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[cbreum]

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[Bitware]

The cost of mining Bitcoins requires power to drive almost a whole country now. It's a crazy waste of energy.

In these times energy savings have more and more focus, but Bitcoin mining is going in the opposite direction by requiring more and more energy. It's bad for global warming and the Earth environment in general.

What can be done about that to keep Bitcoins going strong for the next decade?

As I see it one solution is using premined cryptocurrency like Rimbits. Any other alternatives?

What we got here is a concern troll Crusader... or a subverter.

[franky1]

The cost of mining Bitcoins requires power to drive almost a whole country now. It's a crazy waste of energy.

In these times energy savings have more and more focus, but Bitcoin mining is going in the opposite direction by requiring more and more energy. It's bad for global warming and the Earth environment in general.

What can be done about that to keep Bitcoins going strong for the next decade?

As I see it one solution is using premined cryptocurrency like Rimbits. Any other alternatives?

pointless post to advertise his crappy altcoin..

maybe if he realised that in america.. there are 95,000 bank branches. with 8PC's on average using 400watts each.
so just for the staff to view balances and the basic stuff requires more electric then bitcoin.

then if you include:
all the head offices
all the settlement/clearing house servers..
all the call centres
all he ATMs

then you will see the US Dollar uses even more power (3fold atleast)
so is the dollar any better.. with all the fraud that happens the banker bail outs the money laundering and scams that always occur..

.. i think not

[toucan]

But the problem is that the power bill is being paid ONLY by the mining firms. And if they cannot mine enough BTC to pay the bills...then POOF goes the netwotk and BTC

In the USA, yes lots of PCs but each person pays his own. Every BTC user is only paying a miniscule amount for the transaction confirmation, and this isn't near enough to help out the miners with their massive power requirements

[Amph]

But the problem is that the power bill is being paid ONLY by the mining firms. And if they cannot mine enough BTC to pay the bills...then POOF goes the netwotk and BTC

In the USA, yes lots of PCs but each person pays his own. Every BTC user is only paying a miniscule amount for the transaction confirmation, and this isn't near enough to help out the miners with their massive power requirements

don't worry about this, because they are actually making 4x the bills cost right now, so they definetly are in position to pay it without difficult, not to mention all the profit they did when the diff was lower and the price was higher

also top the op the cost of the energy used is a direct backup of the value of bitcoin itself

[Hazir]

And what do you say about FIAT or Gold? Destroying nature by mining gold out of the ground, melting it down and shaping it into bars, and then storing them in armored vaults forever.
How about the waste of energy printing and minting all the various fiat currencies? I am not an expert but as mediums of exchange I find bitcoin rather well balanced economically.

[CelluleRB]

cbreum maybe a crusader, but you are a sophist. You make the premise that USD needs those computers to stay alive. What you intently forget to say, is that those who have the resources (eg the money) to pay for the kind of computers farm needed to keep Bitcoin alive are just a few. So, these very limited group of people controls the game. And, as it costs more and more to keep the mining process alive, even those who actually control this won't have enough resources to keep all the system alive sooner or later. Added to that, and in 2016 it is a well known fact, global warming is no secret and we should not discard this as easily as some seem to do. So comparing banks with miners is pointless as banks does not create currencies, they manage them.

[franky1]

But the problem is that the power bill is being paid ONLY by the mining firms. And if they cannot mine enough BTC to pay the bills...then POOF goes the netwotk and BTC

In the USA, yes lots of PCs but each person pays his own. Every BTC user is only paying a miniscule amount for the transaction confirmation, and this isn't near enough to help out the miners with their massive power requirements

if the mining firms cannot earn a living from mining, then the can go get a different job. then there is more left for the rest.
the other (benefit to everyone) is the fiat valuation of the bitcoin would rise to compensate the reduction of reward.

by the way worrying about mining reward disappearing is something only your grandchildren need to worry about, the fiat valuation will take care of compensating the reward halvings. and slowly over decades the amount of possible transactions and thus tx fee's will also help with that. as a 20-80 year slow progression.

there is no need at all to cry or worry about fees any time soon. and anyone trying to push a tx fee war right now doesnt understand bitcoin much and wants to ruin bitcoin for selfish and odd reasons.

the mining costs look after themselves. its not suppose to be a guaranteed, easy, life-time income. some pools may disappear and some new pools may pop up. its happened before and will happen again.
in 2012 there were less than a dozen bitcoin pools. now there are more. so the 2012 halving did not cause harm..neither will future halvings such as this year. so relax, calm down, the network wont break due to the halving

[unamis76]

Third thread on the topic in the last few days...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1426579.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1420579.0

Why this sudden surge of interest regarding the power it takes to keep the blockchain going? Why no interest regarding the power it takes to keep fiat banking systems going?

New mining chips will always be continuously developed and they will be more and more efficient with time.

[franky1]

Third thread on the topic in the last few days...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1426579.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1420579.0

Why this sudden surge of interest regarding the power it takes to keep the blockchain going? Why no interest regarding the power it takes to keep fiat banking systems going?

New mining chips will always be continuously developed and they will be more and more efficient with time.

main reasons
1. the reward halving mentions income reduced to 50% so people start to wonder how will miners get paid.
2. americans want to get into mining but paying out $1000 for an asic folowed by regular electric bills they realise they are not profitable(to western consumers)

they simply dont understant that pools can change and different pools can take over.
they dont understand the fiat valuation can change to compensate.

they do not understand that unless they are the manufacturers that then start mining within hours of production. instead of purchasing at the expensive retail cost with lengthy delivery, which means they will not get ROI.
bitcoin mining is profitable if you are at the forefront of the industry. remember bitmain charges customers $1000 because with that funds they can make 5+ units.. 1 for the customer and 4(free) to keep to themselves.

[calkob]

The cost of mining Bitcoins requires power to drive almost a whole country now. It's a crazy waste of energy.

In these times energy savings have more and more focus, but Bitcoin mining is going in the opposite direction by requiring more and more energy. It's bad for global warming and the Earth environment in general.

What can be done about that to keep Bitcoins going strong for the next decade?

As I see it one solution is using premined cryptocurrency like Rimbits. Any other alternatives?

pointless post to advertise his crappy altcoin..

maybe if he realised that in america.. there are 95,000 bank branches. with 8PC's on average using 400watts each.
so just for the staff to view balances and the basic stuff requires more electric then bitcoin.

then if you include:
all the head offices
all the settlement/clearing house servers..
all the call centres
all he ATMs

then you will see the US Dollar uses even more power (3fold atleast)
so is the dollar any better.. with all the fraud that happens the banker bail outs the money laundering and scams that always occur..

.. i think not

Some great points franky...... never actually thought of that myself.  I suppose its the price of the best financial security around 

[toucan]

Ok I know what the answer is...hook those mining companies up to the unicorns and harvest their flatus.

That and pixie dust should do just fine to keep the BTC network going.

Sorry I was so dense not to see this obvious answer.

[yenxz]

The cost of mining Bitcoins requires power to drive almost a whole country now. It's a crazy waste of energy.

In these times energy savings have more and more focus, but Bitcoin mining is going in the opposite direction by requiring more and more energy. It's bad for global warming and the Earth environment in general.

What can be done about that to keep Bitcoins going strong for the next decade?

As I see it one solution is using premined cryptocurrency like Rimbits. Any other alternatives?

yes its can be true,bitcoin consume so much energy,and its why mining bitcoin need so may cost,but it hink the solutions is the bitcoin miners must be want to safe energy and participate by donating bitcoin to energy safer fundations. it must be done

[franky1]

Personal PC is not waste of power. Banks PC and systems are not waste of power. Bitcoin mining is totally waste of energy and much more expensive than the power used for the power in banks for the same amount of transactions

wrong on so many levels.

maybe if you looked at how much power goes into the clearing houses of all the banks and things like visa mastercard.. you will see that bitcoin uses less to settle 'accounts' then what banks do.

[CelluleRB]

franky1, you still make assumptions that are false. Bank don't need to use computers to create currencies. And, they are not controling anything... just ask to those who crashed in the pink papers and mortgage scandals...

[toucan]

Personal PC is not waste of power. Banks PC and systems are not waste of power. Bitcoin mining is totally waste of energy and much more expensive than the power used for the power in banks for the same amount of transactions

wrong on so many levels.

maybe if you looked at how much power goes into the clearing houses of all the banks and things like visa mastercard.. you will see that bitcoin uses less to settle 'accounts' then what banks do.

You may be right, but I imagine that banks and credit card companies process billions of times more transactions than BTC. So the power consumption will be higher. DUH

[Amph]

franky1, you still make assumptions that are false. Bank don't need to use computers to create currencies. And, they are not controling anything... just ask to those who crashed in the pink papers and mortgage scandals...

how any atm is working out there? how they can have all those transactions per day, they are obviously using tons of power

you can argue that this power may be partially free due to the usage of a massive panels farm to have solar energy or any other green energy, but this cna be done with bitcoin too

[blunderer]

Personal PC is not waste of power. Banks PC and systems are not waste of power. Bitcoin mining is totally waste of energy and much more expensive than the power used for the power in banks for the same amount of transactions

wrong on so many levels.

maybe if you looked at how much power goes into the clearing houses of all the banks and things like visa mastercard.. you will see that bitcoin uses less to settle 'accounts' then what banks do.

Banks probably do use more power than Bitcoin. Because they serve the entire fucking world.
Bitcoin?
Well, Bitcoin can handle ~3 transactions per second, which is roughly the number of transactions generated by a small US SHOPPING MALL.
So yeah, an obscene waste of power, currently ~$6 per *single fucking transaction*

Edit: actually ~$6 is the total tx cost, the power costs are more like ~$3 per tx, at Chinese (subsidized) power rates.

[DGulari]

Satoshi got this part wrong.  

What if bitcoin were still around $1 - $2 which is probably what satoshi was expecting.  Then, there'd be no ASICs, or only small ones.  Just thousands of BlockErupters each costing $100.  It'd take almost forever to ROI.  Nobody would develop 14um - way too expensive.  This would have been ideal.

But, bitcoin got WAY too popular too fast.   This means miners rushed to increase hash rate.  mining capacity went WAY up.  

This is how much the network consumes - precisely - and unambiguously
It is the average cost of electricity for all regions where mining is done, divided by the current reward rate (ie 25BTC soon to be 12.5).  

Just like sardines in the ocean.  The number of them depends precisely on the food available.  The population will grow with great efficiency until the food supply will be fully consumed.

The mining capacity will grow with great efficiency until nearly every penny is spent on electricity and the margin is tiny.  12.5BTC/10min is the food supply.  06 cents/kilowatt hour is the cost of electricity.  Therefore, the network will spend precisely $31,500 (6*12.5*$420) per hour buying electricity (presently (6*25*$420).  Mining profits are negligible - and always will be - because crazy fuckers will buy more machines the instant the margin rises slightly above zero.  100% of the reward rate is going to electricity.  (actually, miners have some other expenses too but we can just ignore them as small in comparison).  

Because the average cost for electricity is probably about $.05 or $.06/kWhr perhaps, the network uses (after the halfing):  525,000 kWatts!  ($31,500/.06).  About 500 Megawatts is the network consumption for the next coming four years.  No amount of adjustment or efficiency improvements can change that.  It is as fixed as the reward rate of 12.5BTC/10 minutes* (the food supply) (*assumes electricity rate average doesn't appreciably move from about $.06/kwhr).  

[But what if the sardines are smaller?  What if they are Japanese sardines.  Doesn't matter.  None of that matters.  Sardine breeding efficiency guarantees that the population will grow until it precisely consumes the food supply]

Bitcoin mining is the same.  It will very efficiently grow to meet precisely the food supply of 12.5BTC/block

WOW! Bitcoin network burns 500 Megawatts just to stay alive.  

The interesting thing is that this is a kind of 'tax' on the system.  It embodies itself as inflation.  New money comes into the network and gets burned off as payments to electricity suppliers at a rate of $31,500/hour.  Truth is, Bitcoin today is a VERY leaky system as a ton of value is being burned off by energizing guessing machines.  Yet, more suckers at a rate of $31,500 come every hour to join the herd.  The rest of bitcoin holders suffer this amount of 'dilution' as more units are in the network each block.  The good news, this stops in 2140.  Then, we'll pay for electricity purely with fees - but there will be zero inflation.  

[BitMaxz]

Bitcoin still the best never to use any alternative for bitcoin like any altcoin you mention.. and i think they can make a new miner that do not need to use a power to mine. so i will stay in bitcoin because is nearly accepting more bitcoins in my country..