Elon Musk calls crypto “quite energy intensive”

[BestCoinInvestments]

Recently Elon Musk had an interview with ARK invest podcast. They mostly spoke about his company Tesla and key features of its success, but at the end of the 30-minute show, they touched cryptocurrencies as well.

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

We elaborated on the crypto energy consumption issue in our latest article: https://bestcoininvestments.com/elon-musk-calls-crypto-quite-energy-intensive/

Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

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[fudster]

He isn't sure whether its something to be concerned of which I think its fair to say. But its true that Bitcoin spend so much energy upon mining blocks. There is no changing these settings any more though unless we'd have to reboot over again which is highly unlikely.

So is Bitcoin a threat to global warming?
I'm not sure too. I can't believe the media today, maybe they lied about global warming, they may even be lying about the earth being round.

[bitmover]

Bitcoin is energy intensive because for now it's the only way to secure the network.

Other coins, which have different proposals, such as ethereum, will soon move to less energy intensive methods

As I only heard antonopoulos saying, maybe the world can't handle more than one big PoW cryptocurrency . Not all cryptocurrencies need to be using pow. But bitcoin needs now.

[avikz]

Mining is not limited to bitcoin only so I would rather say, crypto mining can be seen as energy intensive. However, it sounds true when you don't have benchmark to compare with. But if you compare the energy consumption of minting presses with cryptos, it would look so tiny that you would not think much about it in the future.

I would encourage you to read the below article which provides a very good overview of this matter and it shows that global money printing presses consume energy worth 28 billion usd annually whereas bitcoin consumes 0.79 billion usd. It's 2.8% of global money printing consumption. Does it look so big now??

[TimeHacker]

It is energy intensive, but not so much if you compare it e.g. to energy consumption of gold mining. However, eventually also Bitcoin will probably have to switch to some other way of securing the network, such POS like Ethereum plans to do.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

"Elon Musk calls crypto quite “energy intensive”"

Says the man building electric cars. 

[xWolfx]

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.
Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

It's like the only thing the people picked up from that is that he called Crypto energy intensive.

He saying that Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant means a lot for those of us who are called crazy for pointing out the same thing. In his case he got blocked in twitter but yeah it happens. If we take into account the fate free thinkers had in the middle ages this is nothing.

I don't believe that he is wrong. Even when the architecture of Bitcoin's inner technology is brilliant it is obviously not perfect. But i don't think that it was meant to, it was meant to be a starting point for people to develop and find out amazing possibilities that could definitely make human kind advance a lot faster in the future.

[pixie85]

Is that bad? I think that him calling it energy intensive is less important than him calling it brilliant. Energy intensive isn't negative. It's simply stating the fact!
I laugh when tree huggers attack Bitcoin and at the same time they're driving cars and cooking food. Electric energy doesn't come only from sources that produce CO2. Maybe they should look for resolutions elsewhere like in the millions of cars in the streets and coal powered power plants still used by some countries.

[squatter]

He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

Not all crypto is necessarily energy intensive like Bitcoin. There are proof-of-stake, hybrid proof-of-stake and other designs that are much less so, but it comes at a cost. If you want payment settlement so reliable that you can call it "irreversible" then you need to use proof-of-work.

Proof-of-work may be energy intensive, but what's the context? The legacy banking and gold production industries are very energy intensive, too. Nobody seems to mention that in these analyses. Why is everyone so hung up on Bitcoin? Like Musk says, Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant. The whole design hinges on the fact that mining carries costs.

[mrdeposit]

Recently Elon Musk had an interview with ARK invest podcast. They mostly spoke about his company Tesla and key features of its success, but at the end of the 30-minute show, they touched cryptocurrencies as well.

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

We elaborated on the crypto energy consumption issue in our latest article: https://bestcoininvestments.com/elon-musk-calls-crypto-quite-energy-intensive/

Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

Bitcoin mining consumes energy but this is nothing if we take into consideration the downsides of alternative payment systems. Structure of bitcoin is base on mathematical calculations and that's why it is unbeatable. Elon Musk is active on twitter and i follow his tweets but this guy sometimes accept horrible decision without thinking about future of his companies.

[Crypdon]

If he thinks it is too energy intensive he should develop a renewable fuel based battery so we can all mine for free. Anyway, it's good that he has something positive to say about bitcoin in general, better than warren buffet's opinion

[KingScorpio]

He isn't sure whether its something to be concerned of which I think its fair to say. But its true that Bitcoin spend so much energy upon mining blocks. There is no changing these settings any more though unless we'd have to reboot over again which is highly unlikely.

So is Bitcoin a threat to global warming?
I'm not sure too. I can't believe the media today, maybe they lied about global warming, they may even be lying about the earth being round.

the problem is that bitcoin is adressing a quite big issue in humanitarian and egalitarian societies,

the power is being given to those, that had the most equity (installed income sources) and the most manpower working for him calculating his fundraisings.

bitcoin standardises and distributes this kind of power thinking and makes the installation of computation power the way to directly get money.

thats the way how in the "humanist" west the rich are being created, those that can argue the most the best, the most expensive and the most detailed with the banks, are able to loan the most, build most equity and be the richest.

it systematically enriches the richest and it also wastes a lot of ressources.

Bitcoin simplifies this behavior. and thats why its so difficult to get rid of, because its simply adressing a big issue.

regards

[crzy]

So he will invent a bitcoin mining rig that can be more energy efficient, hopefully yes.
Well, this is still a great thought from a great man, now bitcoin is being hype my bang big businesses and its time now to see a bull run. Let’s see who’s next in line to say good thoughts about bitcoin.

[BurgerCash]

I mean, he is one of the Paypal mafia, and the initial goal of Paypal was to replace the dollar, not to become an overpriced transaction service. So he knows why we need bitcoin and he knows how its goal can be silently changed by people who feel threatened by its power.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

People consider energy consumption of bitcoin a problem right now because it doesn't offer much advantages to people in comparison with the resources it is using. There are a lot of other things that consume a lot of energy like hospitals(of course you cannot really compare it to bitcoin but this is what first came to my mind) but in exchange they offer something back to the population. In the future bitcoin will consume probably the same amount of energy but the difference is then more people will use it for payments and transactions so people will not care that much about the energy it consumes.

[vennali]

Really loved the infographic which gives great insights about the energy consumption of miners. I wasnt expecting it to be so high as the miners have already suprassed the energy a few nations like Denmark, Serbia, Greece, Belgium, Argentina and Pakistan. On the whole the consumption is larger than 159 countries.  The amount of electricity used by over 25 million people. Do something about it Elon! Make energy efficient miners and save the world!
I dont think we have come to an alarming rate as of yet, but theres a constant rise in the consumption.

[Twinkledoe]

I mean, he is one of the Paypal mafia, and the initial goal of Paypal was to replace the dollar, not to become an overpriced transaction service. So he knows why we need bitcoin and he knows how its goal can be silently changed by people who feel threatened by its power.

He might have a lot of bitcoin stash for all we know. Not only bitcoin, but eth, xrp and many more. Those guys in the advanced technology know there is future in blockchain and crypto. Even if he's saying energy intensive and that is true anyway, but crypto has already gone a lot and prove the benefits that we can derive from utilizing it.

[franky1]

id prefer to have energy intensive (concentrated on one task) rather than extensive(diluted and spread to 1000 sharded crapcoins)

if you had a baby. would you want it looked after in
an intensive care unit with lots of nurses checking it
an extensive care unit with fewer nurses checking lots of babies

plus, its digital not a flower so yea use of electric energy will be involved.
its not a flower after all, otherwise the claim would be water intensive

id rather have something that has lots of cost of creation to give it underlying value. than something cheap to create such as POS coins which there is less underlying value. thus meaning it needs more speculative crap to bring the price up to be nearer to something with underlying value.
 

[n0ne]

A clear picture on the electricity consumption of bitcoin to maintain the network is provided in the article. Elon musk being a legendary person who has shifted from fueled engines to electric car production to reduce pollution and increase the efficiency has got known better about the value of electricity. When his thinks an alternate to fuel to ignite the car, same is possible with bitcoin as well. Continued search for it will give way for decreasing power consumption on running the network. If electricity consumption and the pollution generated through bitcoin network is to cause global warming, tesla products too isn't exceptional. Because higher percentage of pollution happens while making a lithium ion battery. Maybe it's a one time process, but this too is contributing.

[leonair]

He have a good point there though because in able for Bitcoin to function it needs computing that is requiring miners to do the job and makes a ton of electricity power but I believe that the time will come that the cost of electricity in mining will cut down.

Logically thinking, almost everything in the world that has a very good use to the people needs an electricity to work and Bitcoin is one of it, can I say Internet itself has a power intensive technology?

[franky1]

A clear picture on the electricity consumption of bitcoin to maintain the network is provided in the article.

a false picture on the electricity consumption of bitcoin is provided in the article

ok.. some maths.(same math as infographic. but basing it on more logical/acceptable ASICS of the period)
hashrates peaked at around 60exa in 2018
in 2018 s9's were the main ASIC

60,000,000thash / 14thash = 4,285,714 asics
at 1.3kwh=5,571,428kwh

*24*365=48,805,709,280kwh a year
=48.8Twh a year.. not 70

and thats a number doing like the article done by assuming to *24*365
foolish thing with he 70twh and the 48twh is that its a dumb multiple
the network did not actually USE 70, nor 48
as that just wrongly suggesting when the hashrate got to 60exa. it had always been using 60exa 24 hours a day 365 a year

so lets take the daily hashrates and get the daily energy consumption,, then add up each day. instead of just multiplying a peak time by 365
1st october 2017-1st october2018 (oct18 being the peak electric utility): 22.656twh actually used for the year
1st january 2019-1st january 2019(full 2018 year): 29.592twh used for the year

anyway. it takes more  to power all the refrigerators to keep bottles of pepsi chilled around the world, than it does to scure bitcoin.

[qwertyup23]

That is the reason on why ethical considerations regarding environmental concerns are starting to rise due to the by-product of mining- which is pollution and energy. Maybe another alternative is to find techniques to introduce 'energy saving methods' by considering the geographical location or by considering the use of renewable energy.

A clear picture on the electricity consumption of bitcoin to maintain the network is provided in the article. Elon musk being a legendary person who has shifted from fueled engines to electric car production to reduce pollution and increase the efficiency has got known better about the value of electricity. When his thinks an alternate to fuel to ignite the car, same is possible with bitcoin as well. Continued search for it will give way for decreasing power consumption on running the network. If electricity consumption and the pollution generated through bitcoin network is to cause global warming, tesla products too isn't exceptional. Because higher percentage of pollution happens while making a lithium ion battery. Maybe it's a one time process, but this too is contributing.

I think he is already thinking of alternatives about shifting the consumption of electricity by inculcating their design used on Tesla. Mining definitely uses huge consumption of energy and it is starting to cause pollution in some locations. Given its popularity steadily increasing, I see this as a problem when not addressed in the future.

[Monetran]

“One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

It's a shame that such a smart guy could make such an ignorant statement.

Now, if he had said “One of the downsides of crypto mining is it's quite energy intensive,” he would have been spot on.

Unfortunately, Musk probably has no idea that consensus methods that don't require mining - like Stellar's federated Byzantine agreement - even exist.

Perhaps he should stick to worrying about how much energy his cars use and leave the energy requirements of cryptographic transactions to others.

[mu_enrico]

He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

But POW cryptocurrencies are also work intensive, so?
And with ASIC we could argue that the energy to work conversion is considered efficient, not like any of his e-car products.

[Kakmakr]

Someone should really send him this, https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7

Elon Musk should actually embrace this technology, because it is one way for him to actually push for more sales of his "Power Wall" technology. Imagine if people could utilize cheaper electricity for mining with the "Power Wall" technology, then he would be selling more of those products. 

When people realize the truth behind Bitcoin mining and how energy efficient the technology is, then they are not brainwashed by uniformed shills that are pushing hidden agendas with FUD like Bitcoin being energy intensive. 

[Bitcoindigger02]

We also know that POW has a lot of problems in the waste of computing resources. At the same time, it should be too demanding for the calculation of mining machines. So the algorithm we are going to talk about today, called POS, may be familiar to many people. His full name is Proof of Stake. In translation, it is actually called stock certification. What does this mean? Simple. In fact, if you deposit your assets in the bank, you will get the corresponding interest every month. In the digital world of block chain, that is to say, the time you deposit your digital currency and the time you deposit it in the digital currency will determine the interest you receive.

[bitfocus]

hahaha, musk is building Electric Cars, lol

[tunapa]

It’s really energy intensive which is because of the way it’s built. This is one what important factor that every miner must consider and take note as it cuts across all cryptocurrency. Also it’s a major factor that keeps many people from going into mining because it requires a lot of funds to maintain. But it’s good to know that there are other projects that requires more energy usage than crypto like money printing. If we look very into this , we will see that cryptocurrencies are really the future for any good project that survives.

[aoluain]

we all know that energy consumption through fossil fuels has
to be drastically reduced in order to meet some targets to keep
the planet from warming by something like 1 or 2 degrees over
the next number of years but Bitcoin is just a very, very small
part of the story.

As franky1 eludes to the idea of stopping drinking soft drinks from
refrigerators we should if we listen to the experts stop flying,
stop driving petrol/diesel cars, stop farming meat, stop mining, stop
producing plastics, stop owning pets the truth is we cannot regress
as a society. Commercialism and capitalism still wants to continue,
industry still wants to make money, everyone wants to make money.

The challenge is big but it has to be acted on by everyone.

[Autumn_Rain]

But it's only a PoW consensus which is energy consuming, isn't it?

[suzanne5223]

Mining is not limited to bitcoin only so I would rather say, crypto mining can be seen as energy intensive. However, it sounds true when you don't have benchmark to compare with. But if you compare the energy consumption of minting presses with cryptos, it would look so tiny that you would not think much about it in the future.

I would encourage you to read the below article which provides a very good overview of this matter and it shows that global money printing presses consume energy worth 28 billion usd annually whereas bitcoin consumes 0.79 billion usd. It's 2.8% of global money printing consumption. Does it look so big now??

Although, i dont know the worth of global money printing energy consumption but we can't blame Elon Musk because most people believe believe Bitcoin consume enormous amounts of electricity and with my own research the total energy consumption of Bitcoin mining per annum was US$ 0.76billion.

[Artemis3]

Someone should really send him this, https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7

Elon Musk should actually embrace this technology, because it is one way for him to actually push for more sales of his "Power Wall" technology. Imagine if people could utilize cheaper electricity for mining with the "Power Wall" technology, then he would be selling more of those products.  

When people realize the truth behind Bitcoin mining and how energy efficient the technology is, then they are not brainwashed by uniformed shills that are pushing hidden agendas with FUD like Bitcoin being energy intensive.  

Actually Tesla (which Acquired Solarcity) can provide the very panels, and if you want to use Li-ion batteries to store power you can combine it with the powerwall as well.

They have projects that power entire islands and could easily provide the means for miners which just like small countries are just another customer.

Elon doesn't really need to worry, because in time the only miners that remain will be those with "free" (ie. Solar) energy. Everyday mining becomes less and less profitable until there are no countries left on Earth where its profitable to do it on the grid. Then you will observe an important reduction in hashrate, but that doesn't matter because Bitcoin adjusts difficulty automatically (every 2016 blocks) so it always finds a block every 10 minutes no matter what.

This process has been delayed a few times by the rise of bitcoin price, but I foresee the mining will become less profitable faster than bitcoin deflationary process. And that is GOOD, Bitcoin already IS environmentally friendly, thanks to free market.

Those miners unable to see ahead will stop mining, and that is fine. Bitcoin will go on.

[dothebeats]

If a visionary like Elon Musk, who provides clean energy for a lot of residence and commercial spaces, actually built something that the miners might utilize, this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps it could even be a huge market for him and his companies, considering that there are already a lot of miners operating worldwide who are already complaining about profitability declination since the bear market began. Needless to say, this is not a serious matter, and most reports of bitcoin's 'environmental damage' are exaggerated, and can easily be found a solution if we really want to.

[squatter]

“One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

It's a shame that such a smart guy could make such an ignorant statement.

Now, if he had said “One of the downsides of crypto mining is it's quite energy intensive,” he would have been spot on.

Unfortunately, Musk probably has no idea that consensus methods that don't require mining - like Stellar's federated Byzantine agreement - even exist.

I'm sure he's not ignorant of alternative consensus methods. There just don't exist any yet that can come close to providing the security that proof-of-work does.

Federated consensus may have uses but it doesn't solve the Byzantine Generals' Problem and it requires a lot of trust. The point of Bitcoin was to eliminate trust, not to trust an elite group of validators to do the right thing.

[solarcrypto]

It is energy intensive. Just thinking out loud, but I feel this could open the door for Tesla to be involved with sustainable mining.

[rosmerius]

They only see that bitcoin does need a lot of electricity, even though many other mines use electricity. The global money printing machine also uses electricity but this is not what he thinks. That is his opinion, what is certain is that electrical energy itself provides an opportunity for us to continue to be able to appreciate ourselves in order to mine and produce.

[figmentofmyass]

But it's only a PoW consensus which is energy consuming, isn't it?

Correct, algorithms such as Proof of Stake are Energy Efficient.  

While PoW is energy wasted. But the bitcoin shrills will never admit it.
They confuse waste with security.  

cost is related to security, not waste.

proof of work achieves security through incentive because it costs more to attack the system than to mine honestly. therefore it's only rational to mine honestly.

with proof of stake, it could be much more profitable to attack the system than to mint honestly. why? because there is zero cost for stakers to attack the chain. if they can make more money by double spending than by minting honestly, they'll do it.

[expertofexperts]

Then please ask Elon to buy btc worth billions so it can rise high and we can sell ours 

[Digitalbitcoin]

So he will invent a bitcoin mining rig that can be more energy efficient, hopefully yes.
Well, this is still a great thought from a great man, now bitcoin is being hype my bang big businesses and its time now to see a bull run. Let’s see who’s next in line to say good thoughts about bitcoin.

Yup. It's just beginning.

Will see many more entities with statements relate to Bitcoin and other altcoins in coming years, which will make little more favor and literacy about cryptocurrencies to the non-related audience, this will skyrocket the price of Bitcoin for sure. Blockchain technology implementation will make businesses more lucrative in many aspects.

And then the actual digital/token economy will be formed globally.

The world is on the way towards digital/token economy, which will change the complete traditional system of businesses. Along with Finance, decentralized technology will impact on may other industries such as logistic, real estate, health, governance, many corporate, private, and public sectors.

[Jating]

Here is a good read for everyone:

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-energy-bitcoin.html

Counting consumption

Unlocking a bitcoin requires an intense amount of computational power. Think of bitcoin as sort of a hidden currency code, where its value is derived by solving a programmable puzzle. Getting through this puzzle requires computer brainpower.

Electricity is 90 percent of the cost to mine bitcoin. As such, bitcoin mining uses an exorbitant amount of power: somewhere between an estimated 30 terrawatt hours alone in 2017 alone. That's as much electricity as it takes to power the entire nation of Ireland in one year.

Indeed, this is a lot, but not exorbitant. Banking consumes an estimated 100 terrawatts of power annually. If bitcoin technology were to mature by more than 100 times its current market size, it would still equal only 2 percent of all energy consumption.

So it pretty much says everything, banking consumes more energy, but why we haven't heard anyone attacking it? And pretty much the mining in China is being set up and coal is being used.

[Farul]

Here is a good read for everyone:

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-energy-bitcoin.html

Banking consumes an estimated 100 terrawatts of power annually.
bitcoin mining uses an exorbitant amount of power: somewhere between an estimated 30 terrawatt hours alone in 2017 alone.

Well, People Use Banking System More Than Bitcoin,There Are A Lot More Transaction In Banking System Than In Bitcoin Network.
You Are Comparing System That Used By More Than A Billion people Vs System That Used By Less Than 50 Million People
if You Use Electricity per Transaction You Will Get A Very Different Result
Banking Use A Lot Of Power,But It Was More Efficient

If bitcoin technology were to mature by more than 100 times its current market size, it would still equal only 2 percent of all energy consumption.

2% Of World Electric Consumption Is Huge
2% World Electric Consumption Can Power Indonesia,Bangladesh,Philliphines^[1](More Than 500 Million People) Simultaneously

[maksimukr1989]

Recently Elon Musk had an interview with ARK invest podcast. They mostly spoke about his company Tesla and key features of its success, but at the end of the 30-minute show, they touched cryptocurrencies as well.

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

We elaborated on the crypto energy consumption issue in our latest article: https://bestcoininvestments.com/elon-musk-calls-crypto-quite-energy-intensive/

Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

If we assume that with the help of bitcoin it is possible to exclude completely intermediaries in the form of the financial sector,it is not difficult to assume that bitcoin is less energy-intensive.

[squatter]

Nonsense, it is more profitable to attack a Proof of Work Chain.
I attack a proof of work chain with ASICS  and after destroying that PoW coin move on to another PoW using the same algorithm .

That only works on insecure POW altcoins that share a hashing algorithm with a superior coin. For example, a relatively small subset of Bitcoin miners could attack Bitcoin Cash because it has such a small hash rate. The reverse could never be done. The incentives against double spending attacks are much stronger in Bitcoin or even Ethereum because of the extreme costs incurred by mining.

Proof of Stake requires , I purchase the amount of coins necessary to pull off at attack, which I immediately make my entire investment worth less by attacking it and can not switch to mining another coin like I can with a PoW coin.

You don't necessarily need to purchase that many coins. Groups of stakers can collude together. Altcoin supply distributions also tend to be highly concentrated, whether because of early accumulation when hardly any users existed or scammy initial distribution of coins.

Your entire investment wouldn't become worthless just because of a temporary 51% attack. Attacks like this have happened on lots of chains which still carry value today.

I'm not entirely opposed to POS myself, but I think its theoretical security guarantees are weak. I think if you want something close to irreversibility then you should use something like Bitcoin.

[magneto]

Recently Elon Musk had an interview with ARK invest podcast. They mostly spoke about his company Tesla and key features of its success, but at the end of the 30-minute show, they touched cryptocurrencies as well.

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

We elaborated on the crypto energy consumption issue in our latest article: https://bestcoininvestments.com/elon-musk-calls-crypto-quite-energy-intensive/

Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

I personally think that there is a misconception that the energy that is used by bitcoin miners is going to waste. No, they are not. They are performing the important function of securing the network, validating and processing transactions.

He's not wrong about bitcoin using a lot of energy. But it really depends on what energy is being used, and the way that it is produced in the first place. That's what matters. If bitcoin is using excess energy that was going to go to waste anyways (which I think I read in an article once that this is the case in most scenarios, IIRC), or that the energy is sustainably sourced, then there shouldn't be any issues.

Besides, I think that given that bitcoin is replacing a lot of what gold and silver is as store of values, it may even be more eco-friendly given that gold and silver mining happens on such a large scale.

[cellard]

Bitcoin's value is derived from the big network effect which creates the big amounts of hashrate which creates the big security behind it... is a cycle. The people that call Bitcoin "energy wasteful" is just not understanding all those things behind the curtain.

Elon said he has 0.25 BTC that he was given years ago recently so I doubt he has spent any time researching Bitcoin at all.

[eaLiTy]

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

The people who complain about the intensive use of energy to mine bitcoin has ever evaluated the amount of energy the rest of the financial institutions use around the globe to run their banks and other centralized financial institutions, if you compare that globally with the power consumption of bitcoin mining it will be minuscule, bitcoin is a financial structure which is decentralized and the fact is we really do not need these much tera, peta or exa hash power to mine the coin, this is a competitive field and people who are ready to spend money to mine it, they are doing it in an industrial scale. So how you solve this issue, to get rid of the competition, which is not feasible. Only thing you can do is to ask the industrial miners to move to renewable energy.

[Herbert2020]

If bitcoin technology were to mature by more than 100 times its current market size, it would still equal only 2 percent of all energy consumption.

2% Of World Electric Consumption Is Huge
2% World Electric Consumption Can Power Indonesia,Bangladesh,Philliphines^[1](More Than 500 Million People) Simultaneously

you forgot that there is an "IF" behind that sentence and that means it first has to satisfy a certain condition and then consume that much energy. that "condition" is maturity and mass adoption in which case it means a unique decentralized system that is processing monetary transactions of the whole world for hundreds of millions of people every day. as a result of that, the power consumption would be negligible.

you see it is never about how much power is consumed, it is mostly about why it was consumed and what was offered in return.

[figmentofmyass]

There are only ~15 Mining Pools Controlling Bitcoin and hidden in that amount

the number of mining pools doesn't matter nearly as much as the actual distribution of hashpower. miners can point their hashpower away from a malicious pool at a moment's notice. pool operators who endanger the network will quickly fall from favor. remember ghash.io? hardly anyone else does either.....

it has been reported that Bitmain controls over 51%.

got a reliable source for that? cuz the SV/ABC war sort of showed how impotent bitmain is.

not only do they not control half the network, but much of what they do control is probably hosted on behalf of clients. similar to the case of mining pools above, bitmain has much less control than people think. prove otherwise.

[Farul]

you forgot that there is an "IF" behind that sentence and that means it first has to satisfy a certain condition and then consume that much energy. that "condition" is maturity and mass adoption in which case it means a unique decentralized system that is processing monetary transactions of the whole world for hundreds of millions of people every day. as a result of that, the power consumption would be negligible.

you see it is never about how much power is consumed, it is mostly about why it was consumed and what was offered in return.

2% of World Energy Consumption = 435.5 TWh Annually^[1](Assumption If Bitcoin Became As Big As Traditional Banking System)
Banking Use Only 100 TWh Annually
Same Amount Of People Served, Power Usage Is Four Times Higher

BITCOIN IS NOT ENERGY EFFICIENT
 

[davis196]

Recently Elon Musk had an interview with ARK invest podcast. They mostly spoke about his company Tesla and key features of its success, but at the end of the 30-minute show, they touched cryptocurrencies as well.

At the start of this crypto segment, he laughed and told the story about how he got blocked on Twitter by making fun on the phrase “wanna buy some bitcoin”. Later he continued by saying “I've got some friends of mine that are really involved in crypto”.

And then came his legendary phrase, which all the major news sites picked up: ”I think Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant.” Elon continued by elaborating on what he thinks are the downsides of crypto. He mentioned that one of the biggest downsides is the energy consumption. “One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

We elaborated on the crypto energy consumption issue in our latest article: https://bestcoininvestments.com/elon-musk-calls-crypto-quite-energy-intensive/

Have a read, and tell us what is your perspective on this subject! 

It's good to know that people like Elon Musk are aware about bitcoin/blockchain.
However there's nothing interesting in this interview.We all know about the energy consumption flaws of the blockchain.This is a problem that can be solved.

[Monetran]

“One of the downsides of crypto is it's quite energy intensive,” said Musk.

It's a shame that such a smart guy could make such an ignorant statement.

Now, if he had said “One of the downsides of crypto mining is it's quite energy intensive,” he would have been spot on.

Unfortunately, Musk probably has no idea that consensus methods that don't require mining - like Stellar's federated Byzantine agreement - even exist.

I'm sure he's not ignorant of alternative consensus methods. There just don't exist any yet that can come close to providing the security that proof-of-work does.

Federated consensus may have uses but it doesn't solve the Byzantine Generals' Problem and it requires a lot of trust. The point of Bitcoin was to eliminate trust, not to trust an elite group of validators to do the right thing.

Well, I didn't say federated consensus. I said Stellar's federated Byzantine agreement. It's central to the Stellar Consensus Protocol.

https://medium.com/stellar-development-foundation/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949

Or, if you're really ambitious:

https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf

To my knowledge, there has yet to be a significant flaw found in the consensus system of Stellar. And no mining to contribute to global warming.

I guess you can have your cake and eat it, too.

[squatter]

I'm sure he's not ignorant of alternative consensus methods. There just don't exist any yet that can come close to providing the security that proof-of-work does.

Federated consensus may have uses but it doesn't solve the Byzantine Generals' Problem and it requires a lot of trust. The point of Bitcoin was to eliminate trust, not to trust an elite group of validators to do the right thing.

Well, I didn't say federated consensus. I said Stellar's federated Byzantine agreement. It's central to the Stellar Consensus Protocol.

https://medium.com/stellar-development-foundation/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949

Or, if you're really ambitious:

https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf

To my knowledge, there has yet to be a significant flaw found in the consensus system of Stellar. And no mining to contribute to global warming.

I guess you can have your cake and eat it, too.

I'm aware of how Stellar works and I've read through the whitepaper. It definitely uses federated consensus, which implies lots of trust. I think that was one of the original purposes of Ripple/Stellar -- to leverage trust on the blockchain. An interesting concept, but absolutely not worthy of comparing to Bitcoin's security. There's no incentive to be a validator. The choice exists to trust whoever you want, but logically who will users trust and what is the default behavior? It tends towards a hub-and-spoke model where trusted banks, exchanges, and other services dictate the network consensus.

The incentives just aren't strong enough to keep everyone honest. Bitcoin's rational mining incentives are much more reliable.

[rdbase]

Didnt CZ from binance tweet to elon musk last week he doesnt own tesla but would be interested in owning some.
Maybe elon will want to trade some of his stock with CZ for some bitcoin.

[Eildosa]

Yes, this is true. But as noted above, bitcoin does not consume more energy than printing presses. Therefore, there is no problem in my opinion.

[Inosend]

You can't stop people from comparing this coins since they are all cryptocurrencies and people believe someday some how another coin may over take bitcoin

[figmentofmyass]

it has been reported that Bitmain controls over 51%.

got a reliable source for that? cuz the SV/ABC war sort of showed how impotent bitmain is.

not only do they not control half the network, but much of what they do control is probably hosted on behalf of clients. similar to the case of mining pools above, bitmain has much less control than people think. prove otherwise.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitmain-nears-51-network-hash-rate-why-matters-and-why-it-doesnt/

Piecing all this together, it’s easy to see Bitmain’s influence on the network hash rate.
Through the different mining pools it exerts influence over in one way or another, it may have already stepped beyond the 50 percent mark some time ago.

Bitmain does, in fact, control well over half of all hash power on the network directly.

Wear Blinders if you prefer, but the reality is apparent to all that look.
Bitmain has over 51% control, they just smart enough to hide it.

right, so it's just as i thought.

fyi, that article is from over a year ago. the cited pools control ~ 1/3 of the network hash rate: https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools?timespan=4days

so, much less than 51% for starters.

next, bitmain does not control nearly that much hashrate themselves. they just operate the pools. miners will definitely point their hash rate away from antpool, btc.com and viabtc if they start 51% attacking the network:

the number of mining pools doesn't matter nearly as much as the actual distribution of hashpower. miners can point their hashpower away from a malicious pool at a moment's notice. pool operators who endanger the network will quickly fall from favor. remember ghash.io? hardly anyone else does either.....

finally, bitmain runs a business hosting miners for clients. so that's even less hash power they can use to attack the network (because clients will immediately pull the plug)

bitmain had an incredible fall from grace over the last year. their business is imploding with hundreds of millions $$ in losses. even if they had the hash rate (which they don't) they're in no financial position to risk attacking bitcoin lol.

[cellard]

it has been reported that Bitmain controls over 51%.

got a reliable source for that? cuz the SV/ABC war sort of showed how impotent bitmain is.

not only do they not control half the network, but much of what they do control is probably hosted on behalf of clients. similar to the case of mining pools above, bitmain has much less control than people think. prove otherwise.

 
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitmain-nears-51-network-hash-rate-why-matters-and-why-it-doesnt/

Piecing all this together, it’s easy to see Bitmain’s influence on the network hash rate.
Through the different mining pools it exerts influence over in one way or another, it may have already stepped beyond the 50 percent mark some time ago.

Bitmain does, in fact, control well over half of all hash power on the network directly.

Wear Blinders if you prefer, but the reality is apparent to all that look.
Bitmain has over 51% control, they just smart enough to hide it.

That's just a conspiracy. We cannot really know who controls what hashrate wise. What do we know is that Jihan Wu has left the building, he knows Bitmain is in deep trouble. He took the wrong side of the fork, thus ending up in massive losses as he holds heavy bags of BCash. There's talks of the IPO and whatnot, last time I checked it really looks ugly for that company.

This is fantastic news because the way you can view it is just Bitcoin's incentives working as intended: those trying to fork away thinking their hashrate dictates where Bitcoin goes ends up holding some shitcoin and losing real money (that's real Bitcoin).

[superstarbtc]

Elon Musk Statement on cryptocurrencies is a positive sign for crypto investors even we can say this pump happened because of Elon musk statement

[pawanjain]

I would just say that everything good comes at a cost. Bitcoin is definitely a huge thing h\that has happened to us. It changed the life of many including me.
This  has to go on and if energy is the thing that keeps it running then may be we should not mind giving up some for something so good to keep running.
As Antonopolous said, one PoW system is enough in the market and bitcoin should be the one using it.

[NeutralCreep]

Yes, unfortunately cryptocurrency mining is a quite energy-intensive process, but I think that with time everything will change and you can even get cryptocurrency using a phone.

[SiDtHeBeSt]

I agree with Elon musk that the blockchain structure is amazing and also that Bitcoin mining cosmumes a lot of energy as of now. But maybe with time the energy to consumption might reduce quite a lot compared to that of now.

[hulla]

I agree with Elon musk that the blockchain structure is amazing and also that Bitcoin mining cosmumes a lot of energy as of now. But maybe with time the energy to consumption might reduce quite a lot compared to that of now.

I don't really agree with Elon Musk speech about the energy consumption of Bitcoin because i also find out that Bitcoin mining don't consume much energy than money print press but Bitcoin does consume 3x energy which the Visa and MasterCard consume. However, people are overreacting about Bitcoin energy consumption.

[incomefromcoins]

Elon Musk positive comment towards bitcoin will definitely put crypto industry in limelight and more positivity spread towards the market for price pump

[BlueStackz]

He is very right, after all, he quite acknowledged the fact that bitcoin is a brilliant structure but the point he made which is not far from truth is that bitcoin is energy consuming as bitcoin gets more popular and more investor, mining becomes harder and requires sophisticated machines to mine it and these mining engine quite consumes energy but the energy consumption cannot be compare to the benefit of the bitcoin to the economy monetarily.

Moreover, a miner pays for the energy, not as if the energy used is free, it is left for the energy producing company to step up if it’s affecting them which it is not.

[Gabteb]

Not crypto but BTC there is a big difference because now we have hybrid coins with both pow and pos like DeepOnion and with time we will have mostly pos coins and this problem would be solved, BTC was something experimental which succeed but most of alts now have much more good features and others would be created will be better.

[Farul]

I don't really agree with Elon Musk speech about the energy consumption of Bitcoin because i also find out that Bitcoin mining don't consume much energy than money print press but Bitcoin does consume 3x energy which the Visa and MasterCard consume. However, people are overreacting about Bitcoin energy consumption.

Well, Paper Money Was Used By ~7 Billion People
While Bitcoin Only Used By ~10 Million People^[1]
The Money Print Press Only Use ~150%^[2] Of Bitcoin Energy, But It Serve ~6900% More People.

[pushups44]

It's true that bitcoin is energy intensive, so I hope there will be a shift to miners using renewable energy such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power to secure the bitcoin network. I don't think bitcoin should be prohibited simply because it is energy intensive, but again I think we can use energy more intelligently for it.

[squatter]

Moreover, a miner pays for the energy, not as if the energy used is free, it is left for the energy producing company to step up if it’s affecting them

That's definitely an issue. Ideally, miners would buy excess energy at a discount where it's abundant, rather than adding load to a high-demand or low-supply grid. There already exists some natural incentive to promote this: Where electricity is more abundant, prices are cheaper. I think as we see more businesses of scale enter the mining sector, we'll see an ever increasing share of operations moving towards more sustainable situations where they won't threaten power grids or drive prices up.

There's also the likelihood that green energy sources like wind and solar generation will become increasingly efficient and accessible to the market. That will lower the footprint of what miners consume beyond excess supply.