One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week

Megalith

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An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.

This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes.
 
Yep, as long as they pay for it....!

Now, if they could do something to alleviate the high prices for GPUs, I'd be happy. Been eyeballing that GTX 1080 Ti for a while, but it's too pricey.
 
I think if it were a solar/wind powered Nigeria, no big deal. But it's an entire Nigeria worth of mostly coal power, which is a different story.
 
Really wish amd and nvidia would put out mining specific cards that would be more attractive to miners based on price/performance, but that could not be used for gaming. I don't even know if it's possible for them to cut anything out of their cards to make it cheap enough that miners pick them up instead, and leave the gaming market alone. The used graphics card market is a mess right now, I refuse to even consider it for my next purchase because I'm probably going to end up with a card that's beat to shit.
 
How are the cryptocurrencies going to solve these scaling problems? Since over time this issue will only exacerbate. Visa and MasterCard don't have this issue.
 
Have seen a few articles on this the last few days. All seem to be equating Mining a new coin with Using an existing coin to purchase something. Or are combining the energy cost of mining with the number of existing coin transactions to arrive at a suitably large click grabbing number.

Or does buying something with existing Bitcoin really consume large amounts of power? (Don't know, never had one). Seems silly if simple transactions are power hungry.
 
it's not ust that they are paying for it. When demand increases where will supply come from. Then people complain about nuke reactors and coal generated electricity. I know, just put out a few hundred square miles of solar panels and wind generators (in your neighborhood, not mine). There, problem solved ...
 
Have seen a few articles on this the last few days. All seem to be equating Mining a new coin with Using an existing coin to purchase something. Or are combining the energy cost of mining with the number of existing coin transactions to arrive at a suitably large click grabbing number.

Or does buying something with existing Bitcoin really consume large amounts of power? (Don't know, never had one). Seems silly if simple transactions are power hungry.

Mining isn't the process of making new coins. New coins are the reward for mining. Transactions are what is being mined, and it takes a ton of energy to create new blocks with those transactions in them because the difficulty is so astronomically high. There is only one block every 10 minutes (on average), and when that block is found, every miner on the planet has to start over on a new one with a new set of transactions. So all of the energy they put into the block that was just found goes to waste, and the cost of that wasted energy is amortized across the number of transactions that made it (2000-2500 on average).
 
that's not really their problem is it.,

sounds a failure of the utility to supply their customers with what they pay for.
Actually it is their problem, and then becomes everyone's problem when the utilities start charging premium amounts for using too much power.

But seriously, this is the same mentality as those who kept super green lawns in the middle of the worst 3 year long drought California have. "Not my problem, I'll pay for the water"
 
Actually it is their problem, and then becomes everyone's problem when the utilities start charging premium amounts for using too much power.

But seriously, this is the same mentality as those who kept super green lawns in the middle of the worst 3 year long drought California have. "Not my problem, I'll pay for the water"

again sounds like the utilities fault for over selling their product.

and again as long as people are paying for it who are you to tell them not to?
 
Some of the arguments i'm seeing in this thread are not very capitalistic/free market, comrades....
 
Actually it is their problem, and then becomes everyone's problem when the utilities start charging premium amounts for using too much power.

But seriously, this is the same mentality as those who kept super green lawns in the middle of the worst 3 year long drought California have. "Not my problem, I'll pay for the water"

Are you ignoring the fact that the "shortage" of electricity in California at that time was caused by human manipulation from Enron? It had nothing to do with market demand.

Also, my rates tend to go down when i consume more electricity...
 
I pay 7 cents per kwh delivered through a 100% renewable source (primarily wind) here in TX. Quite impressive since the statewide average for renewables is 16% This setup compliments my 19 GPU farm pretty well :)


There would still be people bitching about the whole mining thing even if my little operation saved puppies and cured cancer. It's a hobby that puts money in my pocket. If we are going to get rid of things in this world that seem to "serve no point" than 1/2 the shit we have would be gone. I don't give two shits about nascar or football, but they are
a multi billion dollar industry that other people enjoy, you don't see me whining online about how they should be abolished.
 
Yep, as long as they pay for it....!

Now, if they could do something to alleviate the high prices for GPUs, I'd be happy. Been eyeballing that GTX 1080 Ti for a while, but it's too pricey.

You'd be surprised how affordable it can be if you do the math... right now a single 1080Ti produces maybe 3 to 4 bucks a day in revenue on NiceHash, assuming you pay the national average for electricity, you'd probably pocket around 80-90 dollars a month back towards the price of the GPU. Every month you run it you have a 10% discount on a REALLY nice card.

And FYI - a properly setup mining config uses less power and runs cooler than your typical balls to the wall max overclock/max voltage gaming/benchmark setup. I have one told timer GPU in my farm thats probably 5 years old and running 24/7, still performs just like the day I bought it. Only thing you have to worry about after a few years is fan replacement.
 
Clearly "miners" of all types are not tree huggers.

that's not really their problem is it.,

sounds a failure of the utility to supply their customers with what they pay for.

Spoken like someone who doesn't get the concept of finite resources.

Actually it is their problem, and then becomes everyone's problem when the utilities start charging premium amounts for using too much power.

But seriously, this is the same mentality as those who kept super green lawns in the middle of the worst 3 year long drought California have. "Not my problem, I'll pay for the water"

Sounds like someone who gets the concept of finite resources and gives a perfect example on how it's abused.

again sounds like the utilities fault for over selling their product.

and again as long as people are paying for it who are you to tell them not to?

Are you kidding me, "overselling", so when the power company goes down for all the various reasons that do happen, how does the population react, outrage for outage and get it back as soon as possible please. So you think the power company can just say, "we're cutting you off, we sold you enough power this month", you're telling me you are just going to say "mmmkay then" and wait for more power next month, good lord. "who are you to tell them not to", well you are telling me the company has the right to tell them so, lol, let's see that go into action.
 
Clearly "miners" of all types are not tree huggers.



Spoken like someone who doesn't get the concept of finite resources.



Sounds like someone who gets the concept of finite resources and gives a perfect example on how it's abused.



Are you kidding me, "overselling", so when the power company goes down for all the various reasons that do happen, how does the population react, outrage for outage and get it back as soon as possible please. So you think the power company can just say, "we're cutting you off, we sold you enough power this month", you're telling me you are just going to say "mmmkay then" and wait for more power next month, good lord. "who are you to tell them not to", well you are telling me the company has the right to tell them so, lol, let's see that go into action.

i do not think you understand the term overselling.
 
My bad maybe then, all I have is the English language and the Dictionary, please enlighten me how you are applying the term instead of just suggesting that I don't understand.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/oversell?s=t
I am using it to describe the reason they'd have brown outs in the first place

If everyone is using all the electricity they require and the power company can't keep up then they fucked up haven't they?

Either buy more from a neighboring company or increase their capacity.

Not really hard to understand is it?

And since brown outs haven't been a problem then who cares of miners use up all the electricity?

Again they are paying for the pleasure.
 
Well, how much do we spend on mining gold etc. only to put it in another hole in the ground and do absolutelly nothing with it?

It's the same.
 
again sounds like the utilities fault for over selling their product.

and again as long as people are paying for it who are you to tell them not to?
How are they overselling a product? This isn't a matter of a cable company wiring up thousands of houses with a limited backbone and then getting upset when everyone wired up actually uses the full bandwidth that they were sold. Power doesn't quite work like that. In an ideal situation the power company has enough power to deal with every household using an "average" amount of power at any given time, they plan for things like heat waves by buying excess from other sources, etc. Now sure we get the "well if just a few people do it" mentality then yeah it's not a huge deal, but if lots do it then it could become very critical. Note, I said could because if you live in an area where you're heating your house with electricity anyways then there's issues. Plus the amount of time it takes to mine a single coin is going to depend upon how much effort you put into it, but presumably you're taking much longer than a week to do so, so the idea of a "weeks worth of household power" really might just mean very little extra power if it takes an enormous amount of time to mine one coin.

And I'm not even trying to go into a "green" direction with power usage either, but I'm not a huge fan of the whole "Well if you can pay for it why does it matter" for something that is a finite resource that is shared by many. Which is why I gave the water/drought example, if one individual bought up all the food in a city "just because he could pay for it" I would basically not care for that individual as well. And no, that doesn't make me a communist. But again, this argument really is based on reality of how long it takes to do said mining.

One thing of interest (hypocrisy?) is how whenever there's an article about electric vehicles, eventually it comes around to "the grid can't handle it" almost putting them into the category of "irresponsible to let that happen". Now you want to mine cryptocurrency, oh hell yeah lets fuck that shit up!

Are you ignoring the fact that the "shortage" of electricity in California at that time was caused by human manipulation from Enron? It had nothing to do with market demand.

Also, my rates tend to go down when i consume more electricity...
Not sure where Enron came into this, my example in the post you quoted was water not electricity.

And I'm happy for you that your rates go down when you consume more, mine do the opposite.
 
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I am using it to describe the reason they'd have brown outs in the first place

If everyone is using all the electricity they require and the power company can't keep up then they fucked up haven't they?

Either buy more from a neighboring company or increase their capacity.

Not really hard to understand is it?

And since brown outs haven't been a problem then who cares of miners use up all the electricity?

Again they are paying for the pleasure.

lol, some apparent snottyness aside, you still don't understand my first reply to you, finite resources, they have brown outs because it's a finite resource, you seem to think they can just flip a switch at any time for any power company to get more power simply because someone(s) has the money to pay for it, this line of thought was also clear to me by your lack of subtenant response to the reply of sfsuphysics (you apparently had nothing real to say to him and figured you'd just pull your BS with me like I don't read other comments or I have no idea what I'm saying) where he clearly explained the reality of that scenario.

What if that neighboring company has as many tools like you that also don't understand electricity and the grid to supply it is also a finite resource and they have as much money to pay for the electricity they want, does your company just "buy" more power from a farther county or state and they start trucking that power over. Seriously man, you're acting like a spoiled brat. And the "increase their capacity" line is equally laughable from a spoiled brat perspective, you think increasing the capacity is always possible, simple to do and somehow won't also increase the price of electricity.

No, it isn't hard to understand, only for the ones who think the resource is infinite and can and should just be found somewhere else if it can't be handled where it resides, pointing finger at you genius.

Brownouts have been a problem and can and will be a problem again if people don't understand that electricity is not infinite, nor is the grid that supplies it invulnerable. Try going completely off the grid with your own solar generated power company, you'll learn.

Are you going to reply to any more of sfusphysics posts or just continue to act like you're putting me in my place, rofl!
 
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I am more surprised an average US household uses an insane 901Kw/h per month.
 
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