are destroyed in order to create it?

The biggest problems I see with mining is that it is a waste of computing power, energy, and labor. We could be using this computing power for AI, exploring space, or solving world problems. Instead we are using up a ton of resources like electricity and producing nothing tangible in return. On the other hand our current banking system does use up a lot of resources to produce and maintain currency. I just wish there was a way to be more planet friendly when producing a digital currency.

There is no problem here with cryptos it is what the media would have you believe. This article below shows your concern but another on their website shows that yes crypto consume a lot of energy but in relation to the general population it is nothing. Idle phones, machines, plug in devices everywhere consume much more electricity but yet this isn't a concern. Basically the media will run with anything that gets a rise out of people and this electricity problem is one of their favorites with cryptos.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-24/will-bitcoin-mining-consume-all-worlds-current-electricity-production-feb-2020

When are you going to get tired of always posting this crap? I Sent you a private message to you a few days ago because i wanted to ask you why are you creating this crap in here.

I sent "do you have some privileged information? because you are posting that kind of fud that is very sensitive"
 
And you did not even replied to me, it seems that you are trying to post as much fud as possible in order to make people lose their money.

You said "came on! Short all your coins in order to leave this system!" when bitcoin was $13,000 each one.

Now it is $17,200, and i haven't seen you posting in those threads anymore.


Came on fucking newbie, if you are jealous because you did not buy bitcoin when it was $1000, then it is your fault.

I have made enough money to retire myself before my 25 years old because of cryptos, so i dont think that they are a "ponzi" just like you are saying.

GTFO

Maybe you can spend some of that money on an education now :)

We need to ban TV. Do you realize how much energy is wasted by people watching TV? Surely, it is orders of magnitude more than the energy spent on securing Bitcoin.

We are wasting resources, period. It has nothing to do with a single specific technology like bitcoin or fiat or whatever, this is just the way how the economy is in (at least) the past 40 years. Such approach is slowly but surely destroying the earth. In order to change this, fundamental change would be required which is unfortunately still not happening and is unlikely to happen any time soon since too much money would be gone from 1%.

TV provides a tangible asset. So that doesn't at all fit the criteria laid out in the first post. TV provides entertainment, enjoyment etc.

The consumption of energy for the production of assets is perfectly okay.

My problem is that we are wasting tons of electricity, resources, energy, and time to produce nothing. Bitcoin is not tangible


Here's a great article posted today on how much energy we are actually wasting
http://theweek.com/articles/742253/bitcoin-worth-energy

The energy consumption criticism of bitcoin reminds me of vegans criticisms against the meat industry. Even if most people converted to a vegan lifestyle, the same number of animals might be slaughtered every year to meet demand. This argument could apply to btc and crypto. Even if bitcoin and all crypto were banned and illegalized across the globe, it wouldn't necessarily imply electrical energy consumption would decline significantly enough to make a difference.

Miners typically target the cheapest supplies of electricity which is usually defined by industrial use rather than consumer usage. This implies that things like hydroelectric plants may be tapped, rather than electricity generated by coal or other sources which have a net negative effect on climate as is often mistakenly claimed.

Some of the main driving force behind energy generation are things like solar panels mounted on homes by residents. There are states like california which generate such a massive surplus of power they have to pay neighboring states to accept the additional energy to avoid damaging their electrical grid. In some regions the generation of electricity already far exceeds demand and due to many factors including the adoption of renewable energy sources, generation may exceed demand for well into the forseeable future.

Power consumption isn't the most critical topic. Power generation may be far more important as eliminating bitcoin and crypto from the equation wouldn't necessarily have an affect on the way we generate power, nor the quantity of power generated.

Here is a great article on Bitcoin:

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/10/20/bitcoin-energy-wasting-ponzi-scheme/ideas/essay/

(Source: Energy Wasting Ponzi Scheme, 2017)

By the way, ShortCoins. If you read my post above, I made a few counterpoints to the articles you're posting.

On the surface issues like energy consumption might appear simplistic and easy to quantify. But lurking beneath the surface there may be several principles which are counter intuitive and go against the grain in terms of public perception. To say that bitcoin consumes energy and energy consumption contributes towards negative precedents like climate change is a bit of an oversimplification. Power plants will not spontaneously shut down if bitcoin mining comes to an end. Every year electrical energy consumption increases, whatever surplus exists would be utilized as a hedge against future energy consumption growth and bitcoin mining versus no bitcoin mining likely would not have an impact.

There are many facets to this topic which are not being acknowledged by authors of some of the articles being posted.

I think there are two sides to this debate. If anyone cares to address the topic, I would be glad to respond.

Entertainment and enjoyment are certainly not tangible assets.

The purpose of Bitcoin's energy usage is to secure it and ensure its integrity. That is not nothing. Do you feel that the money spent on a nation's defense is nothing?

Anyway, the idea is that as wasteful as Bitcoin mining may seem, it is more efficient than the current banking system, and thus we would save energy by switching the financial system to Bitcoin.

Our species, and those like us are not a conservative group. We are wasteful, we are destructive, we are hungry and want to take whatever we can, as much of it as possible, all at once. We have a greedy nature and we can't help but be over-indulgent and "ambitious". We may be using more than we should or "need" to, but does that define "waste"? We are investing into the future and innovation, investment is only possibly with excess and with excess comes waste. I'd argue that wasting resources for digital currencies is still a net-positive compared to the alternative of the same old system forever.

We are wasting resources everyday in various areas, programs and inventions because that's what it takes to invest in the future. It hurts to think about our waste when it is quantified in terms we can understand, in terms of how many people could have been supplied X for Y days, instead of this. The question must always be "Is it worth it?" It is a tough question, but if our excess were not spent as we choose then our situation would be unsustainable and without progress. This represents our freedom, basic freedom to do as you wish with what is yours. One man's waste is another man's future.

Yeah to argue the power consumption there are plenty of other things that consume a lot more power than bitcoin mining, but the point being bitcoin mining consumes too much giving too little. A simple Google search points out that 1 transaction consumes 215 KWh of power, that's a lot.

How much $ USD has been spent on mining crypto and bitcoin?

why you say that the resources to make 17,000$ is less than to mining 1BTC.

also you mining using tools not pc

Let's answer your question with a counter question. How much money is spend to create cash & coins?

The penny might be more trouble than it's worth. The cost to produce the one-cent coin increased to 1.5 cents during 2016,

the Wall Street Journal reported. In 2015, the penny cost 1.43 cents to make, while in 2014, its production value was 1.66

cents.

Well, $1 and $2 bills cost 4.9 cents per note to make, while $5 cost 10.9 cents, $10 cost 10.3 cents, both $20 and $50 bills

cost 10.5 cents, and $100 bills cost 12.3 cents. In other words, the more it's worth, the more it costs to produce.

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/how-many-dollar-bill-circulated/ {Take note : of the

limited lifespan of these notes and coins}

Now, How environment friendly is the whole process to manufacture these coins/bills?

A 2009 analysis found that Western copper mines use 35.7 gigajoules of energy per ton of copper produced, with zinc and

lead mines fairly more efficient, using only 6.6 to 6.8 gigajoules of energy per ton. The report also found that greenhouse gas

emissions for copper mining operations in 2007 averaged 2.45 tons of carbon dioxide emitted for every ton of copper

produced, compared with .58 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of zinc.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/penny-environmental-disaster-180959032/

Let's not even add the cost of electricity to run ATM's and Banks for 24 hours a day.  >:(

There is no doubt that Bitcoin is more environment friendly and much cheaper to create than Fiat money {Coins & Bills}

This makes no sense.
If people would stop eating meat there would be no demand so no more energy spent on growing livestock.

If cryptos would get banned across the world (and we consider an all out ban with prison terms) the value would drop back to the closure of SR levels and mining will not be profitable until 90% of them quit, resulting in a drop of energy consumption.
I don't know where you get your logic...change the supplier.


Energy production and consumption is a zero-sum game.
If those miners would not consume green energy, that energy would be consumed by others and coal generated energy would drop.
And California is importing energy , close to 33% of their entire demand.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2465881.msg25254881#msg25254881

At current prices it CAN end up consuming 60 TWh of energy.
Since we spoke about California, a state with 30 millions and ranked above a lot of countries by GDP is consuming 300 TWh.
You can start commenting on this.....

The only thing preventing a boom in energy consumption is that we can't produce enough ASICs right now

Im not being too scientific here but they always said energy can not be created and nor it can be destroyed. So the question is why we should be worrying about that. We are already warming up the global atmosphere with what we do today and if bitcoin is doing the same then what the problem? Why we should stop bitcoin at the first glance? Why we can’t stop using the cars, industries, private companies, IT worlds, air-travels etc etc? They are also using the highest resources of the earth and are more costlier than the bitcoin in first place.

The thing is we can’t stop using them, because we now rely on them completely, we are used to them and they are our daily life needs.

In the similar ways, bitcoin is into our hearts now, it gives us financial income which we in turn use for carving our daily life needs. So I think we are clear here on the topic that why digital currency can’t be stopped. Because its a need :-)

The energy used to mine blocks is not wasted, it's used to keep the currency decentralized. I don't think that the energy that is used to power a TV is much more justified than the energy to mine blocks. TV is just for entertainment purposes like you mentioned but mining really adds something to the society, because it makes payments possible without a central authority.

what about human beings in the total of the whole population on earth who waste tons of resources and energy with useless and stupid things is that also counted? how about big factories not just consumes a lot of resources but also produces pollution to the mother nature? not just bitcoin mining but every business and firm costs expensive resources and money just to retain and advertise it, what do you expect to establish a business? money free that comes from nowhere? use green energy and other alternative methods to save electricity, there are a lot of people who are smart enough to mine at cheaper costs.

Are you honestly comparing cars (used by billions daily) with bitcoin and 400k tx/day?
Really?

There are 1 million 911 calls each day, most end up using with a car deployed (police , fire, ambulance).

Do an experiment for one week.

a) try to live without bitcoins
b) try to live without using a car or something that wasn't transported using a car

Let's see the results.

Anyhow, the enormous consume will go down once the reward will get smaller and smaller (yeah I know it's a decade) and the miners will only get paid how much people want to spend on transaction fees.

The issue with meat is, demand greatly surpasses supply by a considerable margin. If a considerable proportion of the population quit eating meat there would still be overwhelming demand. There are many people and families who would eat steak dinners every night if they could afford to. Meat is a luxury food item for many and that isn't likely to change anytime soon for the same reasons people aren't likely to give up sharkfin soup or other food items which threaten endangerment or extinction of animal species on the endangered list.

Electrical energy consumption is constantly rising.

https://i.imgur.com/Fz0YobJ.png

Bitcoin doesn't change the world's energy needs increasing on an annual basis and its impact on this historical trend is negligible at best.


Here's an interior picture of a bitcoin mining facility in china.

https://i.imgur.com/HAMFkuL.jpg

Exterior photo of the same mining facility(blue roof), it is powered by a small hydroelectric plant harnessing power from the river.

https://i.imgur.com/XOiFN0L.jpg

Hydroelectric power is slightly cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) than coal and so could represent a natural progression for bitcoin mining ops.

One issue with the media's claim of "bitcoin being bad for the environment" is there is zero effort to quantify how many bitcoin mining ops utilize hydroelectric or other forms of power. They simply assume "coal" which is the worst case scenario.

China has been credited with having 14 of the top 30 most polluted cities in the world long before bitcoin mining went mainstream. There is no objective breakdown of the biggest wasters of electricity, or largest contributors to climate change. Only assumptions being made about bitcoin's role in contributing to both.

....

Here's a source for california paying neighboring arizona to take their excess electricity to avoid damaging their power grid from the excess power produced:


The article above seems to indicate that power generation is so high in some regions they might actually benefit from the higher energy consumption of bitcoin mining enterprises as it would reduce their need to outsource power to neighboring states.

So that means you are thinking that for making fiat currencies we are not wasting our natural resources. Right? You are wrong. To make paper and ink for fiat currencies definitely we are using natural resources. If you start thinking in that way then you wont be able to use anything that is available in market. But nowadays many people are mining cryptocurrencies using renewable energy sources to get profit . I think  in the coming years everybody will shift to that to avoid hugh electricity bills.

It´s a discussion with lack of knowledge and short sight viewpoint, yes we spend, not waste a lot of energy to generate value, but the reason why we don´t have more than abundant energy to use both to mine wealth and to use in our daily lives is due to lack of investments and greed. We have plenty of solar energy, not farmed enough and also wind energy that can be reaped by and large. So, it´s not like we don´t have energy unless you killing the sun or stopping the winds tomorrow. Stop bitching about "energy wasting" and start promoting cheap energy.

Everyone is so caught up on the fact that fiat money is wasting a lot of resources too!

Well no shit!

Just because our current banking system is very wasteful doesn't mean we should continue down that path!

We still need to use fiat money to purchase bitcoin. Bitcoin is causing destruction of resources through mining and through the fact that fiat money is still required to purchase bitcoin. Digital currencies should have the benefit of not wasting resources. Can you imagine how much electricity we will waste to produce a single bitcoin in the year 2100?

The waste is just really pathetic and shows humanity's disregard for the planet in general. We are all destroying this world together

It is true we need to prepare resources for our new generation in future because we have limited resources.
In other side, we try to make this digital currency also for future. I think create digital currency is same important with the resources itself.

Have you compared it to gold mining? Mining and recycling gold consumes far more energy. It's important to keep this in perspective as environmentalists begin complaining about Bitcoin's energy consumption. Here's a recent comparison (http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-mining-really-use):


In the same article, one researcher -- Marc Bevand -- claims that Bitcoin mining uses ~ 4TWh annually, which is considerably less energy than is used by Christmas lights in the US during the holiday season. Granted, as difficulty grows and proof-of-work becomes increasingly difficult in the context of decreasing block subsidy, the network's energy consumption can be expected to increase.

But my point is this: When we consider how much energy is consumed by Bitcoin, you have to consider the alternatives (like gold), which have significant energy costs themselves.

Keep in mind I am all about saving resources and energy.

I 100% agree that fiat money wastes resources too. But you all are REALLY missing the point

We had no choice but to waste resources on fiat money. It has to be minted, protected, maintained, changed out etc. Not to mention security and that stuff. We do have a choice when we move to a digital currency to waste as close to 0 resources as possible. Instead we are doing the exact opposite. The very nature of bitcoin requires us to WASTE more and MORE resources as it is made. We are exponentially wasting more resources on this. And its really sad.

This is in addition to resources we are already wasting on fiat!! I am upset about that too.

But now we are wasting resources on BOTH!

Do you guys not get it?  :'(

I think one reason we waste here is the power supply of the computer, cost of electricty, We need to save resources and energy. in the future we will see a quantum resistance, is just like internet of things so we can't affect the electric usage supply.

Are there any environmental friendly cryptos? Bitcoin is destroying so many resources

I don't think so. Bitcoin actually looks like a lot of electricity. It needs to know that these electric power are idle in many countries. People will not set up mines in the downtown area. In addition, bitcoin is of real value. It can promote efficient transactions and allow people all over the world to deal immediately at the same time.

Right now its 15 hours of wait time and fees as high as $35+

I would say bitcoin is not an efficient way to do transactions at the current time.

No we are not it is actually logical that with our trend towards innovation and technology that we go all in towards having a digitized currency. In the future when we have a whole lot of technology abound then bitcoin and cryptocurrency is the way to go

As long as it's useful I think there's no problem, bitcoin does make a lot of waste of resources. But back again, what bitcoin give to us.
Rather than wasting resources only for something that is not useful, It would be better if used for this kind of thing.

Good information(bolded^). That's what I was expecting to see in a valid breakdown.

According to polls, only 2% of americans have used bitcoin or a crypto currency. Bitcoin's userbase being extremely small across a global scale, it isn't likely to consume as much power as critics claim.

It could help to know some bitcoin mining installations in china are powered by hydroelectric power rather than coal. Earlier this year russia proposed construction of bitcoin miners powered by nuclear energy.

The media claims all bitcoin mining is powered by coal and other extremely polluting hydrocarbon based energy sources but this is not true.

The lady that calls Bitcoin a "Ponzi" is telling someone to buy an education. The irony.

Now to the educated definition of words......

A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒn.zi/; also a Ponzi game)[1] is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator generates returns for older investors through revenue paid by new investors, rather than from legitimate business activities or profit of financial trading. Operators of Ponzi schemes can be either individuals or corporations, and grab the attention of new investors by offering short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent.

Who is the "operator" of Bitcoin?

Who offered you short term returns?

Never type "educated" again. Matter of fact define "educated" in your own words. Watch the crickets everyone.

Long time ago there was Primecoin which used some algorithm to find prime numbers. Why are they so important is simply explaind here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/439870/why-are-primes-important-in-cryptography

It looks like that the idea to both secure currency and do something more usefull while mining has not developed. I mined some of them at the very begininng of the project, but it did not make me millionaire - Primecoin is now nearly dead  ;)

Electricity consumption with bitcoin is termed to be the waste of resource. This is true, because than many other needs the electricity consumed by cryptocurrency is big. At the same time this is to change the entire system as well the efficiency is high than most other technologies available so no need of thinking about the wasting of resources.

you only see mining and creating crypto currencies causes problem but you don't see that it is a great help to many people.

Here we go again. How many times do you guys need to keep spreading this totally false information ? Are you paid to FUD crypto or something  ::)

I can right of the bat say no we're not wasting resources to make digital currencies. To make a system that's to be used by the entire globe, some energy has to be spent. This is not called wasting. This is making use of energy. And please don't pull up some useless and totally inaccurate info that come up on the news with absolutely zero sources other than Mr X who wrote it on his way to the studio.

Before attacking the amount of resources used by crypto, why don't you tell me how much is used by the traditional banking system as a whole ? There is no way mining costs come near that amount. In fact, other than paying humans and using human resources to make transactions crypto removes that whole expenditure.

If you dig a little deeper, you'll find that most of the mining farms that need and consume a large amount of electricity are setup in places where there are natural resources of energy that are unused. That's actually the case in a lot of places in China and the private electricity companies (being companies that also want to make money) actually encourage these setups. Please point out the wasted resources.

Mining used to be a fairly inexpensive. But it is now so intense that it requires dedicated buildings full of specialist bitcoin-mining chips running 24/7. And as the number of bitcoins in circulation grows towards the artificially imposed ceiling of 21 million, mining each new one takes yet more computation. This burgeoning industry is hugely wasteful

A Central Bankless currency is a very tangible thing.  To decentralize money is to decentralize power.  This is the end goal of Bitcoin.  Does that sound incredible to you?  I have my doubts that this end will be reached but the pursuit of this goal is well worth the resources.  I will say that proof of stake is superior than proof of work.  It would add stability to the network and reduce energy consumption.

What do you mean by this? I'm not familiar with the concept.

No, this is the future of currency. When you watch future movies, they are suggested from our present behavior and soon the trees are going to reduce, hence we will not be able to print much paper currency. So, one will need to shift to digital currency soon. I think these digital currency might be government backed but this is the future coming up, where we will use only digital methods. It not might happen in 10-15 years but think beyond and even you may realize about its possibility.

Good comparison, bitcoin vs electricity stuffs. Which one is needing more resources?
Which one is more important. I will choose bitcoin for future.

People who are not interested in using resources, they are interested in their pocket money. They only care about profit from that resource but the resource is endless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI8tBH_qch8

We are spending around 10 billion a year on bitcoin mining at the current costs (which keep increasing)

The adoption of cryptocurrencies are still small so that only medium to average companies are doing the mining, but still there are so many alternatives energy too, it just need a lot of budget in order to implement that. A solar powered mining farm is a pretty good example or that and some people are using the alternatives.
Creating the cryptocurrencies? Wasted? NO this is just its development and the efforts are not wasted. Look at the potential it can bring that to fiat. Destroyed what? Man hours? no what is destroying the world are the crude oils and fossil fuels. If we're serious about having the alternative supplies or using it, the government can do it in a mere time, the only problem is that the resources is a trillion dollar industry. There are so many businesses that will be affected, and then money will speaks again.

Imagine a low life beggar like me was able to mine Bitcoin without doing anything special or having to spend money on hardware and electricity, then beggars like emperor Wu and the gang of jumpers (note that when I say jumpers, I mean people jumping 18 years old girls without sharing with me at least) would mine a billion times more than me. you could also adopt my activity tokens on Waves platform, it costs 0.01 Waves per transaction.

Yes I agree with you. Already we have limited natural resources, and use of these resources during mining is much high as compared with output. Energy consuption during bitcoin mining is much high and today billions of people doing mining due high price of bitcoin. Thats the alarm for us to stop wastage of energy.
To save natural resources we can go through Green way.... In this by using solar systems and wind energy, we can save energy and also cost for it.

Every investment need some types of resources and in this case if we see Bitcoin or other digital currency as a currency then  compare it with another fiat currency. I think fiat currency uses more resources than Bitcoin as they need to build banks, pay electricity bills and pay for employees and so on. If you see on the wider aspect you will notice that Bitcoin or other digital currency is much more cheap and convenient to use than fiat.

The problem is Bitcoin is intentionally designed to waste resources. The way bitcoin works, more and more resources will need to be consumed to make it. BTC doesn't need to work like that. We can make crypto currencies without destroying billions of dollars worth of man power, electricity, and hardware. It is scary that everyone is overlooking how wasteful it is. And that bitcoin's value is derived from how many resources were destroyed to mine it. Mining fees could be minimal compared to what they are

we make weapons,booms and fighting and destroy many resources bitcoin better

we need devices and power (sun & wind power )

http://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-mining-track-consume-worlds-energy-2020-744036

Bitcoin Mining is on pace to exceed the World's energy use by 2020!  :'(

To create a crypto currency is really wasted a lot of electricity. However, this can not be the reason not to create and not use crypto currency. Humanity has great opportunities to use the energy of wind, sun and other alternative energy sources, which are almost inexhaustible. Therefore, I see no reason to not use this energy in part to the crypto currency, which provides us with additional and new features and usability when using it.

Your homework for tonight is to think of 3 reasons why that could never happen.

Strongly disagree with your use of the word never in this case. Especially when you provide no supporting details

Be careful making such egregious statements

Ok, I'll give you the easy one.

1. It is impossible for mining Bitcoins (or any other usage, for that matter) to exceed 100% of total energy consumption.

Can you think of any others?

What? I think you just aren't comprehending.

Bitcoin network will "use as much electricity as the entire world does today" by early 2020


Honestly I can't see what contribution you are adding to the thread, if anything at all. Except maybe arguing semantics and wording


Can you think of anything valuable to add to the discussion?

"The Design, the needs and the greed".
So much for a digital currency.

With the current difficulty setting of 10 minutes a block just for " fairness' " sake till we mined that maximum amount of btc doesn't work with today's events.
It was designed to be an equal opportunity to everyone who are mining. There are no "everyone" now.

The Hashrate is too damn high and the difficulty will rise with it.
(Read what others said) That electricity should have beed used for something else.

It depends on what is "waste" for you. That's why language is unconventional sometimes.

Ok, suppose you are correct and that is the actual intent of the statement. Then, here is another freebie:

2. Let's assume energy production increases 10% in the next 2 years (by 2020). It's a reasonable assumption. If in 2020 Bitcoin uses today's total energy consumption, then there is only 10% left for everything else. That would never happen. I will leave it to you to figure out why.

We could see such threads nowadays showing that they are very much concerned about electricity being wasted for mining bitcoins and they speak in a way as if no other projects make use of more electricity.The only motive is that they want to blame bitcoin by any way.At first,they blamed it for being used for illegal activities,then complained for high transaction fee and when nothing works,they are trying to shed fake tears that more electricity being used.

I predict a price correction will happen in 2018

I see bitcoin being around $1000-2000 or so. But before that happens it might go up in price. Could even get to 100k before the crash

At first some people may see it as wasting of resources once we invested in mining however if you come to think of it, mining investment thru bitcoin is the same as stock investment in various mining companies. Not all users of bitcoin are into mining and developing the digital currency thru it is not solely thru mining.

Many people won't realize the damage that is cost by wasted resources until it is far too late

We won't be able to stop ourselves from destroying every last resource in the name of greed.



"By November of 2020, it’d use more electricity than the entire world does today. That’s bad. It means Bitcoin emits the equivalent of 17.7 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, a big middle finger to Earth’s climate and anyone who enjoys things like coastlines, forests, and not dying of mosquito-borne diseases. Refracted through a different metaphor, the Bitcoin P2P network is essentially a distributed superintelligence utterly dedicated to generating bitcoins, so of course it wants to convert all the energy (and therefore matter) in the universe into bitcoin. That is literally its job."

(Source: Wired, December 15 2017)

Yes. I believe that mining just consume too much of everything. The money you earn from mining is just being eaten away by the resources you use everytime you mine. In my own opinion, I think I'll prefer earning cryptos and I'll be contented.

This looks like a thread by a greenpeace activist. One of those guys who were using a ship that runs on diesel to sail from one oil rig to another in a protest against oil extraction :D We are wasting various resources on various things. Wood to make houses, natural gas to cook food and heat those houses, clean air to make jets move people from one place to another.


What resources? The same ones that you're wasting away by watching porn on your computer? Or maybe the ones that your christmas lights are burning away?

I will sell all my savings and inverse in Bitcoin Mining.Because I had gained many bitcoin from the Mining. Only thing is you need to inverse huge money as a investment to start of Mining.In digital currency investment you will get double or triple of your Invested money.

Even though i support you on investing in a  bitcoin mine i don't think it makes economic sense to sell just everything (your savings) for it because you might crash if it crashes even though it doesn't look like happening any time soon  but its better to play it safe and diversify your investment as  and when you can.

I think as tech develops and clean energy is coming, the energy that mining takes will be improved. Also, Siberia just became a really good option or mining lol.

Its not wasting, its spending. Everything in life comes with a cost, otherwise Bitcoins would be worthless. Its a trade off for the system to function

Doesn't bitcoin mining present us with a workable test-case for renewable-energy production?  

This is just FUD, this is based on assumption on the energy consuption based on current mining equipment and growing difficulty but as you know, the energy efficiency and hash power of mining devices is improving with every new generation. There will be definitely some growth in consumption of energy but it would be very minor compared to this FUD prediction, also the mining of bitcoin is using the most efficient/cheapest energy sources - water, solar so the miners can maximize their profits. You can compare it with gold mining - only portion of gold is used for real pursposes, rest is for store of value but the impact on environment is much bigger - chemicals, energy, waste, landscape destruction. Bitcoin is a gold disruptor, store of value, gold 2.0 with many advantages.

Exactly. By mining Bitcoins we are buying it for fiat with the use of some middlemen. Those middlemen being hardware manufacturers and electricity suppliers. We could do this using the exchange owners as the middlemen and it wouldn't be much different. Somebody has to be paid for us to get cryptocurrency. It can be a guy from craigslist or localbitcoins, it can be an exchange owner or it can be the government if we buy at an auction. Nothing goes to waste!

Okay, let's start with the electricity we used for mining and noding activites to keep our blockchain alive. We consume crazy amount of electricity and we produce this electricity from oil, coal and other petroleum sources mainly. This means we're wasting resources as it's a must.

Nowadays, many uses bitcoins as transferring virtual money. It is also appealing to younger population. They are considered as fintech (financial technology). With this, we are not wasting resources instead we are spending in order to invest. We cannot have want we want if we dont spend something like our time and effort to invest.

Mining Bitcoin requires so much computational power and electricity that is unprofitable unless new money comes into the market to pay for the expenses. But ask yourself, if you are not an investor, once you get your bitcoin what will you do with it? If your answer is get rich quick, sell now and cut your losses.

wasting resources to make digital currencies, thats not true we are here to invest in crypto get good profits and get more knowledge about the new technonolgy of virtual cryptocurrency. If wasting of resources to make digital coin the miner go stop to mined if they get nothing.

Bitcoin mining is never profitable in the present. Miners mine currently betting BTC's value will increase later. The market is dependent on fresh money investing in BTC futures. A price crash is coming soon. Smart investors will buy on the dips. Naive investors will panic sell at any price and give their money away.

Got to shut down all those electric signs in Times Square and Las Vegas too.

There is a lot of power resources in very remote areas, all of the idle power. In addition, there are many encrypted currencies using the POS mechanism, which does not waste a lot of resources.

I think not.
And for me this resources are not only for creating digital currencies only.
But it has now become a tool - a tool for us to change our perceptions with regards to our financial needs.
It enables us to be revolutionized and be independent to banking institution.
And i am very thankful for this.

Totally true. It will cause us to improve instead our daily financial needs. And if what they are talking about wasting resources well, absolutely it's not but ofcourse there are always benefits in creating this kind of lifestyle with the crypto's.

It's something to think about for the future, but at the moment I believe crypto is only responsible for 0.1% of the global energy consumption.
So at this stage there are plenty of other avenues (99.9% worth!) that hold more potential for limiting our use of natural resources.

No  fucks can give about the computing power itself, moreso the amount of power used, like you said. under ideal circumstances, miners can be built from pre existing parts on certain algos. so for the environmentally conscious miner, btc isnt even really an option at the moment, but alt algos still can be profitable to mine. but the power, despite the device, is the real problem, its a waste of a resource that is really needed for something more practical.

the labor is a benefit, imo. there is nothing wrong with value creation, just so at the sake of safety/longevity.

bitcoin is one of the ways to solve  world problems like tax and government.

we have many super computers and only use it to tracking others.

Mainstream manipulation and black propaganda indeed that affect this kind of thinking. Does banking system or fiat/credit card and many more currency in the world doesn’t do the same or have much power wastage than cryptocurrency. If you said No then you need to research for yourself. Cryptocurrency has no dominant usage of electricity and resources and that is even visually available for someone to see.

Energy used to earn money is not waste at all.
Almost every household have 1 TV set and those thing consume a lot of energy with nothing in return.
if you compare the number of rigs to TVs maybe not even in 10 percent.
 

What do you mean we are wasting resources? We are making our resources count in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies bro. It is all good in crypto! We are making differences.

We are not wasting resources on maintaining Bitcoin. Do you know what is the total cost of maintaining every paper currency? Bitcoin uses a lot of energy but it also produces a lot of heat which could be used for keeping our houses warm in the winter. Solar panels are still too inefficient to use them in a huge mining farms.

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies are a clean usage of ressources like electricity as you mentioned, its the power that keep this currency clean and available for many years

Nothing goes for nothing, there will necessarily be some needed resources to expend before mining and creation of ICO projects, so I don't think that should not be referred to as waste.

in any case, the costs of producing something are needed...I don't think that this is a huge expense...besides, the cryptocurrency is really useful...maybe in the future it will be possible to optimize these costs

Yes, yes and yes

We are wasting electrical and CPU power with the block-chain and most of the software
is concerned with making miners rich and is not any used for people that buy these coin
or those that want to do anything useful with then.

$55 in transaction fees on a system that can only do 7 transactions a second
is a total joke and will ensure the leafs fall off the tulip much faster than they should

Total real data processing speed for BTC is 14Kbs if you care to check the maths

That's a bit like saying that it get warmer at night

90KWH of electric just to write 250 bytes of data into a ledger was fine with the enigma machine used in WWII but not today 

If you think investing in digital currency is a waste of resources then why are there so many people who invest in bitcoin? Is there any data to prove that it is a waste of resources? Knowing on how risky it is to invest on cryptocurrency but when you see the data that is in the chart you can see that investing on cryptocurrency is profitable. So i will not believe in what you say investing in cryptocurrency a waste of resources.

The only resources that we spend on bitcoin mining is electricity. Humanity is actively working on finding alternative sources of energy, and I think that in the coming years, providing electricity will not be a problem for us.

How the fuck could be wasting resources? we are mining cryptocurrencies, that is money, and what about when the governments have to print bills? They need paper to make those bills, and getting paper means that they need to cut off trees in order to get it.

Sure, some people are! Most initial coin offering are complete rubbish...they'll never be used, ever. For Bitcoin and the other top ten currencies I believe the energy use is worth it. Also, the miners could try to utilize more sustainable energy options - hydro, solar, wind. The onus is not on us as coin users, but for the miners...along with anyone else directly consuming energy to do so in a responsible way (if that is something they believe in).

Mining operations in Iceland use thermal heat, which has very little negative impact on the world or environment.

Resources are not being wasted to make digital currencies if miners pay the market rate for electricity and equipment. The price is everything, and underscores the worldwide need for true pricing unclouded by subsidies, grants, tax breaks, etc. Look at it this way: Is food wasted that is left uneaten by customers in restaurants? Arguably not if they paid the commercial rate for it. They will have to buy more later to make up for it, but that purchase sends a signal to farmers to plant more. But if the food is artificially cheap, then, yes, it is being wasted. Exactly the same logic applies to 'renewable' energy technologies: the technology is artificially cheap because of subsidies, grants, tax breaks, etc. But somebody has got to pay for it. And who would that be? Taxpayers working in the carbon-burning economy, that's who. In order to fund the renewables, they have to work harder there and in working harder burn more carbon. The only way to prevent the waste of natural resources is to allow a transparent market to price it with all the information it has available to it.

That is the irony about the virtual currency. Since all we are using are our devices, it is not wasting anything. But, if you think about it again, you are also wasting time and energy on it.

In mining, you use a lot of electricity which affects the environment. But you're right, it's money, but it's still carbon. It becomes wasteful when worthless cryptocurrencies are mined. If you check online, there's a really long list of ctcs and a lot of them are rubbish.