Bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity. Is that sustainable?

[RandyGamage]

I don't find this is as a big issue in long run because already there are project that emerging to find solution for this matter. I saw recently a crypto project that aims to build up crypto  mining stations which use green energy from wind, water etc...

[hachiman13]

I'm fairly concerned about this. At this point, bitcoin couldn't  even dare to compete with the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is already consuming that much energy at this level of adoption, what more if its transaction reaches the banking level, that is, several thousand magnitude more than all cryptocurrency combined?

[figmentofmyass]

I'm fairly concerned about this. At this point, bitcoin couldn't  even dare to compete with the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is already consuming that much energy at this level of adoption, what more if its transaction reaches the banking level, that is, several thousand magnitude more than all cryptocurrency combined?

there's a few angles to consider here.

first, the answer to that depends on whether electricity generation averages towards green/renewable energy sources rather than conventional polluting forms.

second, there is no direct relationship between energy consumption from mining and adoption. ideally, upper layer applications like the lightning network, drivechains, etc could allow exponential transaction growth---but off the main blockchain. miner investment into hardware will ebb and flow according to market value and long term speculation; exponential transaction growth doesn't equate to exponential growth in energy consumption.

[Payme21]

I percent of the world's energy consumption?  That's quite crazy but I'll like to say that in terms of pollution and the environment in general, bitcoin will be more friendly because it will move to safer alternative sources of power

[franky1]

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.

1%,,, did you do the math...
average home uses 0.3kwh
1.2bill homes
=4,246,575,342kw/h  (~4.25billion)


14nm asics are 14 terra
hashrate this week is 50,000,000 terra
=3,571,428 asics
each asic is 1.3 kwh
=4,642,857kw/h (~4.6million)

bitcoin uses 0.109% using 14nm rigs

now with 7nm
50 exa with 28terrahash rigs =
1,785,714 asics
each asic is 0.8kw/h
=1,428,571kw/h (~1.23mill)

bitcoin uses 0.0289% using 7nm rigs

yep we are somewhere in the area of between 0.029%-0.11%    no where near 1%
and as i said the 0.029% is the next gen electric usage at this weeks hashrate. so the electric per hash is going down.

now imagine how much electric would be wasted if we stuck with GPU.. but the hashrate was still 50exahash
ill give you a hint. it would be 1177% of household electric

..
back 5 years ago yea the hashrate was 250000x lower.. but the kw per hash was higher using GPU
..

anyway over all we are at 0.1% household use if we use the old ASIC measure

and if we transition to 7nm rigs. we could go upto a hashrate of over 150exa and still be at 0.1% household electric.

this means we can go to 1500exa and finally get to the 1% of household electric this topic is at.

summary:
so give it a while. we are not near a 1% household electric barrier yet.. but pencil in 1500exa into your hashrate calender, then the OP can repost and finally be right

[lubah]

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

I believe that it would be possible to consider the heat energy that miners produce and direct it in the right direction, for example, for heating residential buildings. Thus, mining would become one of the few sources of heat, along with a heat station that spends electricity or fuel on heat. And consume electricity and they are too many, and even cause harm to the environment with their emissions.

[quandrel]

crypto moneys take up little space on the earth and the percentage of energy they consume is too much. I think countries are worried about energy and therefore they do not accept crypto currencies.

[SexForCryptos]

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.

1%,,, did you do the math...
average home uses 0.3kwh
1.2bill homes
=4,246,575,342kw/h  (~4.25billion)


14nm asics are 14 terra
hashrate this week is 50,000,000 terra
=3,571,428 asics
each asic is 1.3 kwh
=4,642,857kw/h (~4.6million)

bitcoin uses 0.109% using 14nm rigs

now with 7nm
50 exa with 28terrahash rigs =
1,785,714 asics
each asic is 0.8kw/h
=1,428,571kw/h (~1.23mill)

bitcoin uses 0.0289% using 7nm rigs

yep we are somewhere in the area of between 0.029%-0.11%    no where near 1%
and as i said the 0.029% is the next gen electric usage at this weeks hashrate. so the electric per hash is going down.

now imagine how much electric would be wasted if we stuck with GPU.. but the hashrate was still 50exahash
ill give you a hint. it would be 1177% of household electric

..
back 5 years ago yea the hashrate was 250000x lower.. but the kw per hash was higher using GPU
..

anyway over all we are at 0.1% household use if we use the old ASIC measure

and if we transition to 7nm rigs. we could go upto a hashrate of over 150exa and still be at 0.1% household electric.

this means we can go to 1500exa and finally get to the 1% of household electric this topic is at.

summary:
so give it a while. we are not near a 1% household electric barrier yet.. but pencil in 1500exa into your hashrate calender, then the OP can repost and finally be right

Thanks for this calculation. It was indeed sounding strange such an enormous figure. Your estimate is much more reasonable. However, so some extent the problem remains, even though not that big.

[admosfir]

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

electricity consumption is not a problem for bitcoin especially for bitcoin miners, because for now electricity can be obtained from various renewable sources, such as solar cells, wind and water flow

[franky1]

Thanks for this calculation. It was indeed sounding strange such an enormous figure. Your estimate is much more reasonable. However, so some extent the problem remains, even though not that big.

1. my calculation was using ONLY residential electricity (peoples homes) where compared to ONLY peoples homes bitcoin uses 0.029-0.1%..

if i included world corporation and industrial. the bitcoins use would be even further lower % (making even better results for bitcoin).

2. bitcoin mining is done in regions of china that use hydro. in iceland that use geothermal and also in area's of america that do hydro. so although media says "CHINA electric is only X% hydro...".. thats just chatter about china the country.. however bitcoin is using the hydro supply.

3. unlike gold. think about it. there are no electric excavators, they are diesel based. there are no solar powered sluice machines, again thats diesel. and same for the dirt trucks. diesel.
bitcoin is high majority renewable and gold is very high diesel.

[d5000]

@franky1: I pretty much agree that 1% is way too much. But which timeframe are your kWh calculations based on? Year, month, day, hour, second?

0.3 kWh per household seems a strange figure ... I guess it's per day, but it seems too low for a day but too high for an hour. In industrialized countries (from China/South America upwards) households use about 2-10 kWh/day. But I don't know the figures of really poor third-world countries.

So let's take another figure: the 21000 TWh world electricity consumption per year, according to CIA World Factbook.

Bitcoin's consumption should be about 30-70 TWh (upper bound: Digicoinomist index, lower bound: upper bound of Marc Bevand's numbers for January 2018, considering all studies still yield an hashrate and consumption increase, despite of the bear market).

So you're basically right, but more with the upper bound of your figures (I get  0,14 to 0,33 percent of the 21K TWh), and considering total electricity consumption, not only "private households".

[Wayan_Pedjeng]

I don't worry about it too much. As time progresses, mining rigs will become more energy efficient and the electricity consumption will go down. Right now electricity represents a smaller share of the overall mining expenses, but that is changing. So reducing the power consumption has become more of a priority.

[kindra0023]

That cost is being too high and it is not known if in the future, mining bitcoins will remain profitable.

[Cripinggedang]

I percent of the world's energy consumption?  That's quite crazy but I'll like to say that in terms of pollution and the environment in general, bitcoin will be more friendly because it will move to safer alternative sources of power

I think maybe some sustainable alternative energy sources can be the solution. I want to believe that bitcoiners are environmentally friendly and think for future generations.
From an ecological point of view this sounds bad and something must be done. Still I believe there are other things that consume more energy than bitcoin.

[Satosho Kakamolto]

Thanks for this calculation. It was indeed sounding strange such an enormous figure. Your estimate is much more reasonable. However, so some extent the problem remains, even though not that big.

1. my calculation was using ONLY residential electricity (peoples homes) where compared to ONLY peoples homes bitcoin uses 0.029-0.1%..

if i included world corporation and industrial. the bitcoins use would be even further lower % (making even better results for bitcoin).

2. bitcoin mining is done in regions of china that use hydro. in iceland that use geothermal and also in area's of america that do hydro. so although media says "CHINA electric is only X% hydro...".. thats just chatter about china the country.. however bitcoin is using the hydro supply.

3. unlike gold. think about it. there are no electric excavators, they are diesel based. there are no solar powered sluice machines, again thats diesel. and same for the dirt trucks. diesel.
bitcoin is high majority renewable and gold is very high diesel.

Good answer.
I was unaware that so much of the Chinese electric is hydro - this changes things of course. And even more does the icelandic geothermal one, which cannot even be blamed to warm up the atmosphere.
And as for gold, I could add to what you have said that modern gold extraction is using Cyanide (CN) which is very polluting and its massive use in gold mones devastating for the environment.
Luckily there is still no Proof of Cyanide protocol in Bitcoin.

[Teriyanone]

It is sustainable because we haven't calculated how much of electricity is wasted by currency traditional money transferring systems waste world electricity due to there ineffective systems and processes and if we do that we will definitely find what is the best way to transfer currencies and I am very sure that Bitcoin will win because no other technology in the traditional financial system can compete with Bitcoin at the moment 

[BlockchainGod]

I think it's temporary. This is a big environmental problem, but I think it will be solved in the future. In extreme cases, bitcoin can be transferred to pos mining.

[badaovodich]

The statistics and forecasts of the power consumption of the Bitcoin digging network are extremely complex, and are not simply based on conventional approaches. Increased demand will boost the development of new power plants, and many power plants will burn fossil fuels. However, it will reduce the electrical energy from cash printer and some Bitcoin replacement machines.

[jonathan6655321]

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

I wonder if it's real or someone just trying to impact bitcoin image around the world

[Wind_FURY]

Those anti-POW criticisms have a misdirecting argument.

The generation of electricity cannot be stored or "saved" because the world does not have the technology to "hold" all that energy yet. Once it is generated, it should be used, or the costs used to generate it would be wasted. The only "wasted electricity" is unused electricity.