Bitcoin Forum

That's an awful lot of money/carbon going into the atmosphere.

The article says bitcoin wastes $76 per transaction confirmed.


https://www.fudzilla.com/news/52242-bitcoin-costs-the-world-25-million-daily (https://www.fudzilla.com/news/52242-bitcoin-costs-the-world-25-million-daily)

People worldwide are wasting "an awful lot of money/carbon going into the atmosphere" by using entertainment devices just for watching YouTube and Netflix and for playing play video games and it's totally fine for everyone.

Yet here we are, building a new digital asset to help people in countries with corrupt governments like Venezuela, and suddenly it's a huge waste of energy. Fucking LOL.

The problem is that power plants burn carbon to generate electricity. The problem is not people that use electricity. If electricity generation was 100% carbon-free, then it wouldn't matter how much we use.

I've quickly scanned the article... They're talking about "the research rapport" without listing any sources.
At first glance, this article looks like just a bunch of numbers thrown together tbh.

In reality, nobody knows how much electricity is being used, and which source is used to generate said electricity.

Everything depends on which exact mix of ASIC's is running at any given moment, and which energy mix is being used to generate the electricity for each of these ASIC's (coal, nuclear, wind, water, biomass).

Also, in order to be fair, to the total energy cost of solving a certain amount of blocks  (and the sum of the outputs off al transactions therein) should also be compared to the total energy cost of an equivalent amount of FIAT... I mean, the whole process of designing, printing, transporting, banks, ATM's, checking, destroying, servers managing bank account,... they all use a lot of energy aswell...

Lets be generous and say bitcoin only uses $50 per transaction.

How much do you think it costs the bank when I buy a coffee with my debit card.

If the stats that mining uses 9% of electric in India are even closely true that's frankly shocking.

$1000, $500, $100, $50.... Those are just numbers TBH.... Let's see HOW you find these numbers instead of being generous while still guessing lower numbers.

I'm not saying the number in the article was wrong, i'm not saying $50 is wrong... I'm saying that, without any sources, $50 is just a number, it has no meaning whatsoever. As long as you're guessing, why not guess a transaction costs $0.005... Why is that guess worse than $50? I haven't seen any real calculations, my quick glance at the article made it look like the writer is just pulling numbers out of thin air, then proceeds to use them for a lot of calculations (full disclaimer: i just quickly scanned the article)...

Start with the current difficulty. Using this difficulty, you can get a rather good estimation of the current hashrate.
Then estimate the mix of ASIC's that would be needed to reach this hashrate. You'll have to get the biggest ASIC producer's numbers: how much of which model have been sold over the last 2-3 years?
Then, you'll have to find out where the biggest mining farms are located: are they using "leftover" energy produced by hydropower (energy that would otherwise go to waste) or are they using energy produced by burning coal, or maybe something in between?
What happens with the leftover energy? Is it recuperated? How about old ASIC's, are they being recycled?

Then, you'll have to study FIAT: how much trees are cut down, how much cotton, how much energy is used in the process of transporting raw materials, making paper, printing paper, distributing, running bank offices, making vaults, filling ATM's.
Then, look into the server parks that are needed by big banks...
Then, you'll have to find a way to compare FIAT energy costs with BTC transaction costs... The amount of FIAT being exchanged for goods and services on a daily basis VS the amount of BTC being exchanged on a daily basis, and their respective energy costs.

Finding an exact answer to this question is probably complex enough to fill a 4 year phd program, so i'm not even going to try a back-of-a-napkin estimation

Firstly, it would be good to see what this article is based on and whether the calculations are indeed accurate. I think I've found the original source which is cited by various other websites: https://tradingplatforms.com/it-costs-25-million-daily-in-electricity-to-process-bitcoin-transactions/. I've never heard about the company and I don't think their research report clarifies properly how they gathered data and calculated the figures. For instance, I wonder where they got the carbon footprint of Bitcoin and whether it's even possible to accurately measure it since we don't seem to know for sure how much energy comes from coal and from other sources.
Secondly, I don't find the financial part problematic. As for the carbon footprint, it's a serious matter that has been brought up multiple times. It's not the electricity consumption that should go down, it's how we generate that electricity. Moving to eco-friendly sources could ease the footprint immensely.

Thanks for finding the source :)
I haven't read the article, but if your representation is correct, i can sum this case up pretty easily:

• An article that has been written without detailing the exact methodology or exact figures is making certain conclusions.
• Fudzilla (what's in a name) used this article to write a second article using their conclusions, without even quoting the first article (which already didn't give enough details as it stands)
• OP posted a small part from the fudzilla article

After a second quick glance, i already saw a discrepancy between OP's statement and fudzilla: fudzilla claims (without proof) that transacting 1 BTC costs $76, they're not talking about cost per transaction, but cost per BTC.

Once again: i'm not saying these numbers are wrong, i'm just saying that given these articles, there is no way to verify these claims... Our community usually operates using the slogan "don't trust, verify"... No numbers, no calculations => no trust... Sorry... Doesn't mean those numbers are wrong, just that i don't trust them at face value.

If Bitcoin is digital gold, then I'd be interested to know how much energy physical gold mining and logistics uses.

Bear in mind that about 90% of gold is speculative value.

It must be quite a lot as I hear mining companies are now making plans to become carbon neutral by 2050 in the same way that big fossil fuels companies are.

They must be feeling guilty about something...

Never mind ESG concerns about pollution and cheap labour.

Exactly! The electricity used in bitcoin mining is nothing compared to all the other wasted energy by many individuals and companies. As we alone, are already wasting energy in some ways. Just look at how you live everyday. We are wasting a lot of energy if we really look at our activities. Now, with bitcoin mining, at least it is helping in some way, with the ease of transactions and all.

I guess, a lot of us are guilty in one or more of these wasting habits-

https://www.ase.org/blog/10-biggest-energy-wasting-habits-home
https://www.srpnet.com/energy/advice/energyWastingHabits.aspx

Then I guess every one of us is a culprit in carbon emissions since all of us are using energy sources somewhat related to the burning of fossil fuels. This issue has been debated for years and years, even though a significant percentage of miners have already shifted to areas where renewable energy sources are available and cheap. These articles often assume that the entirety of the bitcoin network relies on fossil fuels for electricity, which is wrong, just to spin something up that the people will consume. Try checking out how much electricity the banking sector actually uses and be amazed at what you’ll see.

Yes that's one of the disadvantages of Bitcoin but more better mining devices can be developed in future to solve this issue.
You know how many trees are cut every year to produce paper money?

We have to accept the fact that a centralized system will always be more efficient than a decentralized system. Just think why democratic governments are so slow at implementing anything. BUT some things are too important to be centralized which obviously comes at a drawback.

What does it has to do with centralized and decentralized system?
It's about power consumption due to Bitcoin mining and transacting.
Crypto can not be centralised.

I am not saying we should do anything. Bitcoin is what it is.

I'm simply making the observation, that decentralized systems are less efficient than centralized systems.
Bitcoin's decentralized nature requires thousands of miners to compete instead of collaborating.
If Bitcoin were centralized there would be no need to compete for mining Bitcoin because all the verification of transactions and issuing of new coins would happen by one single "miner".
This leads to higher electricity costs, more hardware costs, slow transactions...thus being less efficient.

you guys obsessing over Bitcoin's exact amount of carbon emissions is hilarious.

we all know it's a lot when compared to other payment methods with similar transaction volumes to Bitcoin.

at the end of the day, who cares? carbon emissions/global warming are such big, vague issues that we will always put the blame on other people.
it's simply the most rational thing to do from a game theory perspective.

Trying to put focus only on Bitcoin on how much it do uses and do affect when it comes to carbon emissions? If we do look on the global scale of problems then
how about on putting up some attention about car industries? on how big they do really contribute into these emission talks? It seems like they do already
hadnt enough things to play on but rather on focusing on things of finding issues with Bitcoin. Just let it be and this isnt the problem that we
are just facing now.

this kind of confirms my argument. it's simply a non-issue because even if we acknowledge that it's a problem, there is nothing we could do about it, aside from shifting blame.

Why are they pushing bitcoin into this like bitcoin is the only thing? They don't even have a good source about it and let's be honest, there are a lot of buildings/factories that do worst than bitcoin. They don't even consider that there are a lot of bitcoin miners that wanted to use natural energies the reason a lot of them also uses solar energy.

Bitcoin mining is highly mobile. An internet connection being the only requirement.

This mobility translates to mining ops seeking out the cheapest sources of electricity that can be found across the globe.

Low cost sources of electricity are untapped, surplus, energy. Derived from hydroelectric plants and assorted environmentally friendly power.

High cost sources of power are regions where electrical grids are overloaded and energy is scarce.

This illustrates a crypto mining sector where surplus, green and untapped power is the best option for bitcoin mining. The path of least resistance.

$25 million a day, isn't a strain on existing grids, fossil fuels or infrastructure. Its the opposite.

There are millions of dollars spent on ridiculous things and also for destruction. Let's take weapons that are being used around the world. Billions of dollars are spent making weapons and destroying entire countries, and I can't find anyone coming out to say that 10 million dollars were spent on building an ICBM to destroy a hut. In Afghanistan !!!! These are nonsense !!!
It is true that Bitcoin consumes a great deal of energy, but at least it helps millions of people improve their living conditions.It is not the bitcoin that pollutes the Earth's atmosphere, but the thousands of factories and factories that manufacture weapons and chemical and nuclear materials that kill people.