Power Usage

[rosetrees]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

[MicroGuy]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

It's not all cryptocurrencies, it's Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. And yes, something will need to be done. PoW is not sustainable.

[Emoclaw]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

There's already Proof of Stake which does not require any computing power as you mine by using the coins you have.
It's a very time-tested alternative but Bitcoin can't switch to it at this point because there will be catastrophic backlash (primarily from miners) among other things.

I guess we'll see what happens with the Lightning Network, from my understanding mining isn't necessary with it.

[secondgarlic]

This may indeed be one of the most important problems that bitcoin will face in the near future. There have recently been articles talking about the increased power need the bitcoin environment requires, and there are many altcoins which run on considerably less power. I think it's going to be interesting to see how this topic plays out.

[AVAMONEY]

The actual power usage has long wanted to be completed but with more additional new bitcoin users, with wallet addresses created and transactions are increasing every day, while the size of block size is still remain the same about 1 MB.
The most likely condition is to increase the block size of the block first, With the bigger block available, the bigger the chance that every transaction will be picked up by antpool and mining is more quickly completed. Later, to find a solution to reduce the use of power in mining bitcoin, because in theory and practice, whether mining gold or mining other real estate does not require the use of large power including electricity, Hal this happens in bitcoin.

[Kprawn]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

Why is the power usage such a big deal? How many people are complaining about the power being used in 1000s of Banks

all over the world? Can you imagine how many air-conditioning units are running 24/7 in these buildings? How much electricity

are spend on CCTV and monitoring equipment? How many computers/scanners/photo copy machines/fax machines/printers

and ATM's are being used daily? I see nobody complaining about that. 

[MiiDoViic]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

It's alarming how much power miners are using. I've read an article that mentioned bitcoin mining is consuming more than 30.14TWh a year which is a very large number ,More than what the whole country of ireland is consuming and other 159 individual countries,.  I believe there should be a solution for this problem in the near future or bitcoin will face some serious obsticles in their ways. i could already see those environment fanatics raging. The government will for sure use this as an excuse against the blockchain technology. But the energy consumption is rising because of Bitcoin's quite insane price rise, not because the network actually requires it. the Lightning Network should be launched very soon as long as bitcoin is refusing to switch the POW to POS.
This is the energy consumption used by bitcoin miners :

[hndrk10]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

I fear at some point we will get to the point where miners won't see Bitcoin as an opportunity to mine and when that will happen, oh boy, shit will get loose.

[Iranus]

Common sense would dictate that BTC mining's power consumption is the amount of electricity that can be bought with the value of the block reward plus the value of transaction fees, minus a small percentage based on the assumption that the majority of miners are making at least a small profit.

In which case, the electricity consumption rises alongside the price, because the miners' income becomes more valuable and often because transaction fees increase due to higher demand during those periods.

However, it's possible that it will become less of a problem after the block reward no longer exists, because the electricity usage would be equivalent to the transaction fees that people are willing to send.  If you treat transaction fees which major payment networks take in as essentially being burnt money because of the costs of running their business, it could even end up being as good as traditional payment systems in this sense.

I fear at some point we will get to the point where miners won't see Bitcoin as an opportunity to mine

Not possible.  If some miners leave, it results in a difficulty adjustment which makes mining more profitable, thus increasing the number of miners again.

[Faroxx]

I think the power consumption is not a big problem. Now a lot of miners with moderate consumption.

[Andre_Goldman]

I think that we need some level of power hashing pupping into the system to make sure that it will be hard for a centralized systems such as governments, corporations, etc ... to take over our computation power ...

[xhomerx10]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

It's not all cryptocurrencies, it's Proof of Work cryptocurrencies. And yes, something will need to be done. PoW is not sustainable.

   Power consumption/Bitcoin value will reach an equilibrium at some point in the future.  Are you saying that it will continue to increase beyond our capacity to generate electricity?  Let's assume that there isn't enough electricity to supply the demand; one of the most fundamental concepts of economics (arguably the backbone of any market economy) would dictate a price increase for electricity in lieu of an increase in miner efficiency.  The only way it's unsustainable is by keeping all other variables constant while increasing the fiat value of a Bitcoin.  Only a flawed mental model leads to the conclusion that PoW is unsustainable.

[Nilda]

The cost of electricity is the only thing you need to worry in bitcoin mining, which is a good thing. Compared to other businesses like restaurants or banks, mining also requires minimum or no other personnel involvement but you. Businesses runs on electricity. If you’re concerned about electricity, go into farming instead.

[jseverson]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

Why is the power usage such a big deal? How many people are complaining about the power being used in 1000s of Banks

all over the world? Can you imagine how many air-conditioning units are running 24/7 in these buildings? How much electricity

are spend on CCTV and monitoring equipment? How many computers/scanners/photo copy machines/fax machines/printers

and ATM's are being used daily? I see nobody complaining about that. 

They can't ban banks though, can they? No one will be clamoring for their closure. The world knows they're necessary. Banks are also separate entities, with each essentially a company of its own. They can't be bundled together when talking about power consumption.

Bitcoin, in contrast, has a target on its back. As the world exists now, it's unnecessary. The majority won't care if it dies, and some may even want it to. The world has been looking for excuses to undermine Bitcoin, spouting things like how criminals and terrorists use it as a weapon. We can't really afford to give them any more reasons to hate.

Something needs to be done for sure.

[holegordon]

Mining bitcoins certainly consumes a lot of power in order to mine a considerable amount, also it is expected that we will be needing much more power to continue mining, but before the power consumption becomes unsustainable we would have probably mine all 21 million bit coins.

[dzkazmi]

Thats the need of crypto currencies now, Reducing in the power is very important now.

[vv181]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

(snip~)

Agree, I think it’s pretty safe to say that quite a bit of CO2 is emitted, indirectly, from mining Bitcoin. I read an article that every transaction emits 30kg of carbon. That's is pretty dirty for Bitcoin, really dirty. But I'm not sure lightning network will help this problem, could you explain more about somehow lightning network can reduce the power consumption.

[Fundalini]

Am I daft for thinking that one of the biggest threats to cryptocurrencies is the amount of power used to mine them.  It seems to me that in the next year or so alternative technologies will need to be developed that dramatically reduce power usage.

Why is the power usage such a big deal? How many people are complaining about the power being used in 1000s of Banks

Exactly. And probably those appliances they are using are outdated and inefficient. Wire transfers would probably exhaust more power (and time) than sending money thru bitcoin.

[xhomerx10]

Mining bitcoins certainly consumes a lot of power in order to mine a considerable amount, also it is expected that we will be needing much more power to continue mining, but before the power consumption becomes unsustainable we would have probably mine all 21 million bit coins.

 Dude~ mining also confirms transactions on the network; mining must continue after all 21million coins have been mined or nobody will be able to properly transact.