One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses As Much Energy As Your House In a Week (vice.com) 227
Long-time Slashdot reader SlaveToTheGrind quotes Motherboard:
Bitcoin's incredible price run to break over $7,000 this year has sent its overall electricity consumption soaring, as people worldwide bring more energy-hungry computers online to mine the digital currency. 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.
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.
Proof of work (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. Proof of Stake requires almost no electricity at all, as the blockchain is determined by who puts up the largest stakes. The reason Proof of Stake isn't popular is because it's a "rich get richer, poor may as well not play" system, just like capitalism.
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason Proof of Stake isn't popular is because it's a "rich get richer, poor may as well not play" system, just like capitalism.
Because we know that with Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work system, it's the poor that can afford racks full of ASIC miners, right?
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Informative)
No, the reason PoS isn't popular is because it's provably insecure.
Contrary to a PoW-chain absent a +51% cartel, it’s mathematically proven that it is impossible to determine the “true” transaction history in a PoS blockchain without an additional source of trust. If a source of trust is always needed, a potential pandora’s box of attack and centralization scenarios is opened. This is a seed of truth behind the joke that Ethereum plans to use “proof of Vitalik”.
(follow the links for the actual paper)
https://medium.com/@tuurdemees... [medium.com]
Nothing theoretical about Bitcoin's insecurity (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrary to a PoW-chain absent a +51% cartel
In 2014 a single mining pool reached 50%.
https://www.coindesk.com/51-at... [coindesk.com]
As bitcoin mining in increasingly centralized on expensive specialized ASIC hardware, as individual/small miners increasingly host remotely (where they don't have physical control of ASICs) where electricity is inexpensive, bitcoin insecurity is increasing.
Bitcoin was designed with the assumption of distributed mining. With many small players contributing to the blockchain, as in the early days when CPU and GPU mining was practical. That assumption of bitcoin's design has turned out to be false, bitcoin is vulnerable.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that any "51% attack" (which in reality needs to be ~80% or so) is temporary with PoW. In PoS any catastrophic breakage in trust cannot be gotten back.
Re: (Score:3)
The difference is that any "51% attack" (which in reality needs to be ~80% or so) is temporary with PoW. In PoS any catastrophic breakage in trust cannot be gotten back.
How is a successful 51% attack upon bitcoin not going to damage trust? How is the fraud/damage going to be undone?
The future is the blockchain. Bitcoin is just one of many users of the blockchain, bitcoin is as replaceable as other coins. It is not established, its use beyond speculators extremely rare. For the average consumer using bitcoin the switching cost from bitcoin to something else is very low.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it damages perception, but the integrity can be regained by others having more PoW than the attacker. The same is not true for PoS. Once the stakes cannot be trusted you cannot regain the trust.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it damages perception, but the integrity can be regained by others having more PoW than the attacker.
Once the illusion of security is broken it cannot be regained. Few are currently aware of the 2014 50% pool because nothing resulted from it. Should a group attain 51% AND cause fraudulent transactions that will become widely known and not forgotten. Bitcoin would never be the same.
The same is not true for PoS. Once the stakes cannot be trusted you cannot regain the trust.
If your argument of getting PoW below 50% restores trust then getting stake below 50% also restores trust. You can't have it both ways.
More importantly increasing use tends to diversify ownership of coins. Large stakeholders a
Re: (Score:2)
No, just because someone reaches ~80% PoW temporarily that doesn't affect future immutability once such a hashrate superiority dips again. The same is still not true for PoS. Once someone gains superiority it stays that way.
I agree Ethereum is a good benchmark. Still no PoS switch in sight.
Re: (Score:3)
Even now the top 4 pools control over 50 percent. From a country point of view, miners from China control over 80%
And its not like the government over there can exert undue influence over those commercial mining operations, operations largely dependent on government run hydroelectric projects offering very low rates.
Start with proof of work, switch to proof of stake (Score:2)
Yes. Proof of Stake requires almost no electricity at all, as the blockchain is determined by who puts up the largest stakes. The reason Proof of Stake isn't popular is because it's a "rich get richer, poor may as well not play" system, just like capitalism.
No, the "rich" and the "poor" experience the same percentage increase in wealth. The problem with proof of stake is getting started, the distribution of coins from the founders to the masses. In proof of work there is a basis for coin distribution, "work", but for proof of stake?
Also note that "stake" is not simply how many coins you have. The age, the amount of time you have held those coins, is also factored into the "stake". So those who hold coins get a little extra compared to those who just trade.
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Bitcoin isn't ANYTHING like that.
Oh wait.
Exactly! BitCoin is the most ridiculous, sketchy snake oil that has ever been peddled. Now we find that it is extremely wasteful of energy as well. The day bubble bursts and everyone's money has evaporated into the cloud can't come too soon.
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we find that it is extremely wasteful of energy as well.
“Now”? As if we didn’t know about this, all along?
Re: (Score:3)
Agree but...that's different from digging gold how? (ok, gold has quite a good practical use but it's value is another thing)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! BitCoin is the most ridiculous, sketchy snake oil that has ever been peddled. Now we find that it is extremely wasteful of energy as well. The day bubble bursts and everyone's money has evaporated into the cloud can't come too soon.
But while you get angrier, we're getting richer. BCH up 100% in a day!
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean just-like-Trotsky-ites ... pimping the pauper with the words THEFT-AGENDA substituted for the word RICH.
Or just like the fascists selling a middle class tax cut on the tired old theory that when we give the lion's share of that tax cut to the big corps and the 1% that it will all trickle down to the middle class, eventually. Yes, Trump's economic adviser, Gary Cohn, used the phrase trickle down in an interview just a couple of days ago.
When the rich run the system, Trump's promises notwithstanding, they rig the system to make themselves even richer, so, yes, you could call it a theft agenda.
Re: (Score:3)
There's also proof-of-stake [blockgeeks.com].
Re:Proof of work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No.... Make mining less profitable, and the amount of hash power being used for mining will go down.
For starters; I would suggest modifying the protocol so that miners have to pay some of their mining reward out to those operating full nodes -- basically add some "originating node" data to each transaction, where the first N nodes in the path through the network replace a designated piece of data being propagated with a blob that can be used to prove the node knew the correct piece of data without re
Re: (Score:3)
If mining activity goes down an attack on the blockchain becomes cheaper.
What do you do with gas guzzlers? (Score:2)
And this crypto-currency mining....
Re: (Score:2)
The usual government response to folks who are wasting precious bodily fluids to cause global warming would be to tax the hell out of them.
But, hey, these days it seems like we have electricity coming out our asses for free. When I was a kid, I remember my parents telling me to turn off lights in the house or to remember to turn off the radio when leaving the room to save expensive electricity.
Today, I see all the kids on the bus showing each other videos on their smartphones. I guess that these days, e
Re: (Score:2)
Bad Math (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The energy spent *MINING* a bitcoin is not at all close to the energy spent *TRANSACTING* a bitcoin. Why is this even a metric?
Thank you! Terrible bad title and terrible summary to go along with the bad math. This is so misleading that this junk should just be removed. It reads like government propaganda.
Re:Bad Math (Score:4, Funny)
Its worse than a bad title and summary - it assumes a speculative future state as current fact.
-It COULD be profitable for bitcoin miners to spend XYZ Terawatts of Electricity mining Bitcoins.
-Assume XYZ Terawatts of power are currently being used to mine bitcoins.
-Interchange creating something with trading something.
TRADING BITCOINS COST XYZ TERAWATTS OF POWER OMG.
Let's do that with a non-bitcoin related story.
-Actors could use their status to take unfair advantage of women.
-Bill Cosby raped like 76 women.
-Bill Cosby is an actor, and can equally theoretically represent any other actor.
HOLLYWOOD ACTORS ARE RAPING HUNDREDS OF WOMEN EACH!
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Bad Math (Score:5, Insightful)
The energy spent *MINING* a bitcoin is not at all close to the energy spent *TRANSACTING* a bitcoin. Why is this even a metric?
What metric should be used and why? The purpose of currency is to provide a means to conduct transactions, so in that sense it seems reasonable as the metric is tied to the purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
What metric should be used and why?
Troy fucking ounces.
Re: (Score:2)
So long as they are consenting ounces, I don't see the need to publicise Troy's sex life, especially in bold text...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad Math (Score:4, Interesting)
This is epically true since bitcoins whole purpose is to conduct transactions so it would be fair to consider all the computers, network equipment, man hours, etc in the entire system as a direct cost of conducting those transactions.
This wouldn't be any different then looking at all of Visas equipment and energy costs and dividing by the number of transactions it conducts per day to arrive at a 'cost' of swiping your credit card.
Re: (Score:3)
Not really. Since bitcoins specifically ties mining activity to confirming transactions it's fair to link them.
If it is fair to link them then it is more than fair to ask that we at least get the most basic math, explanations, and conclusions right, which are points where this story (or title and summary, at the very least) fail miserably. If it is right to link them, then it is wrong to do so incorrectly and in the most inflammatory way possible.
Re: (Score:2)
This wouldn't be any different then looking at all of Visas equipment and energy costs and dividing by the number of transactions it conducts per day to arrive at a 'cost' of swiping your credit card.
Note that this would only be a tiiiiiny fraction of the cost. Here in Norway we have "BankAxept" which is a no-frills direct debit solution, it costs the store around $0.03/transaction (plus ~$100 to establish, ~$20/month) and VISAs physical transaction costs are probably roughly the same. The rest are the kickbacks, dispute process etc. which is why the store usually pays around 2% in processing fees. Plus they run the risk of chargebacks and such, while with direct debit it's as good as cash in hand. Whic
Re:Bad Math (Score:5, Informative)
Bitcoin has two contradictory goals. On the one hand it needs everyone to have the same information. The network couldn't work if I think I have 10 coins and you think I have 5. The way this classically works is you just have an authority keep track of it, the bank. You can simply ask the bank how much money you or anyone else has in the account.
But bitcoin doesn't want a central authority so how can it keep track of who owns what and whose paid who? It uses a consensus based on whatever group has the most computing power. And they're rewarded for this work with a few new bitcoins and that reward is called 'mining'.
So 'mining' is simply the act of gathering up all the transactions the network wants to do and 'signing' it with your massive computer power and pushing it out to the world. You can't have transactions with out mining.
However bitcoin scales directly to the mining power on the network, so if everyone just closed up right and only you were left you could run all the transactions on a general purpose CPU if needed. So there is no reason it has to be wasteful, but the way it works is the greater the reward for mining the more it encourages people to waste electricity.
Re: Bad Math (Score:2)
Because youâ(TM)re not really âoemining bitcoinsâ, youâ(TM)re mining blocks. Blocks contain transactions, and as a reward for mining the block you get a reward of bitcoins (for nowâ" those will eventually disappear) and any transaction fees for the transactions in the block. So basically the ONLY real metric is power per transaction block. Thereâ(TM)s no real Bitcoin to âoemineâ
Re: Bad Math (Score:2)
You speak of the generation of BTC as a side effect of securing transactions, but you can just as easily and accurately frame it as securing transactions as a side effect of generating BTC. At this time, they are inextricably linked.
In the 23rd century, you will be correct.
Re: (Score:2)
Because on a fully effective bitcoin network, there is a fixed(constant) ration between the number of transaction that can happen on the network, and the number of blocks which are mined.
Mining subsidizes transaction fees. (Score:2)
The energy spent *MINING* a bitcoin is not at all close to the energy spent *TRANSACTING* a bitcoin. Why is this even a metric?
Mining subsidizes transaction fees.
Mining is sort of like a fixed cost, transactions fees like a variable cost. You have to factor in both.
Re: (Score:3)
Mining is implicit in a Bitcoin transaction, by design.
I think mining is explicit, rather than implicit. Bitcoin will have to evolve from its current form, eventually. As the number of coins is finite, it is probably unrealistic for mining to occur in perpetuity as it becomes exponentially less efficient to mine; it is easily conceivable that new mining technologies and the impetus to mine will not keep up forever. Fortunately, we are dealing with software that can be changed and networks that can adapt. So any discussion of the future of bitcoin must take into
Re: (Score:2)
it is probably unrealistic for mining to occur in perpetuity as it becomes exponentially less efficient to mine;
The idea is that transaction fees will take the place of the block reward.
So... (Score:3)
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
It is ironic that in a era where most people are talking about:
* Energy efficiency
* Energy independence
* Emissions reduction
* Green power production
we are racing to consume [waste] tons of energy to produce "currency" which doesn't actually produce any goods or services. Imagine consuming megawatts of energy just to produce currency that could then be used to later buy things like, perhaps, more megawatts of energy. Seems insane.
Re: (Score:3)
So ... just like gold or diamond mining.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Industry and science can now use synthetic diamonds. They are cheaper (especially the little ones used in saw blades) and have better quality. Industry use of gold is only 10% of the mined amount. We could stop gold mining, and the industry could survive on the already-mined gold for centuries.
Re: MMORPG money brought to life. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Just because it is tangible and useful doesn't mean that it is valuable. Water is tangible and useful.
I mentioned diamonds and gold because the price of those commodities is far higher than their intrinsic value.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
>"So ... just like gold or diamond mining."
Both have intrinsic value. Just like coal, copper, or uranium, or any other actually mined materials have intrinsic value. A "bitcoin" or whatnot, however, has no actual value whatsoever, just a conceptional value that people artificially place on it. It is a lot like actual fiat currency which has no actual value; except fiat money costs very little resources to create.
Re: (Score:2)
fiat money costs very little resources to create.
Yep. And that's actually a bad thing if you're trying to keep your wealth stored as fiat money. Inevitably, someone will come along and decide to solve their problems by creating a bit more money, making your store worth less.
Re: (Score:3)
A thing can only be used as currency if it is expensive to replicate and its source can be controlled by a reliable producer. The US dollar is hard to replicate, and every few years the "proof of work" has to be increased to keep ahead of people who figure out how t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gold and diamond have practical uses. Bitcoin is useless and deliberately wasteful.
Currency has practical uses, where it gets it's scarcity based value is a moot point.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a small benefit to the increasing cost of mining BTC, in that it pushes the technology of high speed computing, including economizing on power consumption.
Re: (Score:2)
Bitcoin mining doesn't create very useful technology. It only creates optimized technology for calculating a particular SHA-256 hash. There's very little spinoff from this.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, the actual computing is being done with an ASIC specially for this task. But because the limiting factor on mining is already keeping the cost of power below the value of the coins produced, any way of shaving power used counts, as does any way of cramming in more parallelism.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
This is because of COMPETITION for mining, AND the low cost of energy. When energy costs increases, mining will be less profitable or unsustainable at current hashrate at that point, and thus less power will be consumed mining, and the difficulty/energy required will drop.
I would point out that a LOT of mining is occurring in China and using up excess renewable/subsidized energy production that would be wasted otherwise.
So what happens is mining also incentivizes production of that renewable energy a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Energy costs about 5 times as much in the form of Electricity as it does in the form of gas*. I would be better off with a personal truck engine converted to gas generating electricity in my house, and that is without considering the waste heat from a gas engine would heat my house - but the neighbours might complain about the noise.
Centralised energy generation was an excellent idea with steam engines in Victorian times, but its damn stupid now. Using giant gas turbines
Re: (Score:2)
I found a Ukranian company selling some heaters (their website looks a bit old, so I don't know if they're still in business): http://en.hotmine.io/ [hotmine.io]
Re: Irony (Score:2)
I think you forgot the actual energy distribution part of your equation. Electricity is far easier to distribute than other forms of energy: lpg, petrol, diesel, etc. The infrastructure is also easier to maintain than the other forms.
Not to mention the distributed maintenance costs would be higher when stuff breaks.
Then there is the sharing benefits where a group has less peak demand than the combined peak demands of each so you need to produce less energy in the first place.
Distributed solar I guess comes
BTC's no good for buying toilet paper (Score:2)
We need DIGITAL currency that BTC currently is not:
- has low latency transactions (seconds at most, scaling problem, transaction history drag)
- is eco-friendly = transactions are near free (minimum payment for watts/others/intermediaries/...)
- the price is fixed (to avoid speculations/currency being a subject of trade instead of tool for trade, maybe price fixed to Basket of Goods?)
+ all the cool features that BTC curently has like limited amount of coins (to avoid inflation), security, validability, decent
Re: (Score:2)
We already have that. It's called a debit card. Those things are easy to do if you are willing to trust in a central authority.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as stores are willing to take my bitcoin and give me real products ranging from toilet paper to cars, houses and boats... is your statement holding any value?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Smart post... Bitcoin is proof of energy production capacity, which in a world gaining AI and robotics is equivalent to the capacity to produce EVERYTHING. It seems renewables are the way to go with it, as a renewable source that can sustain itself (with a little love from robotics AI) is equivalent to an ever flowing cornucopia of money, because it's equivalent to an ever flowing cornucopia of wealth in terms of production capacity. This is because it all comes back to energy in a robotic world, mining the
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Irony (Score:4)
You forgot to explain how "The whole premise that "one bitcoin transaction uses more power than your house" is blatantly wrong" wrong?
It seems simply enough to calculate the energy requirements for mining a block. This block contains a fixed number of transactions, and if you divide the number of transactions with the energy requirements to mine the block, then you get the energy requirements for each transaction, which currently is about what a house uses in a week.
Off-Topic (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Would be 3-5 weeks for other western countries who actually insulate their houses, use modern appliances and lighting.
Still, itâ(TM)s a win...sort of (Score:2)
Given that the average electric bill per household per month is substantially less that $7,000 (price of BTC), its economically viable to keep doing this. The cost to the environment is another thing. Letâ(TM)s just hope that some of those bitcoins are put towards research to mitigate the environmental cost.
I pay for my house energy usage in bitcoins (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay my power bill using bitcoins. I noticed that I have to build out exponentially more bitcoin mining infrastructure every month, but I thought that was normal. I guess I should have realized something was amiss when we built the 60-acre data center. Anyhoo, the 3,600-acre data center will be sufficient, I am confident.
Re: (Score:2)
In California Terms (Score:2)
Each transaction costs about $32.25 just in energy used alone at my peak rates.
What a fucking waste.
Re: (Score:2)
2nd this, I'm surprised at the level of support bitcoin is getting when it's horribly inefficient, doesn't scale linearly and it's pretty obvious that a lot of the transactions are pure speculation into a bubble currency.
It's over 250 kWh per transaction now and growing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Potential to save vast amounts of energy (Score:2)
Clearly Aliens (Score:2)
I recently read speculations that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually an alien space probe, sent to destroy our civilisation.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really plausible, bad with numbers? (Score:2)
According to this: https://blockchain.info/de/cha... [blockchain.info]
we have up to 350k transactions per day. (This has similar numbers: https://www.quandl.com/data/BC... [quandl.com])
So we "waste" 350,000 weeks of american households energy, per day.
Where on the planet are the power plants supporting that?
Re: (Score:2)
Doomed to failure (Score:2)
Let's see who has, or rather had two months ago, the intelligence to sell and get ou
Re: (Score:2)
If the worth ever goes down, or probably even appears like there's an outside chance of going down below transaction cost then bitcoins become worthless instantly.
Just like anything right? I mean when nickles cost more than 5cents to make they'll stop making them then the world will end. Or....
Let's see who has, or rather had two months ago, the intelligence to sell and get out at the peak before the crash.
Two months? BTC peaked at $7800 3 days ago. Naturally it sank a little after a lofty rise and is at the same price it was two weeks ago when it was at it's then peak. Sure it could crash in the next 2 minutes, or in 20 years. But just wishing it away won't make it happen.
Sorry, that makes no sense (Score:2)
> 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.
That's just being silly. Imagine a company that has three vice presidents and spends $1 billion per year. I can say that company spends "over $300 million per
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They aren't progressives.
Sure they are. Progressives just aren't what you wish they were.
Re: (Score:2)
All most progressives want to do is build the environmental cost of the SUV into the sale price via taxes, so that the market will start driving decisions that are better for us all. Likewise I think bitcoin should be taxed for the environmental damage it does.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he never expected that much power going to mine them. As far as I understand it, the less people mine it the easier it gets but it still works.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What has the size of the house to do with the needed electricity?
The largest consumer of electricity in a home is the climate control system. [eia.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
What are you guys doing? x_X
You need to read Slashdot more often:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
That's what we're doing.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
And Germans are using 10X as much as natives hiding in the Amazon rain forest. Shame on Germany!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Waste heat at the power plant (Score:2)
It's hard to 'inefficiently' generate heat.
Other than to generate most of it at the power plant and only a small fraction in the residence where the heat is used. A natural gas furnace is less expensive to operate than an electric heater, even though only 80 percent of the free energy in the gas goes to heat (with the other 20 percent out the exhaust pipe), because all the heat generation happens in the residence.
Re: (Score:2)
even though only 80 percent of the free energy in the gas goes to heat (with the other 20 percent out the exhaust pipe)
You must have a very old furnace if it only gets 80%. A modern high-efficiency one gets 96%.
Re: (Score:2)