Do you miners ever feel bad all pollution mining causes?

[thebaron]

It's a small fraction of the energy that governments around the world use to keep track of it's citizens with monitoring systems. Now, which is a more pointless waste?

[BTCMe]

My miner is such a fraction of a percent to what my gaming rig produces...  I guess I need to stop gaming then.   

It would be kind of interesting to see what a true decent mining rig sucks up compared to like an XBOX or PS3 or something like that.   

[laststop]

First off I'm not trolling I was honestly looking for opinions. Of course I'm for BTC everyone here is but even tho I use crossfire 6990's to mine I do wonder sometimes all this electric we are using. And I've only mined 66 bitcoins so I havent used THAT much electric.

[silverfuture]

Finding solutions for problems is always a more efficient use of energy than worry or guilt.

[Etlase2]

To date, nobody has provided any other suggestion as to how to provide transaction timestamping in a secure manner that is not dependent upon a central authority.

If you think you can come up with an alternative, please share.

This is not accurate. See my sig for one example. Another are the proof of stake ideas from Meni and Cunicula. I also proposed a bitcoin-like blockchain that used bitcoin days destroyed or a similar metric to decide which chain is stronger rather than purely hashing power. This could allow for a safe reduction in difficulty without opening the network to attack.

For today's GPU miners, well more than half of the revenue from bitcoins goes to pay for electricity.  But those using FPGA use a fraction of that.  The reason the GPU miners are still around is because FPGAs are so expensive.   ASIC designs are even more efficient than FPGAs and they can be produced (after paying the fixed expenses for the R&D) cheaply.

But if bitcoins for example, sell for $1,000 a piece and there are 10 or 20 bitcoins in tx fees each block, there will be competition to see how much people are willing to spend to eek out a profit on mining. Likely it is going to be 90% of the value of the bitcoins or more. So it's either electricity or the purchase of additional FPGAs or ASICs and the effort of repaying those investments. If there are $20k worth of bitcoins each block, competition is not going to allow people who have $10k invested to reap a 100% ROI. If ASICs are ubiquitous, you can expect the ASIC energy output to come close to that of GPUs, there will just have to be a lot more of them mining. If ASICs are not ubiquitous, GPU miners will still have an opportunity to profit above their electricity costs. GPU miners in cheap electric economies may mine long after ASICs are ubiquitous.

[deus-ex-machina]

All the electric you use for mining = more carbon in air. Do you feel guilty you are profiting off earths destruction through greenhouse gases?

Compared to ONLY ocean C02 emissions, total human output of C02 is like a small fart.

So to answer your question, no, I don't give a toot.

That's carbon dioxide. He was referring to everything that involves carbon.

Of course, we are carbon-based.

[Stephen Gornick]

If ASICs are ubiquitous, you can expect the ASIC energy output to come close to that of GPUs, there will just have to be a lot more of them mining.

Today a typical rig costs a thousand dollars for the hardware and consumes $75 / month of electricity.

Amortize that 18 months, and you have roughly 40% of the monthly costs going to the hardware and 60% going to electricity.

A thousand dollars worth of ASIC (e.g., a 1/15th of an BFL SC mini rig) consumes about $10 / month of electricity.

Amortize that the same 18 months and you have roughly 85% of the monthly costs going to the hardware and 15% going to electricity. 

ASIC mining is 7.5X more efficient then (consumption of $10 / month of electricity versus $75 / month) when including the amortized cost of the hardware.

The unknown is how long to amortize.  if it is longer than 18 months then electricity as a % rises.  If it is shorter (e.g., faster ASIC comes out) then the cost of electricity as a % of expenses drops.

So I don't think today's miners will be consuming anywhere near as much electricity (e.g., 7.5X less in the example I just gave) with ASIC presuming they aren't going to increase their investment over what they were spending for GPUs.

[Littleshop]

All the electric you use for mining = more carbon in air. Do you feel guilty you are profiting off earths destruction through greenhouse gases?

1/3 of my power is nuclear.  1/3 of my mining helps with heating. 

[Etlase2]

Amortize that the same 18 months and you have roughly 85% of the monthly costs going to the hardware and 15% going to electricity. 

ASIC mining is 7.5X more efficient then (consumption of $10 / month of electricity versus $75 / month) when including the amortized cost of the hardware.

The unknown is how long to amortize.  if it is longer than 18 months then electricity as a % rises.  If it is shorter (e.g., faster ASIC comes out) then the cost of electricity as a % of expenses drops.

So I don't think today's miners will be consuming anywhere near as much electricity (e.g., 7.5X less in the example I just gave) with ASIC presuming they aren't going to increase their investment over what they were spending for GPUs.

I don't follow the ASIC stuff much as I don't mine, but from what I've heard here and there the price of ASICs should drop significantly once competition begins and they begin mass production. Like, really significantly. Chip fabrication costs hinge heavily on the amount that can successfully be produced, so if demand is high enough and the manufacturing process efficient, the price should drop like a rock, just like every other ASIC. And we can only really guess what the real eco-footprint of these devices will be, it can't be hinged upon just how much electricity they use. No matter what, it's still wasteful. The solution to the security of the network needs to be something other than "throw more money at it", or you might start seeing some ironic parallels to typical government policy.

[frozenkai]

My local energy provider claims to run 25% on solar panels and wind turbines and that number will probably get bigger so, no.

[rontus]

I feel bad because my mining warms up the whole apartment and thus neighbors apartments as well.

[Gabi]

Better you guys don't check how solar panels and windturbines are made... green? Ha! Nice joke! Go check how materials for them are mined 

[Testit]

My local energy provider claims to run 25% on solar panels and wind turbines and that number will probably get bigger so, no.

I buy 100% electric from wind and water power 

[deus-ex-machina]

Better you guys don't check how solar panels and windturbines are made... green? Ha! Nice joke! Go check how materials for them are mined 

Mining the materials is a one time thing for each product, while other sources are used up a certain amount each use each product and sometimes when not being used.

[brubits]

All the electric you use for mining = more carbon in air. Do you feel guilty you are profiting off earths destruction through greenhouse gases?

I'm not mining yet, but I generate my electricity via solar and wind.

/  How do you feel about your posts' carbon footprint? /


http://grist.org/series/skeptics/
'“How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming'

[rube7x]

Grid tie is the answer.

[FreeMoney]

yea but adding bitcoin just adds more carbon into the air without reducing the demand on paper money at all. But if that's the rationale you use to keep you guilt free do ya thing

Without reducing the demand for paper money at all? Kidding?

I've practically abandoned paper money. I'm down to 2 months expenses in paper thanks to bitcoin.

The reduced demand for paper is tiny because bitcoin is tiny and so is the pollution.

Also paper money pollutes children's bodies with shrapnel, so there is that.