Bitcoin Forum

Would be interested to hear what the point of view is on a recent increase in press statements as follows: ‘Bitcoin may soon consume more power than Australia’— almost 10 times more than Google, Microsoft and Facebook combined.
Is there anything behind this or is it just another angle of attack against bitcoin prompted by remarks by Bill Gates?.....is it even possible to calculate consumption in this way?

I think it's just either propaganda, or just mere ignorance/narrow-mindedness — whereas the latter is a bit more likely in my opinion.

Not only Bill Gates or journalists, but people in general, love hating on Bitcoin because they missed out or they currently don't see the point of it. Crap like Netflix, TikTok, and gaming consoles, which are mostly just entertainment platforms to start with, use a crap ton of energy as well and no almost one complains about them. And yet here we are with Bitcoin, where we are giving a monetary tool for people to use worldwide, and yet they think that it's a total waste of energy. It's just stupid.

This argument is pretty lame in a sense that if I say "Electric bulbs" are consuming more power than Australia, Argentina, Uganda, Ethiopia or name any country. Sounds stupid right? That's what it is,  if you combine the power consumption of all the electric bulbs in the world and you will be shocked how much energy "Electric bulbs" alone are consuming.  But this is not a valid comparison.

Now same thing applies to Bitcoin mining you can't compare the power consumption of world's bitcoin mining to the power consumed by one country.  and for the matter of fact consuming a lots on energy" does not make any thing bad by default. World is already changing we are moving to renewable energy sources, only thing which can be argued is how much fossil fuels being used or what is the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining. Yes currently it's estimated that 61% mining currently powered by fossil fuels (thanks to China).

Sixty-one per cent of Bitcoin mining last year was estimated to have been powered by fossil fuels, according to Cambridge University's Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

But this is decreasing day by day and alternative and renewable energy are getting cheaper day by day. I think you are referring to this article https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-18/bitcoin-has-a-climate-problem/13210376, and answer to the your question is also there.

"The unique thing about energy-hungry things that use electricity is that those are the easiest things to decarbonize"

More I would say It's very stupid to compare Google or Microsoft to Bitcoin mining. Microsoft is consuming 9TWh because they only counted their owned resources only. I can argue that all the computers, servers and laptop those are running Windows or any of Microsoft software should be counted to Microsoft energy consumption then tell me how much energy Microsoft is consuming.

By the way energy consumption is actually a sing of a advancement in civilization. It has been theorized that human civilizations will constantly increase their demand for energy and there would come a time when its demand will be same as the total energy output of the Sun and we will be building Dyson sphere so one would argue Bitcoin mining consuming more energy :p

Suffice it to say that each time a bitcoin bull market is starting to begin and price rises high, the media brings out the old "topics" such as "bitcoin consumes more power than blank", "blank [country] is banning bitcoin", "bitcoin is only used for blank [something illegal]", ... they dust them off and print a new article for the hundredth time.

Bitcoin power consumption criticism is like criticizing a plane for using hundreds of times more fuel than a small motor cycle!

I don't think it is simply either one of them and not the other. The issue is extremely contaminated. To me, part of it is propaganda, a bit of ignorance, a bit of exaggeration, and, of course, some truth as well.

Bitcoin is running on energy 24/7. That is a fact, right? So there's emission every second of the day. That, we cannot deny. But that's just what it is. That's true to almost all facets of human life. Every single day, every single one of us contributes to the overall carbon footprint. You are enjoying a song from your phone while riding on a taxi going to your unconditioned office; all of it leaves a footprint.

It's just that Bitcoin adversaries seemingly overemphasize the immense amount of carbon footprint attributed to Bitcoin, but then Bitcoin supporters claim the estimates are overstated. "Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind," Bill Gates says. On the other hand, pro Bitcoin claims around 3/4th of Bitcoin's energy is coming from renewable sources. Bitcoin fans say Bitcoin's energy consumption is a lot more efficient than fiat's while Bitcoin critics describe it as wasteful. This goes on and on.

This won't be a problem if the energy used in powering the Bitcoin mining farm is from renewable energy resources. The best approach for this is to go the renewable energy route entirely so there wouldn't be any more energy demand problems. It should be known that almost most of the power came from renewable energy as well.

As of this report, it is said that over 74% were using renewable energy back in 2019. I can't find any update for last year's consumption, but you can see that the majority is renewable.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy

I hope that there are more advances and developments for the energy sector to make renewable energy collection and storage efficient and cheaper for everyone.

That is possible cause these guys have been putting the word "Bitcoin" to gather some readers about their baseless theories. Since everyone is curious about cryptocurrencies now and the main category is Bitcoin, they wanted some share about it and this is why they creating such propaganda to lure people with some strange belief. There's no way Bitcoin mining will be the cause of some power shortage this is all hoax and the one that made this claim might be some sort of person who doesn't have enough knowledge to conclude some research such as this one.

Well with the increase traffic of bitcoin in the long run, I think that we can expect that it will need more power, the solution here is either to make infrastructure to reduce the power consumption or alleviate it at least or make more renewable energy plants like hydro-electric or better yet a nuclear power plant.

Well, it should happen, as more bitcoin is getting mined, blocks get a little bit harder to mine and that means that it will take more power to get those blocks. I agree that the power consumption is small but we have to continuously prove that bitcoin can have the least carbon footprint out of every other financial institution out there.

I agree, it could most definitely be a mix of a lot of things. But I almost forgot one thing — the same reasons why most "news sites" frequently publish "articles" concerning bitcoin's price, it's because it's likely that price and FUD articles are what gets a lot of engagement on social media.

How about we worry where we get those power instead of focusing on the power consumption, the power consumption for bitcoin will only go up as the adoption grows a bigger day by day, we need to make a more green energy sources. The only reason for this is just to make bitcoin look bad and make the prices go down.

OP, welcome to the forum!

It’s actually GOOD that Bitcoin is being secured by higher and higher hashing power, unlike nascent altcoins that are insecure, and open to 51% attacks, or flawed POS coins. It makes Bitcoin the BEST cryptocurrency investment because it “consumes” more energy than a small country.

There might be some groups that are interested in painting Bitcoin in bad light, a few years ago the Polish government was caught in spending money on hiring bloggers to criticize Bitcoin. But the media could also be doing it on their own, "Bitcoin consumes more electricity than country X" is a pretty clickbaity title that can generate a lot of traffic.

I don't like the theories that every bank and government out there wants to stop Bitcoin, if it was a reality, Bitcoin ecosystem wouldn't look as it is looks now.

PoW is fully secure and this security comes at cost of huge electricity, we have to accept this fact it’s not a propaganda. There are other consensus algorithms like PoC which don’t require huge electricity but are not secure. In order to keep btc blockchain secure we have to burn more and more electricity.

We've heard this kind of argument in 2017, when we are in a bull run, suddenly died down because obviously the price tanks and we are in the bearish trend for the next three years. And now that the price is not on the $60'ish, then you have to think why is this kind of argument (which is flawed to begin with), started to pop up again.

The answer is simple, they want to bring bitcoin again by creating the old and rehearse topic.

We have been hearing this kind of propagandas for a very long time. Especially after Bitcoin has reached great levels, the number of haters has increased also. It is true that there is a huge power consumption. But it is not a thing that you can't find a solution. Besides, I'd also like to see this kind of people speaking up for many other things that are threatening the environment.

CoinShares (https://coinshares.com/research) research showed that 78% of Bitcoin mining uses renewable energy and earlier study from 2019 showed that percent was 74%, so we can say there is increase of renewable energy.
Sichuan region of China has around 48% global mining share and that is 43% share of renewable mining, as you can see below from Deutsche Bank research data.
All this propaganda bs is just a part of some bigger agenda and it all started with wrong data coming from Cambridge University and their CBECI Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index,
and I think governments will try to use this as excuse for offering their centralized 'green' coins for masses.
It is good idea to follow @danheld on twitter for more information about this topic that should be eye opener for many people, and not watching mainstream media + using your head also helps.

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

First, we need to understand that some article writers are only good in spreading FUD just to get their paycheck or be more popular and the fast means for people to get popular these days is to talk about Bitcoin.
Second, we should expect something positive from everybody because some human mind will still be ignorant and also do series of attack on Bitcoin because Bitcoin has somehow affected their means of income through the ease and liberation it provides to people.

Bitcoin electricity consumption has always been an issue to the ones who hates it and whenever prices goes up in the Market then the argument is again raised with respect to its electricity consumption to various countries.But is the government not using high volume of electricity to power up their projects also and moreover banks combined cost is more than that of Bitcoin.If we need to secure the Bitcoin network we need miners to validate and secure network which will consume high voltage of electricity as POW concesus.Moreover the miners are moving towards new use of electricity like renewables resources which further reduces the cost so stay away from such FUD's and focus on your goals.

Look who's talking about Bitcoin's power consumption...

"Bitcoin uses more energy than American Airlines and each $1 billion in inflows is equal to owning 1.2 million cars, Bank of America says"

So apparently they accepted that Bank of America is doing some research on Bitcoin (https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/bitcoin-uses-more-energy-than-american-airlines-bank-of-america-2021-3-1030224439)


https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/g/georgecarlin/379398/georgecarlin1-2x.jpg

The energy consumption published by most statistics about Bitcoin mining are false and more of an attack against Bitcoin from the Bitcoin critics not footing by Bill Gate comment for it something thatt crypto enthusiasts and critics have debate about but we all honestly consume energy in some many ways but the record provided by World Energy Outlook 2020 Analysis IEA (https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2020) shows that global energy demand drop by 5% last year meaning we consume the 5% plus during our outdoor daily activities mind you miners and some companies are open during the period of lockdown if we do the survey and calculation we will see that the energy consumption said about Bitcoin mining is total incorrect.

People who bring up the energy consumption issue don't dare touch the topic on where most of the energy being consumed comes from. I am yet to read an article that is against bitcoin being power-hungry that also tackles the use of hydroelectric power on some of the world's largest mining facilities. Big numbers do attract a lot of people, so I guess that's why they all have these analogies and comparisons to the power consumption of other small countries to paint the narrative that bitcoin is an agent of speeding up global warming and all that stuff.

It's totally environmental propaganda.

Soon these people will say bitcoin contributes to global warming, melting of polar ice caps, prolonged drought periods, burning forests, extinction of faun and flora... The goal is to instill fear into masses' heads and drive the popular opinion against bitcoin.

Absolutely it is just a propaganda. Bill Gates made a similar statement some time ago that Bitcoin is consuming a great deal of energy blah blah blah. I also think the main goal of this kind of statements is taking down Bitcoin. But it won't help of course.

Then it will push renewable energy adoption if those statements is true.
Also, how about social media and youtube. You can now check your screen time, battery consumption to run those apps. Multiply it to the average number of daily active users   ;D

Phase 1, declare it as a problem.
Phase 2, offers a solution.

Familiar with this? Covid  ;D

Actually power consumption is different one. It's essential one to make a use of power for the mining process. Eventhough we used power for the mining, it will created more and more return from it. Only thing is, you need to inverse certain part as a capital for mining setup.

This topic is recirculated often , people like to hear about BTCs negative side, because most of them have missed the train.

It is hard to evaluate if the power consumption of BTC has real impact to enviroment. We would have to get data on how much miners uses energy generated from fossil fuels and how much uses clean energy.

I totally agree with this when it comes to continuing to elaborate the negative side but without even thinking back about how it would be harming out when it comes to power consumption
if the supply is just really that right or ample to support it? as long it doesn't really harm or risk out everything then it should be completely fine.

These are indeed propaganda to make Bitcoin to be on the negative side of things again but well, I don't really mind that much because people aren't really that dumb to make
out direct conclusions without any reconsideration on checking out everything.

So its better not to put that much of attention into those calls.

I think it is more misinformation and a lack of understanding and also a lack of basic research on the subject matter. If you do a little bit of proper research... you will notice that most of the mining in China are done with renewable/clean surplus energy resources. (Hydro electricity and Wind farms etc..)

Also, if you look at the energy needed for the alternative currencies... you might notice that it is using a lot more energy. (Banks use enormous amounts of energy for CCTV / Cooling / Office equipment etc.)    ;)

You really made a point. There are many institutions etc. that have much more power consumption than Bitcoin miners. And we are having much bigger environmental problems than this but it looks like some people don't want to put them to the first place in the list. And we also have global warming which is very important and caused by various things. If this kind of people really care about the world, they should especially indicate them.

What usually draw the power consumption enough is the actual efficiency of power from the bitcoin mining farm, usually, there needs a cool and steady standby electricity in performing mining activities, therefore, such process drains out the more power from electrical source of power.

Considering this above process gives rise to renewable energy in the society, at least mining Bitcoin with power supply is not a waste of energy but it transforms into a source of country revenue, China government already uses it to backup her economy failure.

I think Bitcoin is being blamed for consuming a lot of electricity is not very wise. Because there are other things whose electricity consumption is
greater than Bitcoin is not in question, this is just an attempt to bring down Bitcoin. It doesn't matter to me that Bitcoin consumes a lot of electricity,
as long as it provides benefits for many people. The problem is that many Bitcoin haters only see Bitcoin from the negative side, they cannot accept
the positive side of Bitcoin. In the end this matter became a long debate, which in my opinion should not have happened.

Is Bitcoin currently consuming large amounts of electricity? Yes or no? I don't think denying this state of fact will convince anyone, its energy consumption is a matter, whether you like it or not.


https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1153B/production/_116917907_v266cd8de5-cf2e-4fb0-ba22-e6dfb9f2951c_nc.png

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index : https://cbeci.org

Obviously, the ones saying that Bitcoin consumes too much electricity don't even know what they're saying. I don't understand why they're so quick to point their fingers when there's literally so much other industries that kills the environment. Why not shift their focus to that, huh? You would think that they have turned out to be environmentalists all of a sudden. You can't deny the fact the Bitcoin really does consume a lot of energy but the propaganda exaggerates it too much to show a negative side of Bitcoin. 

It's just how people are trying hard to find a reason on banning something or at least make other people concerned about it. If they are concerned about the electrical consumption of Bitcoin then they must be more concerned on other industries that consume more electricity but we don't see them do that kind of action, to keep it short they just want people to worry about it. It's the same approach as what other people are doing when they say "Bitcoin is dark web money" or "Bitcoin is a money for criminals" its the same motive but on a different approach and all they want is to mislead you.

Half-truths are the most dangerous.

Yes, this is partially true as PoW is a very energy consumption algorithm. At the same time, only the plugged standby chargers are using way more energy globally. [1]
Banks are eating even more, but nobody is demonizing the bank about their carbon footprint.

[1] Vampire Energy: Essential Answer
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/vampire-energy-essential-answer

Bitcoin's energy consumption is rather easy to model. It will always tend towards an equilibrium defined by:

bitcoins generated TIMES price per bitcoin EQUALS energy units consumed by bitcoin TIMES price per energy unit

As long as the left side in lower than the right side, mining becomes unprofitable and will be reduced. As long as the left side is higher than the right side, it's profitable to use even more energy for mining.

Do that with Australia, Google, Microsoft or Facebook. It's not as transparent and to some extent, you have to trust the numbers they publish.

I'd call it a socialist propaganda.

In my opinion more consumption means more money for the businesses that produce power. It means more demand and demand creates workplaces. It pays people and allows them to have a family and not worry abut finances.

Makes you think what those who want mining to disappear would say to people who work in that sector and are feeding their families because they have a booming business.

When you don't like a thing, almost everything about that thing is always ugly. Most of these people saying all these things have not been in support of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and altcoins are not the only thing consume power. There is always solution to every problem. Let's increase power generation.

You're right because at time develop hatred just like that in order degrade who ever them feel like intermediate the list with a force information that will look ugly as you said here mate, it's obvious that many people dislike cryptocurrency, and is not even today, so those that is against Bitcoin will keep on castigating the use of Bitcoin till the end of it, so it's not the end, the result currently is massive turn up in Bitcoin and alternative coins everyday and every hours.

I mean, what about majority of 7 billion people living on this planet that consumes electricity, like come on, we all know that they consume more than Bitcoin mining rigs. Besides, there's nothing bad I guess about it since the power companies make profits on it because mining rigs consume its needed electricity. It's just a cycle Consumer>Supplier>Government>Country, we are all getting the benefits on one another actions.

The only problem are those people who are greedy in power and always want the attention of the people, they all wanted to take the spotlight forever but Bitcoin shines much brighter than them so it's much better to ignore them.

Well it is true, Bitcoin mining consumes a lot of energy. Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps. Some say that bitcoin mining is an environmental conundrum and that it is responsible for nearly 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. I guess it would be helpful if most of the bitcoin mining operations use renewable energy. Just to lessen the carbon footprint, that's all. Then again, why are they only focused on bitcoin? There are other industries that produce way more carbon emissions.

Prolly just propaganda against bitcoin.

There are multiple kinds of factories that consume a lot of energy, especially those that produce devices such as smartphones, consoles, hardware, and so on. Every year, a great deal of energy is wasted in the production of components that aren't used or sold. Actually, if they use a lot of power, which means they're tripling their production rate, they'll make a lot of money, particularly if their product is in high demand. I'm not sure why they keep blaming bitcoin when some private producers are among those who waste energy on products that are only used for entertainment.

Read this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5325350.0