[2017-11-24] These maps explain how much power Bitcoin mining consumes globally

[fanatseal2]

The difficulty of Bitcoin algorithms has been increasing over time, it changes every 2016 blocks. More and more miners entered the market, but the environment always changed towards more difficulty, and this is what made miners change CPUs to GPUs as a main tool, and some time after that, create first ASICs.

ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, are usually a pile of video chips connected with each other to combine computational power and mine cryptocurrency more efficiently. But the increasing difficulty led to another hardware scale increase — impressive mining farms in vast hangars with...Read more

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[warrior333]

I haven't heard that many countries are experiencing a shortage of electricity. There are certainly some areas where not enough power but it's a shipping problem. Mining cryptocurrency promotes the production of electricity. What's wrong with that? You can buy shares of energy companies, which serve regions with a large number of miners. Bitcoin is starting to have an impact on the economy and that's good.

[aso118]

It is wrong to look at the overall electricity consumption of the network. In countries where there is an electricity shortage, government can impose restrictions on its usage. Or they can tax it. In countries where there is abundant clean electricity, there is no reason why it should not be used for Bitcoin mining.

[Carlton Banks]

The Bitcoin blockchain is resistant to censorship precisely because of the difficulty of mining a block.


That's a highly useful property, and a very significant part of what makes Bitcoin valuable. Any talk of Bitcoin's electricity usage is a subtle attack on the entire premise of the system (and anyway, as has been alluded to already on this page, alot of Bitcoin mining is sourced by non-polluting renewable electricity).

[MoonJeina]

The difficulty of Bitcoin algorithms has been increasing over time, it changes every 2016 blocks. More and more miners entered the market, but the environment always changed towards more difficulty, and this is what made miners change CPUs to GPUs as a main tool, and some time after that, create first ASICs.

ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, are usually a pile of video chips connected with each other to combine computational power and mine cryptocurrency more efficiently. But the increasing difficulty led to another hardware scale increase — impressive mining farms in vast hangars with...Read more

I think this approach might be somewhat wrong in my eyes . Bitcoin mining is extensively done in the countries where there is no shortage of electricity .
Yes , indeed a lot of hardware and electricity is associated with bitcoin mining but the broader perspective here is mining of bitcoin for its availability to the parts of world . Talking about the transfer of CPUs into GPUs as a main tool, this is just an another development made for a an effective mining of bitcoin to see some clarification in the algorithms using the chips . This might take some extra energy , but this is also helping to save so much time and efforts .                                                     

[Bolt Brownie]

I'm divided here, and I think we need to have an open perspective about this. I know some of you already said that "a lot of Bitcoin mining is sourced by non-polluting renewable electricity", but if we consider that China is still the country that most contributes to mining, and that it's main source of energy still comes from coal-fired power stations, then I'm not sure we can really say that bitcoin mining is that environment friendly. I could be wrong of course, and let's not forget that China is also the worlds leading renewable energy producer, but these sources of energy still represent less than 16% of it's total energy production.

Of course that I wont just start criticizing bitcoin mining right away, because I think that we need to look at it's energy cost, and evaluate how useful it's energy consumption is to our society. Only after doing this, we can see if we are wasting energy or not.

Right now we don't really use bitcoin and we just store it. So from this point of view it could be kind of a waste of electricity. Obviously that we can't forget the potencial for bitcoin to be used as a currency as well, so if we ever get there, then it's energy consumption wouldn't look that bad anymore.

But let's imagine that bitcoin ends up being "just" a digital asset. Can we criticize it's energy consumption? All the other assets are tied to banks, exchanges, brokers, and then need to be converted in fiat in order to be used and are also tied up to services like Visa, Paypal, ATMs, etc. I don't know if anyone made this calculation already, but I'm quite sure that the energy cost of all these services together is much larger than the energy spent in bitcoin mining.

So, although we must not forget about the environment, and we should try to use as much renewable energy as possible, I think the the energy used to support the actual fiat system, is way larger than the energy used to support the bitcoin network.

[Iranus]

Miners (and therefore the difficulty) react to the value of the money that they receive in the block.  That's the block reward and the transaction fees, which obviously is going to add up to a lot when the price is very high.

It's how BTC becomes so secure - the more electricity that's "wasted" the more difficult it is to stage an attack on the network.  Of course this means that it's arguably actually "wasted" energy, since it does serve a clear purpose.

More and more miners entered the market, but the environment always changed towards more difficulty, and this is what made miners change CPUs to GPUs as a main tool, and some time after that, create first ASICs.

The difficulty reacts to miners, not the other way around.  And indirectly, the miners react to the market.

[Irvinn]

I do not think that mining bitkoyna will face a serious problem of power shortage. Indeed, mining requires a lot of energy. However, recently a network of alternative energy sources, such as solar or wind energy, has been developing extensively. Appropriate equipment can be installed in any private house and such energy will be low-profitable and almost unlimited. Therefore, I do not think that this will be a problem for the development of the crypto currency.

[Carlton Banks]

Of course that I wont just start criticizing bitcoin mining right away, because I think that we need to look at it's energy cost, and evaluate how useful it's energy consumption is to our society. Only after doing this, we can see if we are wasting energy or not.

That's difficult to quantify. Those who use Bitcoin to make the most significant profits will keep BTC outside of the traditional financial system, i.e. the very information needed to measure Bitcoin's most significant societal benefit will be kept hidden, otherwise the owner will place their property rights in danger.

Right now we don't really use bitcoin and we just store it. So from this point of view it could be kind of a waste of electricity. Obviously that we can't forget the potencial for bitcoin to be used as a currency as well, so if we ever get there, then it's energy consumption wouldn't look that bad anymore.

No, this is wrong. Bitcoin has been using most or all of it's transaction capacity for several years now. The recent blocksize increase hasn't yet reached the new saturation point, but it will eventually get there.

Additionally, you're amply demonstrating that you don't know why Bitcoin is mined at all. Even if there were little to no transactions (as you apparently believe), Bitcoin's proof of work does perform a beneficial task: cumulative protection of Bitcoin's censorship resistance (every new block in the blockchain strengthens it's immutability further)

So, although we must not forget about the environment, and we should try to use as much renewable energy as possible, I think the the energy used to support the actual fiat system, is way larger than the energy used to support the bitcoin network.

But that's generally true of all industry anyway.

I suspect it's the gap in understanding of why Bitcoin uses proof of work (to strengthen the blockchain) that causes this misinformed protesting of blockchain waste.

[coolcoinz]

Those maps really don't tell us much. It's obvious that less industrialized countries with no infrastructure will not consume a lot of power. Just compare the red ones with the green ones. In European countries (red) you have lights on every street, giant screens displaying commercials, neon signs, computers in every house. In the green ones like some african countries people are running generators to light the buildings and there's almost no street lights or anything like that. Why would anyone need street lights on dirt roads anyway. Bitcoin mining will always look enormous compared to some of these economies, where people are still cooking food over open fire and getting their water from a well.

[error08]

I'm not sure how they calculate and categorize how much power consume to mining in a country, even in China where the biggest mining farm located can't compare to the whole country's power consumption but it's clearly different if we compare to Africa, pretty sad as mining uses more energy than Ecuador (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2151823-bitcoin-mining-uses-more-energy-than-ecuador-but-theres-a-fix/)
Blockchain implemented proof of work which cause a lot of energy used everyday, it's make sure bitcoin is something that really worth.

[Bolt Brownie]

Right now we don't really use bitcoin and we just store it. So from this point of view it could be kind of a waste of electricity. Obviously that we can't forget the potencial for bitcoin to be used as a currency as well, so if we ever get there, then it's energy consumption wouldn't look that bad anymore.

No, this is wrong. Bitcoin has been using most or all of it's transaction capacity for several years now. The recent blocksize increase hasn't yet reached the new saturation point, but it will eventually get there.

Additionally, you're amply demonstrating that you don't know why Bitcoin is mined at all. Even if there were little to no transactions (as you apparently believe), Bitcoin's proof of work does perform a beneficial task: cumulative protection of Bitcoin's censorship resistance (every new block in the blockchain strengthens it's immutability further)

I wasn't saying there were no transactions. I was saying that right now, the only real use for BTC is to be uses as a store of value. Even gold, that is also a store of value asset for excellence, has many other applications (like electronics, medical, dental and is even used in aerospace industry). The energy cost to mine gold, and to keep it safe, is probably bigger than the energy to mine bitcoin. But if we analyze all the practical uses gold has, then we will probably accept that it has a reasonable cost, to all the benefits it provides.

What I was saying about bitcoin, is that if BTC only works as an asset, and has no other practical uses, then one could argue, that it's costing much more than what its actually contributing to society. Like you said this is hard to analyze, and I'm not saying I agree with it. I actually think that bitcoin mining has a fair cost to benefits BTC brings to our economy.

What I was also saying, is that this last "argument", used by many, might fall completely if BTC manages to solve it's scalability problems (probably with the LN), and can present itself as a form of payment widely accepted by merchants.

As for how mining works, I think I have a basic knowledge about it. I know that blocks act as ledgers, and the transactions are stored there. A block can only be "added" to the blockchain, once it has been "validated". In order for that to happen, miners need to confirm transactions and put them in those blocks, and when everything is done, a hash is created and is also stored in the block. That hash itself is used to create the hash of the next block, so everything is "connected" and it's impossible to forge fake blocks because "everyone" would know that and reject them.

Miners "compete" with each other during this process, and who ever finishes it first, gets the reward.

Now, like I said I have basic knowledge about this, and as far as I know, this process of creating a hash would be way to easy, and all coins would be mined in minutes. This is where "proof of work" comes into place. A hash needs to look a certain way, and miners can change some part of data on the block, in order to keep trying to generate a hash that is valid.

Basically miners keep the network secure. I probably said a lot of bad things here. Like I said this is just my basic notion of mining, but even if any of this is wrong, I know that miners are crucial to keep the network safe.

[CryptoBry]

I haven't heard that many countries are experiencing a shortage of electricity. There are certainly some areas where not enough power but it's a shipping problem. Mining cryptocurrency promotes the production of electricity. What's wrong with that? You can buy shares of energy companies, which serve regions with a large number of miners. Bitcoin is starting to have an impact on the economy and that's good.

There are now also many producers of renewable energy which Bitcoin mining can take advantage of. Power is always required in any economic activity and of course Bitcoin is never an exemption. In the coming months, it is quite possible that new mining equipment requiring less power can be introduced into the market. The challenge here is how to go for cleaner and greener alternative sources of energy and if Bitcoin can be one of the many impetus that we really shift into this source of energy then at least we can say that Bitcoin is helping us on this particular challenge.