Elon Musk calls crypto “quite energy intensive”

[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

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[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.