Could massive use of Electricity be the end or new high for Bitcoin

[MoKenyanCrypto]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

[riderinred]

I think it is highly unlikely that BTC mining might be jeopardized by a shortage of electricity.
Next generation Miners are more efficient and the worlds power production is also increasing (as you can see here https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-generation-worldwide/ ).

Many new cryptos are also moving to less energy consuming algorithms and PoS, so again I doubt that a power shortage might endanger Crypto.

[sindikat]

In fact, the electricity shortage has local character. There are regions in which a large surplus of electricity. The problem is that it is expensive to transmit over long distances. Can be ever going to remember about the invention of Tesla? But first, I think that farm mining will move to surplus regions where there are renewable sources of energy.

[hahahafr]

The electricity and all those things are really going to change in a few years from now, so i dont know why are you really worried about all this problem, because this is just minimal.
And how do you know that the entire world is going to be using the electricity to only mine bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies? it does not have sense, because the electricity is going to be in there anyway, it does not matter if it is by solar panels, solar electricity, or by any other way.

[Dutchyyy]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

Pathetic attempt to gain attention. Electricity is used and for the regular banking.

Why don't they make a info graphic how much electricity are using all the banks in the world with their workstations and main frames?

[DannaWonder]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

Pathetic attempt to gain attention. Electricity is used and for the regular banking.

Why don't they make a info graphic how much electricity are using all the banks in the world with their workstations and main frames?

Yes it is true banks are using electricity but we should also understand that banks are already accepted worldwide so them consuming electricity is not a question. What he is trying to say is the electricity that bitcoin mining requires for now specially it is not yet on a stage that it is already accepted worldwide.

[jekjekman]

Humans is the most adaptive species though so if this problem will arise in the future I think people who mines Bitcoin will do such things that will solve any kinds of problem that will occur, electricity is significant in mining so if in year 2020 Bitcoin will use the entire global electricity supply then I think the distributor of different electric power company in the whole world will keep up and build new infrastructure to cater the demand of the people who needs electricity.

There a lot of alternative source of electricity though.

[avikz]

Its true that Cryptocurrency mining requires a lot of power and the demand for power due to mining is increasing exponentially every month.Also due to the increased demand of electricity, the price is also becoming costlier. The only solution is to move to an alternate source of energy like solar or windmills.

While these alternate options are costly initially, but it provides a far better profitability in mining. I don't think the massive use of Electricity will not be the end of bitcoin, but instead it will force miners to move to a different source of energy in future just to keep his mining operation profitable.

[lordquanta]

In fact, the electricity shortage has local character. There are regions in which a large surplus of electricity. The problem is that it is expensive to transmit over long distances. Can be ever going to remember about the invention of Tesla? But first, I think that farm mining will move to surplus regions where there are renewable sources of energy.

Most the places which generates the electricity are either away from habitat. powerstations for hydro-electricity or coal electricity or nuclear electricity are few examples. So even if we say that these farms are moving towards closest possible distance then again electricity consumption by mining is the issue. Only saving done here is the electricity loss in long distance supply. Otherwise power consumption is still same.
New hardware for mining rigs is becoming more and more energy efficient. Thus in future there will be more proficient hardware to reduce the power consumption. To all those who are whining about bitcoin mining gulping electricity should know that internet is also gulping major electricity.

[MoKenyanCrypto]

I guess moving to renewable energy like solar energy might be a good move

[Hydrogen]

Sindikat made a few excellent points above ^.

Due to a high number of residential solar panels being installed on homes, some regions like california generate an extreme surplus of electricity which they pay neighboring states to accept onto their own grids. It is known that some bitcoin mining plants in china are powered by hydro electric power plants, which is a renewable source of energy. Russia has proposed bitcoin mining plants powered by nuclear reactors. To an extent the energy debate may not be as critical as some make it out to be due to the supply of electricity greatly exceeding demand in many respects.

Moore's law dictates ASICs and GPUs will utilize increasingly lower quantities of electricity as lithographic silicon fabrication processes adopt smaller nanometer scales. While mining difficulty will inevitably rise, so too will the energy efficiency of future generations of GPU/ASIC.

Quantity of electricity may not be the central issue. Energy efficiency and waste could come to the forefront of the discussion in the future. There could be a point made about Elon Musk replacing 15% efficient internal combustion engines with plug power that can be generated at near to 30% efficiencies by large power plants. The amount of waste in terms of emissions may be yet another talking point.

In software engineering there's a school of thought which says code optimisation is a waste of time. Programmers put much faith in the concept of hardware computation increasing at a fast enough pace to keep bloat at bay. It is possible that a similar argument could be made with crypto. Even if the consumption of electricity can be measured and quantified, growth in energy sectors could easily outpace demand. Part of this could be attributed to decentralized energy production and climate change awareness which incentivize people to install solar panels on their roofs or windmills in their yards.

[carlisle1]

I think it is highly unlikely that BTC mining might be jeopardized by a shortage of electricity.
Next generation Miners are more efficient and the worlds power production is also increasing (as you can see here https://www.statista.com/statistics/270281/electricity-generation-worldwide/ ).

Many new cryptos are also moving to less energy consuming algorithms and PoS, so again I doubt that a power shortage might endanger Crypto.

good point mate power shortage only applies to aome countries but not worldwide in which wont have big effect on bitcoin mining.miners are all over the world and before getting into it they make sure that electricity wont be the problem upon mining.and another thing is some miners now that lives in cold regions use mining to supply heat to their houses so they are making two things earning and saving.so that wont be possible to drop the bitcoin by just some power shortage

[player514]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

People have found ways to use the byproduct (heat) of mining bitcoins to their own benefits. There are areas that are much colder in which people are using mining in order to heat their homes. These innovative ways to use heat will probably be extremely useful when it comes to a discussion about environmental negatives of mining and such. I doubt that this issue will ever cause the true end of bitcoin.

[ToyotaFortuner]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

bitcoins require enormous electricity, they may point to nuclear power to suppress the much-needed power needed to mine the vital bitcoin,

[omonuyak]

Before 2020 many mining tools will be developed that will help in consuming less electricity. I think electricity will not be a problem in future and that is not going to affect bitcoin development. I have see that from Japan to USA many technology are coming up that are going to generate energy without mush electricity.

[rjbtc2017]

Other than having "Natural Energy Resources" and "Renewable Energies" for generating Electricity, we should also need to consider the Technology and Arts who are using GPU on their respective field, there is an ample time to create more GPU that can run faster and at the same it is efficient on the usage of electricity.

Technology field is not ceasing to find new solutions to this, and also consider the large business who continuously using Electricity on a daily basis and even Electricity/Energy providers is not stopping to find sources to generate more to support these businesses and also to sustain their business as an energy provider.

[Micerker]

Hello everyone,
Today I came across a post https://powercompare.co.uk/bitcoin/ and became wary of potential drawbacks of increased Bitcoin mining to global electricity supply or with its reduced mining because of "caps" on electricity use lead to high appreciation of its value. Because its going to be a concern in coming days if only by 2020 mining will be using entire global electricity supply. Check the article and lets discuss the future of BTC as well as crypto!

In many countries electricity costs are very cheap so do not worry about it. In countries like china the cost of electricity for mining is very low.

[nl247]

Its true that Cryptocurrency mining requires a lot of power and the demand for power due to mining is increasing exponentially every month.Also due to the increased demand of electricity, the price is also becoming costlier. The only solution is to move to an alternate source of energy like solar or windmills.

While these alternate options are costly initially, but it provides a far better profitability in mining. I don't think the massive use of Electricity will not be the end of bitcoin, but instead it will force miners to move to a different source of energy in future just to keep his mining operation profitable.

That is a very good solution, even though they come in with some huge price. But for someone who knows exactly what they are investing in, that should not really serve as an issue as long as it gets the job done. With that, we will start seeing a lot of mining farms making use of solar, wind etc to generate power. It has been happening already in some places with high rate of electricity and we will just have to see a new huge market for alternative source.

[benmartin613]

It would really be cost efficient for miners to move to a colder place or replace their old rig to a new one, older rigs tends to heat up more and use more electricity than newer ones.

[Kaliboi]

Its a high for bitcoin ,as electricity is the  ultimate need of hour many organisations are making it from natural resources like solar ,wind etc the electricity is going to be cheap and more over electrical devices coming in future will be more efficient