How about a cutoff date for mining

[CistaCista]

We are now at around 90 % of all coins having been mined, and the carbon footprint of mining is currently the size of Argentina's.

Why don't the developers set a cutoff date for when mining is feasible, for example when 95 % of all coins have been mined. It's far enough into the future so that everyone can adapt. The world is not going to watch idly as the last % of bitcoins are being mined with an energy budget larger than Europe's.

[ranochigo]

How are you going to build and lengthen the blockchain without any miners?

If you are talking about switching to POS, it (probably) won't happen. The difficulty helps to balance it out, as the profit margin decreases, mining would be left to those with cheap electricity (probably hydro or other renewable sources) and efficient hardware. Not like electrical usage is really as much of a concern as the media makes it out to be.

[Charles-Tim]

The world is not going to watch idly as the last % of bitcoins are being mined with an energy budget larger than Europe's.

The world is watching as industries are increasing and using electricity which is everyday increasing too, so far the industries are making money and paying for the electricity, then case settled and no one to complain as it is win-towin. If miners mine profitably, and they pay for electricity which will also in a positive feedback increase electricity generation and electricity companies making more money, then case settled. Bitcoin mining as of now only generate more electricity that will be used for mining and others, which means bitcoin mining will make electricity company more productive as they mine and pay for the electricity they are using.

The question should be, will bitcoin mining be profitable? So that miners will be able to pay for electricity. All I know is that bitcoin is a deflationary asset, it would even probably that transaction fee will be enough for miners to mine profitably if all bitcoin are mined.

[vjudeu]

Mining will never be stopped, because a lot of people want mining endlessly. Mining is the whole purpose of existence for a lot of altcoins. For now, it is impossible to mine Bitcoin on CPU and earn one satoshi per day or so. That's one of the reason why some altcoins are created, just to mine them and convert back and forth between Bitcoin and altcoins.

Why don't the developers set a cutoff date for when mining is feasible, for example when 95 % of all coins have been mined.

Because if they do, then miners can just reject the new version. Then, there will be two versions: the original Bitcoin will be as it is today and the new, more eco-friendly Bitcoin will be just another altcoin, that also will be quickly dumped, because each Bitcoin owner will instantly sell this altcoin for Bitcoin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

and the carbon footprint of mining is currently the size of Argentina's.

What is your source for this?

The world is not going to watch idly as the last % of bitcoins are being mined with an energy budget larger than Europe's.

Much worse things than bitcoin mining are done with much more energy consumption than bitcoin mining, and the majority of people don't seem to care.

Regardless, energy consumption is an irrelevant metric. All these headlines about "Bitcoin uses more electricity than *insert nation here*" are completely missing the point, not to mention usually deeply flawed in their calculations. Carbon dioxide production is a far more important metric. It doesn't matter if bitcoin contributes to 10% of the global electricity consumption if all that electricity is from renewable sources. What we do know is the following:

Bitcoin mining uses around three quarters renewable energy, which is 4x higher than the global average.
Bitcoin mining subsidizes the growth and development of renewable energy projects by acting as a buyer of last resort for electricity which would otherwise be wasted.

[NotATether]

and the carbon footprint of mining is currently the size of Argentina's.

What is your source for this?

BBC and a Cambridge research study say that bitcoin mining uses 121 terawatt-hours (that is, 121 billion * 3600 watts) of electricity per hour. Worlddata says that Argentina also uses 121 terawatt-hours in a whole year. I believe that's where OP got this information from.

...Carbon dioxide production is a far more important metric.

 Bitcoin mining makes about 36.95 megatons of carbon dioxide per year, but don't consider the rest of the metrics - the metrics for individual transactions in particular are silly and make no sense. But we are doing much better than even a couple third world countries.


I don't think it would be feasible to stop mining even after all 100% of the coins are generated, because without mining, how will you put transactions into blocks? There will be no blocks found, payments would come screeching to a halt, of course the hashrate will drop and so will Bitcoin's value down to zero without being able to spend any of it.

edit: spelling

[khaled0111]

As NotATether pointed out, even after the last bitcoin is mined and there is no block reward anymore, we will still need miners to include transactions into their blocks and confirm them.
Also, I don't think electricity consumption will pose a problem after few years from now as the difficulity will probably decrease and miners are switching to renewable energy sourses because this is more profitable for them on the long term.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin mining makes about 36.95 megatons of carbon dioxide per year, but don't consider the rest of the metrics - the e-metrics for individual transactions in particular are silly and make no sense.

If you read the text underneath on that site, it says that their calculations are based on the average carbon dioxide production of Chinese electricity generation. As we know from Coinshares Mining Reports, this is not accurate and bitcoin uses much more renewable energy than that.

Even if you assume that number is accurate, it sounds scary but is actually incredibly small on a global scale. 37 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide. Let's put it in to context.

America consumes 12.5 billion kilograms of beef each year. Each kilo of beef produces around 25kg of CO₂, for a total of 312.5 billion kilograms. If ~10% of the US population stopped eating beef, it would offset the entire bitcoin network. We are not talking about global population, and we are not talking about all meat. Just beef in the US. Bitcoin produces the same CO₂ as 10% of one fraction of one sector in one country.

[Charles-Tim]

America consumes 12.5 billion kilograms of beef each year. Each kilo of beef produces around 25kg of CO₂, for a total of 312.5 billion kilograms. If ~10% of the US population stopped eating beef, it would offset the entire bitcoin network. We are not talking about global population, and we are not talking about all meat. Just beef in the US. Bitcoin produces the same CO₂ as 10% of one fraction of one sector in one country.

When it comes to electricity usage, what comes to my mind is that 'is it profitable to use electricity to mine bitcoin and gain'? Obviously yes. That is why counties like China have many miners. In that case, can bitcoin create energy? Obviously yes because miners mine and profit are made which are used to pay power company which will be used to pay workers and enlarge the power company which will lead to more generation of electricity.

People only focus on bitcoin mining and power usage because they believe electricity produces carbon which contribute to global warming, but in this case, there are many companies in the world that consume electricity, there are also many that produces green house gasses. I do not even think electricity production contributes to 30% of green house gasses production, how about deforestation which is also one of the major contributor and automobiles producing green house gasses that are have potent global warming effect. How about big companies making use of crude oil by products that constantly producing green house gasses, and many more.

If bitcoin generates electricity which is true, I think the question should be, what is the percentage contribution of bitcoin mining to production of green house gasses (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons etc) which is causing global warming rather than commenting on the percentage electricity bitcoin uses so far miners mine and generate profit that can be paid to power companies to pay workers and generate more electricity.

[pooya87]

You can't just remove mining, it has to be replaced by something else to serve the same purpose mining is (ensuring immutability of bitcoin blockchain). There is no alternative for it even though many have tried to use different algorithms nothing has yet been able to give the same security level as bitcoin's PoW.
You also have to keep in mind that bitcoin is providing a secure decentralized way of payment globally and is accessible to nearly 8 billion people. The electricity usage is minuscule in comparison.

[20kevin20]

~

I think it's wrong to say that Bitcoin generates electricity. The Bitcoin mining process uses electricity, and any renewable source of electricity miners use is mostly strictly used for the mining. So BTC consumes electricity, but as o_e_l_e_o pointed out, a significant part of miners use renewable sources.

As for the mining part, it's going to be extremely hard to change the algorithm that has been only used and strengthened ever since Bitcoin started to exist. The core functions and principles of Bitcoin are the hardest to change at the moment, especially when Bitcoin's decentralization and security is in a better spot than ever before. Even if a better algorithm is found, it needs testing and so we would probably need an altcoin as a long-term testing ground.