Bitcoin Forum

On May 31, 1999, as the dot-com economy was beginning to take off, a Forbes article was published that claimed that it was “reasonable to project that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade.” The piece accused the internet—and, specifically, hardware companies—of “burning up an awful lot of fossil fuels” and setting the world on a dangerous trajectory of energy usage.
  
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f316a32-407f-4c7c-821e-33470e572bbc_616x530.png

When the California energy crisis hit in 2000, resulting in a nationwide conversation about energy usage, this narrative entered the mainstream. Dozens of other high-profile publications cited the Mills report, claiming that the internet was on track to gobble up the national energy supply. Internal reports by JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank also cited these figures “with little or no indication that there was even a debate about them.” For such a provocative claim, there was a shocking degree of consensus.

The problem? The projections were wrong. Mills’s calculations were fraught with errors, resulting in a figure for internet power usage that, according to subsequent estimates, was at least a factor of eight too high. The data today, two decades after the Forbes article, clearly illustrates that these doom-and-gloom projections were way off-base. Even the most aggressive projections today show the internet only consuming 20% of electricity by 2025, and many tech giants are fully transitioning to renewable energy.

Read everything at the following link and please share it everywhere. If you are on Twitter, tag Elon as he needs to get bombarded.
https://www.veradiverdict.com/p/bitcoin-energy-consumption

We know that Elon's narrative on Bitcoin CO2 footprint is weak, at least because Tesla knew all this before buying Bitcoin and before accepting it for car payments.

So imho the fact it's an old narrative taken back up from the dusty vaults it's not of great importance.
Plus, we already know that extrapolations are wrong:

Energy consumption isn't equal to environment pollution.
Bitcoin miners aren't guilty for the environmental pollution,the coal burning power plants are guilty.
What if the Bitcoin miners are buying electricity from nuclear power plants or hydroelectric power plants?Those power plants aren't polluting the environment.
All the dumb people are just "Big Energy consumption-BAD for mother nature.Low energy consumption-GOOD for mother nature" which is wrong.This is a really dumb narrative.

Calculating the energy consumption for Bitcoin (apart from extrapolation) also neglects the fact that the whole banking system requires energy as well. A lot of energy if think it through from the very first step to the very last.

As for Musk addressing that issue right now is hilarious, ridiculous, call it whatever you want. Out of a sudden he feels like bashing Bitcoin for its energy consumption.

Here "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM" he explains global warming and his whole business is all about energy (Tesla + Solarcity) but he only notices Bitcoin's energy consumption after polishing Tesla's P&L with sales from Bitcoin. What a faggot!

Hi guys,

Citing Reuters "Bitcoin production is estimated to generate between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, or between the levels produced by Jordan and Sri Lanka, a 2019 study in scientific journal Joule found."

Divide by 18M bitcoin and you get 1277 kg/btc/year   ( the equivalent of driving 6388 km with a modern car).

I can't deny that is quite a lot !!



My point : if you're a bitcoiner you are probably rich (and in 10 years you may not have to work anymore) so you can afford to plant a few trees !
A 100 trees is enough to offset 1 bitcoin, on reforestaction.com that's 300 USD !!!   


300 dollar per bitcoin and now your bitcoin is carbon neutral, why not ?




Cheers,

I do not think that the politicians in the world have solved all their problems to pay attention to the problem of energy and environmental problems, and then does Bitcoin mining have an effect on the environment or not?
We are facing real financial crises, a problem in the health sector, the possibility of reviving the economy. Therefore, talking about fossil fuels, oil and energy will not take an effective space to formulate new laws.

I feel happy that we have moved away from the point of drug promotion and dark activities of energy and fossil fuel consumption.

There are many types of energy consumption on this planet and you can convince me that all of them are useful consumption.

The drama on Bitcoin energy consumption comes from Bitcoin protesters who see Bitcoin network is useless. Let them be free but I believe a few of them will change to be Bitcoin supporters.

Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (https://cbeci.org/)
Electricity supply in 2021 (https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/electricity). The Electricity supply chart shows the renewable resources are increasing with Solar, Wind, Bioenergy, Hydro and they will be used more by society. Bitcoin mining farms will use them more.

If you compares that chart with cbeci's chart, the drama on Bitcoin energy consumption is non sense.

That's what we should be focusing on, and a lot of people still don't get that it is the fossil fuel that does the pollution. I believe that the reason for that is that a lot of people in the energy sector aren't allowed to talk shit about these fossil fuel conglomerates because they will suffer the most so they find another sector to blame which is unfortunately the bitcoin mining sector.

... create real sustainable use cases, yes - complicated, but complex?

https://twitter.com/EdBsv/status/1393133036326195203

get Bitcoin back into good light


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiUkA-d4NL8

Bitcoin mining has always been accused of energy, high energy consumption and environmental pollutions this accusation lacks merits to stand as a fact. So to me, the way to go about this is for a debate to be held and analysis/investigation to be carried out to determine the actual level of Bitcoin energy consumptions.

You cannot debunk it that is the big issue that we have here the only way that you could debunk it is by collecting the usage of each miner and they are not going to give up information up easily. Instead the demographics which are being cited are estimations and estimations only. I am also sure that I have read that its estimated that the electrical car companies are using just as much as those that are using gas because to generate electricity we are still relying on fossil fuels to generate it.

I do not think we can debunk it and I do not think its even worth wasting our time with. Elon and Tesla have made the decision to allow Bitcoin payments and then remove it all in the space of a couple of months without any new information being brought to light. I am not sure what to think of it as it just sounds like they planned for this and maybe Elon was looking to profit off of the swing that it has caused.

Energy consumption does in turn equal pollution but I do like the overall narrative you are trying to push. Bitcoin miners are using the grid to power their mining rigs and therefore the power plants have the power to limit the amount of consumption the world uses but they do not. However Tesla and many other green agenda pushing companies still use fossil fuels in order to get by in life. I do not see Tesla banning fiat currencies which rely on cutting down trees and printing ink on them as a way of standing up for the environment.

But the data is not there to analyze in the first place. Think of it the fossil fuel plants that are generating the power for these miners cannot in any way determine what their product is being used for. They can probably determine the location and where their product is being used the most but they cannot say a Bitcoin miner is using our product here and there. That is impossible. The only indicating factor would be if a household is using more than average 24/7 (since most miners are running 24/7) but then that is not a problem since that would only be slightly above the average its the mass operation facilities which would be the most detrimental to the environment but when you compare it to Tesla's own facility which has a number of different tools they rely on which would be detrimental to the environment then I do not see the reason they have pin pointed Bitcoin miners.

Tesla is not a green company they only give the impression they are. The tools they use were mined from the ground and those mining facilities use fossil fuels to mine. There are no electric mining facilities. The tools they used were welded and their very own charging facilities rely on burning fossil fuels.
 

But the electricity needed for mining is really high do we really disregard that and just say that bitcoin doesn't consume a lot of energy because a computer doing complex puzzles are expending electricity and this takes a lot of time and power to do so.

How to debunk something that is real?
Is Bitcoin mining consuming energy? Yes, it does!
Can we approximate how much energy does it? Yes, pretty simple the number is there, just take the hashrate and see how much kwh are required for it based on the standard miner!
Can bitcoin energy consumption spike 3 times from what is now? Yeah, bitcoin just needs to reach ~120k before the having!

Rather than focusing on trying to minimize the obvious the community should look at the most important thing, that is stated in the article also:


Bitcoin will consume as much energy as the block reward will allow it to, if it drops to 100$ the consumption will drop 100 times too, the same amount of transactions could be processed at but at the same time it will be as secure as the shitcoin on the 40th page on coinmarketcap. If one BTC reaches 1 million before the halving and assuming there is enough mining gear in the world you will see consumption go up by 20x from those 100ThW but at the same team, it will be 20 times more secure against any attack.

Doge is not burning less energy because of god knows what magic trick, is burning less because BTC mining reward was $46,948,254.22 USD compared to $7,132,078.25 USD and that's all.
miners have only one cost cooling and electricity, and both are capped by this reward, if doge goes to 1 million dogecoin will burn also more energy than this planet could produce. Ethereum hashrate has doubled from the start of the year, and I'm pretty sure that didn't occur without the doubling of energy consumption.


Actually, the extrapolation works here, if the reward double so does the miner revenue so grows the amount of energy they can pay for mining.
Double the price, double the income with a bit of ignoring ROI, and wages and maintenance double the amounts of kwh burned.

Anything digital consumes energy, but uncontrollable things are usually noticeably more expensive.  The energy used by Bitcoin empowers an uncontrollable economy.

Elon Musk's argument is rather pathetic.  He is looking to accept an eco friendly cryptocurrency for a non eco friendly company.  Ironically, he owns a car manufacturing company and one of rockets.  Do his rockets not pollute the air?  Do his cars not pollute either upon production?  But once again, here he is with his market manipulation.  It is a money game that he is playing very well so far, and seems to be without consequences as well.

Long as we wish for a solid free currency, we will have to make a sacrifice.  As stompix said above, Bitcoin needs this in order to stay at least as strong and secure as it is today.  And for now, the sacrifice seems to be the consequences of energy consumption and pollution.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

They could be compared to what is happening to cryptocurrency now, but somehow cryptocurrency is different than the PC.
Personal computers are there already and already caused damage by being produced and also the stage where people are using it.  And now, cryptocurrency is only the second one there.  But IMO, these are pointless, it’s not the Bitcoin that has a problem, it is actually the energy providers who have to step up and do something to help human nature to survive and at least recover.

I don’t think energy consumption is the main thing here really, it is the favor of the higher people with it.
I’m not really sure why Elon stated that thing in his tweet but seriously, I find it really disappoint and funny at the same time.  It’s like hypocrisy on a different level.

Nobody talks about internet and app use these days consuming vast amounts of energies for... pure entertainment. Email, video, text and audio. I don't have stats but 90% of it is for pure entertainment that brings no value of anything at all.

But nobody complains, this is the Dystopia of humans being distracted by entertainment. And our dear Elon is part of that entertainment too:)

I find it easy to debunk the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Drama made by Elon Musk with two simple questions.

First question will be, did Elon Musk know that miners operations are being developed and to the point that they progress to have their operations run with 75% of the energy used are renewable? If yes, then I guess the CEO is trying to test something or doing some Public Relation Stunt so on and so forth.

What about the cobalts being mined by the young Congos? Shifting and the topic and asking Elon would make him look a hypocrite. I just hope that he doesn't belong to that group of people. That would hurt my heart enough not to respect him as one of the best entrepreneurs.

Well, I just think that Elon Musk is planning to established and publish a coin that has a very least energy consumption. He's not contrast with the idea Bitcoin itself, he said in a podcast that cryptocurrency is brilliant, but I think he is trying to find a way to get in and have his own coins.

In most cases it does.
Bitcoin miners provides the derived demand for electrical consumption. If the cost of energy generation for fossil fuel is low, miners will use it. It is a blanket statement to say that Bitcoin miners are not contributing or otherwise exacerbating the problem because the truth is that they do, just perhaps to a lesser extent than most. Most renewable energy still have plenty of concerns with regards to the environmental degradation arising from this.

---

There is a stark difference between the scenario you've described and the predicament that we're in right now. The energy consumption doesn't have to be extrapolated over a larger timeframe for it to be enough of a concern; the network already consume a lot of energy. There is really nothing wrong with that and you really cannot debunk that. Whether it is worth for us to be mining silicon, building farms, wasting electricity for 2000 transactions per 10 minutes needs to be tackled from a completely different perspective. If you have a solid argument as to why the tradeoffs is worth, then you have a point to be made. Personally, Bitcoin deals with a huge transaction volume and the nature of PoW requires some form of resource exchange which is the electricity in this case and to a certain extent the environmental impacts. The point weakens as Bitcoin grows and scales to a much larger network, if that happens.

Still haven't seen the elon musk criticism yet... I won't be surprised if his company(or companies) does way worse than what he is accusing Bitcoin of, with little impact to the billions of average global citizens.
The good thing about Bitcoin is that it solves very important problems in the right way, and is benefitting many people globally. I would overlook the energy consumption issue if it's coming from renewable/clean sources, helps secure the global network and benefits much people globally . What has elon musk centralized companies done for us? I find Bitcoin and other decentralized network way more valuable and important.
It actually deserves the energy it consumes assuming it's from renewable sources . What I don't really like about its PoW is the concentration of large stationary mining farms around the world.

Bitcoin consumes something like 0.1% of global electricity, electricity is responsible for 30% of carbon emissions, so Bitcoin is responsible for 0.03% of carbon emissions from this rough estimation. IMO 0.03% isn't that high, especially when industries like meat and trasportation are responsible for so much more.

Neptune riding the waves

It looks like he's going to start at the bottom again. After reasoning rejecting Bitcoin because it is not energy friendly and energy consumption is too large because it is against Tesla's mission. But it seems like we are too stupid to believe that straight away. She continues to collaborate with her doge. Does doge not consume energy like Bitcoin. Maybe the answer is no if Elon answers it. But what power he has become a person who is able to change the state of the market, at that time like McAfee. But now that he's gone, maybe later Elon will be like McAfee he'll disappear from the hack. So that new people will appear in Crypto.

It is so sad to think that technology advance but the way many people think stay primitive.  When an unupdated person heard of energy consumption they automatically think coal burning, oil drilling without even thinking that there are alternative ways to get energy such as from wind, geo (geothermal energy), solar which is very nature friendly.  Elon Musk just loves drama and spotlight, he knows these things (sources of energy) all along but he wanted his statement to be the talk of the cryptocurrency industry thus he deliberately releases that statement.

One should simply point out, first of all, that a tiny 19% of power came from low-carbon energy sources in 2019. This means we are so distant from a green transition and thinking that bitcoin is polluting the world and destroying the environment is simply very stupid.
The article has a lot of data to avoid focusing on the finger while looking at the moon (if you don't know those words originally came from Confucius “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” )

Bitcoin energy narrative always ignored the energy wasted by other activities or industries, nothing new under the sun.
And let's say that banking is probably not even that much energy hungry, but just think on advertising, or physical casinos, or, as I've read somewhere, the Christmas lights...



Yes and no. We don't know what the future holds. One example is the ever rising difficulty, decreasing the income/kWh.
And the advance of technology is not always able to cope, leading to increase of consumption for the same revenue.
(And if the technology is advancing, the gears are not for free either).
So.. the "formula" is more complicated and not as easily predictable.

I fully agree with this. Elon Musk is not some sort of child that will choose a candy at a whim and seconds later will just throw the candy away. I mean he is a genius and I don't think a man of his stature will decide on anything without considering all the factors - and with Bitcoin he must have known that some people are questioning the energy involved in mining the coin. And now he is pretending to have some sort of buyer remorse, and yet he is hodling on to the Bitcoin they already have -- and it is because even if he thinks that Bitcoin is bad for the environment he is sure it is good with business and making good profits. In other words, we are witnessing a man who is a hypocrite at the very least. People who in cryptocurrency must stop following this man and must stop the kind of influence he is wearing.

Bitcoin price falling as a result of this, Elon why ???

The formula is pretty simple, as you start from  solid base you will not be able to spend more on energy than you get in reward.
Here is one pretty good thanks to burtw (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401)

Also, what do you mean by the increase in difficulty?

The increase in difficulty is an effect of the increase in reward, remember that last year at 10k we were doing 100 Exahash, now we're doing barely double with 5 times the reward, the consumption is barely keeping up with the price because of chip shortage that leads to both Bitmain and  MicroBT get sold out even if customers are ready to pay triple the price.
I've got an insane deal buying 3 miners at just 2 and a half the price of last summer, if enough mienrs would be available at this moment you will see difficulty do another x2 in a month.

There is a problem with your logic. The banking service Bitcoin provides is no where near of legacy banking. I don't know how much electricity common banking consumes and I expect it to be very high but on the other hand the amount of services they provide are also a lot. VISA alone probably verifies more than 30% of the credit card transactions.

According to this page (https://www.statista.com/statistics/278970/share-of-purchase-transactions-on-global-credit-cards/), it is 50%.

How many transactions go through btc? 525960 * 10 at best and in return, it consumes more electricity than Sweden. And while the number of transactions btc enables will stay same, the energy consumption will only rise exponentially. I don't think that is sustainable.

People are trying so hard to compare the Fiat payment system footprint with Crypto currency footprint, but they cherry pick the inputs. You cannot just take selectively and then bundle all aspects of the competitor and then exaggerate the result.

Example : A Bank transaction is so much more than the single entry that are done on a database within the Banking system.... these transactions are done on a server that are located in a secure server room... with 24/7 air-conditioning and 24/7 security system. (CCTV/Guard houses with lights and aircon etc.)

The transaction might originate from a ATM that consume electricity, even if it is not used (24/7) and those ATM's are monitors and controlled remotely from within a control center, with it's own electricity usage. (All these devices are manufactured and recycled and that process use electricity)

We can go a lot deeper......  ;)

Actually the theory and the reality not match always, and that's basically my point.
And in the summer of 2016, while some miners were disconnecting, I am almost certain that not all of them were mining on profit. And it's clearly not the only case. And if it has happened before, it can probably happen again.


The relationship between increase of reward and increase of difficulty is not necessarily as you say. It's somewhat similar to "what was first, the chicken or the egg?".
With the current semiconductor shortage the situation is unnatural an indeed the difficulty doesn't rise as much as expected, but, on the other hand, isn't this yet another sign that the overall rule doesn't always work as expected?

What I found exceptionally spot on reading the article in OP is that basically the Internet had to suffer the same bullshit. Today's bitcoin turn ok, but I think the environmental attack is yet another attempt to take the king down in favor of the crazy horseshit boiling in the other blockchain pot.
Yes, bitcoin consumes energy, so what? it's called progress. and that's how it works

IMO I believe for that part, Elon musk must have taken profits off the Bitcoin he bought because I don't suppose he would be doing this knowing fully well that it will result negatively to Bitcoin price and still hold.
On the other hand, I thought the same thing too, Is it that Elon Musk is saying that an organization like Tesla and himself did not know all the details involved in Bitcoin mining or rumored surrounding Bitcoin in terms of energy consumption for mining before making that decision? IMHO, I believe that Elon did this just to show how much he can manipulate the market to his own advantage since there have been studies that have also shown that Bitcoin mining doesn't really consume what is been claimed.

This is non-sense. Why would it drop 100 times if it was evaluated with $100?

Due to this phenomenon, I guess that governments will sooner or later find their way to illegalize the use of ASICs, if renewable sources of energy aren't that productive yet. Thus, this formula won't be valid forever. Mining is a greedy game and fortunately, it can be controlled in a way. Do you really believe that Bitcoin will destroy the planet? C'mon.

---

---

As for this:

I always carry this image when someone brings this topic:

Can the difficulty increase once it has his miminum profitability without an increase in price? No, it can't.
We had tens of those evens in the past, mienrs staing on the shelves as there was no incentive to add more hashrate since the profits were marginal.

Have we seen difficulty spikes long after the price has stopped growing? Yes we have again seen it numerous times, look now, the overall difficulty despite those flops is still up 6% and Bitcoin is not at all near the ATH, the difficulty keeps rising and it will keep rising even if we drop to 30 the break-even point is well below the current price for the number of miners we have on right now.

There is no chicken and egg, the difficulty follows the reward, sometimes it might now keep up p with it but never has the difficulty dictated the price.


It's a freak situation, simple as that, it can't be a perpetual state of affairs and its effects will soon be negated.



Because miners would only make $90k instead of $45m.
How many miners can you feed with $90k even at 1cent per kwh? Oh, let me answer that for you, around 100k S19pro, so just 11 Exahash.
1cent/kwh , no ROI no cooling, no maintenance, no profit.



Before posting it you should check the date of the study;)

The source for your image says:
Source: ARK Investment Management LLC, 2020. Data Source: https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3
That quotes a study from 2014:
https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-economic-environmental-costs-bitcoin-mining

It's a good story, and I haven't heard of it before. That being said, the Carbon footprint is getting bigger over time, and surely the development and mass adoption of various technologies contributed to that. As for the estimates being very off, it's good that they were and that it's not as bad as some thought it would be. I also think that it was indeed uncalled for to stop accepting BTC payments since it's really hard to fully assess the real impact of BTC (because often the sources of electricity for mining aren't known) and to compare it with the impact of other things. However, I do think that the energy sources matter and the issue of fossil fuels shouldn't be disregarded.

There is almost always a reason behind fluctuations in the market, (really any market) it is not always obvious but one thing is clear it is just as likely that a pigeon that was perched on a fiber line farted and caused the whole thing.   ridiculous yes, same as the idea that one opinion could influence millions of cryptocurrency investors to suddenly stop supporting the market.

  Even if Tesla stops accepting crypto, how many investors were on their way to the dealership to buy one?

  No, that does not fly in any real way.   IT is far more likely that over leveraged margin traders got a call or banking deposits had to be reconciled,  another not obvious likely cause.

  all of these things contribute to an issue but what is going on right now is manipulation, no other way about it.   You can see it clearly in the order book.

  Someone has a big bet out on puts and that is the real problem.

  When a whale or a corporate presence manipulates the price of BTC in order to win a bet.

  It not only affects everyone that holds and trades crypto but everyone else who cannot engage the market because the price will not go up and it will not go down far enough to make it profitable to engage in the market.

  If you bought the dips prior to the new Low, 48 to 50 then you are stuck unless you take the loss and short it.

  You might be tempted to buy more but that is not a healthy method of getting out of a hole.

  The only thing you can do is wait until those options expire and the market returns to a state where the price is not held down by artificial means.

But the price can fall, crypto winter can go for months (years?) and the difficulty won't fall that much, not proportionally at least.


It was said in many occasions that the difficulty follows the price and it was said in many occasions that the price follows the difficulty sooner or later. So.. yeah...


Freak situations, exceptions, .. name it. There are always cases to show that the rules don't always work. Isn't that the point of all this discussion?

since my friend fillippone started an even better thread which now includes the article I posted here, you guys can keep discussing it there as I do not see any point in splitting what I find one of the most important discussion of the btc world recently.
For this reason, I will lock this thread and you can move to filli's thread. Thanks for all great contributions!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5325350.0