Bitcoin is wasting electricity and are harmful to the environment.. Yea right!!!

[Kakmakr]

So, we all know everyone is going on and on about Bitcoin mining wasting lots of electricity and how this is harmful to the environment, but have we ever considered how harmful other payment methods are?

Visa and MasterCard have about 65 million customers <old statistic> and we also have debit cards from Banks and also other payment cards like American Express and Diners Club etc. A lot of these cards are replaced once every year and it is made from material that are very harmful to the environment.

Cards are made of several layers of plastic laminated together. The core is commonly made from a plastic resin known as polyvinyl chloride acetate (PVCA). This resin is mixed with opacifying materials, dyes, and plasticizers to give it the proper appearance and consistency. - Source : http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Credit-Card.html

The average American has 2 to 3 credit cards and there were 304 million Visa credit cards in circulation in the United States and 545 million Visa credit cards in circulation outside of the United States in September 2014. Source : https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/market-share-statistics.php

There are about 189 million Americans adults with at least one credit card.

In Q4 <2014> cards in circulation looked like this :

Citigroup -    109,774,131

JPMorgan - 93,847,656   

Bank of America - 79,822,686
   
Capital One - 63,194,228
   
American Express - 54,900,000

Discover - 43,630,772

Synchrony - 31,030,786
   
Wells Fargo - 24,271,107
   
Barclays Delaware Holdings - 16,156,368
   
U.S. Bancorp - 14,440,681

So, looking at some of the statistics and considering that those cards must be manufactured with the use of electricity and also destroyed and ending up in landfills, then I would say Bitcoin's carbon footprint must be minuscule compared to this industry.

Feel free to add some updated statistics and also a graphical presentation of what those millions of cards would look like, if you had them all together. We would circle the earth a couple of times, if we had all the cards that were manufactured, since it was introduced many years ago.  
   

[franky1]

i wouldnt start going down the road of XXXm slithers of plastic. as the materials used in creating an asic actually outpace credit card plastic

did you know the power cord(to wall socket) alone has more plastic than 5 credit cards
the styrofoam/bubble wrap that the delivery box contains also has more plastic than credit cards
and i havnt even started on the insides of an asic


the main debate about bitcoins environmental wastage is myth busted because most asic farms are set up in area's that have cheap renewable electric generation, meaning low coal/oil/gas electric generation linked to bitcoin

however visa/mastercard's datacentres, wall streets skyscrapers and all those individual bank branches use far more electric

[Kakmakr]

i wouldnt start going down the road of XXXm slithers of plastic. as the materials used in creating an asic actually outpace credit card plastic

did you know the power cord(to wall socket) alone has more plastic than 5 credit cards
the styrofoam/bubble wrap that the delivery box contains also has more plastic than credit cards
and i havnt even started on the insides of an asic


the main debate about bitcoins environmental wastage is myth busted because most asic farms are set up in area's that have cheap renewable electric generation, meaning low coal/oil/gas electric generation linked to bitcoin

however visa/mastercard's datacentres, wall streets skyscrapers and all those individual bank branches use far more electric

Yes, but the purpose of this debate is to open people's eyes to the "hidden" pollution that are not talked about, when they target Bitcoin for their "wasteful" use of electricity and how harmful some aspects of other payment options are to the environment.

We have not even touched on the sourcing of the components/minerals needed to create paper/plastic notes and also metal coins. 

There are more ATM's and card readers out there, than all the ASIC miners ever manufactured and they use a lot more components to manufacture these devices. 

[Herbert2020]

everyone who has ever mentioned "waste of electricity" and "bitcoin" in the same sentence have been trying to attack bitcoin for different purposes. the thing is, the amount of energy used on its own is not an indicating factor about being wasteful or not. it is about why that amount of energy is used and what is given in return.
in case of bitcoin, the purpose which all of those attackers deliberately ignore is to have a unique global payment system that can not be shut down, censored, or controlled. it works 24/7 and literary everyone on the entire planet can use it if they choose to because there is no centralized authority that can prevent them for any arbitrary reason like being from certain country or nonsense like that.
for this valuable service, the amount of electricity used is nothing!

[franky1]

There are more ATM's and card readers out there, than all the ASIC miners ever manufactured and they use a lot more components to manufacture these devices. 

agreed
there are more PC's in banking skyscrappers, bank branches and data centres
more ATM's and merchant card readers

but the plastic credit card itself, isnt a stat thats gonna win the debate in favour of bitcoin

[franky1]

This is what so many people fail to mention. The haters love to focus on the short comings of BTC and avoid looking at how its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. However, I do feel that we can collectively help solve this issue by using energy efficient miners in this regard.

We need to do whatever we can to help save our environment. We need to solve the issues related to the production of cards and the heat generated by miners by adopting more energy efficient solutions. These companies need to learn from companies like Intel.

asic manufacturers are already solving the environment issue. imagine if we were using gpu's.
imagine it.. how many GPU's, motherboards and power supplies would be needed to attain 56terrahash(1 asic)

now imagine 80exahash(80,000,000thash) of gpu hashing is alot of GPU's and electric in comparison to asics.

the whole point of an asic is to be an asic. to concentrate all processing on one single task efficiently. the asic farmers also lase factory space in area's where they have cheap renewable electric. because asic farmers want cost efficiency.

the electric debate has ben myth busted ages ago. electric is not a debate that needs to keep returning because the problem thats been presented has already been solved

[incombit]

This is the upcoming technology for electrical power generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottsnowden/2019/03/12/solar-power-stations-in-space-could-supply-the-world-with-limitless-energy/

So, in the future, electricity consumes at bitcoin generation won't be emitted any harmful constituents to the environment.

[stompix]

Feel free to add some updated statistics and also a graphical presentation of what those millions of cards would look like, if you had them all together. We would circle the earth a couple of times, if we had all the cards that were manufactured, since it was introduced many years ago.  

Actually no!

The circumference of the earth is 40075 km, the card is 8.5 cm, so that would make around 470 millions cards to do one lap.

So, looking at some of the statistics and considering that those cards must be manufactured with the use of electricity and also destroyed and ending up in landfills, then I would say Bitcoin's carbon footprint must be minuscule compared to this industry.

Let's see you're comparing 149 million cards as a starting point with what?
13 million addresses in the chain with a balance of more than 10$? And that is global!
Let's compare the power consumption of all the bank in the world that serve billions with what? 400k transaction a day?

There are more ATM's and card readers out there, than all the ASIC miners ever manufactured and they use a lot more components to manufacture these devices.  

Of course, let's not count bitcoin atms, those are running on unicorns.

agreed
there are more PC's in banking skyscrappers, bank branches and data centres
more ATM's and merchant card readers

Coinbase has a nice office, binance also, so does bitstamp.
Oh wait, do they have servers and datacenters of their own? Oh wait, those run on carebears! Sorry!

[hatshepsut93]

Don't forget the argument which says Bitcoin Electricity could be used for something more useful, while there are more less useful electricity usage in bigger amount such as cooling Pepsi

That's what we really should be comparing Bitcoin's power usage too, because Bitcoin at the current state is nowhere near as efficient as banks. They have billions of clients while Bitcoin's user base is in 7-figure range. It's better to compare Bitcoin to unnecessary luxury, like those cruise liners that create more pollution than millions of cars. Bitcoin's footprint is rather small compared to many other things, and if someone uses it as an argument against Bitcoin, their are either misinformed, or don't argue in good faith because they are strongly biased against Bitcoin in the first place.

[Kakmakr]

Feel free to add some updated statistics and also a graphical presentation of what those millions of cards would look like, if you had them all together. We would circle the earth a couple of times, if we had all the cards that were manufactured, since it was introduced many years ago.  

Actually no!

The circumference of the earth is 40075 km, the card is 8.5 cm, so that would make around 470 millions cards to do one lap.

So, looking at some of the statistics and considering that those cards must be manufactured with the use of electricity and also destroyed and ending up in landfills, then I would say Bitcoin's carbon footprint must be minuscule compared to this industry.

Let's see you're comparing 149 million cards as a starting point with what?
13 million addresses in the chain with a balance of more than 10$? And that is global!
Let's compare the power consumption of all the bank in the world that serve billions with what? 400k transaction a day?

There are more ATM's and card readers out there, than all the ASIC miners ever manufactured and they use a lot more components to manufacture these devices.  

Of course, let's not count bitcoin atms, those are running on unicorns.

agreed
there are more PC's in banking skyscrappers, bank branches and data centres
more ATM's and merchant card readers

Coinbase has a nice office, binance also, so does bitstamp.
Oh wait, do they have servers and datacenters of their own? Oh wait, those run on carebears! Sorry!

You noticed that I gave statistics of 2014, because I have no updated statistics and the statistics was mostly for the US..... so take that with more updated statistics and extrapolate it to a global number with all the cards that has ever been manufactured and then let's travel around the globe with that.  

Ok, let's also subtract the +/- 4,000 bitcoin ATMs <Source : https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-atms-continue-to-spread-across-the-globe/ > from the approximately 3 million ATM units globally and see how strong your argument is.    < Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_teller_machine >  - We not even counting the millions of card readers merchants use globally to read those credit cards.  

There are currently only +/- 130 Bitcoin Exchanges in the World, compared to the 100 000s of Bank branches globally. "The US has slightly less than 8,000 banks/credit unions. For the rest of the world, you could estimate it by averaging 30 banks/credit unions per country, so for 220 countries/territories, that would be 6,600. So one could assume the figure would hover close to 14,600 +/- 1500 banks worldwide."  - <Notice it says Banks, not Bank branches>  

Source : https://www.quora.com/How-many-bitcoin-exchanges-are-there-in-the-world

Source : https://www.quora.com/How-many-banks-are-there-in-the-world-1

Some more interresting statistics :

The Agricultural Bank of China is the world’s largest Bank by a total number of employees, main office situated in Beijing in China and founded in 1951. This Bank has 441,144 employees, it has over 24,000 branches.  

Source : https://www.worldlistmania.com/largest-banks-world/

Let's not compare Bitcoin with it's competition, because there is no argument that they are wasting less energy and contribute less pollution than Bitcoin.  

[TimeBits]

Greed blinds you, you are impacting the planet negatively for your own gains (just like the real miners pouring Mercury into mountains and destroying many natural habits for a bit of gold)

Easy to point fingers at other people doing bad things, instead of admitting the truth about your own flaws.
"making others look bad, does not make you look good" This is not American Politics, this is our EARTH.

So let`s look at bitcoin and now and not point fingers at what we already all agree is a complete waste of power 2x (the $lave money) / (Us the peoples power) "YES IT IS SHIT COMPARED TO BITCOIN THE FIAT IN ALL ASPECTS"

But on with Bitcoin
Bitcoin uses more power than Ireland at the moment and increasing, according to this newer article (granted it`s been pretty stable atm, It will go up more when the price goes up)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/4/20682109/bitcoin-energy-consumption-annual-calculation-cambridge-index-cbeci-country-comparison
more power than Switzerland.

Anyways, even if the power is renewable power *which is great!*, It could be used for something more important like food production, or back up shelter productions for the general public rather doing random math equations.

But the fact is most people do not know: Wind and Solar, in order to create the wind turbine or the solar panels, you actually create more Co2 Emissions than if you were just to burn the traditional fossil fuels, than you will ever get back from creating the parts to make the "renewable energy" In fact you actually escalate the CO2 emissions at a ALARMING RATE.

Look into water, for that is the answer for the next 100 years, it also keeps the sea levels in check, When I was 13 I had my lawn mower running on water, by splitting the atoms of h20 and burning clean hydrogen which left extra oxygen in the atmosphere which we will need to terraform mars.  

So you make more oxygen, You keep sea levels in check, and you don`t create on CO2 emissions splitting the atoms of h20 like when building the solar panels or wind turbines. It is a triple win.

No I don`t think fiat is better, I know it is worse 100x, but I can still see that using more power than Ireland or Switzerland to "secure" a network, when there is other algorithms now that can do the same thing and do what the bitcoin does on a phone or two.

So it`s not a sarcastic "Yea right!!!"
It is right.   Bitcoin is wasting electricity and is harmful to the environment

I know you don`t want to admit it, I don`t want to either, I love bitcoin but
That is the truth.

This man knew it 10 years ago https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1153096538\
Life Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine https://youtu.be/K8kua5B5K3I?t=285 "The rest can only be used as treated as waste material" Hazardous waste material.

[stompix]

Let's not compare Bitcoin with it's competition, because there is no argument that they are wasting less energy and contribute less pollution than Bitcoin. 

No, actually let's compare it, let's not be mindless zealots that would sacrifice our own daughters if Satoshi would come back and say so.

You're comparing the whole banking section that serves billions with the current network.

But let's compare the bitcoin network with something its own size, it consumes more power than Austria, more than 8 million people doing shopping watching tv playing games runnign air conditioners and making millions of transactions a day. It consumes more power than 8 million need to live just so 400k can transact a day and 13 million can have their coin safe.

If you want to compare it to the whole banking sector of the world do it when it will reach that size and the same user amount, and by that time a coin would probably be 1 million $ and miners would spend more than 100 times what they do now.

There must be something that can be done to fix POW, not POS (I hate that system) but it's clear that there room for improvement and something must be done.
I do understand this f** energy is spent with a purpose, but at some point, you have to wonder if it's really necessary to put 100inch steel doors worth 20 millions$ to protect a cookie jar.

[Kakmakr]

Greed blinds you, you are impacting the planet negatively for your own gains (just like the real miners pouring Mercury into mountains and destroying many natural habits for a bit of gold)

Easy to point fingers at other people doing bad things, instead of admitting the truth about your own flaws.
"making others look bad, does not make you look good" This is not American Politics, this is our EARTH.

So let`s look at bitcoin and now and not point fingers at what we already all agree is a complete waste of power 2x (the $lave money) / (Us the peoples power) "YES IT IS SHIT COMPARED TO BITCOIN THE FIAT IN ALL ASPECTS"

But on with Bitcoin
Bitcoin uses more power than Ireland at the moment and increasing, according to this newer article (granted it`s been pretty stable atm, It will go up more when the price goes up)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/4/20682109/bitcoin-energy-consumption-annual-calculation-cambridge-index-cbeci-country-comparison
more power than Switzerland.

Anyways, even if the power is renewable power *which is great!*, It could be used for something more important like food production, or back up shelter productions for the general public rather doing random math equations.

But the fact is most people do not know: Wind and Solar, in order to create the wind turbine or the solar panels, you actually create more Co2 Emissions than if you were just to burn the traditional fossil fuels, than you will ever get back from creating the parts to make the "renewable energy" In fact you actually escalate the CO2 emissions at a ALARMING RATE.

Look into water, for that is the answer for the next 100 years, it also keeps the sea levels in check, When I was 13 I had my lawn mower running on water, by splitting the atoms of h20 and burning clean hydrogen which left extra oxygen in the atmosphere which we will need to terraform mars.  

So you make more oxygen, You keep sea levels in check, and you don`t create on CO2 emissions splitting the atoms of h20 like when building the solar panels or wind turbines. It is a triple win.

No I don`t think fiat is better, I know it is worse 100x, but I can still see that using more power than Ireland or Switzerland to "secure" a network, when there is other algorithms now that can do the same thing and do what the bitcoin does on a phone or two.

So it`s not a sarcastic "Yea right!!!"
It is right.   Bitcoin is wasting electricity and is harmful to the environment

I know you don`t want to admit it, I don`t want to either, I love bitcoin but
That is the truth.

This man knew it 10 years ago https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1153096538\
Life Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine https://youtu.be/K8kua5B5K3I?t=285 "The rest can only be used as treated as waste material" Hazardous waste material.

People have already debunked the popular myth that Bitcoin is using more power than Ireland and there is a detailed explanation and debate on this forum about that. <I will look for the thread and then quote it here.>    - https://news.bitcoin.com/mainstream-media-claims-bitcoin-burns-more-energy-than-ireland-does-it/

It is good that you mentioned "water" in your argument, because I mentioned this ...." The Agricultural Bank of China is the world’s largest Bank by a total number of employees, main office situated in Beijing in China and founded in 1951. This Bank has 441,144 employees, it has over 24,000 branches." Source : https://www.worldlistmania.com/largest-banks-world/ in a previous post and you can think how much water is used by 441,144 employees on a daily basis. <Dig deeper into the source for more astonishing statistics>  

Most Bitcoin mining farms do not have more than 10 people working on site. 

[Slow death]

Technology is evolving and what we have to do is seek to improve mining, look for a way to continue being decentralized, but without consuming too much electricity and polluting the environment. We can't make comparisons with others. we have to improve ourselves. In my country the cost of electricity is very high, imagine if the cost of electricity was ever too high in all country? What will mining look like? these are things that we have to think about improving in the future

[sureshverma]

The Internet also spends electricity, but you continue to use it

[Khaos77]

Yes , Bitcoin is wasting electricity.

Bitcoin is raising electricity rates for people on the same power grid,
that have absolutely nothing to fucking do with bitcoin.

Bitcoin is drawing electricity at an ever increasing rate, due to the winner take all failure in design of Proof of work.

All other financial institutions draw power at a fairly stable rate , considering it taken them over 100 years to reach there current power drain.

Bitcoin current draw would be acceptable if it was stopping here or only growing at less than 5% per year.
It is growing much faster than that and for what a pathetic less than 2 million onchain transactions per day.

The whole point to the energy waste is the high amount used is supposed to secure the network.
That myth is busted , since miners foolishly give a mere 4 mining pool operators over 51% control on a daily basis,
meaning no matter how much energy wasted , you're trusting 4 guys not to collude and bring the whole bitcoin network crashing down.

The facts are,  I can run a PoS network with each node using less electricity than an xbox.
That PoS network can easily exceed 10 million onchain transactions per day,
As long as their are 12 majority stakers, then it is 3X more secure than bitcoin,
it won't raise electricity rates on people having nothing to do with it,
it is not detectable by energy usage,
it can be run off of laptops,
it can change locations everyday.

Want to pretend like bitcoin energy waste is ok,
your delusion , enjoy yourself,
but it's causing miners to go bankrupt,
security danger increasing because you can't hide that power drain of a warehouse full of asics,
neighbors will complain to the utility as bitcoin raises their own electricity rates,
as bitcoin rewards end, transactions fees will have to grow exponentially trying to keep up.

Just because the black smoke coming from your car's tailpipe does not bother you,
don't think you're not pissing off the person behind you.
And it is only a matter of time before they do something about it.
  
 

 

[franky1]

powr consumption is easy to estimate

75exahash

antminer s17pro = 56terra 2.5kw
antminer s9 = 14terra 1.4kw

75,000,000terrahash / 56=1,339,286 s17pro asics online
75,000,000terrahash / 14=5,357,143 s9 asics online

1.3m s17 * 2.5=3,375,000kwh
3.3gwh *24*365=29565000000kwh/year
29.565twh/year

5.3m s9 * 1.4=7,500,000kwh
7.5ghw *24*365=65,700,000,000kwh/year
65.7twh/year

so between the most efficient current range and what is deemed the least efficient the electric use is between 29.5-65.7
but here is the snag..
the asics have not been hashing away at a constant 75exahash network rate for the last 365 days. so infact the electric usage would be lower as the hashrate has been lower before todays stats


seems university of cambridge wants to stick with the least efficient asics and using the highest hashrate as a constant
when they say it compares to switzerland

however the most efficient asics have been out for months hashrates have ben lower so ill stick to a tw/y of ~30 rather than ~60

[Khaos77]

however the most efficient asics have been out for months hashrates have ben lower so ill stick to a tw/y of ~30 rather and ~60

The fact that most ASICS lifespan is less than 2 years before they are just paperweights ,
is also an incredibly wasteful event.  

Ignoring flesh eating disease or bitcoin energy waste, in time they both consume the host.
 

FYI: https://www.inverse.com/article/57389-bitcoin-mining-s-incredible-energy-waste-has-been-captured-in-new-research

While the global banking industry used 650 terawatt-hours per year to process transactions,
de Vries noted that it ultimately used 0.4 kilowatt-hours per transaction.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, used 491 to 765 kilowatt-hours per transaction.

Banks .4 kilowatt per transaction
verses
Bitcoin 491 to 765 kilowatt per transaction
(Proof of Waste)

[franky1]

Yes , Bitcoin is wasting electricity.

Bitcoin is raising electricity rates for people on the same power grid,
that have absolutely nothing to fucking do with bitcoin.

1. making bitcoin go to PoS is like making gold become available in everyons backyard as long as they have a spoon and a coffee filter.
imagine if gold could be mined for free.. the value of gold would drop. dont you realise yet the reason bitcoin/gold is so highly priced is because its expensive to attain.

2. mining farms do not even consume electric from the same 'consumer market' as residents. infact power grids make excess electric to cover occasional power demand spikes. and its this excess that usually goes to waste and unpaid, which mining farms do contracts for.
if you didnt realise power grids have multiple markets. residential, industrial and others. so please understand the bitcoin mining does not even touch the residential market.

3. i think all those crying about bitcoin mining costs are those lonely hobbyists that have just 1 or 2 asics and are not 'getting rich' purely because they have to pay thir parents/landlords electric bill. i think its these hobbyists that should find their own efficiencies rather than blaming the entire bitcoin mining community.
yes i get it, hobbyists want PoS so that they can 'get rich' without any costs.. we all understand it. but sorry bitcoin aint free

The fact that most ASICS lifespan is less than 2 years before they are just paperweights ,
is also an incredibly wasteful event. 

the fact that mist asic miners make profit if they are smart enough to be efficient. means they made returns on initial investment by using what you describe as the eventual bitcoin paperweight.. and then
yep and then.. they sell the bitcoin paperweight for less than its purchase price to the altcoin community o they can use it as altcoin miners. thus getting even more return on original investment

[franky1]

Banks .4 kilowatt per transaction
verses
Bitcoin 491 to 765 kilowatt per transaction
(Proof of Waste)

must you forget a few things
1. bank transactions are only part of the overal flow of fiat. think about it.
people that use applepay(users own phone uses battery) which communicates to
applepays datacentre(uses electric) which then communicates its transaction to
visa/mastercards datacentre(uses electric) which then.. yep then communicates to
banks

2. a bitcoin transaction can contain many outputs (many destination/payments)