Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

This is another of the bitcoin related topic which has been discussed many times already in last couple of months:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15663053" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15663053</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15873395" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15873395</a><p>I have also written a blog on this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hackernoon.com&#x2F;dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy-use-5f38e91c3253" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hackernoon.com&#x2F;dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy-use-5...</a>

Isn&#x27;t the root of the problem that fossil fuels are too cheap? If you tax carbon to include the costs of climate change then this problem will go away.

The idea is the switch to proof of stake will likely fix this particular problem if it works.

Is there a reason the proof of work can’t do something more useful, like protein folding?

As I know, there is only 2 million Bitcoins unmined left. Once we mine all, aren’t we done with mining and miners ?

Sincere question: what&#x27;s the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?

This article is based on some incredibly bad estimates, and reaches an outrageously large conclusion.<p>Let us assume that 100% of all mining rewards go to electricity (and none to buying mining equipment, paying employees, servers, or networking), and let us further assume the electricity costs $0.01 &#x2F; KWhr, which is cheaper than one can buy basically anywhere.<p>From flippening.watch, BTC paid miners $20,797,200 yesterday, for 2,079,720,000 KWHrs. This translates to approximately 87 GW of electricity, 24&#x2F;7. 87 GW is approximately the output of the 21 Palo Verde nuclear plants in Arizona, which according to the US Energy Information Administration, can output up to 3937 MW. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;tools&#x2F;faqs&#x2F;faq.php?id=104&amp;t=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;tools&#x2F;faqs&#x2F;faq.php?id=104&amp;t=3</a><p>In other words, Bitcoin is a drop in the bucket. Let&#x27;s put this myth of massive energy usage to rest, and at the cost of being too snarky, and let us ask our journalists to learn basic math.<p>edit - I made a math mistake, which I have corrected. The overall point, while I was off by several orders of magnitude, however, holds.<p>edit 2 - I retract the entire comment. It appears the article is true, and that, ironically, I made the same mistake I accused the journalist of. I&#x27;m going to leave the comment up for posterity, but I retract it.

It&#x27;s a problem because it&#x27;s a digital currency? Because many other things that could be considered &quot;surpeflous&quot; also consumer massive amount of electricity. Or for example (not superfluous but potentially equivalent) how much electricity all the global banking system uses? I bet that it&#x27;s more than &quot;a nation&quot;.

fast forward to a Dyson sphere for crypto mining

How does a nation expand credit with a cryptocurrency? Like as in the case with fractional reserve banking?

High electricity consumption is the trade bitcoin made in its design for a stable money supply, it&#x27;s not an inherent problem with cryptocurrency.

I posted on FB while working on my degree and got a 5 year memory about it recently. I visualized the miners turning the polar bears black, and I was a good liberal who turned off my lights. Ethics would win. &quot;It was a cool prototype&quot; that I forgot about. Every CS student can figure this out, so it&#x27;s surprising that we&#x27;ve let it go. Incentives, right.

What a ridiculous article. Household air-conditioning wastes energy. Running your television wastes energy. Serving up webpages for The Guardian is apparently a waste of energy. If the problem is that the price of energy does not encompass the negative externalities it creates, then we need a Pigouvian tax on it. The price rises, and miners reassess whether or not they are profitable in a carbon-neutral world. The author seems to think that market participants using energy in a profitable manner are at fault here, rather than the policymakers who are not interested in tackling the Greatest Moral Challenge of Our Time (TM). But sure, jump on the bandwagon and write op-eds while Bitcoin is in the news.