Johnny Doe
Well-Known Member
I wasn't aware of that!
Bitcoin discussion and news
- Thread starter camouflage
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I wasn't aware of that!
It's all in this newly merged thread.
Each bitcoin transaction currently uses something like three weeks' electricity consumption for an average UK household. And it's increasing rapidly.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Sold through the Blockchain 'sell' option that I think uses Coinify. Wouldn't recommend it though since my money seems to have vanished.
Johnny Doe
Well-Known Member
Explains why someone who was trying to get me to invest in a mining farm was trying to say it was much greener that other farms - based in Iceland, less cooling required etc
bimble
floofy
one week i think (not that this makes it 3 times less mad) . One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Iceland is great for energy intensive stuff like Bitcoin, their main export is aluminium refining because they have oodles of geo-power to draw on (basically their main export is geothermal energy). Sunny places with decent infrastructure could do quite well too.... so naturally (being humanity) let's just run the whole thing off coal and firewood and dried baby seals, why not.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
We only use 4000kWh per year of electricity in the UK per household. That's about a third of the US usage your article is based on. Balance out some rounding errors and for UK households, it is more like 3 weeks, as I said.
How much electricity does a home use? | OVO Energy
You've not put up another video with that twat in it, have you?
bimble
floofy
camouflage that video simply helps explain why 3/4 of mining is in China. He takes it a bit bloody far doesn't he though, pretending that vast pools like that one in Inner Mongolia are "green" .
.As far as I am aware, a transaction is a transaction. Maybe somebody better clued up on blockchains will correct me though?
mwgdrwg
Be a Pisces. Jam.
But won't the electricity used to mine the larger number of Bitcoin be taken into account? Is the mining and the logging different or the same? It's confusing.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It is the mining of the blocks that uses the electricity. So each 10-minute block of transactions has a very definite cost.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
To be clear, people don't really mine for bitcoin. They mine for the answer to a very boring but hard maths question that can only be answered through trial and error brute force. Once they have that answer, they release a new block on the chain, and that new block includes 12.5 bitcoin in the name of the miner.
bimble
floofy
eh? That would mean that a transaction, eg) me selling some bitcoin, does not cost any energy. It does though doesn't it?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Btw, given that bitcoin can potentially be divided up indefinitely, the number of bitcoin in existence is not really relevant.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Well you turning your computer on takes energy. But we're talking about the huge amounts of energy used for mining. Your transaction can't exist unless someone has mined a new block.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
camouflage that video simply helps explain why 3/4 of mining is in China. He takes it a bit bloody far doesn't he though, pretending that vast pools like that one in Inner Mongolia are "green"
I'm not 'supporting' what he's saying, just thought I'd throw it in as it seems the discussion on energy consumption now exists at the level of bitcoins 'celebs' whereas before I hadn't seen the matter addressed. Figured this thread a suitable place for what AA had to sAy.
I agree with him though about the invisible cost of everything we do on the internet... honestly, how many of us have ever wondered at the energy foot-print of a credit card transaction or twitter post? I certainly hadn't.... and I've seen the humming always-on datacentres that represent the basis of all this posting and clicking and swiping that we do. It's an important discussion to be had.
bimble
floofy
Yep I agree with that too. Would like to know how much of the world's energy goes on watching porn, playing video games, facebook online advertising data collection etc. But, blockchain is a uniquely wasteful / greedy mechanism built up out a sort of game theory attitude isn't it, to get rid of the need to trust anyone or anything.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
I know you don't like him, I read your reasons... I felt a little embarrassed for you really. Ultimately though I don't care what you think.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Whataboutery. Bitcoin burns masses of energy in order to produce a tiny set of transactions every 10 minutes. It is uniquely wasteful.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Iceland has oodles of geo-power, which could be put to use making the world a better place. Or it could just be wasted on idiocy like bitcoin. It's a world resource, and wasting that resource is just as bad, imo, as wasting any other.Iceland is great for energy intensive stuff like Bitcoin, their main export is aluminium refining because they have oodles of geo-power to draw on (basically their main export is geothermal energy). Sunny places with decent infrastructure could do quite well too.... so naturally (being humanity) let's just run the whole thing off coal and firewood and dried baby seals, why not.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
I agree, I don't feel able to evaluate the total cost of a bitcoin transaction versus the total cost of an incumbent transaction... but for now a person buying a car for example by selling some bitcoin is causing both costs, the cost of transacting bitcoins for fiat, then the cost of the fiat transaction for the car or whatever.
The Beautiful Mind (Nash) type approach to life that hates trust and pretty much all the social things that make us human is itself an interesting characteristic of the Libertarian mindset. Of course "trust" in this case is a technical term to do with information processes and security architecture but I'm convinced that a lot of Libs can't tell the difference, for them it's about trust as in human interactions too. Not sure what I'm saying here... feel free to ignore.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Wot, you wanna fight me? Don't waste your time, go fight bitcoin then if you think it's so bad. I doubt calling it idiocy is going to do much to stop it though. Maybe try sneering and tutting louder.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
What?
I am pointing out that clean resources such as geo-power are also valuable resources.
I'm disgusted by what is happening with bitcoin. I think it's fucking evil. I'll say as much as often as I like, thanks very much.
bimble
floofy
Yep. i think with bitcoin this trust-free aspect is quite explicit, making it attractive to people who err close to a conspiracist type individualism, with the feature it has of supposedly being beyond the reach of The State and Big Banks etc. But that idea's turned out to be a bit of an illusion anyway seeing as the power to determine what happens next is still in the hands of a few major players.
eg) Putin's Aide Seeks $100 Million to Rival China in Bitcoin Mining .
It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s that he talks utter bollocks. You read what I posted, but you didn’t offer a single shred of refutation. The guy simply knows nothing about the subjects he is ranting about. This latest nonsense is a great example of that — we know exactly what the energy consumption of Visa is — it’s been quoted in this thread — and it’s the minutest fraction of the cost of bitcoin.
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