Bitcoin Mining Now Uses More Power than 159 Countries

Megalith

Megalith

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Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index is showing that energy consumed by Bitcoin mining now exceeds what is used by countries like Ireland, Hungary, Oman, and Lebanon. Bitcoin uses about as much power as the entire country of Morocco and slightly less than Bulgaria. If Bitcoin were a country, it would have the 61st highest energy consumption.

While it’s possible mining hardware will become more efficient, the calculations for Bitcoin transactions will only become more complex. As long as Bitcoin value keeps increasing, so too will the amount of energy going to verifying transactions. Meanwhile, other cryptocurrencies like Etherium and SafeCoin are on the rise. That means more CPUs and GPUs churning away in server rooms, even if Bitcoin drops in value.
 
And how much energy is used to mine for gold around the world?

How much is used to mint coins and print dollars?
 
his point is that if the goal of the article is to suggest that it's inefficient and wasteful, that we'd need an apples:apples comparison. and to add to what he said, how many people drive cars, in slow and inefficient traffic, to go work at the mints, presses, etc?

i have no financial interest in bitcoin, as i'd rather stick to the equity and real estate that ive done for years, but it doesnt mean im not a big fan of fair analysis.
 
Let the free market decide what energy costs and let people decide what they want to do with it. How is this any different than 90% of the internet being used for porn or games?
 
Yeah, some countries have very little in the way of electrical infrastructure. It's possible this is true.

Of course, many of those countries experience private roll-out through people using solar and wind to power their own homes and businesses.

It's a useless statistic if it's accurate, it's also impossible to make it an accurate statistic.
 
Lol this is getting worse by the day.

And I had a bunch of friends (not any Internet or Computer experts) bugging me to help them set up an mining farm believing that if they spend $100,000 they can make lots of money.
 
Monkey God said:
Let the free market decide what energy costs and let people decide what they want to do with it. How is this any different than 90% of the internet being used for porn or games?
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I'd say you're right and wrong:

You're right, in that it's on a similar level of much of human activity that uses energy that doesn't lead to anything necessarily productive. I think there's the argument to be made that resources spent on bitcoin are of equal footing towards energy spent on watching a movie, playing a game, SETI screensaver, etc. So in that sense, sure, leave it to the free market.

HOWEVER,

Leaving it completely to the free market doesn't factor in the damage to the environment or long term sustainability as part of its costs. The market is perfectly fine with letting the world burn until there's nothing left so long as it's monetizeable.

So it's not really that bitcoin is the problem so much as we're not acting in a sustainable manner to begin with and bitcoin is sort of a catalyst.
 
There is no reason to worry.

Simple economic calculation will ration the juice.
 
nutzo said:
And how much energy is used to mine for gold around the world?
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Not nearly as much, but still too much. Gold is a stupid thing to just keep around as a hedge. Buffet has a great quote on Gold: “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility."

How much is used to mint coins and print dollars?
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Little. Not only do they optimize the presses to be as efficient as they can because we want the cost to be low, but paper (plastic actually in many country these days) money is a small fraction of the total monetary system. Most of it is digital.
 
JargonGR said:
Lol this is getting worse by the day.

And I had a bunch of friends (not any Internet or Computer experts) bugging me to help them set up an mining farm believing that if they spend $100,000 they can make lots of money.
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You think it would be a waste of money?
 
Savoy said:
Whats your point here?
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If that's the question you are asking as a response, then any explanation as to why will be lost on you.

When you take a hard line on what constitutes "wasting" energy, then every single thing we do outside of eating/sleeping/reproducing is a waste of energy. Even if you relax the conditions some, every one of us could find something "wasteful" another person does just because we don't personally agree with it. You like sitting watching hours of football and spending hundreds possibly thousands of dollars on merchandise? Personally I think that's a huge waste, but you don't see me trying to ban the NFL.
 
JargonGR said:
Lol this is getting worse by the day.

And I had a bunch of friends (not any Internet or Computer experts) bugging me to help them set up an mining farm believing that if they spend $100,000 they can make lots of money.
Click to expand...

It's not a matter of if they would make money, it's just *when* they would be in the black profit wise. The name of the game is risk and how averse you are to it. I'm a huge fan of bitcoin/mining/building rigs, but there's no way I'd ever take my personal money out and risk it on something that volatile. Still didn't stop me from building up a 20+ min-farm here at home over the past 6 months just using profits from previous GPU's to keep building. My approach being I'd be a little slower building up, but I'd never be caught with my pants down should there ever be a crash. Cost of electricity is another huge thing here, I pay 7 cents per kwh delivered, someone in CA that pays 25 or 30 cents is operating in almost a completely different world.

100K put into a mining farm 6 months ago would be in the black several times over at this point if they held onto the coins. Of course at the time you build the farm there's an equal chance you might never break even if the market doesn't play nice or you sell off too early. I always get a little kick when I see people on craigslist/ebay/wherever selling mining rigs for many times what they paid. Usually it's in a slight downturn of BTC or ETH, and the prices are always astronomical for these home brew rigs.

What the noobs don't realize is that the "overnight" millionaire stories are actually the stories of people who did something everyone else considered "stupid" at the time but they got lucky in terms of BTC value. General return on investment time is around 6 months whether you are building a 1000 dolllar or a 100K dollar farm. the key no matter what level you operate on is patience
 
Monkey God said:
Let the free market decide what energy costs and let people decide what they want to do with it. How is this any different than 90% of the internet being used for porn or games?
Click to expand...
People left then to their own devices to do whatever they want? That should turn out well. Isn't that why we have problems with deforestation and greenhouse gases?
 
JargonGR said:
Lol this is getting worse by the day.

And I had a bunch of friends (not any Internet or Computer experts) bugging me to help them set up an mining farm believing that if they spend $100,000 they can make lots of money.
Click to expand...
Charge them a flat rate or hourly rate and help them. What they do with their hardware isn't your business but that's an opportunity if you could get paid... 100k, I'm sure they can afford to splurge a little your way.
 
Missing the point said:
You think it would be a waste of money?
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It would be a waste of resources, which is infinitely more important than money.
sean.b said:
his point is that if the goal of the article is to suggest that it's inefficient and wasteful, that we'd need an apples:apples comparison. and to add to what he said, how many people drive cars, in slow and inefficient traffic, to go work at the mints, presses, etc?
i have no financial interest in bitcoin, as i'd rather stick to the equity and real estate that ive done for years, but it doesnt mean im not a big fan of fair analysis.
Click to expand...
Going to work serves a purpose, it's not a pure waste of energy. To get from A to B you have to spend some energy, there is no way to avoid it. And I doubt he had thought about it that much, he was simply scrambling to find an excuse for the gigantic pointless waste of resources that is cryptocurrency.

Bowman15 said:
Wait until you will need a server farm to process a single transaction and paying someone or getting money takes weeks. Oh, and at that time process/server farm companies will milk the transaction fees. What a freaking waste of energy....
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At least someone gets it. To start such a stupid wasteful pursuit as cryptocurrency mining, when we're already using more energy than what is sustainable in the long term is beyond short sighted and stupid, and of course selfish.
 
M76 said:
People left then to their own devices to do whatever they want? That should turn out well. Isn't that why we have problems with deforestation and greenhouse gases?
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That's also why you have the bitcoin scam of the week since it became a thing....
 
Seems like everyone that missed the boat is trying to take a shit on bitcoin. What a bunch of narrow minded freaks.. The rest of us are laughing all the way to the bank :D
 
nutzo said:
And how much energy is used to mine for gold around the world?

How much is used to mint coins and print dollars?
Click to expand...
Curiosity got me on this one, and did some research, and came up with an ball park figure of about 130 Terawatt-hours for gold which is about 4x the bitcoin amount. However being as that is mostly used for electronics and shiny pretty babbles for people and less about actual money, the comparison is a bit weak. Now printing money is actually a bit harder to figure out, since the US Treasury dept doesn't exactly share it's electric bill, however some quick looking on how much energy it takes to make paper, and yes I realize money paper is different, I would think the making of the raw material would probably be a bit more energy intensive than printing (argue this if you must), but going by the energy cost to make the same amount of paper as the US Treasury prints in a year it's about 100 Gigawatt-hours or 300 times less than bitcoin.

So not taking a side, just was curious about the question.
 
two top investors, one of them being Warren Buffet, said Bitcoin will crash and burn ... but what do they know, right?
 
_l_ said:
two top investors, one of them being Warren Buffet, said Bitcoin will crash and burn ... but what do they know, right?
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Well considering his net worth is around $85 billion, I'd say he's been right more than he's been wrong on some things so playing the odds can help.
 
Bitcoin is just getting started. I'm going to go as far as saying that in a few years some of the people that got on the train early will make a killing and make old warren look like small potatoes : D
 
Imhotep said:
Bitcoin is just getting started. I'm going to go as far as saying that in a few years some of the people that got on the train early will make a killing and make old warren look like small potatoes : D
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I wouldn’t go that far, however I think it will continue in a trend where enough people will be cashing out having made their money and more buying in and it will continue to rise... for a little while yet at least. I don’t see it dying within the next 6-12 months at least.
 
M76 said:
It would be a waste of resources, which is infinitely more important than money.

Going to work serves a purpose, it's not a pure waste of energy. To get from A to B you have to spend some energy, there is no way to avoid it. And I doubt he had thought about it that much, he was simply scrambling to find an excuse for the gigantic pointless waste of resources that is cryptocurrency.


At least someone gets it. To start such a stupid wasteful pursuit as cryptocurrency mining, when we're already using more energy than what is sustainable in the long term is beyond short sighted and stupid, and of course selfish.
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You're attacking a weed without digging up the roots. If cryptocurrency never existed, we would ALREADY be using more energy than what's sustainable. Bitcoin is the catalyst, not the source of the problem. If anything, it could be beneficial in forcing us to confront the problem faster rather than take the boiling frog route.
 
Sycraft said:
Not nearly as much, but still too much. Gold is a stupid thing to just keep around as a hedge. Buffet has a great quote on Gold: “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility."
Click to expand...

If you see gold as an "investment" or hedge only, Buffet makes a good point, however, this quote is total fail at the end. People will argue cryptocurrency does have a utility in the ability to move funds outside of the current banking cartel, but there is no argument that gold doesn't have a utility. As shielding in outer space and a non corrosive conductive material in electronics and more. All metals tmk have a utility. Using energy to retrieve gold for its use as a utility is a key factor in advancing humanity imo, using energy to retrieve gold to divide and store wealth is very arguable at best imo.

tetris42 said:
You're attacking a weed without digging up the roots. If cryptocurrency never existed, we would ALREADY be using more energy than what's sustainable. Bitcoin is the catalyst, not the source of the problem. If anything, it could be beneficial in forcing us to confront the problem faster rather than take the boiling frog route.
Click to expand...

Way to make lemonade out of lemons man, we can only hope that going too far in everything we do will give us a chance to reel it back in in time.
 
why are there so many negative articles on hardocp about bitcoin.
ive noticed that in the past weeks.
 
TorxT3D said:
why are there so many negative articles on hardocp about bitcoin.
ive noticed that in the past weeks.
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To be fair, there are just a lot of negative articles around bitcoin out there. Personally, I think both positive and negative are plants, they read as very basic a lot of times and seem to entice you to buy or sell, get into the game or get out depending on where they come from. I’m mining a little, and buying a little, no more than I can afford not buying coffee every week really, we’ll see how it pays out in the long run.
 
This whole story is quite misleading.
People are led to believe that Bitcoin uses more electricity than 159 countries, while it uses more electricity than each country on that list, not combined.
 
_l_ said:
two top investors, one of them being Warren Buffet, said Bitcoin will crash and burn ... but what do they know, right?
Click to expand...

Ya they abused undeveloped system 40 years ago and that's how they got rich. People 40 years before them didn't understand the system they abused. Just like they don't understand this new system we're abusing.
So what they have to say about cryptocurrency matters not regardless of their experience.
 
_l_ said:
Do miners actually think the World's major Governments will just sit back and watch you get rich ? LOL, sorry, I had to laugh when I visualized that ...
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Yeah, ever since the governments passed the maximum wage laws so no one can own more than 1 million, it's really changed things. No longer can people become rich and just pay taxes on their income and capital gains like they used to, now the government will take everything. First they came for all the rich people, now that there are no more rich people left, they're coming for the Bitcoin miners. Remember, being rich is a crime, that's why the world's governments ensure it never happens anymore.
 
There are a lot of things I don't really understand about Bitcoin. One is what will happen when all coins are mined, or nearly all mined? If people can't get more coins, won't they stop mining? Then if enough stop, doesn't it all collapse? I must be missing something.
 
tetris42 said:
Yeah, ever since the governments passed the maximum wage laws so no one can own more than 1 million, it's really changed things. No longer can people become rich and just pay taxes on their income and capital gains like they used to, now the government will take everything. First they came for all the rich people, now that there are no more rich people left, they're coming for the Bitcoin miners. Remember, being rich is a crime, that's why the world's governments ensure it never happens anymore.
Click to expand...


IMUO (In My Uninformed Opinion) it's not the Government, it's CORPORATE AMERICA that is doing that. Government is not forcing Corporations to under pay it's workers, make monopolies, etc. Middle class being squeezed out is not the Government's fault
 
_l_ said:
IMUO (In My Uninformed Opinion) it's not the Government, it's CORPORATE AMERICA that is doing that. Government is not forcing Corporations to under pay it's workers, make monopolies, etc. Middle class being squeezed out is not the Government's fault
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That is an idea, but I would suggest that corporation management, IE, C-Level executives are responsive to a board of directors, which are responsive to the shareholders. The shareholders being ultimately responsible for the direction of the company, since they are the equity holders - the owners. While there are massive activist shareholders groups, most shares are probably in mutual funds with the 401(k) dollars from normal people.
 
pgaster said:
There are a lot of things I don't really understand about Bitcoin. One is what will happen when all coins are mined, or nearly all mined? If people can't get more coins, won't they stop mining? Then if enough stop, doesn't it all collapse? I must be missing something.
Click to expand...

Bitcoin supporters have this fantasy land theory that they'll do it for the transaction fee. Yeah, I'm sure that $40-50 fee will cover the costs that have been covered with $1k+ coins. Basically, its fubar but they like to pretend it will never happen.
 
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