affect whether Bitcoin mining on ecology?

[henryjames1003]

I found somewhere idea that Bitcoin mining can affect on ecology. the greater btc's spread - the greater the influence of bitcoin system on ecology. Does someone calculate cumulative kW of all Bitcoin miners? it can become a serious threat in the future. am i right?

[franky1]

I found somewhere idea that Bitcoin mining can affect on ecology. the greater btc's spread - the greater the influence of bitcoin system on ecology. Does someone calculate cumulative kW of all Bitcoin miners? it can become a serious threat in the future. am i right?

bitcoin mining uses less electric then las vegas does.. and less then newyork.. so if you want to solve the electric issue, shut down the FIAT market of new york OR the poker chips of las vegas.

while your at it instead of just shutting down part of one city, close off all FIAT systems of every city, of every country and the worl electricity bill will shrink much more then trying to shut bitcoin down. FIAT wastes more electric

[Rias]

Las Vegas and FIAT markets are old school and from 20th century that are out of our control. We should create new progressive systems that correspond to the spirit of the 21st century, where we are already for 14 years btw.
21st century system absolutely positively must be environmentally friendly. Comparing Bitcoin to Las Vegas is like comparing Bitcoin to Coalbrookdale (the first steam locomotive).
it is a serious phylosophical error to compare objects from different epochs in isolation from the epoch itself.

So I agree that Bitcoin it is like Ford for 21st century. And in 21st century we must take into account environmental consequences. Bitcoin doesn't.
Therefore I will compare Bitcoin as a technology of 21st century with some other technology of 21st century.

[johnathan32]

Las Vegas and FIAT markets are old school and from 20th century that are out of our control. We should create new progressive systems that correspond to the spirit of the 21st century, where we are already for 14 years btw.
21st century system absolutely positively must be environmentally friendly. Comparing Bitcoin to Las Vegas is like comparing Bitcoin to Coalbrookdale (the first steam locomotive).
it is a serious phylosophical error to compare objects from different epochs in isolation from the epoch itself.

So I agree that Bitcoin it is like Ford for 21st century. And in 21st century we must take into account environmental consequences. Bitcoin doesn't.
Therefore I will compare Bitcoin as a technology of 21st century with some other technology of 21st century.

I agree with you, the technology should progress along with Bitcoin

[franky1]

bitcoin technologies is already helping the ecology.

imagine it this way, imagine fpga and asics were never invented.

in 2012 many people were making GPU farms. imagine every 2 weeks difficulty increase more GPU farms added more GPU's. at 1000w for 4gpu's (4ghash a unit.) imagine the massive amount of wattage wasted.

ASICS do THASH's, which are more then 25x a gpu(4card) unit yet use the same power as just 1 unit. so although there is still greed and people shooting themselves in the foot trying to out power each other for a slice of the pie.. its atleast 25 times better than if GPU farms would continue try out powering each other since 2012 til now.

lastly to answer the OP's question, it is possible to roughly answer his question. but by the time he reads it the numbers would be different.

but if he looked at the current ASIC miners avalable. and for instance
2 terrahash cointerror miner ~2100W

using numbers from other manufacturers.. make an average THASH ~ 1kw

so basic maths, current total number of terra hashes mining the network=current kilowatts used

[henryjames1003]

bitcoin technologies is already helping the ecology.

imagine it this way, imagine fpga and asics were never invented.

in 2012 many people were making GPU farms. imagine every 2 weeks difficulty increase more GPU farms added more GPU's. at 1000w for 4gpu's (4ghash a unit.) imagine the massive amount of wattage wasted.

ASICS do THASH's, which are more then 25x a gpu(4card) unit yet use the same power as just 1 unit. so although there is still greed and people shooting themselves in the foot trying to out power each other for a slice of the pie.. its atleast 25 times better than if GPU farms would continue try out powering each other since 2012 til now.

lastly to answer the OP's question, it is possible to roughly answer his question. but by the time he reads it the numbers would be different.

but if he looked at the current ASIC miners avalable. and for instance
2 terrahash cointerror miner ~2100W

using numbers from other manufacturers.. make an average THASH ~ 1kw

so basic maths, current total number of terra hashes mining the network=current kilowatts used

And what about infrastructure created around ASIC miners or fpga? Have you calculate it too? The system's difficulty growing too so there are constantly growing need for new Thash's ( equals new kw's).

[tmbp]

bitcoin technologies is already helping the ecology.

imagine it this way, imagine fpga and asics were never invented.

in 2012 many people were making GPU farms. imagine every 2 weeks difficulty increase more GPU farms added more GPU's. at 1000w for 4gpu's (4ghash a unit.) imagine the massive amount of wattage wasted.

ASICS do THASH's, which are more then 25x a gpu(4card) unit yet use the same power as just 1 unit. so although there is still greed and people shooting themselves in the foot trying to out power each other for a slice of the pie.. its atleast 25 times better than if GPU farms would continue try out powering each other since 2012 til now.

lastly to answer the OP's question, it is possible to roughly answer his question. but by the time he reads it the numbers would be different.

but if he looked at the current ASIC miners avalable. and for instance
2 terrahash cointerror miner ~2100W

using numbers from other manufacturers.. make an average THASH ~ 1kw

so basic maths, current total number of terra hashes mining the network=current kilowatts used

And what about infrastructure created around ASIC miners or fpga? Have you calculate it too? The system's difficulty growing too so there are constantly growing need for new Thash's ( equals new kw's).

That it irrelevant, Bitcoin as a network has and always will use only a tiny fraction of what fiat uses if even it was widely adopted.

[Yakamoto]

Bitcoin minin is a very small fraction, VERY small, of global power usage. It at most consumes the equivalent of a city, if you include overhead for EVERY MINER.

Other than that, however, power consumption isn't a major factor. As said, most cities consume more power than what the Bitcoin computer network uses, and so the only way to justify turning off the Bitcoin network would be to turn off a city of equally large power consumption. If you can do that, and I'll be surprised if you can, then I think people may consider it.

And most people don't care. They're making money, and the environment hasn't been seriously affected by the network yet.

[franky1]

And what about infrastructure created around ASIC miners or fpga? Have you calculate it too? The system's difficulty growing too so there are constantly growing need for new Thash's ( equals new kw's).

again if we were still in the GPU arena, the network difficulty would keep on rising, because miners would always compete to gett a nice slice of the reward pie, more gpu's would be racked and stacked, like i said for 1kw a GPU unit (4gpu's) would produce maybe 4 or 5 ghash each. so even if the difficulty possibly lower over the 2 years of 2012-2014 due to maybe a 10%-20% rise instead of a 20%-40% rise. the amount of physical units would increase. like i said ASICs are a 25 fold electric saving but the amount of new GPU units would not be 25x less.. infact there would be more.

as you can see here https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate the hashrate of july 2013 - august 2013 webt from 200thash to 280thash(roughly) which shows a 40% jump a month. so lets use a conservative 15% jump a month if left on GPU mining and lets work out the kw for just 1 year (july 2013-2014)

so
july 2013 200 thash (40,000kw) gpu unit 5ghash (200units per thash x 200 thash=40,000)
august 2013 230 thash (55,200kw)
sept  264.5 thash (63,480kw)
octo 304 thash (73,002kw)
nove 349 thash (83,952kw) dece 402 thash (96,545kw) janu 462 thash (111,026kw) febr 532 thash (127,680kw) marc 611 thash (146,833kw) apri 703 thash (168,858kw) may 809 thash (194,186kw) june 930 thash (223,314kw)
july 1070 thash (256,812kw)

if you havnt worked out from other posts i like to grey out less neded-to-know info

so this month GPU would show only just above 1petash hashrate but a 256mw electric bill.
now lets go back to that chart the peak of this month is 145 petahash = 145mw electric bill

so asics bring 145x more hash power for 60% of the power.. hmm well thats more efficient then i first thought up.. so its all good, bitcoins use 145megawatts (to answer OP's question) compared to a GPU prediction of 256megawatts if the mining industry stuck with GPU's

now to google some stats about cities and other stuff
http://ask.metafilter.com/145849/Which-uses-more-power-Disney-or-Las-Vegas

According to this 2007 Forbes article, Las Vegas uses 5,600MW on a summer day

so the entire world of bitcoin uses only 2.6% of what las vegas does

i hate maths.. but there you have it

[12inchdick]

That wiki entry fails to recognize the distinct possibility that Bitcoin is what was created by the AI. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoin_mining_is_a_waste_of_energy_and_harmful_for_ecology

[henryjames1003]

And what about infrastructure created around ASIC miners or fpga? Have you calculate it too? The system's difficulty growing too so there are constantly growing need for new Thash's ( equals new kw's).

again if we were still in the GPU arena, the network difficulty would keep on rising, because miners would always compete to gett a nice slice of the reward pie, more gpu's would be racked and stacked, like i said for 1kw a GPU unit (4gpu's) would produce maybe 4 or 5 ghash each. so even if the difficulty possibly lower over the 2 years of 2012-2014 due to maybe a 10%-20% rise instead of a 20%-40% rise. the amount of physical units would increase. like i said ASICs are a 25 fold electric saving but the amount of new GPU units would not be 25x less.. infact there would be more.

as you can see here https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate the hashrate of july 2013 - august 2013 webt from 200thash to 280thash(roughly) which shows a 40% jump a month. so lets use a conservative 15% jump a month if left on GPU mining and lets work out the kw for just 1 year (july 2013-2014)

so
july 2013 200 thash (40,000kw) gpu unit 5ghash (200units per thash x 200 thash=40,000)
august 2013 230 thash (55,200kw)
sept  264.5 thash (63,480kw)
octo 304 thash (73,002kw)
nove 349 thash (83,952kw) dece 402 thash (96,545kw) janu 462 thash (111,026kw) febr 532 thash (127,680kw) marc 611 thash (146,833kw) apri 703 thash (168,858kw) may 809 thash (194,186kw) june 930 thash (223,314kw)
july 1070 thash (256,812kw)

if you havnt worked out from other posts i like to grey out less neded-to-know info

so this month GPU would show only just above 1petash hashrate but a 256mw electric bill.
now lets go back to that chart the peak of this month is 145 petahash = 145mw electric bill

so asics bring 145x more hash power for 60% of the power.. hmm well thats more efficient then i first thought up.. so its all good, bitcoins use 145megawatts (to answer OP's question) compared to a GPU prediction of 256megawatts if the mining industry stuck with GPU's

now to google some stats about cities and other stuff
http://ask.metafilter.com/145849/Which-uses-more-power-Disney-or-Las-Vegas

According to this 2007 Forbes article, Las Vegas uses 5,600MW on a summer day

so the entire world of bitcoin uses only 2.6% of what las vegas does

i hate maths.. but there you have it

thank you for this pretty math. may be not now but possible in future this problem become more urgent. But here were one opinion that fiat is
the idea of a past era and BTC - is nowadays reality. it is wrong to compare the effects of different epochs.


May be ASIC-mining looks attractive from an economic standpoint. But sometimes I think that GPU-mining(asic too) is not environmentally friendly in comparison with CPU minning(or PoS vs PoW). 

May be i need to repost some in Alternatve Cryptocurrency's thread.

[jbreher]

If mining ever becomes a rational market, the amount of electricity consumed will stabilize. The amount of electricity consumed per day will have a value some margin below the value of the bitcoins on that day.

Joules/day ~= 144 (block intervals / day) * 25 (BTC / block interval) * ($/BTC) * (J/$)

of course, the 25 in the above will adjust periodically as per reward halving.

This puts an upper bound on energy consumption. This figure must be adjusted downward for a profit margin, and downward again for the cost of equipment amortiization.

Again, assuming mining ever becomes a rational market.

So this could be a very large amount. The relevant question then is whether bitcoin can displace enough of the traditional financial industry to compensate for this energy consumption. I think the answer is undoubtedly yes.

[minerpumpkin]

It's always quite interesting that we'd need only a couple hundred/thousand USB-drive-sized miners to run the network. If they only were distributed equally. But that's the problem a proof-of-work backed decentralization is exactly employing in order to work...

[giveBTCpls]

I still think the hashing power could have been designed in a way that you can contribute with it besides maintaining the network, for disease research and whatnot. I wonder if this could take too many resources or it could be done in a parallel approach.

[Yakamoto]

I still think the hashing power could have been designed in a way that you can contribute with it besides maintaining the network, for disease research and whatnot. I wonder if this could take too many resources or it could be done in a parallel approach.

This was the intention of Curecoin, but I don't know what happened to it.

People would do standard PoW to mine for coins, but at the same time they'd be helping scientists with researching things via carrying out the calculations.

I don't know if it ever caught on, or if anyone agreed to allow it to run calculations for them...

[Gleb Gamow]

And what about infrastructure created around ASIC miners or fpga? Have you calculate it too? The system's difficulty growing too so there are constantly growing need for new Thash's ( equals new kw's).

again if we were still in the GPU arena, the network difficulty would keep on rising, because miners would always compete to gett a nice slice of the reward pie, more gpu's would be racked and stacked, like i said for 1kw a GPU unit (4gpu's) would produce maybe 4 or 5 ghash each. so even if the difficulty possibly lower over the 2 years of 2012-2014 due to maybe a 10%-20% rise instead of a 20%-40% rise. the amount of physical units would increase. like i said ASICs are a 25 fold electric saving but the amount of new GPU units would not be 25x less.. infact there would be more.

as you can see here https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate the hashrate of july 2013 - august 2013 webt from 200thash to 280thash(roughly) which shows a 40% jump a month. so lets use a conservative 15% jump a month if left on GPU mining and lets work out the kw for just 1 year (july 2013-2014)

so
july 2013 200 thash (40,000kw) gpu unit 5ghash (200units per thash x 200 thash=40,000)
august 2013 230 thash (55,200kw)
sept  264.5 thash (63,480kw)
octo 304 thash (73,002kw)
nove 349 thash (83,952kw) dece 402 thash (96,545kw) janu 462 thash (111,026kw) febr 532 thash (127,680kw) marc 611 thash (146,833kw) apri 703 thash (168,858kw) may 809 thash (194,186kw) june 930 thash (223,314kw)
july 1070 thash (256,812kw)

if you havnt worked out from other posts i like to grey out less neded-to-know info

so this month GPU would show only just above 1petash hashrate but a 256mw electric bill.
now lets go back to that chart the peak of this month is 145 petahash = 145mw electric bill

so asics bring 145x more hash power for 60% of the power.. hmm well thats more efficient then i first thought up.. so its all good, bitcoins use 145megawatts (to answer OP's question) compared to a GPU prediction of 256megawatts if the mining industry stuck with GPU's

now to google some stats about cities and other stuff
http://ask.metafilter.com/145849/Which-uses-more-power-Disney-or-Las-Vegas

According to this 2007 Forbes article, Las Vegas uses 5,600MW on a summer day

so the entire world of bitcoin uses only 2.6% of what las vegas does

i hate maths.. but there you have it

Ahhhh! I see. So, the bad guys are all Altcoins with their combined consumption of electricity.

[magic755]

about ecology affect:

You all say btc is a very small part of world energy system, u say that asics and infrastructure linked with it are take a very small affect on  world.
By you forget about localization factor.

What if we take all of mining stuff in the world and place it in one city. You will not be able to breathe in that city I think.
oh of course one city is a tiny part of world, isn't it?
 

[franky1]

about ecology affect:

You all say btc is a very small part of world energy system, u say that asics and infrastructure linked with it are take a very small affect on  world.
By you forget about localization factor.

What if we take all of mining stuff in the world and place it in one city. You will not be able to breathe in that city I think.
oh of course one city is a tiny part of world, isn't it?
 

Ghash.io is just one warehouse. google has more servers then ghash.io.. its just the hashing power of ghash.io is more because the computing unit is a asic chip not a cpu/gpu that google has..

people need to realise that a box smaller then a show box has more hashing power then two 7 foot tall server racks. so google has more computer units but wont match ghash.io's speed of mining due to the technology difference.

so take palo alto. there are more physical computer unit combined in that one city than bitcoin miners. so if we swapped out the computers and servers and made palo alto into a bitcoin mining farm city palo alto's electric will go DOWN

[meowdea]

I found somewhere idea that Bitcoin mining can affect on ecology. the greater btc's spread - the greater the influence of bitcoin system on ecology. Does someone calculate cumulative kW of all Bitcoin miners? it can become a serious threat in the future. am i right?

I have no idea how it could affect the ecology. In my opinion bitcoin mining is the way more environmentally-friendly than a working banking system with a huge number of printers, computers, cars and etc.

[Qsquegg]

In fact, printing fiat cases much more damage to ecology, so in that case, Bitcoin might be an option to change everything to a better way.