Development for Bitcoin to reduce CO2 footprint

[konfuzius5278]

I know it has been discussed often with many hardliners on both sides about the energegy consumption of Bitcoin and its CO2 footprint.
For my opinion as crypto technical forward payment option we should not close the eyes to it when many people try to lower their CO2 footprint to do the same.
For my start i use the data of https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption to say that BTC needs minimum of 38 TWh up to 63 TWh a year with an annual footprint of 30216 kt CO2 (!!!) Everyone can expect what this means.

So my question is: Should DEV-team focus on a enviromental friendly main bitcoin fork? We have big knowlege in that team so we possible have a secure solution. Can be POS but need not to be.

And we should have in mind that Bitcoin itself is still not a payment system. It needs off chain ideas like lightning network to pay your food with bitcoin at a supermarket.

Some standart argues for POW hardliners I like to say something in the beginning:
1) We can use green power for mining
Green power is an illusion. Even windmills or dams pollute the enviroment

2) Any other consensus algo makes centralisation
Bitcoin is central already with 4 mining pools get all the blocks with mainly global players like Bitmain

3) We will have new hardware for more easy mining
Ok. And the old ones are trash? Even bad for enviroment. And this will continue

4) Algos like POS makes the richer more rich
Now the people who can buy big miner farm get richer. And even when not, maybe its a bad pill we have to take

5) The banks consume energy, why we should not
Pointing with fingers on others is like in kindergarden

Maybe I forget somethink. But again I think we should wake up and do somethink. Whats your opinion.

[bitmover]

Old subject...

Pos was not tested in a big network such as bitcoin. Not even ethereum tried it yet. And bitcoin must be more conservative, as a change in the algorithm could cause lots of unexpected problems. Let other shitcoins try first...

Peer coin and other cryptocurrencies which tried are very small and barely used..

Also, pow is working fine. Why people care so much about bitcoin energy consumption to secure the network?

How much does the whole banking system consumes? How much energy does christimas lights worldwide consume?
Bitcoin energy consumption is necessary, as it keeps the network safe and secure against attacks. We should focus in reducing energy costs in less important activities, such as christimas or old lamps with high energy consumption

[franky1]

its obvious your a PoS fan. but PoS has no upfront cost to create new coin. thus most of the PoS fans real motivations are purely to grab coin without upfront costs. rather than some environmental desire.

but lets deal with the stats first.
right now hashrate is 55exahash. and with asics at upto 55 terrahash. thats 1mill asics of T17 at max capacity 55thash
 1mill using 2.5kw = 2.5gw/h
now imagining if all them asics were running non stop for a year and the hashrate stayed the same for that year
thats 22tw/year. but hashrates declined in winter 2018 so the tw/y would be lower
lets do the same for older gen asics. the s9 at14thash and 1.3kw
4mill units with 51gw/h = 44tw/y
and as i said hashrates were lower so tw/y would be lower than 44tw/y
so the whole 38-63 stat is actually more so UNDER 22-44tw/y

anyways

1 asic today is the equivalent of 30,000 GPU so because we are not using ~30billion GPU' the environment has already benefited
think about it power wise a motherboard with 3GPU and a PSU of 600w .. 10billion systems
which at 600w compared to an asics 2.5kw =~2.5 billion asics PSU's..
but the reality is more so 1-4mill asic PSU's so efficiency has already occured. and continue

secondly
your 5 points at the end.
1. anyone can turn anything into sounding like a environmental disaster. even vegans make animals look bad for the environment

2. firstly hashing a block and using electric has nothing to do with consensus. asics have no hard drives to validate transaction rules
secondly theres more than 4 pools.

3. many people sell old hardware to altcoiners

4. PoS is already centralising. many people are syndicating their take(pooling it) to get higher threasholds to get more reward chances

5. not so much pointing fingers at other worse currencies, such as the massive quarries/holes dug in ground for gold. but more some comparison that bitcoin is not as bad as others. did you know more electric is wasted to keep pepsi bottles chilled per year

[konfuzius5278]

Old subject...

Pos was not tested in a big network such as bitcoin. Not even ethereum tried it yet. And bitcoin must be more conservative, as a change in the algorithm could cause lots of unexpected problems. Let other shitcoins try first...

Peer coin and other cryptocurrencies which tried are very small and barely used..

Also, pow is working fine. Why people care so much about bitcoin energy consumption to secure the network?

How much does the whole banking system consumes? How much energy does christimas lights worldwide consume?
Bitcoin energy consumption is necessary, as it keeps the network safe and secure against attacks. We should focus in reducing energy costs in less important activities, such as christimas or old lamps with high energy consumption

Yes its old topic but for my opinion need to be discussed until solution

Its again pointing with finger on others about chrismas lights and so on. By the way normal lamps in europe are forbidden, only energy saving lamps allowed.

You could run big testnet, need not to be from one day to another to see if the algo (i said need not be POS) works. And there are coins working good with POS.

But there need to be the will of changes. And you see its not there....

[konfuzius5278]

its obvious your a PoS fan. but PoS has no upfront cost to create new coin. thus most of the PoS fans real motivations are purely to grab coin without upfront costs. rather than some environmental desire.

but lets deal with the stats first.
right now hashrate is 55exahash. and with asics at upto 55 terrahash. thats 1mill asics of T17 at max capacity 55thash
 1mill using 2.5kw = 2.5gw/h
now imagining if all them asics were running non stop for a year and the hashrate stayed the same for that year
thats 22tw/year. but hashrates declined in winter 2018 so the tw/y would be lower
lets do the same for older gen asics. the s9 at14thash and 1.3kw
4mill units with 51gw/h = 44tw/y
and as i said hashrates were lower so tw/y would be lower than 44tw/y
so the whole 38-63 stat is actually more so UNDER 22-44tw/y

anyways

1 asic today is the equivalent of 30,000 GPU so because we are not using ~30billion GPU' the environment has already benefited
think about it power wise a motherboard with 3GPU and a PSU of 600w .. 10billion systems
which at 600w compared to an asics 2.5kw =~2.5 billion asics PSU's..
but the reality is more so 1-4mill asic PSU's so efficiency has already occured. and continue

secondly
your 5 points at the end.
1. anyone can turn anything into sounding like a environmental disaster. even vegans make animals look bad for the environment

2. firstly hashing a block and using electric has nothing to do with consensus. asics have no hard drives to validate transaction rules
secondly theres more than 4 pools.

3. many people sell old hardware to altcoiners

4. PoS is already centralising. many people are syndicating their take(pooling it) to get higher threasholds to get more reward chances

5. not so much pointing fingers at other worse currencies, such as the massive quarries/holes dug in ground for gold. but more some comparison that bitcoin is not as bad as others. did you know more electric is wasted to keep pepsi bottles chilled per year

Yes I am POS fan, but not in all kinds. Maybe the good bitcoin developer have a complete other idea

HASH rate rises with ASIC and every new ASIC. But we dont save energeny with that

1) I dont say you dont need energy to run the system, but should be less as possible.

2) BTC. com says last 24 hours pool statistik correct 6 pools run more then 70% of network https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=day

3) how many actual altcoins where is reasonable to run with old Antiminer with sha256 you know?

4) Yes ok, you can pooling your POS chance? What is wrong?

5) Still we say in germany "Look your own nose first before ruling others"

Is there nobody here say: team of btc DEV should work on a solution?

[franky1]

HASH rate rises with ASIC and every new ASIC. But we dont save energeny with that

old S9 work out as ~100w for 1thash
new T17 work out as ~50w for 1thash

also many mining farms facilities set up their warehouses in regions where hydro/thermal/solar/wind is available. which is a co₂ saving

1) I dont say you dont need energy to run the system, but should be less as possible.

compared to the GPU mining 55exahash via ASICS uses 1000x less power
should we go back to GPU mining?.. or be happy the network is less than 40pw/y instead of 40pw/y

2) BTC. com says last 24 hours pool statistik correct 6 pools run more then 70% of network https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=day

first you said 4, then 6, but the pie chart shows 12, and also those 12 are not 12 facilities but hundreds
they are just grouped together for easy display. even antpool as one 'entity' have multiple facilities where each facility
has their own management, some like segwit, some dont, some like empty blocks, some dont.

3) how many actual altcoins where is reasonable to run with old Antiminer with sha256 you know?

with bitcoin at $9k a coin miners can afford to buy new asics at $1500+
with crapcoins no one will spend $1500+ on a new asic when they can a second hand buy an s9 for $100
what do you think happened when new gen of asics was released winter 18. crapcoins like bitcoinSV bought the s9's

4) Yes ok, you can pooling your POS chance? What is wrong?

what is wrong with pooling asics..
same answer applies to both (the pool/syndicate/club/group get more chances and more wins)
it was you that was trying to insinuate that pooling was bad and only had only had 4 pools

5) Still we say in germany "Look your own nose first before ruling others"

its not about pointing fingers in other directions. its recognising the bitcoin network has made efficiency savings, and simply showing the energy us of bitcoin is not as bad as other industries

Is there nobody here say: team of btc DEV should work on a solution?

no matter what DEVs come up with, users will find work arounds.
EG imagine dev's implemented that no pool can go over 8% of hashrate or more simply a pool cannot make 2 blocks in a row
pools will just proxy their IP's and make it look like their pools are more than 1 pool
if devs changed it to PoC (hard drive sizes) people will just fill warehouses with thousands of external hard drives all needing electric, eventually exceeding electric of GPU which is then less efficient than ASICS

in short if a currency is popular/useful people will find a way around it to get greedy

[NeuroticFish]

Is there nobody here say: team of btc DEV should work on a solution?

I'll keep it simple: no, nobody will say that devs have to work on a solution. Why? Because there's not a problem.
Bitcoin has more urgent problems to be fixed and they are working on that direction.

Energy use, CO₂ footprint... those are issues for which you should not be ask the consumer to handle (you won't get useful results).
Why don't you ask Las Vegas stop wasting electricity? Why don't you convince USA or China stop the coal based industries?
Bitcoin mining goes mostly of hidro and solar electricity. And this makes it much cleaner than some wants to make you believe.
So back to the start. It's not an issue, so no solution is needed. At least not yet.

[konfuzius5278]

Is there nobody here say: team of btc DEV should work on a solution?

I'll keep it simple: no, nobody will say that devs have to work on a solution. Why? Because there's not a problem.
Bitcoin has more urgent problems to be fixed and they are working on that direction.

Energy use, CO₂ footprint... those are issues for which you should not be ask the consumer to handle (you won't get useful results).
Why don't you ask Las Vegas stop wasting electricity? Why don't you convince USA or China stop the coal based industries?
Bitcoin mining goes mostly of hidro and solar electricity. And this makes it much cleaner than some wants to make you believe.
So back to the start. It's not an issue, so no solution is needed. At least not yet.

They all say bitcoin community run the coin. Its property of no one. And as member of community its not wrong to make it better or make suggestion.
And even if I am customer I want improvement. Not waiting 3 hours for TX because no block found..... but thats not my actual topic.

[konfuzius5278]

HASH rate rises with ASIC and every new ASIC. But we dont save energeny with that

old S9 work out as ~100w for 1thash
new T17 work out as ~50w for 1thash

also many mining farms facilities set up their warehouses in regions where hydro/thermal/solar/wind is available. which is a co₂ saving

1) I dont say you dont need energy to run the system, but should be less as possible.

compared to the GPU mining 55exahash via ASICS uses 1000x less power
should we go back to GPU mining?.. or be happy the network is less than 40pw/y instead of 40pw/y

2) BTC. com says last 24 hours pool statistik correct 6 pools run more then 70% of network https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=day

first you said 4, then 6, but the pie chart shows 12, and also those 12 are not 12 facilities but hundreds
they are just grouped together for easy display. even antpool as one 'entity' have multiple facilities where each facility
has their own management, some like segwit, some dont, some like empty blocks, some dont.

3) how many actual altcoins where is reasonable to run with old Antiminer with sha256 you know?

with bitcoin at $9k a coin miners can afford to buy new asics at $1500+
with crapcoins no one will spend $1500+ on a new asic when they can a second hand buy an s9 for $100
what do you think happened when new gen of asics was released winter 18. crapcoins like bitcoinSV bought the s9's

4) Yes ok, you can pooling your POS chance? What is wrong?

what is wrong with pooling asics..
same answer applies to both (the pool/syndicate/club/group get more chances and more wins)
it was you that was trying to insinuate that pooling was bad and only had only had 4 pools

5) Still we say in germany "Look your own nose first before ruling others"

its not about pointing fingers in other directions. its recognising the bitcoin network has made efficiency savings, and simply showing the energy us of bitcoin is not as bad as other industries

Is there nobody here say: team of btc DEV should work on a solution?

no matter what DEVs come up with, users will find work arounds.
EG imagine dev's implemented that no pool can go over 8% of hashrate or more simply a pool cannot make 2 blocks in a row
pools will just proxy their IP's and make it look like their pools are more than 1 pool
if devs changed it to PoC (hard drive sizes) people will just fill warehouses with thousands of external hard drives all needing electric, eventually exceeding electric of GPU which is then less efficient than ASICS

in short if a currency is popular/useful people will find a way around it to get greedy

1) it keeps the same. The HASH rate rising does not save energengy. And it makes the network not more safe because all people have acess to same miners

2) You want to turn my argument against me. No problem. Lets centralise some more and save energy. You can no really mean BTC is decentral at its current mining market.

3) No one will spend any Dollar for buy ASIC for crapcoin. If i really want to mine it, I rent some HASH rate thats much cheaper

4) see point 2

We have 17 Mio of 21 already mined. A really comfortable situation for e.g. POS. Let the big player get their blocks. And let the wourld know we are able for changes

[odolvlobo]

The efficiency of the mining equipment is irrelevant. Miners with efficient equipment will increase their capacity. Whether miners are efficient or not, they will consume as much energy as they can in order to maximize profits.

Here are some ways to reduce the carbon footprint of mining:

1. Reduce the amount of fossil fuels used in power generation.
2. Increase the cost of energy.
3. Reduce the value of the mining revenue. Note that the halving reduces the revenue by almost half every 4 years.
4. Switch to an algorithm that does not depend on consuming energy.

[mda]

I would add proper scaling to the solutions from above.
With tens of thousands transactions per second CO2 footprint will have a practical application unlike ~5 transactions per second that are used now mainly for speculation.

[franky1]

this topic is about developing bitcoin to reduce CO₂
which is basically point 1

1) it keeps the same. The HASH rate rising does not save energengy. And it makes the network not more safe because all people have acess to same miners

again yes the hashrate rises
under the assumption that where something rises. the cost/effect rises. there would be no way for it to decrease, but only to be controlled/reduced how much the impact/cost grows alongside the rise

now lets go back in history. back to mid 2013
hashrate of say 200thash for the network. now imagine without asics, the network continued to get popular from people buying up GPU.. yep thats right ASICS never happened(OMG i changed time)..
imagine the exponential growth of hashrate still occured but stayed with GPU technology to achieve it
ok? got that image in your head?... now fast forward to 2019.
we are at 55exahash but warehouses are GPU filled

the heat alone in these warehouses is far higher
the electric is 40PETAwatts/year
the amount of units(equipment) are about 10billion GPU
imagine the raw material needed to manufacture the gpu's
imagine that with 10billion units and 40petawatt/y the warehouses cant all fit in regions where hydro/thermo/solar plants exist

...
now delete that time line we imagined. and look at the real timeline we do live on
only a couple million not 10billion units which means less raw material to manufacture products (good for CO₂)
only 40terrawatt not 40petawatt  (good for CO₂)
less ware houses, less energy so able to function in regions of hydro/thermal plants  (good for CO₂)

[konfuzius5278]

I understand your argument and I would say its 50% right. Of course the ASIC energy consumption is less per TH.
But the HASH rate would never grown that much without ASIC the problems you say would people stop doing it this way.
So again if new Antminer come up or not for me there is no save of energy because simple the HASH rate will rise.

[_Django05_]

I know it has been discussed often with many hardliners on both sides about the energy consumption of Bitcoin and its CO2 footprint.
For my opinion as crypto technical forward payment option we should not close the eyes to it when many people try to lower their CO2 footprint to do the same.

This is an old topic but for the sake of the argument i'll leave it here.

Changing the Bitcoin code
Some altcoins have already done this to avoid the race for computing power by miners. This eliminates the need for dedicated high-speed mining equipment.

Hardware
ASIC miners use less power to generate more coins

Buying carbon credits
It is designed to underpin renewable energy credits, meaning that when you trade them, you’re supporting a market that rewards the production of solar energy.

Buying green power
Most jurisdictions offer ways to purchase power from alternative energy suppliers. Alternatively, you can buy renewable energy certificates or their equivalents, which are tradable certificates rewarding producers of renewable energy.

You can look at it here.

[konfuzius5278]

Aside from whether PoS is better than PoW in terms of environmental, security or decentralization, the fact is Bitcoin community most likely won't agree with big changes.
Even block size increase, SegWit and LN which are "less controversial" have hard time accepted by the community.

And this may result in a big problem for BTC later. For technical reasons (payment ?!) and also my main topic:
Think of new "green" european parlament says: POW Crypto use are forbidden in europe.
They stop normal lamps for energy saving, even vacuum cleaner are not allowed to sell with more then 1000 W because of energy consumption.
They stop much plastic one use material starting 2020
And that was made under mainly conservative leading parlament ....

[HeRetiK]

Disclaimer: I'm a PoW hardliner who's not convinced of PoS and its derivatives (at least those that I'm aware of)

I'm under the impression that whenever the power consumption of PoW gets brought up that one factor is largely ignored: Grid energy storage.

Maybe the hard facts will betray me once a comprehensive studies comes out (so far most studies I found regarding the power usage of PoW were on shaky grounds at best, link me up if you have something interesting), however so far I'm under the impression that economic forces lead to PoW mining using energy that mostly goes beyond what can be stored in the power grid and would therefore get wasted for the most part.

That is, based on the assumptions that
1) miners are driven towards places with the lowest energy cost,
2) energy is the cheapest where there's a surplus of electricity and
3) current energy storage capabilities are very much lacking
we can come to the conclusion that the additional power consumed by miners is energy that is otherwise wasted. Unlike consumers and most industries that have other economic factors at play (eg. you can only drill for oil where there is oil, you can only produce commodities where resources are either nearby or cheaply delivered) electricity is almost the sole concern for mining operations.

But like I said, the hard facts may betray me, so hopefully at one point a proper study will take place proving the above either false or correct. Also I'm neither an economist nor a grid engineer, so for all I know my assumptions could be utterly void.

That being said, I would very much love to see an increase of Bitcoin's transaction throughput as to make it actually feasible to phase out some of the legacy banking system in favor of cryptocurrencies (ie. IMHO Bitcoin's PoW wouldn't feel like that much of a waste if it were to successfully supersede parts of the existing system rather than running redundantly alongside it).

[konfuzius5278]

Interesting point to say maybe the electrical power would be wasted when not used by bitcoin.
And as I said before you also point out its not a working payment system at the moment.

So for place with much coal energy power its wrong because you could simply reduce input and output regarding to demand.
For green power can be some right because e.g. windmill produce power even when not needed. Thats big problem normally because you have to backup it when there is no wind 

So lets make an agreement that 30% would be wasted. Its still 20000 kt of CO2 extra. And for the people say the conclusion of Hash Rate and power consumtion is wrong i give another 30%. Still there are more then 12000 kt = 12000000 tons of CO2 extra for bitcoin.

Guys you really can affort this with your conscience.

By the way I wait 3 hours meanwhile for a TX I gave 12000 sat/kb. Cheap TX in Bitcoin mainnet is past again.....

[franky1]

I'm under the impression that whenever the power consumption of PoW gets brought up that one factor is largely ignored: Grid energy storage.

power plants produce more than they consume ON PRPOSE to prevent brown outs/black outs during sudden surges of power utility.

EG they know at superbowl halftime, alot of people microwave some popcorn or make coffee or turn on a houselight to go to the bathroom.. this means there are known times of power utility growth. but not enough time to just flick on an extra generator at a seconds notice. and so power plants process excess power to cop with known and also some unknown scenarios

imagine power plants produce an excess of 15-20% above consumption. because its impossible to give power after its needed. but also its impossible to take the power back if its unused. and so this 15-20% excess is essentially 'waste' electric.

mining farms dont buy the domestic allowance power (normal consumption) instead they make year long deals/contracts that they will buy 1-10% of the excess. which power stations love. after all it would have gone to waste anyway

also although "china" as a country does have coal power plants. asic farms decided to set up in regions not near to coal power plants and in regions of hydro/solar/geothermal. so the CO₂ numbers are way lower than what you may think.

[Flyingduck2K]

I'm under the impression that whenever the power consumption of PoW gets brought up that one factor is largely ignored: Grid energy storage.

power plants produce more than they consume ON PRPOSE to prevent brown outs/black outs during sudden surges of power utility.

EG they know at superbowl halftime, alot of people microwave some popcorn or make coffee or turn on a houselight to go to the bathroom.. this means there are known times of power utility growth. but not enough time to just flick on an extra generator at a seconds notice. and so power plants process excess power to cop with known and also some unknown scenarios

imagine power plants produce an excess of 15-20% above consumption. because its impossible to give power after its needed. but also its impossible to take the power back if its unused. and so this 15-20% excess is essentially 'waste' electric.

mining farms dont buy the domestic allowance power (normal consumption) instead they make year long deals/contracts that they will buy 1-10% of the excess. which power stations love. after all it would have gone to waste anyway

also although "china" as a country does have coal power plants. asic farms decided to set up in regions not near to coal power plants and in regions of hydro/solar/geothermal. so the CO₂ numbers are way lower than what you may think.

those are actually pretty interesting facts. thanks for sharing!

I've heard that googling something requires the same ammount of heating water for tee 3 times.

[franky1]

I've heard that googling something requires the same ammount of heating water for tee 3 times.

average kettle is 1200watt/h = 20watt a minute
average gaming computer 600watt/h = 10watt a minute

if a kettle takes 1 minute to boil (depending on how much water your boiling) you would have to google for 6 minutes to match