Bitcoin & PoW is a waste of energy & destroys nature

[Malin Keshar]

1 - The talk about energetic collapse in some sense remembers me the Malthus thesis about the collapse of food. We can make more power-saving hardware, we can develop new energy sources, we can make the losses on transmissions lower, we can make alternative energy founts(like solar and aeolian) be more economically viable. We could use more nuclear energy too, if not by the environmentalist's pressure. We aren't on verge of an energy collapse.


2 - we need someone to publish a paper showing that the FIAT system waste more energy and resources than BTC, so instead of 10 pages thread we would have only a one post thread.

[Brangdon]

Once I did the calculations on how much roughly the ATMs, in the USA alone, use more power 24/7 then the entire Bitcoin network. It was nearly 2x the amount of power.

Talk about a wasteful infrastructure!

Bitcoin wins that comparison only because it doesn't have a significant number of ATMs. Eventually Bitcoin ATMs will be as common as fiat ones, and then we'll have that cost in addition to the costs of mining.

[notbatman]

This thread is lame. There are many clean energy solutions, they're just not politically feasible in our corrupt system.

There's a white paper on low energy nuclear reactions out there. The media was so bearish on cold fusion they had to re-name it.

[bitsmichel]

This thread is lame. There are many clean energy solutions, they're just not politically feasible in our corrupt system.

Agreed. We need more freedom if we wish that the planet continues to exist

[Peter R]

When having a conversation about the energy usage of bitcoin's mining network, it is important to know what the facts are.  Here are some important facts:

Total power deposited on earth by sun:

   130 million gigawatts

Total (average) power consumed by humans:

   16 thousand gigawatts

Total power consumed by bitcoin mining:

   0.68 gigawatts (assuming all bitcoin inflation buys electricity at $0.10 / kw-hr)
   0.07 gigawatts (assuming 1 W / GHash)

So, humans are using 0.012% of the sun's energy that hits earth, bitcoin is using somewhere between 5x10^-8% and 5x10^-7% of the energy available from the sun or 0.0004% - 0.004% of the total energy consumed by humans.  

[notbatman]

When having a conversation about the energy usage of bitcoin's mining network, it is important to know what the facts are.  Here are some important facts:

Total power deposited on earth by sun:

   130 million gigawatts

Total (average) power consumed by humans:

   16 thousand gigawatts

Total power consumed by bitcoin mining:

   0.68 gigawatts (assuming all bitcoin inflation buys electricity at $0.10 / kw-hr)
   0.07 gigawatts (assuming 1 W / GHash)

So, humans are using 0.012% of the sun's energy that hits earth, bitcoin is using somewhere between 5x10^-8% and 5x10^-7% of the energy available from the sun or 0.0004% - 0.004% of the total energy consumed by humans.  

What's the total power output of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy?

[Peter R]

When having a conversation about the energy usage of bitcoin's mining network, it is important to know what the facts are.  Here are some important facts:

Total power deposited on earth by sun:

   130 million gigawatts

Total (average) power consumed by humans:

   16 thousand gigawatts

Total power consumed by bitcoin mining:

   0.68 gigawatts (assuming all bitcoin inflation buys electricity at $0.10 / kw-hr)
   0.07 gigawatts (assuming 1 W / GHash)

So, humans are using 0.012% of the sun's energy that hits earth, bitcoin is using somewhere between 5x10^-8% and 5x10^-7% of the energy available from the sun or 0.0004% - 0.004% of the total energy consumed by humans.  

What's the total power output of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy?

I think you mean the total luminosity of the milky way:

   5000000000000000000000000000 gigawatts     (5×10^36 W)

Quiz: assuming you could run bitcoin miners off the total luminosity of the milky way, and assuming each watt provides 1 GHash/s of hashing power, approximately how long would it take to find two 512-bit numbers that had the same sha256 hash?  If you used your miners to mine bitcoin, approximately what would network difficult increase to and is there enough resolution in the bitcoin protocol to support this or we would need a hard fork?

[Adrian-x]

What's the total power output of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy?

Don't worry your self with that. We first need to move from Type 0 to Type 1 civilization money, looking at galactic power is a Type 3 civilization issue on the Kardashev scale

[RepublicSpace]

The media speaking abouit it is just randomly looking for hooks because they have to keep their mouths moving. They don't care about the ecological impact of anything and they won't bother again with that angle once they've nudged it a little and determined that it doesn't have any "legs," as they say.

[Lethn]

If you don't like Bitcoin because of the 'useless' power consumption then support a coin that actually does something with all that power like Primecoin or Curecoin, Einsteinium coin would also be a good choice because of the foundation and they would benefit from commerce using that coin too.

[TheTruth4]

Why isn't the content of the section entitled "Bitcoin mining is a waste of energy and harmful for ecology" not sufficient to debunk the recent spate of articles about Bitcoin being an "ecological disaster" and whatnot?

[TheTruth4]

Also, has anyone else noticed that Forbes and the big financial press seem to have soured on Bitcoin lately? They used to seem really neutral, to almost positive.

[cbeast]

Also, has anyone else noticed that Forbes and the big financial press seem to have soured on Bitcoin lately? They used to seem really neutral, to almost positive.

Bitcoin has become boring. This is a good thing.

[unexecuted]

I think we're not on that step to worry about mining becoming too harmful for the planet.

[ThePurplePlanet]

First let's put things into perspective

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/27d793/research_is_the_bitcoin_network_sustainable/


Second in my opinion mining energy will turn into a feature. There is lots of energy wasted. Electricity utilities waste excess power during nights. They can use bitcoin to earn income with that wasted power. Same for geothermal. For solar panels people will replace batteries to store excess energy value with bitcoin. Lower cost for them.

It is not feasible now because chips are very expensive but once competition heats and hashing chips prices drop to the ground all the mining will move to energy waste resources. Even biking has excess energy that we don't have a commonly used battery to store. Why not store it in bitcoin.

Cars harness wasted energy into expensive batteries costing thousands each. Storing in bitcoin will be cheaper.

All the wasted energy can be stored in bitcoins.

[Ron~Popeil]

The fiat system uses hundreds of times more power than bit coin. 

[JypsiCreme]

it's funny: mining BTC is harmful for ecology and some ecological projects are donating BTC

[Skele]

Maybe yes, it is a waste of energy and destroys nature, but that's now, actually, thanks to the large energy and oil monopoly. I think it's

only a matter of years before it pops up new cheap and clean forms of energy...