Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday some fiend told me Bitcoin is consuming too much energy for miners to confirms each transaction and this can't be good. Surely, you have encountered the argument of bitcoin critics/haters that bitcoin consumes a lot of electricity and energy. If you encounter this argument again, show them this statistic!


As you can see on the picture above, bitcoin is consuming less energy and helps saving natural resources. While, the traditional banking system and printing the fiat consumes much more energy comparing to Bitcoin.

The statistic (not sure about your source) is telling all!
It's the mainstream media wants to make News and without putting spice they can not sell their articles. There are also Facebook and other social media experts (self-proclaimed celebs and experts with very little knowledge about the actual crypto industry but pretends that they are everything for bitcoin and crypto) who likes to create valueless contents to earn from the advertisements. Average Joe who do not have any knowledge about the world ecosystem takes it guaranteed that they are telling everything from authentic research.

FUD spreads.

It's good to some extent though :-D

It would be great if the source is mentioned though. The calculation method also has to be explained so we're talking on the same ground. For example, what is counted by "fiat printing", what makes it different from the banking system, etc.

Nice graphics btw.

I don't understand the image as you cropped the note for value in the screenshot. Would you mind sharing the source link (article, document, report) from which you took that image, please.

It is my guess, the values in image is for electricity costs for different systems. Is it true?

It could be true as the total marketcap of bitcoin is very smaller than the total value of all fiats have been printed on the planet. Naively derives from it, I can assume how small the electricity cost of bitcoin mining is if compares it to costs of other systems.

People will spread more FUDs when bitcoin marketcap takes the first position here: https://assetdash.com/  ;)

From this images,we come to know many new facts.The banking system had consuming more electricity then a bitcoin mining.Their was FUD about the usage of electricity for the mining of bitcoin.So we a traders can claim our people,we are not only responsible for the more use of the electricity by the mean of mining.

The banking system is way more expensive than crypto mining,but the banking system creates and maintains way more jobs.The crypto mining industry isn't creating many jobs,which kinda looks bad in the eyes of the fiat FUDsters.They are going to play the "they took our jobs" card,when blockchain technology replaces traditional banking services and millions of bank clerks lose their jobs.
Great image,not sure it's accurate though.

Well, everyone can create an image comparing all of them, are they accurate or are they just for artistic purposes. We have to really not care about the electrical consumption of bitcoin because it won't help if we are just looking at the numbers, it doesn't matter that we are being compared, they will continue to spite us if all we do is look at the numbers and do nothing about it. Only action will make these critics shut up, they do not care even if we were to show that traditional financial instruments are making more consumption.

Everybody is counting the mining electricity and the carbon footprint.

But what about all the banks?!

The global bank industry has tens of millions of people just for front office convenience. What about their carbon footprint? Going to work, heating, electricity .

And then the bank's mainframes and networks, etc.

I think that those banks have x10 the global carbon footprint than all cryptocurrencies!

OP, your selfmade pic is worth nothing. Who made this calculation? Source? Link? Details?

Honestly there is a way , there are a lot of things that can be done. One of them :-

Using renewable sources of energy ( which I personally believe is the most important one , people should understand that every land is different, at some places there might be a lot of scope for wind energy, at some places geothermal energy therefore they have to study in this regards if they do want to open a bit mining farm )

At the same time after a while the whole bitcoins will be mined and therefore at the end of the day we would just use the energy on confirming transactions. So it's not like it's going to use so much energy till eternity.

I do believe if renewable source of energy is used it could be amazing for the whole thing. Would not only give them a green stamp but at the same time would help people and the environment alike.

A statistic was posted last 2 years if I remember correctly which prove the electric energy used in Bitcoin mining is never up to the energy used by the government to print new fiat currency but alot of people are ignorant about this fact since Bitcoin mining equipment are usuallly turn on 24/7.
With that been said, it will be nice if the OP provides the link to his picture graph that shows the range of energy consume in Bitcoin mining and others.

I'm sure that the banking and finance system has it higher but I'm not quite sure on the statistics. If we are to use this infographic for our reference on the argument energy consumption of banks vs. bitcoin, the latter wins the efficiency game by a long shot. Also, it's not an excuse for the banks and other such institutions in being the vanguards of economy in not changing their habits in energy consumption.

I guess we can agree that most of us are doing our part to actually save the environment, no matter how small the effort is. I'm just not sure whether the banks do theirs.

Amazing! In addition, Fiat printing and the banking system go hand in hand to exist. I had also heard the same argument that bitcoin consumes a lot of energy and is not eco-friendly. Logically from negative opinions towards bitcoin, we need to share the truth with the world.

Bitcoin is a clean technology that provides real solutions to the current monetary network. As explained by Michael Saylor in this interview.

I think what that picture indicates is the overall usage of the resources of the banking system (which includes delivery, servers, ATM, etc.) vs Bitcoin, not just energy.

I don't know if the statistics on this article is true (https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-energy-consumption-is-far-more-efficient-and-greener-than-todays-banking-system/) but the total consumption of the banking system per year is around 140 TWh while Bitcoin is only around more or less 111 TWh. That's still a huge difference, not to mention a lot of Bitcoin miners use green energy nowadays.

There's just too many FUD around Bitcoin that doesn't make sense if you compare it to the banking system.

Yes, I have read the articles which states the bitcoin mining electricity consumption is only 0.3% of worlds power. That's all! What else do you need to confirm whether its cheap or not?
The graphics are obviously amazing one and gives clear idea on how stuff is working with different pricey organisations. Though Gold mining is all about mechanical energy still it costs the more!
Bitcoin looks so cheap as compared to the banking system alone! It means it could be more economical in the future to use bitcoin rather than the traditional banking system.  :)

The discussion must never be only about "how much" electricity bitcoin consumes but it should be about "what" it spends it on.
Bitcoin as the only global decentralized currency is accessible to everyone on earth all day every day. The very small amount of electricity it is consuming to offer such a unique service to nearly 7.8 billion people is negligible when you think of it that way.

And how people caluclated banks power consumption? It almost impossible

Been talking about this long ago, as pooya says, it's a cost-benefit thing. We shouldn't kill the gaming industry for all the amount of electricity they consumer worldwide to have servers and computers constantly on for... entertainment.

But yeah man, where's your source?

Those, by the way, are maintenance costs. They don't count human cost, reputational cost, damages long term, human rights, wars, etc. Corruption costs. And how those costs are passed to consumers!

Could really go to town with all that.

This is interesting and I hope is not speculative that is why the source is needed to confirm this. It is understanding that banking system can consume energy but the margin of difference is far higher than others.

This is interesting and I hope is not speculative that is why the source is needed to confirm this. It is understanding that banking system can consume energy but the margin of difference is far higher than others.