Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin
US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.
Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin::US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.
What a huge waste in times where we have global warming and urgently need to cut our carbon footprint a bunch of greedy people are living like there is no tomorrow.
There is no tomorrow, because of global warming.
For you, mega flora will be super stoked.
Yes, good, blame the poor, make them feel responsible. Forget corporations, forget who is actually burning the earth down. The earth is going to die because YOU drove a gas car, used bitcoin, and don't like paper straws.
Ah yes, the poor who dig Bitcoin. Sorry but if you are having money to dig Bitcoin you aren't exactly poor. And you know if we all as humanity change just our diet, the effect would be immense, so it is not only the corporation's responsibility but also the collective.
Oh hey, it’s the guy Dan Olsen was talking about in that Folding Ideas video!
The economics of Bitcoin mining are a bit weird in that it impossible to make it more energy efficient.
The system auto adjusts the computational complexity of mining bitcoin so that it always costs a little less than one bitcoin to mine a bitcoin, and at scale the only variable expense is electricity so as the price of bitcoin goes up, so does the amount of money that must be spent on electricity.
Current 6.25 Bitcoin are mined every 10 minutes. So globally about $2 million must be spent on electricity every hour.
In a little over 2 months the block reward cuts in half to only 3.125 bitcoin every 10 minutes. That will have the side effect of reducing the money spent on electricity for mining bitcoin so long as the price of bitcoin remains the same.
"The System" is not really that intelligent. The statement that "It will always cost a little less than one Bitcoin to mine a Bitcoin" is only correct because the incentives in the system steer everyone toward that. There's no direct link between the two. Bitcoin Miners are intently aware of how much energy they consume, and if the price of Bitcoin dips below what they are paying for electricity, they likely will shut down their rigs, because no one wants to mine at a loss.
The real issue with Bitcoin is that the algorithm used to find more Bitcoins is kind of basic in terms of its difficulty mechanism. It was the first one ever used for cryptocurrency. It was originally envisioned that owners could mine more bitcoin with spare cycles on their CPU, but since it was first designed, people have come up with custom mining chips that can mine faster and much more power efficiently. But paradoxically, this has made things worse, because the bitcoin mining difficulty simply scaled up to account for all that. So now the only way to mine Bitcoin is to have this custom hardware -- it's too hard to do any other way -- and you need so much of it that you are just as power hungry as before.
There are other algorithms that don't have these same problems. They have been designed to use other computing resources (like gobs of memory) that are much harder to concentrate on custom chips, making it much more expensive (monetarily and spatially as well as computationally) to simply spam more of them. Ethereum uses a totally different model now that doesn't rely directly on power consumption at all.
OG Bitcoiners seem to think that the massive power consumption is a net benefit, because it is spent in making the overall network more secure, and less likely to be attacked. So they will never try to change their block algorithm, even though other projects are just as secure with less power consumed. And if that opinion holds, the only way to eliminate this source of power consumption would be to crash the price, and cause the Bitcoin miners to have to mine at a huge loss to continue.
I think what needs to be considered here is what we consider a waste of electricity. Efficiency calculations are dependent on waste, So I personally think electric cars are a waste of resources, they consume electricity to run and consume non renewable resources to produce just to move a maximum of 1-5* people per journey. Whereas an electric which still uses this resources can move over 10x that amount per journey, and trains over 30x that amount per journey.
So to me that's energy inefficiency at the consumer point.
Now let's look at energy generation and transfer. At the moment, alot of energy production is a for profit business, Company A builds a solar farm, Company B builds a Coal power plant and Company C (This would be overseen by the government, not a private company) builds a nuclear reactor. All 3 of these companies produce various amounts of electricity with different efficiencies, but all must be sold at the same price. It might only cost £0.01/KwH on the solar farm to produce, but must be sold for £0.33/KwH, the coal would be £0.27/KwH and nuclear would be £0.45/KwH.
You have 3 generation methods, each with strengths and weaknesses all being forced to sell for the same price. Normally in a capitalist system you see "Competition" (not really) on the market. Company A would say "We're cheap, but can only guarantee 97% uptime due XYZ issues", most homes would be fine with me this. Company B + C "We're not as cheap but we can offer 99.9% uptime" This looks great for companies needing that security in uptime.
I've gone on a tangent and can't be bothered finishing this post maybe someone else will.
Is it not a way in which some governments could collaborate to end this Bitcoin madness?
Genuinely question.
Like maybe some big countries could agree to collaborate and join resources to make a 51% attack and bring Bitcoin price to 0 so people stop wasting resources on it.
2% of enery usage for something that do not add any value to society is INSANE.
I think the best solution would be to properly tax carbon. That way Bitcoin miners would either become unprofitable or move to greener energy.
I don't think it's a good idea to establish the precedent that gov't can decide what you can and cannot do with your energy. You may think it's a waste of energy, but if the externality is properly taxed, I don't see the problem with letting it continue
Please don’t buy Bitcoin if you want the Earth to last.
I avoid it to not feel like a dumbass.
Saving the energy is just a bonus..
How can we expect North Korea’s criminal enterprise to flourish without it?
If the Kims are getting a little backscratching from Greg selling me LSD that's a price I'm willing to pay for quality
Earth is fucked; I need money.
Buy Bitcoin.
I think bitcoin is a waste of electricity. Never got the hype around something that takes so much energy, but doesn’t even even actually exist to make it worth it. Disgusting.
Anything is only worth what someone will pay. Always. Nothing has value beyond that.
Honestly eth just made more progress between built in smart contracts and proof of stake, I'm surprised Bitcoin is still holding on. Sunk cost fallacy I guess.
I'm not an economist or anything, but I don't think it's a sunk cost fallacy I think it's just a market. They're all mining both. Just leaning heavier on whichever one makes them more money in the moment. The market is going to have a hell of a lot of inertia.
Yep, Ethereum uses less power than a debit/credit transaction or even a PayPal transaction.
Have you read some of the work Visa has been doing with EVM and zero knowledge roll ups? Pretty interesting stuff.
Fucking nightmare.
I wish all my the nightmares would be like this!
At first I thought the article was inaccurate but It sounds like there has been a huge increase in US Bitcoin mining since 2020.
Some interesting information from their source article:
"The CBECI estimates that the global share of Bitcoin mining occurring in the United States rose from 3.4% in January 2020 to 37.8% in January 2022"
"the CBECI estimates put electricity supporting Bitcoin mining in 2023 at about 0.2% to 0.9% of global demand for electricity."
Who knew that fake money could do so much damage?
Tons of people. Tons of people did.
Honestly surprised it is that low.
I can't believe its that high, what a fucking big, stupid, dumbdumb thing. So wasteful and for what benefit?
The argument on the other side of the coin is that renewable electricity is often produced in excess, and when it cannot be stored, mining bitcoin is an effective way to convert that excess electricity into money. Normally, that energy would just be wasted, reducing the efficiency and economic viability of renewable electricity sources.
This argument is sound, but the problem is that it doesn't describe reality. The reality is that Bitcoin miners set up shop wherever electricity is the cheapest and consume inordinate amounts of electricity whether that electricity is in excess or not, and whether that electricity was generated renewably or not.
The cops used to find people growing marijuana in winter by the snow thawed on the roofs. Now there would be a mining rig under such a roof (also, most of the time there will be no snow, and then too much snow on occasion)
Benefit is a better world.
Maybe the larger American owned projects are located in places where energy is cheaper / cooling is easier
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the US's electricity.
The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the US, where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority.
One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020.
Tracking the history of five of these plants showed that generation had fallen steadily from 2015 to 2020, reaching a low where they collectively produced just half a Terawatt-hour.
To better understand the implications of this major new drain on the US electric grid, the EIA will be performing monthly analyses of bitcoin operations during the first half of 2024.
But based on these initial numbers, it's clear that the relocation of so many mining operations to the US will significantly hinder efforts to bring the US's electric grid to carbon neutrality.
The original article contains 783 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Bitcoin is a SnitchCoin. Every detail of every person on every transaction is broadcast to anyone and everyone listening. All the way down to IP address.
Fantastic solution to force very gorramn business to conduct their bullshit in it and pay their fucking taxes.
Any REAL person can handle theirs in Monero and swap off Bisq for now until Monero has their own TOR Market.
2% for the reliable independent monetary system seems like a good deal. How much does our current one consume with all its flaws?
Bitcoin is anything but reliable and independent. And it's 2% for the miniscule inconsequential amount of transactions it does compared to the amount of transactions happening.
More like 2% for a casino.
How much goes to the dollar?
There's a powered device or 5 in every store connected to a credit server.
You need the same infrastructure for any electronic payment system.
What you don't need for anything is crypto "mining", which is almost pure overhead. That's what the article is about.
How is bitcoin still a thing? I thought it was a ponzi scheme and a scam that benefits drug dealers or something. Was it not those things all along?
I'm not an expert, just asking based on my mainstream point of view.
And if it's a scam, why is it worth $40,000 when a few years ago it peaked at $20k and crashed to a few thousand dollars each.
Also this article is about electricity use. Who cares about that? Electricity is everywhere. Burning coal to generate electricity, though, is very stupid, given the state of the biosphere. So is the "problem" of bitcoin really just a hat on top of the problem with fossil fuels?
I think my point is that bitcoin has often been compared to beanie babies but nobody's talking about beanie babies anymore so I'm really wondering why are people still talking (and mining) bitcoin? Was it not just a fad after all? Did they find some good use for it?
Edit: why is this comment downvoted? Is it beanie baby fans or what?
Well, so a lot of people call it a Ponzi scheme, and it certainly has been used as one before, but the thing that separates it from a true Ponzi scheme is there is a product, and it's not you.
Places accept Bitcoin as a currency, there's Bitcoin ATMs, all that. This makes it valuable as a method to make online purchases, specifically, as a third-party payment processor. First you convert your money to Bitcoin through a service of your choice that's not related to the person you're paying, then you transact, and eventually that person cashes out Bitcoin for money. This generates 3 transactions, which a Bitcoin miner can authenticate and be paid in Bitcoin for their efforts.
This seems convoluted but it's about the same process as using a debit card, with MasterCard or Visa promising to balance everything in a bit and acting as an institution to verify trust.
This process is not the only positive thing about Bitcoin, but it's a major one and ensures two things. The first is that those exchange services give everyone in this "Ponzi scheme" an out. While they're running, you can't be pumped and dumped in the usual way. This creates some confidence, which helps keep people in, which raises the value. A normal Ponzi scheme promises an out, but has none.
The second, because there's people who trust in Bitcoin on actual merits, is that Bitcoin becomes a legitimate investment. It becomes equivalent to currency exchanges, where people exchange their money anticipating the value of USD or the euro to raise or fall. Again, very much like a Ponzi scheme, but since these people have an out, this is a risk, not a scam.
As far as I know (I'm not an expert) these two kinds of transactions are the bulk of the transactions in Bitcoin, but between the two, Bitcoin will remain alive with frequent usage and that enables bitcoin mining. None of this is stable, but it's also not a scam.
During the big push to get some vendors to accept Bitcoin this system hadn't formed, there were plenty of people willing to sell and mine Bitcoin, but few that were willing to buy it, and calling it a Ponzi scheme was appropriate. It's just the end goal wasn't to sucker someone into giving you money, it was to sucker them into supporting an economy that didn't exist. They succeeded, so now it's not a scam, just risky.
No. There is no out.
Charles Ponzi pretended that he had a way of getting extremely high yields on investments, so people gave him their money. In reality, he simply paid out early "investors" with money he got from new "investors". That means he needed more and more money/more and more investors. That couldn't work very long.
This is like bitcoin, in that any profit must come from new people. If someone bought bitcoin for $1000 and sold it for $1 million, that means that 1000 people must have paid them $1000 each. Even more people than that must have paid in, because the electricity bill and the hardware also need to be paid. To pay these people the same profit, you need over one 1 million people to pitch in $1000 and so on.
The cash flow structure is a lot like a Ponzi scheme. It's not so much risky as unsustainable. That's the point of calling it a Ponzi scheme. It's all out in the open, so maybe it's not a scam, as such.
Mind that the crypto space is full of unregulated and unaudited exchanges (=banks), beyond the reach of regulators or police.
I'll grant that it does provide a service by facilitating money laundering. We couldn't have ransomware without crypto.
