Bitcoin and global warming

[TontomHit]

As I know, Bitcoin consumes more energy, than my whole country. Yes, it is a problem, but not sure, if it could be changeda, as it also makes the system secure IMO.

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[Impulseboy]

Does anyone know/have any figures about the total power consumption that bitcoin requires currently? It should be high I'm sure, and should also go even higher in the future. However, compared to other industries, where does bitcoin rank exactly? I would assume bitcoin's power consumption still ranks lower in comparison to most of the business sectors.

What about using solar panels to mine bitcoins? Do you think that this will help alleviate the power consumption when mining bitcoins? So far, this is the only solution I can think of. What do you think? Will it suffice?

[raking]

Nothing is perfect. You should know that each country's paper money is valuable worldwide, but to produce it loses a lot of natural resources but it still has many advantages over cryptocurrency. Printing money against money and fraud on the Internet, more importantly the value of paper money is always stable.

[xtrump101]

I think our main problem is the huge electricity expense induced by mining and its noxious effect on the climate. This is, to my mind, the only serious argument against Bitcoin.
Alleviating the electricity expense should be one of our priorities. If we do not do it for the sake of the Earth (which we really should) we should at least do it selfishly because governments will not tolerate this forever and they will be right. The more the exchange rate increases, the worse it gets, of course.
Some solutions exist though: first there is proof-of-stake, of course. This technology may be too young to be deemed reliable enough but we should at least start considering it.
If we do not like proof-of-stake I think we could drammatically decrease the electricity expense by stopping monetary creation now. Nowdays Bitcoin is famous enough to remain secure even if miners earned transaction fees only. And if as a whole there are 16.5 M coins instead of 21 M, this does not make much of a difference. That is even good for holders. To make miners agree with that solution, they must be compensated for their lost income.  More precisely, active miners must be compensated because they have already bought ASICs. Futures miners do not need to be compensated. Since mining is a competitive industry, future miners will make no profit on average, whatever the reward scheme. To compensate active miners we could decide that the next 2016 blocks yield, say, 100 new coins and then 0 forever. Everybody would win and the Earth above all!
There are probably many other solutions and I wish the community cared a little more about this fundamental issue.

gold mining consumes more electricity until each finish product for about 20% more than the bitcoin accordong to research you can google it to verify, so i wonder why electricity consumption on mining bitcoin becomes an issue and not for gold?

[Luke_Turner]

the thing about electricity is that until we are presented with options about power consumption alternative, there's nothing much that we can do but use electricity when mining bitcoins. Unless there are some renewable energy that we can use as electricity, there's not much that we can do to reduce global warming because electricity is needed to mine bitcoins.

[KryptoKai]

This is not going to be a problem in the future as miners move to cheaper forms of energy which is likely to be renewable. Something like solar power or biogas which is better for the environment. Switching to colder climates will reduce airconditioning requirements

[gesdan]

i think at one year ago we can see that there are people that use computer and mining rig to mine bitcoin around the world, and it spend many energy of electricity and makes global warming, but we can see right now, the mining is not popular right now because its not profitable again, so many miners stop mining the bitcoin

[keykey1]

As I know, Bitcoin consumes more energy, than my whole country. Yes, it is a problem, but not sure, if it could be changeda, as it also makes the system secure IMO.

However, it is still very strange to hear (read I mean sure) that somebody finds the connection between Bitcoin mining and global warming. It is nonsense as for me.

[Herbys]

As I know, Bitcoin consumes more energy, than my whole country. Yes, it is a problem, but not sure, if it could be changeda, as it also makes the system secure IMO.

If Bitcoin will facilitate or improve the lives of its users - it is justified.

You need to live comfortably! Better than the population to give up gasoline in favor of electricity.

[sidebyside]

The greed of miners is causing serious problems for the Earth's climate. The amount of electricity supplied to the mining plant is enormous. We need new solutions to minimize this. Perhaps the plant operators should look for green energy sources to protect the environment and reduce pollution.

[WebTera]

I think the percentage of energy consumed to mine bitcoins is negligible compared to the total energy consumed by humanity as a whole. Therefore, we should not assume that this is a serious problem for bitcoins.

[Urbinklin]

Bitcoin does consume quite a lot of energy. But I think there are more serious reasons for environmental problems. And you can not blame in the global warming of bitcoin, which was created recently.

[Emilyp]

I strongly advocate for the abolishment of cryptocurrency mining in general. It contributes to huge consumption of electrical energy and also makes the cost of transactions high compared to fiat and this has been a supporting argument to those who don't crypto.

[bitvelk]

But even taking into account the energy costs of bitcoin mining, it still remains the most profitable coin. The creation of national money also takes material resources and electricity.

[halfmil]

The greed of miners is causing serious problems for the Earth's climate. The amount of electricity supplied to the mining plant is enormous. We need new solutions to minimize this. Perhaps the plant operators should look for green energy sources to protect the environment and reduce pollution.

Again 1/10th of 1% of the worlds electricity is not something to worry about and is not causing any type of temperature change on this planet.

[mekie]

 Bitcoin mining uses electricity-producing electricity causes pollution and global warming, just as mining any resource will. The only way to mine bitcoin in an environmentally friendly  way is by only using renewable energy. Perhaps someone could do a calculation showing the breakeven point using solar and wind generated electricity ie cost of panels and turbines to power a rig to mine 1 bitcoin  

[supelle.born]

The more difficult the bitcoin mining is, the greater machine processing and consequently electricity will be required for the creation of bitcoins and logically this is not favorable for global warming

[randall_boss]

I think that the electricity that is required to mine bitcoin is becoming a climate issue, especially considering the current price of bitcoin. It would hardly be efficient to mine bitcoin, as I imagine electricity costs are probably more than the bitcoin is worth

[Lauren Smith]

There way worse things playing a much bigger part and factor than mere mining. WOrrying about mining causing global warming is silly. Global warming is caused by fumes being left in the atmosphere and improper dumping methods. Basically, global warming is caused by people who want to save money by dumping their crap wherever they feel like it.

The more difficult the bitcoin mining is, the greater machine processing and consequently electricity will be required for the creation of bitcoins and logically this is not favorable for global warming

That not true. Newer miners use only a fraction of the electricity older miners used.

[ZzV1Finn]

I think our main problem is the huge electricity expense induced by mining and its noxious effect on the climate. This is, to my mind, the only serious argument against Bitcoin.
Alleviating the electricity expense should be one of our priorities. If we do not do it for the sake of the Earth (which we really should) we should at least do it selfishly because governments will not tolerate this forever and they will be right. The more the exchange rate increases, the worse it gets, of course.
Some solutions exist though: first there is proof-of-stake, of course. This technology may be too young to be deemed reliable enough but we should at least start considering it.
If we do not like proof-of-stake I think we could drammatically decrease the electricity expense by stopping monetary creation now. Nowdays Bitcoin is famous enough to remain secure even if miners earned transaction fees only. And if as a whole there are 16.5 M coins instead of 21 M, this does not make much of a difference. That is even good for holders. To make miners agree with that solution, they must be compensated for their lost income.  More precisely, active miners must be compensated because they have already bought ASICs. Futures miners do not need to be compensated. Since mining is a competitive industry, future miners will make no profit on average, whatever the reward scheme. To compensate active miners we could decide that the next 2016 blocks yield, say, 100 new coins and then 0 forever. Everybody would win and the Earth above all!
There are probably many other solutions and I wish the community cared a little more about this fundamental issue.

The creation of New bitcoin coins is carried out through mining. Cryptocurrency is issued decentralized. Initially, mining was carried out by computing power of ordinary computers, but with the increasing complexity it became impossible.