Is bitcoin mining a problem of wasting energy? No

[mk4]

Bitcoin is already centralized, Bitmain just splits their over 51% dominance in multiple pools, so the clueless stay clueless.

So.. AntPool + BTC.com = 51%? Math checks out lmao.

https://i.imgur.com/7YPspb6.png
Source: https://coin.dance/blocks/thisweek

4 players can control the Bitcoin network. That's why any changes in consensus, if they reduce the income of miners, are doomed to failure.

Bitcoin consumes most of the energy from mining all cryptocurrencies. Therefore, a dead end.

1. The 4 mining pools actually needs to coordinate the attack and mutually agree to everything.
2. The attack would work only assuming that the individual miners don't switch off their miners or switch mining pools to prevent the attack.
3. Because the pool owners clearly know that manipulating the chain is going to have a positive effect with the price right? ? ?

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[kryptqnick]

It is a wasting because it could be done with staking, that way the could shouldn't need miners.

Yes, but it could end up making Bitcoin centralized. Think about it. Imagine being a huge exchange with a lot of PoS coins in custody? Solely from being a whale, you automatically have a significant influence over the network. In contrast to PoW whereas you'd actually have to dedicate money to buy hardware.

This is a fair point. PoS is not better at everything, just like the Lightning Network. Moreover, I don't think the attitude of reducing electricity consumption is something we should adopt in general as a strategy to fight global warming. Reducing waste makes sense, but energy consumption seems to be something different. Perhaps it's just because I was influenced by the idea of the Kardashev scale where energy plays a crucial role. I am not a climate skeptic, at the same time, so I think that something should be done. Namely, we should work on clean energy solutions. Some research suggests that mining largely uses clean energy, by the way.

[rdbase]

Was thinking of this the other day: What happens to these miners when all 21 bitcoins have been mined? Will they just stop mining because they will no longer be paid from receiving those block rewards?
The answer is no.
They will still be paid by the miners fee namely the transactions fees which still remain quite high. I watched one video showing how one btc pool receives $500k per block on those fees alone.

[johnyj]

The Money losing Bitcoin running from your basement, will be neither secure or strong.
And a $50 electric radiator would be better at heating your basement.  

Old mining rigs are long ROIed, they still generate coins when they work as a heater, and since most of the electricity that is consumed by mining rigs become heat, if 1/10 of those electricity can become bitcoin, it is still more efficient than a pure heater. And that's why the network will never go down in hash rate, because old mining rigs can still work as a heater

Of course I still think the waste of electricity is huge in POW, I do see benefits of POS, but that model is quite close to company share holder, need to have further discussion about its implication

[Assface16678]

Today one of the things we can do with the use of cryptocurrency and your computer is the mining many people getting mine some bitcoin to their computer and as a reward they can get a bitcoin. Still, there are people does not believe the capability of the mining because they think it is just a waste of time it can be possible because if you don't have enough or capability to mine you will lose your money too because mining is taking a lot of time that your computer is on and that consumption of energy is too large the coin you earned are not enough to pay your bills but if you are in a country with low market price of electricity and you have a good computer to mine you can now make a lot of profit every single day and one of the things you need to do is to maintain your pc to make more efficient earnings.

[elmag398]

I believe this depends on who is doing the job, some people are experts at what they do. besides there are many other ways to earn bitcoin, one may desire to invest them and double profit or even trade them.

[Dildo Shwaggins]

Most of the mining is done through excess energy produced mostly by "green" energy sources. The carbon footprint of Bitcoin is probably a lot lower from what some services provide, as they use the average carbon footprint for the industrial sector. These results are not scientific correct.

[evilgreed]

           Based on what I see so far, it is really a waste of energy. Mining nowadays are not really cost efficient, because instead of earning, it will only boost your energy consumption and at the same time not that really beneficial for the environment. We all know that theres a lot of improvisation needed to build mining rigs and it is also proved that it needs more energy, also don't tell me those equipments doesn't need maintenance?

[conected]

           Based on what I see so far, it is really a waste of energy. Mining nowadays are not really cost efficient, because instead of earning, it will only boost your energy consumption and at the same time not that really beneficial for the environment. We all know that theres a lot of improvisation needed to build mining rigs and it is also proved that it needs more energy, also don't tell me those equipments doesn't need maintenance?

- When they consider this in the role of someone who does not invest in bitcoin mining, we will probably feel this is a waste of energy, environmental pollution and not profitable when the costs of mining are rising too fast but the views of some individuals are unlikely to provide a reasonable answer. Mining bitcoin will waste energy or not, it depends on the benefits we get, complaining about environmental pollution, so many industries are creating worse things, Bitcoin mining is only a negligible part

[apvmoreira]

I can't agree that it is problem of wasting energy. Our problem is what we don't use alternative resources of energy which are eco-friendly.

[isaac_clarke22]

It is a wasting because it could be done with staking, that way the could shouldn't need miners. And i think this is why ETH is moving to PoS.

And it's a waste if the energy cost is bigger than the mined coins...

Sometimes it's just a waste of energy because the thing is the amount of bitcoin that they are mined was just bigger than the electricity bill of the used energy by the bitcoin mining so I say that somehow it is just a waste of energy because there are a lot of kilowatts that is used by but not suitable enough for the bitcoin mining so it is kind of wasting some of our energy especially right now that the electricity supply was not enough to sustain all the needs of the people.

I feel like it also depends on the rigs used by the miners. I read back in the days that people can use ASIC miner rather than using their usual GPU for mining Bitcoin. In terms of consumption energy, I am not sure if in the future we could make renewable energy to power up these mining so that it could at least lessen the usage of electricity, because in some countries that becomes the barrier for people to mine cryptos.

[fiulpro]

You can actually use energy wisely , the renewable sources of energy are not new , people are using them since a long time , it does need a healthy investment at first but at the same time prices of these renewable resources are getting more and more convenient.
It does use a lot of energy , the mining causes a lot of inconvenience for the people, there are people who illegally are doing it and some are even putting up the softwares in computers of cyber cafes just to protect themselves of the hefty price of electricity bill.

[kemoglo]

It is a wasting because it could be done with staking, that way the could shouldn't need miners. And i think this is why ETH is moving to PoS.

And it's a waste if the energy cost is bigger than the mined coins...

Actually I always saw it as "freezing" energy, you can always re-spend it later on and keep it circling, yeah bitcoin uses this much energy as of now but then in the future you can always keep that energy working.

Or maybe I just don't understand the true benefit of PoS

[yohananaomi]

You can actually use energy wisely , the renewable sources of energy are not new , people are using them since a long time , it does need a healthy investment at first but at the same time prices of these renewable resources are getting more and more convenient.
It does use a lot of energy , the mining causes a lot of inconvenience for the people, there are people who illegally are doing it and some are even putting up the softwares in computers of cyber cafes just to protect themselves of the hefty price of electricity bill.

there is no denying that the electrical energy used is huge, big in everything. both of the consumption and the price incurred because electricity costs are very expensive. I strongly agree with the above that to immediately make changes with other resources, even though at the beginning it will cost a fair amount, but for the next trip it will feel very profitable. there is no time to say late for changes as long as the price of electricity will continue to increase in price.

[wozzek23]

It is a wasting because it could be done with staking, that way the could shouldn't need miners. And i think this is why ETH is moving to PoS.

And it's a waste if the energy cost is bigger than the mined coins...

You have a valid point but I always feel that PoS makes richer people more richer and poor gets poorer. The rich can always buy more coins and stake to get more coins and it's similar to gaining interest in money in bank. While in PoW there are a lot of things involved and you can't just mine more because you are rich.

Bitcoin could be mined with a simple GPU in starting and you don't have to buy anything to grab some bitcoins while to grab PoS coins you must buy those coins first and then you can earn interest on that. Plus, PoS gives much more power to someone if they can grab a big amount of coins from the market and loosing the actually meaning of decentralization.

[tbterryboy]

Basically, I was on the opinion that no matter even if energy is wasted still proof-of-work was better than proof-of-stake but after the quantum supremacy was proved by google and I read somewhere that they can mine all the bitcoins in a few minutes actually blew my mind and the is is actually where I believe proof of stake is better because there is no way someone with quantum supremacy can just mine p-o-s coins at all.

I mean we are already wasting so much electricity and resources and now there is a giant in the market who can just mine all the coins in some minutes so I start to feel like p-o-s is much better and while it gives more power to whales but it still is impeccable and there is nothing that can ever alter the mining speed unlike p-o-w coins.

[Ozero]

I see almost no problems with electricity for the extraction of bitcoins. In my opinion, this topic ceases to be relevant in our time, when technologies for the use of alternative sources of electricity production are rapidly developing and improving. Solar panels are now relatively cheap and their production is improving and growing. The sun is an almost eternal source of energy, we just need to learn how to properly use what nature gives us.

[add1ct3dd]

Bitcoin mining is not a waste of energy because of this bitcoin mining we will be able to mine bitcoin and make a supply of for all the world and this is a way of earning money so I can say that it is not a way of wasting energy, perhaps those people who are saying that it is just a way of wasting energy is just like nothing happens but in bitcoin mining people are earning by doing this.

You don't get the actual topic man, the thing is how POS is better than POW and since POS is already a good algorithm why do need need to waste energy to mine POW coins since POS is a simple solution and I do agree that POS has upper hand because no matter what but energy and resources are being wasted in POW indeed.

it could end up making Bitcoin centralized. Think about it. Imagine being a huge exchange with a lot of PoS coins in custody? Solely from being a whale, you automatically have a significant influence over the network. In contrast to PoW whereas you'd actually have to dedicate money to buy hardware.

But, to buy those hardware you need to invest money and like you said if someone grabs a big number of coins they can control the network similarly if someone has a lot of coins they can sell off buy miners and actually be a whale too.

[squatter]

You don't get the actual topic man, the thing is how POS is better than POW and since POS is already a good algorithm why do need need to waste energy to mine POW coins since POS is a simple solution and I do agree that POS has upper hand because no matter what but energy and resources are being wasted in POW indeed.

Bitcoin remains the dominant cryptocurrency for good reason -- POS is widely viewed as insecure. Ethereum has delayed their transition to POS by several years and backtracked to a hybrid POW-POS proposal because of the threats.

But, to buy those hardware you need to invest money and like you said if someone grabs a big number of coins they can control the network similarly if someone has a lot of coins they can sell off buy miners and actually be a whale too.

Aside from cases of pre-mining or insta-mining large stakes, exchanges remain the biggest threat to any sort of POS system:

No need to imagine, it's already been done -- at least with Delegated POS. https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1234522463129800709

Poloniex, Binance and Huobi were caught staking customer STEEM and using it to attack the existing DPOS consensus. They've done a pretty good job of brushing the attack under the rug, but the evidence is rather damning.

POS hasn't been solved yet. It may never be. POW is the best we have, for now and the foreseeable future.

These risks don't exist in Bitcoin.

[coinfinger]

Was thinking of this the other day: What happens to these miners when all 21 bitcoins have been mined? Will they just stop mining because they will no longer be paid from receiving those block rewards?
The answer is no.
They will still be paid by the miners fee namely the transactions fees which still remain quite high. I watched one video showing how one btc pool receives $500k per block on those fees alone.

And respectively the coins price will go up too because the miners are the ones who will actually mine when they get enough value for their miners and hence the overall value of bitcoins will go up indeed. But, I don't think there is a possible way to mine all bitcoins because each halving the reward is cut to half and this will make even harder each time to mine.

Crypto mining requires a lot of energy and if Pos can solve the problem then I believe there is no need to waste resources with Pow coins, I agree BTC is the boss and Pow is fine for it but other new coins should focus on Pos moving forward.