Energy to produce Bitcoin and Ethereum is too high ?

[shkwarka333]

And what energy for Fiat currency requires more than a digital currency.  If you think about how many forests are cut down for paper production, etc.

[richan]

I don't think the energy use to produce cryptocurrencies are so high because the number of transactions needed to be validated on the blockchain and smart contracts are even more demanding of energy than what is currently use.

[Zin-Zang]

And what energy for Fiat currency requires more than a digital currency.  If you think about how many forests are cut down for paper production, etc.

I don't know about you , but I went paperless over 10 years ago.  
Get all of your account info online and tell the company to no longer send paper statements.
Plenty of software apps can act as digital file cabinets for your records.

If Bitcoin energy usage was growing at a sustainable rate of even as high as 10%, the world could most likely meet that demand for years.
Problem is Bitcoin energy usage is growing exponentially and it will outpace the world's ability to produce it in a few years. (Conventional or Alternative)

* That means either bitcoin uses so much electricity it raises the price for everyone.*
* Also the world will eventually just ban new mining operations (as China is already doing),
which will centralize control of bitcoin mining to only the elite few with the political connections to keep the power connected
at the expense of the surrounding people and environment. *
At that point Bitcoin becomes no better than centralized banking.  
Politician says block any new transactions from these address and the bitcoin miners comply or their power get cut off.

Decentralization is a major factor in a service staying out of government control ,
this insane energy waste centralizes bitcoin mining even more and gives Governments
the leverage they need to control the bitcoin miners and which transactions are processed.
Somewhere out there Satoshi is shedding a tear for the corruption of his dream.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

They need to find out a ways to manage this...For example creating a special complex where the electricity would be created from the solar panels, or something similar. The alternative sources.

Yep, this is not Bitcoin problem (and Ethereum will move on PoS). The problem lies in old methods of electricity production

[1Referee]

The problem lies in old methods of electricity production

Partly, but what a lot people tend to ignore is that mining equipment will only become faster and more energy efficient. Right now we have had years of explosive network growth that came with explosive energy consumption. What we are working towards is more explosive network growth, but with less energy consumption. Overall the energy consumption will still increase, but by far not in the way the consumption has been increasing in the last years.

I am even sure (it might even be happening already) that at some point the heat that mining farms generate will be turned into energy, or at least get sold to near villages to have them warm up their houses and whatnot. In current time and day waste doesn't exist anymore. Waste is waste when you don't do anything to have it work for you. If other industries manage to perfectly reuse heat, why won't mining farms be able to do so?

[Nnedaddy1]

I think that's a valid point you raised there.
It consumes a lot of power.

[AlexAtom]

Not too high, the fiat currency requires more energy resources i guess.
You need only electricity to mine bitcoin and ethereum. But fiat currency, you need many kinds of resources.

[franky1]

seems the articles 'expert' in zing zangs link cant grasp simple maths
the expert does a very weird way of working out his estimate. (facepalm)

The most frequently cited figures come from Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index on his blog, Digiconomist. De Vries does something of a reverse calculation to guess how much energy the network uses each day: he assumes that bitcoin miners spend 60 percent of their revenues on electricity, then guesses how much they pay per kilowatt-hour to calculate their energy consumption.

. but here is a more straight forward way

 if you take the ~35exa hash this week for the network
thats 2,500,000 s9 miners running all the time on average
at 1.3kw/h per asic=3,250,000kw/h for the network

3,250,000kw/h (3250mw/h   3.25gw/h   0.00325tw/h) =28.47tw/year

no guess. no estimate. just plain math

its not actually

Hmm,
Your math is missing,
energy usage from Lighting, (silly humans don't work well in the dark)?
energy usage from network routers & Internet connections & security cameras?
energy usage from any full nodes running in their operations?
energy usage from Cooling those asics? (Depending on Geo-location temperatures.)  
(Asics got heating covered, so that is no issue.)  

initially i did the maths. but then noticed the totals were so low it wasnt even worth including

just imagine it a room of just 1000 asics (i could fit that many in my living room) so lighting is not even a decimal in comparison to 1000 ASICs
(1000*1.3kw(asic)      1*38w(bulb)) = 1300038w/h
2.5m asics +lighting =3250095000watts/h = 3,250,095kw/h = 3,250.095mw/h = 3.250095gw/h = 0.003250095tw/h = 28.4708322tw/year

each farm only needs 1 PC so thats at most 500w/pc.. screw it ill be generous. lets say 4 PC's as backups or for the guy to play solitaire on while bored
and lets say 20 pools thats 80 pc's to actually monitor the asics. thats 0.0003504tw/year

so in total that still does not change 28.47 to anything more than 28.4711826 which still rounds to 28.47.. so as i said not worth including

[kastara]

Basically, technological developments are made to save existing power and technology a breakthrough that can be renewed, as well as technology in blockchain that is now widely used by some companies.