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

[ict]

In my opinion. bitcoin consumes more than 1 percent of electricity in the world because currently users of bitcoin or altcoin are so large that the amount of electricity consumption will definitely increase. and the majority of electricity consumption occurs in crypto currency miners, because they need a large amount of electricity to operate mining equipment for 24 hours a day.

[WhaleSlayer]

All things considered it doesn't really matters how energy is consumed by Bitcoin or whatever, because the system in the end will self regulate itself eventually. If Bitcoin't consumption will be unsustainable then something will change. If mankind's presence on earth will be unsustaibale, then something will change. Whatever the outcome, it will the the only possible and inevitable one.

People too often forget that whatever happens is in fact the only thing that could have happened.

[FuryBeast]

Electricity consume % may be far-fetched. And even if it doesn't and mining ends, btc will still be used.

[readygoaw]

In my opinion. bitcoin consumes more than 1 percent of electricity in the world because currently users of bitcoin or altcoin are so large that the amount of electricity consumption will definitely increase. and the majority of electricity consumption occurs in crypto currency miners, because they need a large amount of electricity to operate mining equipment for 24 hours a day.

Even if Bitcoin (mining) uses 1% of the electricity, it is not something critical. The cryptocurrency has more pros than cons. People realize that it helps them to live better. BTC is the chance to start a new life.

[@Hakermania@]

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?

bitcoin is sustainable entergetically? my answer is: yes. Based on a research, almost 80% of the energy used to mine bitcoins comes from renewable sources
sources: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf (page 9)

[KingScorpio]

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 not its just short term populistic.

[fommes86]

bitcoin is sustainable entergetically? my answer is: yes. Based on a research, almost 80% of the energy used to mine bitcoins comes from renewable sources
sources: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf (page 9)

You forgot to remove your blinkers    instead of bitcoin mining, this green energy you talk here, could replace some coal power plants for real world electricity needs instead    its useless, don't try to greenwash bitcoin, it is not sustainable. point.

[felicita]

it would be great when all farming /mining centers using there produced heat to regenerate electricity power.
Becourse we still making so much heat and blast it unused in the air -.-


regards

[shield132]

We have also to consider that some percent of this energy is green energy. Bitcoin changed life of a lot of people, personally I think we can't blame miners because they consume so much energy. Some may come and say what the hell is bitcoin, why is electricity wasted in such a shit but they don't know economy well, have no imagination what is crypto, what is decentralized system and what is blockchain.

[odolvlobo]

bitcoin is sustainable entergetically? my answer is: yes. Based on a research, almost 80% of the energy used to mine bitcoins comes from renewable sources
sources: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf (page 9)

You forgot to remove your blinkers    instead of bitcoin mining, this green energy you talk here, could replace some coal power plants for real world electricity needs instead    its useless, don't try to greenwash bitcoin, it is not sustainable. point.

I agree that the source of power for Bitcoin mining is irrelevant, which is why Bitcoin mining itself doesn't have a carbon footprint.

However, your point appears to be that Bitcoin is not worth the amount of energy spent on it. What about the amount of energy spent on entertainment: video games, youtube, netflix, music, automobile racing, driving to a football game? Are those activities sustainable? Surely, all the energy spent on those activities is wasted, too.

[udivkx]

Bitcoin does consume a lot of electricity, but we should just accept it. A lot of objects in the world consume a large amount of electricity - shops, advertising signs, houses and so on. So there's nothing we can do about it, not to stop do we get bitcoin?

[Sumo]

I also believe that bitcoin is not the worst thing we spend energy on. This benefits society, so such use of natural resources is necessary. In the world, a huge number of useless items that people spend electricity on, and bitcoin is the least of the evils.

[fattyforhire]

Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy for mining, you can not argue with that. But if you are really worried about this, then you should be reassured by the idea that bitcoin mining is not infinite, so sooner or later it will stop.

[Patron92]

I do not think that this can be attributed to serious global problems. Now the number of environmental problems is growing, and the use of electricity for the extraction of such a useful resource as the cryptocurrency is not the worst thing that exists now. So I don't think we should make a problem out of it.

[franky1]

more electric is used to keep bottles of soda chilled, than bitcoin uses

cocacola have 10million coolers.
and thats before you count the other brands

32exa bitcoin hashrate is only 1.1m S15 or 2.2m S9's
3 coolers = 1 s9
so if bitcoin was only mined using S9's would need 3.3m S9's just to match cocacola
or
4 coolers = 1 s15
so is bitcoin was only mined using s15's would need 2.5m S15's just to match cocacola

again. this is just the coolers of cocacola. its not including the non branded coolers fastfood/grocery stores buy themselves
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola trucks used to deliver the bottles and cans
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola warehouses before delivery

this is not including the other brands (pepsi, etc) branded coolers either

[Initscri]

To be fair, I'm sure if you compared to the current banking infrastructure, that may be using quite a bit of power as well in contrast.
It may not be at 1%, but it may be quite a large amount.

I don't think it's sustainable, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years something changes with regards to this. Either power generation will become easier (plausible?) or Bitcoin *(and other cryptos) will have to adapt.

[Satosho Kakamolto]

more electric is used to keep bottles of soda chilled, than bitcoin uses

cocacola have 10million coolers.
and thats before you count the other brands

32exa bitcoin hashrate is only 1.1m S15 or 2.2m S9's
3 coolers = 1 s9
so if bitcoin was only mined using S9's would need 3.3m S9's just to match cocacola
or
4 coolers = 1 s15
so is bitcoin was only mined using s15's would need 2.5m S15's just to match cocacola

again. this is just the coolers of cocacola. its not including the non branded coolers fastfood/grocery stores buy themselves
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola trucks used to deliver the bottles and cans
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola warehouses before delivery

this is not including the other brands (pepsi, etc) branded coolers either

You seem not to realize that the adoption rate among the population of coca cola and other branded coolers is astronomically higher that the one experienced by Bitcoin. Should every coca cola drinker adopt Bitcoin and perhaps start to mine it too, there would be barely electricity left on Earth for anything else.

[pant-79]

Large mining farms open in those regions where the energy balance is excessive and where electricity is cheap.
At the same time, there is no reliable method for estimating energy consumption for mining. In order to carry out the calculations correctly, you will need reliable data from data centers obtained from the miners themselves. But analysts have no such data. Therefore, no one can reliably assert.
Yes, mining really consumes very large amounts of electricity. But some mining companies use renewable sources for electricity production.A HydroMiner startup gets electricity from a hydroelectric power station. At the same time, the company pays only 4-6 cents per kWh, and earns $ 300,000 a month.
And energy costs all over the world are growing every year, so it’s not fair to blame only the work of miners o for all the troubles.

[September11Myth]

I guess that after the price decline and hashrate drop now Bitcoin's electricity consumption has been considerably lowered. A temporary relief. But this point remains crucial for the future, anyway: in a closed system like Earth with limited resources and climate change problems PoW cryptocurrencies are not sustainable and have no long term future. End of period.

[HiDevin]

It's not sustainable at all. It's pretty much going to destroy the planet if bitcoin experiences exponential growth in mining because there will be so many miners. I think in the future the bitcoin devs/team should consider switching to something more eco-friendly than PoW. For example like PoC coins like BURST whos mining is mostly on HDDs.

Look at PoS coins too, maybe some of their features are flawed, but most of the coins you can earn by just keeping the wallet open, so you can just basically use a Pi to power your wallet instead.
As the future gets more green, the future of bitcoin looks more grim as it just uses too much power unless they change that.