Bitcoin may be a useful way to send and receive money, but all this financial liberation doesn’t come for free.
The community of miners who create bitcoins is using vast quantities of electrical power in the process. This had led some experts to suggest that bitcoin isn’t very environmentally friendly. So how much electricity does a bitcoin take to produce?
No conclusion at all.. I was Just shocked and want to share it with steemers...
Orignal Article:
http://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#assumptions
Also, for those interested. The original article has a lot more details on how these calculations are made.
This is why I use #gridcoin and #solarcoin. Gridcoin uses the CPU and GPU to do real scientific research and so the energy is used for real value beyond just securing the network. SolarCoin rewards on generation of solar energy, so it actually produces more energy than it consumes.
Thank you for mentioning both of these- GRC will help defray my direct costs for running BOINC, and I'll look into #solarcoin when I get started actually installing my solar system- my only current option for installation is where I don't need the power and can only effectively feed it to the net, I still need to purchase power for my business due to not owning this building. #solarcoin would leverage that contribution.
I've been BOINCing for years off and on.
;)
Yeah roll on microgrids where you can transit energy across the grid from one place to another. Effectively you could sell your own energy back to yourself.
The energy grid needs to become like the internet, where we can all dynamically buy/sell on top of it.
Good luck with your install.
There is no commercial utility in the US willing to allow that (my farm property, where I never am for appreciable amounts of time, is 10 miles outside of town where my business consumes 100 hours a week or more- this is no complaint, simply a description of fact), only a local power co-op could pull that off, and commercial utilities HATE that, and there's little to no local co-op spirit to put that together, and I haven't the strength or resources to attempt the effort.
I might be able to hang a small collector on the wall to power this, my office rig which BOINCs, but not much else- better than nothing but not very cost-effective, with the storage and control circuitry.
Oh sure its the same where I am, monolithic energy companies just want to push energy at you. I was talking futuristically; I hope we can get there one day, there are some small projects beginning.
Seems interesting man.. Totally new piece of information for me...
Well if the price falls below the profit level you will see miners bail out after a while, which should reduce the competition and difficulty, and then it will get easier to mine again, which should return it to profit. Its self correcting but some miners may go out of business in the process.
Please be fair and legal. This is on the edge of plagiarism. At least mention the original author's work:
http://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#assumptions
Also, for those interested. The original article has a lot more details on how these calculations are made.
Edited man! Thanks for showing me the right way to post...
I am sorry, That was my first ever post... I will do that for the next..
and thanks for sharing the link..
Would be great if everyone would switch to Gridcoin and all the energy would be used to benefit humanity instead of crunching useless hashes.
Good thought But King will be King man...
Correct... till the King dies - or get killed. ;)
;)
It's about time for a revolution. :D
A revolution against the King :)
Increasing Mining Dufficulty
This means more hashing needed to mine the same amount if Bitcoin prices don't change. With increasing price miners are drawn in again, making the ongoing spiral just go nuts.
When price drops miners will panic sell once again.
Gridcoin is the one solution to mindless mining. Crunching scientific and health related projects that benefits the humanity should be clear for anyone to do. Join the revolution! 😎
Damn, I could assume the Bitcoin network is using a lot of electricity to maintain it's service, but so much... Wow it's almost hard to believe! Thanks for sharing!
It's really only profitable with ultra-low-cost mega-powerful hardware, especially with cheap power- at average US utility rates, the ROI is even less appealing.
Pools, however, are still a quite reasonable proposition, but that will cease in less than 10 years except on the new forks.
Unless their are new technologies who don't use as much energy + new ways of getting electricity that will reduce the cost a lot... 😉 I believe in science!
Well, you're hypothesizing, and reasonably so, but Bitcoin Classic really can't be redefined, so those developments won't be deployed fast enough to make a substantial difference before the last block is verified.
How can you say that ??
That's nuts!
Yup.. That is.....
The break-even cost of BTC is highly deceptive, as in so many other calculations that don't factor anything other than direct generation costs. This becomes relatively moot, for instance, were the electricity mandated by the Bitcoin maintainers and mining pools to be sourced from the least environmentally-damaging and polluting systems- which might change the /GWH cost and resulting calcs, but would be far less deceptive by not excluding indirect energy costs.
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STOPThanku ,,,
well for sure this is happening, and not only the bitcoin network is soaking power like hell, all the GPU Crunching that currently goes on is also taking a lot of power. Personally i think we need to invent new systems of securing a coin than simply throw a lot of hashpower at it. Also new distribution methods need to be thought of than simply POW or POS ( of those 2 POS for sure is the much energy friendlier method).
What do you think where this at the time of writing this reply 78.17 Th/s for Ethereum come from ? Remember the GTX 1060 (one of the most energy saving cards) uses roundabout 90 Watts for 21.3Mh/s .
Short break for some Calculations :
Mega is 10^6, Giga 10^9 and Tera 10^12
Following this a 78.17 TH/s are then 78.170 000 000 000 Hashes per Second.
Like said above the card produces 21.300 000 Hashes per Second.
Which ultimately means if all cards would be GTX 1060 (for sure not true) that they would soak up 330295774,6478873 Watts. To make it more readable
330.295774 Megawatt
Following this thought onwards this means that at a day this mining would soak up
330.92 * 24h = 818,08 MWh a day. For the year this would be 365* 818,08 MWh = 297139,2 MWh.
I checked on Wikipedia, this is as much Energy as the Seychelles are using or Greenland or the Maldives.
On the other hand side there are power plants out there that are exactly delivering 300 MW, Coal plants for instance.
And remember, this is only one of the Altcoins (the one where most mining is happening for sure, but only one coin out of many).
If you want to try this out for another big coin like Zcash i just used the stats given on Whattomine.com
I know guys, this isnt really the case, not all cards are 1060Gtx and some are better in H/W. But there are many that are worse as well :) so i just tried to make things a bit more simple by reducing complexity.
One final thought, i for one am really into the topic that @scalextrix already mentioned. Using this energy for something that is really worthwhile and not just for heating up the air :)
Give BOINC and Gridcoin a try (but forget about getting rich in no time) and calculate for instance in projects about fighting cancer, or identifying more HIV treatments .
It totally worked man.. ;)
this is SO mindboggling STUPID.
beyond belief.
These are assumptions...
Orignal Article:
http://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#assumptions
And Go get some Google also