Bitcoin Forum

Hello. I was thinking about bitcoin disadvantages, and I just realized how bad the bitcoin was for the environment. We are literally destroying the planet with mining. And it will get worse and worse.
I think, if we want the bitcoin to be a viable money we have to solve this problem. I was thinking about green energy.
What do you think about this problem, and how could we fix it?

More than 90% of human activities affects environment in one way or the other. Most of the  facilities we use reach our hands after exploitation of natural resources.  New ways need to be invented which have least effect on the environment as petrol diesel coal is being replaced by solar wind energy though it is in its initial stages.  LED technology being replaced and is being used instead of conventional lights bulbs a good step forward saving environment. 
In the initial stages every invention creates  problems of pollution but afterwards with advancement of technology we may control it.
Major problem is usage of Petro products which need quick replacement. 
Leadership with strong positive attitude are trying and marching ahead in this direction. 
All of us need to save energy , least usage of man made things will save earth environment.  People need to be educated for simple natural living.
Just bitcoin can't be blamed fiat currency paper  currency also affects environment due to trees cut for printing also electricity used for it.


 

The amount of energy required for a bitcoin transaction is rather abstract, but the power consumed by each bitcoin transaction can be spent by a single U.S. family for a week, which more or less pollutes the environment...

I was also thinking that Op is an environmentalists who is pointing out that bitcoin mining is dangerous to Mother Earth but not complaining using computer for games,, internet for days,, electricity with all appliances at home and using cars rolling around the neighbourhood..

Global warming is been a problem for decades even in time bitcoin is not yet being discovered.. How to fix it? The leader in the whole world with great minds /scientists/engineers are with them but it is still unsolved.. And you expect the bitcoin community can..

Where the ugliness is happening is money in bitcoin minerals, all is well, bitcoin brings about a good change in the world of the economy, whose workers are the ones who are destroying nature by pressing trees and so on.

bitcoin mining indeed cost electricity, but it is not bad as other factory that produce waste even worse.
the cryptocurrency mining is still acceptable for our environment, as long as the wasted product low-harmful.

Here is a simple solution to the problem:

1) If you are making good money with bitcoins, invest some of it for making environment better. For instance, you can plat more trees by spending some money.

2) There are some of the coins that are mined with environment friendly methods. You can go for those coins if you are concerned about environment.

3) If you are involved in bitcoin mining and thus causing a lot of environmental problems, you should cut the use of other electronic gadgets that result in environmental pollution.

It is not right to disrespect his suggestion by saying that other people are also harming environment in different ways. I think that people do not realize that by harming the environment we are putting pour life in danger. There is no point in making money at the cost of environment. However, as bitcoins are now a source of income for a lot of people we should look for ways to maintain a balance. For instance, suppose a company is involved in large scale mining of bitcoins. It is the social responsibility of the company to take some steps for preventing environmental pollution like by planting trees.

with very high bitcoin prices for now of course will be difficult to do mining activities because it requires a considerable cost to meet the needs of electrical energy. and if we look at the level of energy sources that must be supplied to conduct a mining of course this will affect the level of natural resource problems that affect the environment. and to overcome this in mining activities is I think in this case should not be done individually because now many companies are opening Veritas Mining with the aim to divert energy needs are increasing.

Now BTC's mines use a lot of mining companies to consider renewable energy (wind, hydro, solar) to power supply! These energies will enable the miners to give full play!

This is a reasonable utilization of resources!

Mining bitcoin is not so bad on this planet compared to the volume of the number of factories or also the oil and coal mining, all will be fine.

OP, suggest you try to understand the context of the situation before making rash comments. Also suggest you understand how to use the word "literally".

Most people can agree that Bitcoin mining has contributed to quite a bit of discussion surrounding sustainability and efficiency, but the studies fail to take into account a comprehensive look at cost-benefit current conditions and potential. You can't ignore that there is already usefulness in what Bitcoin already does and what it further promises. Any useful industry has an associated cost.

Do you have a source for this stance, or did you fall for sensationalism? Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy for sure, but it's currently still nothing in the big picture. Refer to this article:

https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50

So banking is literally destroying the planet 3x (conservative estimate) as fast? You shouldn't look at things through a vacuum. Don't get me wrong; I also think the massive consumption is a problem. It's getting blown way out of proportion though.

Everything is relative. Bitcoin mining is really an insanely energy-consuming process. However, we should remember that in the case of Bitcoin, electricity is spent only on mining and blockchain operation. While maintaining, for example, a payment system, which is used by almost all people and often enough, is accompanied by additional energy costs. BTC is even more environmentally friendly than traditional payment systems. Also do not forget that the total number of bitcoins is pre-installed. This means that sooner or later the last BTC will be mined and the mining will finally stop.

Hmmm, i'm really doubt about your point, how can Bitcoin destroys the environment when it's just a digital currency?

I do not see anything bad on bitcoin, which will affect the environment, bitcoin will run out, and bitcoin mining will end. but not for other altcoin mining.

that is, bitcoin has more positive things, you have to read a lot, how the crypto world can improve the world economy.
of course if they are willing to realize.

but it's back to us, how to use and manage bitcoin well. bitcoin is sensitive to its owner.

If you really think that bitcoin mining is the root cause of global warming ,then i have nothing else to say,yes bitcoin mining does need huge amount of electricity and in future we might see people using green energy methods like solar and wind energy ,but one thing you have to understand is that,to mine one bitcoin you have to spend around $7000 including electricity and hardware and the price of bitcoin is justifiable and do you think it is not viable to spend that much.

Few algorithms already exist that are not using a lot of electricity, PoS and DPoS so you can relax. In my opinion they will be mass-used in a few years

Soon we will be forced in to using greener energy (not from fossil fuels) and then even if the cost of energy required for BTC rises it won't be anywhere near as bad as it is currently. Solar and Geothermal power are far superior to fossil fuels in terms of protecting the environment and these alternative energy sources should soon phase out the heavily polluting methods. In the long run I don't think Crypto will generate that great of an issue for the environment

think about it this way..
if we were mining using GPU's the electric used by the network would be much higher but the difficulty(security from brute forcing) would be weaker

that said
the total 23exahash is about 1.8mill S9 miners

however
there are half a million ATMS in america
there are 6700 banks in america, many bank call centres, head quarters
(1.4mill employee's probably with access to a pc each)
then we have the background stuff like visa, mastercard and amex servers

and thats before you equate the fuel consumption of the secure bank note armored delivery vehicles and staff getting to work
and thats before you equate the physical resource consumption of printing bank notes..

if you done some maths you would see moving fiat around uses more electric and is less secure than bitcoin

in short FIAT is less environmentally friendly

The Tree-huggers are all worked up by the amount of energy and electricity that are used by Bitcoin mining, but they forget

that Fiat currencies are much worst. These guys get worked up by FUD that are spread in the media and these articles

are mostly biased. Can you imagine how much damage is done to the environment to manufacture coins and paper money?

How many trees are cut down? Now paper/silk money is being replaced by plastic money in the UK, which is even worst.  :o

The only concern with bitcoin miners are they consume too much electricity which big factories also do the same thing. What I mean is, its happening that there's a shortage on electricity even before bitcoin comes because the demand for this are quiet increasing day by day and the supply are being lowered.

That's true and I totally agree with you, the current POW system is burning too much electricity and huge percent of the electricity usage in China goes directly to cryptocurrencies mining, that's why I assume that soon enough countries will notice it and will start doing steps to prevent people from mining so electricity waste will stop.
I believe that we are not really far away from switching up to POS, and once we do that we will no longer need to worry about electricity wasting.

I'm a lot less optimistic about this than you are. Either way, at least there's a viable alternative for when the problem gets big enough. We might not even reach that point, with the rate renewable energy tech is progressing. Massive consumption shouldn't be a problem for as long as they come from clean sources after all.

We cannot blame the minerd because they are not the ones that produces energy. The only possible reasons that can affect the environment are the ones producing the energy. The coal miners are the ones damaging the atmosphere because of the burning of fuels.

This is now the new mode of attacks from those who are hostile to bitcoin. Now the fight is taken to the next level and its seems that those against it and eco friendly now. How pathetic.

But there was one article saying that Japan GMO will built a mining hardware that will consumed less electricity and they are even thinking of using solar panels as well.

https://news.bitcoin.com/japanese-electricity-company-uses-excess-solar-power-crypto-mining/

So I guess the next arguments against bitcoin will be coming from WWF (World Wildlife Fun) because of the "whales" roaming and manipulating the market.  ;D

the use of energy in bitcoin mining does eat up a lot of power resources, but I think the electrical energy required comes from renewable energy, not petroleum, so it's not a big deal. the problem of electricity consumption in developed countries can support this business to keep going. and the use of hardware on the current mining is low in energy, more mining users can be efficient in its use.

I share your sentiments in general, the part about using renewable or "green" energy. Not really sure if this is also applicable where you live but where I'm from the problem is renewable energy isn't cheap (ie. buying and setting up solar panels on the roof of your house). I think a person who runs a btc mining farm would have sufficient resources to also invest in tapping sources of renewable energy if they cared enough but that's another problem, some people just lack sincere concern for the environment.  

Well, if you were thinking about green energy, maybe miners could use a solar panel for their electricity usage.
But I think it still not profitable. But the idea using solar panel can be implemented several years later.

COINS work proof mechanism, that is, the so-called "dig", is often reviled: so much to the machine works, what all don't cost a lot of energy, and output, just in order to maintain the currency network safe operation. Doesn't this amount of wasted energy mean that bitcoin is not environmentally friendly?

We say that the currency system than traditional monetary system more efficient, but that doesn't means that the currency is more "green", what exactly is "environmental protection", it remains to be investigated, at the very least, environmental protection is more than a problem of energy saving.

Bitcoin mining didn't start global warming. industrialization did.there has not been a permanent solution for environmental degradation and BTC cant shoulder the sole responsibility. besides, there are lots of other computer apps that operate heavily on electricity and internet and iv never heard complains about them, im not in defense of BTC mining, just thinking all should accept responsibility  and work together to minimize the pollution.

the environmental "problem" is not a problem at all. you are making it into one because possibly you have read some bad articles on some FUD campaign news site about this. the fact is bitcoin is providing a very important and much used utility and compared to that the energy that it is consuming to provide that utility is very very small.
as an example i can tell you that when you heat your house during winter and when it is snowing outside you are wasting energy and YOU are an "environmental problem"

besides if you compare the amount of energy that mining bitcoin consumes with other things like branches of a small bank (not all banking system just a couple of them) you can see that the energy consumption is not that high.

A lot of mining are done with electricity that are generated from environmentally friendly sources. "Green power" is a term used to describe sources of energy that are renewable and considered to be environmentally friendly and harness natural processes, such as geothermal energy, wind energy, biomass energy, and solar energy.

Some of the biggest Chinese Bitcoin mining farms are situated close to hydroelectric power plants. So this is just a FUD story that was concocted by the media to draw negative attention to Bitcoin.  >:(

Well the percentage of pollution that bitcoin miners cause with their machines is a very negligible number, one because there is not many high/ extremely consuming rigs out there, second hard core mining farms that I know of use clean energy as a secondary power like geothermal power in order for their business to be profitable.

The bitcoin mining consumes a lot of power, but I think it does not really affect the environment as the amount of power consumed for bitcoin mining is very small compared to other industries. There are also a number of bitcoin-producing farms using renewable energy sources to reduce electricity and not affect the environment.

There is no way to quantify the energy spent on a transaction.
We can have 400 000 or 23 675 transactions a day , the same amount of energy will be spent for mining.


Greener energy is not cheaper.
It's cheaper because it receives subsidies from the government.
It is also efficient because right now wind farms and solar panels are installed in the best spots.
Like in the first days of gold mining, when gold was found directly in the riverbed.

Once we ramp up the production you will have to put panels in not so efficient places, so the cost will just go up.




Well, let me answer one of your question:
http://www.designlife-cycle.com/us-penny/
So the US mint that is servicing 300 million people is pending less than 1/7 of what bitcoin consumed in December and since then with the difficulty skyrocketing we can assume it has grown a lot!!!!


So, you add ATMs, banks, call centers, headquarters, their pc...
But you don't add bitcoin nodes, bitcoin atms, the servers that run exchnges, online wallets, and the computers of all 1 million people that have an account on bitcointalk :P.
This qualifies for quite a biased view, isn't it?

Let's be honest, printing fiat is also expensive and in some cases it exceeds the value of produced coins. A lot of money is spent on securing bills from forging. Try to imagine how much electricity is wasted on such things. Bitcoin has a potential to become the international cryptocurrency then the cost of maintaining it would be much lower than fiats'. Some cryptocurrencies are also being backed up by a lot of miners which use a lot of electricity. Take Ethereum as an example. It's not only being used a payment (in some cases) but also runs ICOs, smartcontracts and dapps.

I think the problem is let say we want to build solar panel, in every country the price of solar panel is really expensive and only a few people which could build that green energy. and if there is a cheap price, then I think small mining industry will try and compare with the electricity that they use and will apply this energy to supply their hardware. but personally, I agree that we can use renewable energy like solar panel to replace the electricity which need by many people so we can reduce the electricity fee.

Just bitcoin, but all digital currencies in total can match the power consumption of banking systems.

But enough with the environmental damages, it's been discussed several times in the past.
Bitcoin blockchain is way more convenient than banks however, if banks cease to exist due to the introduction of blockchain in financial sector (that is impossible during our time) the problem would be less employment ratio.

Bitcoin's hashrate could grow too to consume even higher resources if mining become more competitive and if newer generations of ASICs failed to solve power efficiency.

Maybe with the mining energy needed, the world move to greener energy sooner than later. How ever maybe some day, Bitcoin may implement POS and the mining will be stopped.

I agree with you in most of what you've said. The cost of electricity to support fiat, or even mining gold, since many compare bitcoin to gold, is way bigger than the costs used to mine bitcoin. A lot of miners are actually trying to use renewable energy, mostly because it's cheaper, but it's also good for the environment so it's a good thing they are doing it. In fact bitcoin mining could help boost the investment to produce renewable energy.

The only thing I don't agree in your post, and that shows a certain lack of understanding on why mining is done, is when you say that mining will stop.
Mining is used to keep the network secure, by confirming that every transaction made in the BTC blockchain is legit. In order to do so, miners get rewarded with some bitcoin (this reward is halved every 4 years, and the next one will happen in 2020). So when all bitcoins are mined, this will simply means that they will stop getting this reward. At this time, the only incentive they will get to continue securing the network, by verifying transactions will be the fees they collect. So basically mining will never stop.

I agree with your remark and admit that I exaggerated a little when I said that the mining would stop. In fact, I meant that since there will be no reward that the miners get now, the incentive to continue to deal with this matter will be lost. When all bitcoins are mined, people's interest in mining will not be as strong as now, as they will no longer receive a reward. You said that the only incentive they will have to continue is the fees they collect. But I don`t think this i the strong incentive, which would encourage people to act. Mining will not stop, but its scale will be much less than today.

really bitcoin spends electricity, but when compared with other projects that are very pollute the environment such as waste and others.