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

[Yangleiden]

Still waiting at 5200 with my buy order. Come lower pls. Remember, it doesnt matter at what price you bought BTC, it matters that you have it in financial collapse.

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[Balambgarden]

Still waiting at 5200 with my buy order. Come lower pls. Remember, it doesnt matter at what price you bought BTC, it matters that you have it in financial collapse.

First of all we are yet to see what would happen to Bitcoin under a financial collapse because Bitcoin was adopted after the recession (better yet in response to it). We have observed when stocks fall, Bitcoin also falls as in the many signs of 2018. 5200 is a very random buy order. Why not $900 or $4200? Just random.

[Phan Long]

I think if the developed world becomes modernized, there are many infrastructure to develop, replacing the whole bank. As a result, Bitcoin's power consumption will be much lower than that of banks. In fact, there are too many banks in the world, electricity is huge.
Bitcoin, online transactions, no intermediaries, etc. That is the transaction of the future.

[Photographer]

Still waiting at 5200 with my buy order. Come lower pls. Remember, it doesnt matter at what price you bought BTC, it matters that you have it in financial collapse.

First of all we are yet to see what would happen to Bitcoin under a financial collapse because Bitcoin was adopted after the recession (better yet in response to it). We have observed when stocks fall, Bitcoin also falls as in the many signs of 2018. 5200 is a very random buy order. Why not $900 or $4200? Just random.

Yes, Bitcoin has been created to give an alternative to traditional FIAT system, but it is now mainly been used to speculate so as to increase one's holdings in FIAT, which is quite perverse given the original mission. So what would happen in the case of a financial collapse is totally unpredictable.

[bluehive21]

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?

This is a topic that should have discussed previously but I am glad we are doing it right now because the main idea to implement Bitcoin in the world is to provide a efficient and effective transactional method with better security and less interrupt but even it has achieved today the concept of sustainability and to reduce of energy consumption was some what abundant until this year I saw many projects regarding sustainable and power saving Bitcoin mining methods so the above is true but it doesn't mean that BItcoin should not be used because the bad effect can be reduced using today technology 

[SecureCryptoPayments]

If you look at this point of view, then the electric cars needs to be locked out. We are saving energy

#support SecureCryptoPayments

[John.Verdon761232]

In principle, there is nothing surprising in order to earn bitcoins you need to spend a lot of electricity. I think these figures will grow, but it was worth expecting.

[franky1]

Still waiting at 5200 with my buy order. Come lower pls. Remember, it doesnt matter at what price you bought BTC, it matters that you have it in financial collapse.

First of all we are yet to see what would happen to Bitcoin under a financial collapse because Bitcoin was adopted after the recession (better yet in response to it). We have observed when stocks fall, Bitcoin also falls as in the many signs of 2018. 5200 is a very random buy order. Why not $900 or $4200? Just random.

in a fiat financial collapse. $10 goes from buying 10 loaves of bread. to only buying 1 loaf of bread.
(look at zimbabwe dollar a trillion dollars buys you a bread crumb)
or to flip the mindset a lof of bread goes from $1 to $10+

what will happen is bitcoin will go up to trillions of dollars. but the purchase value of goods, assets or services wont match the amount of goods or services 1btc can buy today

this is why we need to start measuring bitcoin against cost of living.. or even just a 'bread loaf value' to detach away from the dollar so we can see a real btc vs goods value

as for people waiting to buy at or below $5k range. bar a temporary fluke of stupidity where a whale sells at a loss.. i dont anticipate a sub $5800. and ill explain why

firstly. if a miner that mines to hoard. is happy to spend $6.1k mining. if they see the market drop to under $6100. they will just divest some of that electricity money and just buy btc from the market and save themselves a couple hundred dollars and ofcourse time.

since november 2017 (retested end of june2018) the community has had 10 months to sell below $5800 .. ample oppertunities. and they havnt taken up that option.(thus market community acquisition cost consensus =$5,800+)
ontop of that if you do the math of mining costs of a BTC. that too sits at over $5,800.(thus mining community acquisition costs consensus =$5,800+)

this basically makes the market and mining both support the rational consensus to not sell below their costs (not stupid to sell for a loss)

i would have said the maths of september is more like $6100+... but its too soon to say that, because 5800 was only a couple month ago so too soon to raise the bottomline to 6100 without giving the community ample option to test. so im cautiously sticking with $5800 for a couple more months

[r32godzilla]

It's just a false allegation against bitcoin by its critics.They are equating the total number of transactions confirmed with the energy used for mining.But whatever the number of transactions confirmed,the energy used for mining the whole block remains the same.For gold mining and for banking transactions taking all over the world,more percentage of energy is being used and no one would raise such issues anytime

[franky1]

ok i looked at the digiconomists chart

"Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154"
=154 watts per terrahash  (simply x1000 math)
=2156 watts per ASIC (simple x14 math (asic do 14th)

yet we all know an asic is 1.3kw... not 2.156
so that chart is wrong before even looking at the other implied "estimates".

screw it lets do it
Bitcoin's current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh)   73.12
Bitcoin's current minimum annual electricity consumption** (TWh)   54.77[3]
Annualized global mining revenues   $4,728,978,787
Annualized estimated global mining costs   $3,656,073,069
Current cost percentage   77.31%
Country closest to Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption   Austria
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh)   200,332,771 [2]
Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154
Total Network Hashrate in PH/s (1,000,000 GH/s)   54,219   [1]
Electricity consumed per transaction (KWh)   896
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Bitcoin   6,770,506
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for a single transaction   30.28
Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption   0.33%
Annual carbon footprint (kt of CO2)   35,830
Carbon footprint per transaction (kg of CO2)   438.98
54,219,000 terrahash    (remember an asic is 14terra)
54,219,000 /14=3872785.714285714asics (remember an asic is 1.3kwh)
3872785.714285714*1.3 = 5,034,621.428571429kwh

electric over a day. thats simple. multiply the hour by 24
5,034,621.428571429kwh *24=120830914.2857143

so [2] should be 120million not 200mill

next. lets look at [3] which is based on the hashrate and assumption of using the s9 asics (14thash that im using)

the 120m kwh per day or the charts 200m kwh per day. can be converted to terrawh per day easily(h/1000=m..)
(kw/1000=mw..)120830914/1000=120,830.14megawattdays
(mw/1000=gw..)120,830.14/1000=128.83014gigawattdays
(gw/1000=tw..)128.830.14/1000=0.12883014terrawattdays
then days to a year is a simple *365
0.12883014*365 = 47.0230011 a year

now. thats lower than [3]
but note the wording of [3] bitcoins minimal
... um sorry. the math of my 47twh a year is based on onday multiplied. so there is an issue
the charts [2]200kw (converted to tw and multipled by 365) is 73.12 .... so there is an issue
the issue is that the estimates are that the electric and hashrate has been the same for the whole year

but BEFORE TODAY hashrates and thus electric used were lower.
so for the last 365 days. the electric/hashrate per day was LOWER
anyway. its harder to write out the daily electric for the last 365days. so i used excel and just displayed the end result

the actual electric consumption for the year is 20.7  not 47 not 54 not 73

ok so i googled "electricity consumption"
and got this
Electric energy consumption is the form of energy consumption that uses electric energy. Electric energy consumption is the actual energy demand made on existing electricity supply. The total electricity consumption in 2012 was 20,900 TWh.
i checked may other statistics site for 2012 and also found domestic consumption at the 19,000-21,000 area

i also looked at newer stats for more recent years. anyway

100/20900*20.7=0.099% ... ok. so on previous pages i done one way of working it out. and this time i done it another way. and both ways resulted in a 0.1%.. so im happy and i double proofed myself.

[SistaFista]

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?

Do you think 1% is bad enough to compare with the entire electricity consume ? I dont think so.
There are many company using electricity more than bitcoin mining. You can name all of the industry companies in the world and how much they consume electricity. Cryptocurrency will always sustainable as long as we used it.

[d5000]

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.

There definitively are miners using partially "not-scarce" electricity (like coal/hydro/nuclear power at night when there is low domestic consumption but the plants cannot be "regulated down"). But if only because of Bitcoin mining, existing plants have to work more, or new electric plants have to be built, then Bitcoin "is using scarce electricity". I am pretty sure that this applies to a majority of miners.

This is still not the same thing as "wasted" electricity. For me, it becomes "waste" if it's innecessary. If we have a PoS or whatever system that can achieve the same grade of security consuming less energy, then the difference is what I would call "wasted energy".

But there is a solution, even if we preserve PoW: Use non-scarce electricity, like renewable-based electricity that doesn't compete with the electricity used for non-mining (domestic/industrial) consumption.

@franky1: I repeat, take a look at Mark Bevand's study. I believe his calculations are the best out there.

[franky1]

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.

There definitively are miners using partially "not-scarce" electricity (like coal/hydro/nuclear power at night when there is low domestic consumption but the plants cannot be "regulated down"). But if only because of Bitcoin mining, existing plants have to work more, or new electric plants have to be built, then Bitcoin "is using scarce electricity". I am pretty sure that this applies to a majority of miners.

This is still not the same thing as "wasted" electricity. For me, it becomes "waste" if it's innecessary. If we have a PoS or whatever system that can achieve the same grade of security consuming less energy, then the difference is what I would call "wasted energy".

But there is a solution, even if we preserve PoW: Use non-scarce electricity, like renewable-based electricity that doesn't compete with the electricity used for non-mining (domestic/industrial) consumption.

@franky1: I repeat, take a look at Mark Bevand's study. I believe his calculations are the best out there.

mark bevands study was out dated. even in january 2018 he was using ASICS of 2+ generations old.
my numbers were based on the last 12 months. using the 2017/2018 generation miners.
i even broke the costs down to the daily level of the hashrate of the day. worked out asics costs of the day etc.. and then added up the total electric.. (yea i got super anal with the details)
as i showed the OP's source done 54thashrate(54210peta) *365 (yet last week, last month we were not at 54thashrate so his electric use would have been off by alot)

as for the domestic amount per household.
you said
"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"

are you saying 300w an hour is high?
...
i just grabbed UK stats
google "Average kWh per day. The average electricity usage per household: Electricity: 8.5 – 10 kWh per day".
8.5/24 = 0.35416kwh     10/24=0.4166kwh
now remember thats just the UK other countries have different amount.  yep many countries use even less electric than the UK (world bank 12.6% of houses have no electric)

america do love their bigger houses AC, gadgets and techy stuff.
google: "average American your monthly read 911 kilowatt hours (kWh)"
911pmonth*12/365/24=1.2479kwh (as i said america love their AIRCON)

where as other countries have smaller houses less techy stuff, no AC... did you know aircon is the biggest electrical drainer in most households..
many countries dont have it. so many countries use alot less electric

 which backed up by a few stats sites showed the world average was 0.3 per household.

but yea mark bevand using the previous gen asics which were 2-3x less efficient would get a result 3x more then my numbers. but both me and him got numbers below the OP's 1% figure.
yea

in short if mark used todays gen asics and done th maths per day and added up each day.. he would see we are at 0.1% so his math is good. but just outdated.. where as the OP's source 1% math is meant to be recent. but just wrong in many places

the 1% figure had too many flaws to ignore so was worth the time calculating

[franky1]

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.

There definitively are miners using partially "not-scarce" electricity (like coal/hydro/nuclear power at night when there is low domestic consumption but the plants cannot be "regulated down"). But if only because of Bitcoin mining, existing plants have to work more, or new electric plants have to be built, then Bitcoin "is using scarce electricity". I am pretty sure that this applies to a majority of miners.

power plants do regulate. and at night they do shut down some generators.
but they do try to keep some excess between produced and consumed.
it does take 30mins-1 hour to restart a generator. so they like to keep a gap. and they also like to sell some of that excess to other countries**  that have less of a gap and suddenly had a surge of consumption that was unforecasted.
**OR INDUSTRIES hint hint

yea. they forecast extra TV use during super bowl and even forecast even further consumption at commercial tv breaks when people warm up a coffee or microwave some popcorn.
but sometimes. when there is a big news event which on a normal day wouldnt see many people with TV on, suddenly turn on their TV's. that unforeseen event is why they have the excess.. to prevent brownouts


before you made your reply. and as part of my post with loads of maths i was going to add a sarcastic comment to the reddit propagandists who scream "china 51%"

so here goes
lets imagine out of the 20.7twh that 50% was just in china (10.35)
china consumes 5683
china produces 6529
=836 difference (13% safety gap)

10 vs 800 excess.. = no impact to residences lives

[mafiajohngotti7]

Perhaps it's time to make your own power plant and get energy from it for bitcoin mining.

[figmentofmyass]

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.

very true, although we can't assume that all energy consumed by bitcoin mining is excess capacity. that's why some localities where electricity is cheap are getting concerned.

for instance, quebec approved a rate hike for bitcoin mining businesses, and also temporarily halted new service requests for them. the logic is that demand for quebec's cheap electricity from miners has gotten so high that they'll need to start buying extra capacity (at rates unknown) to meet demand if they don't start upcharging miners or otherwise stop them from setting up shop. if they have to buy extra capacity to meet miner demand, that will drive up rates for residents, too. if i lived there, i wouldn't be happy about that.

[iamike]

Bitcoin is indeed consuming a lot of energy because of the kind of machines use in the crypto mining. There is the need to get a standby or reliable energy supply independent of the general public energy system.

[AAKODI]

From the ecology point of view this sounds bad and something should be done. Still I beleive there are other things that spend more energy than bitcoin. Maybe some sustainable alternative energy source could be the solution. I would like to believe that bitcoiners are environment friendly and think for the future generations.

Of course we spend electricity and other valuable resources for unnecessary things that has no value and make no production but some point out the Bitcoin energy consumption as a huge problem to the world but with sustainable mining methods and other systems in the future Bitcoin electricity usage will headed low and such problems will not occur again

[Naginiya]

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?

Of course this is a significant era that the world is more concern about green energy and low power consumption concept so as a latest invention in the financial world when Bitcoin consume more power this was discussed by many people mainly by environmental friendly organizations to point the real issue behind it and I think that is why as a solution we see many solar energy mining projects are coming in this year 

[ClemenTeron]

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?

Anything fast, secure and effective can consume little more power and I think it is acceptable because even the best and latest lamborghini will consume much fuel than a Toyota Hybrid does but the out come is much different so do we say Lamborghini is bad no we don't and I think it is the same story with Bitcoin and its network we wanted faster and better transactions without any interruption which traditional systems can never provide and we got