Bitcoin's proof of work energy consumption currently is 73.12 TWh, which is 0.33% of the worlds total electricity consumption. See more details in the picture.
Ok, lets say BTC gets more adoption and the price increases 10x to $75k, then the electricity consumption would be over 3% of what the world uses as a whole. Ok, still not a big problem I suppose. Lets say Bitcoin reaches global adoption and is now one of the main currencies. The price is $750k (at that price BTC's marketcap would still be lower than the Euro). In that case the proof of work energy consumption would be 30% compared to the world.
This will not happen. At some point along the way the community, governments and basically everyone with a brain will demand a consensus algorithm that is not this wasteful. I really hope and believe that the cryptocurrency that gains large adoption will not use proof of work.
BTC's consensus mechanism isn't proof of work. Ever since the exchanges allocated the ticker to whatever the core devs say BTC is, it has been centralised political council. The only role proof of work plays in BTC is decentralisation theatre. It can be safely dispensed with and no damage will have been done by the time the normies start to REEE, having served its purpose as the bait in the bait and switch tactic that changed the consensus mechanism out and turned BTC into just another central bank managed currency.
Alexander Lopez
Dont reall give a fuck until people who bring this up can show other energy intensive industries and how it compares. How much fuel is burned transporting worthless products around the world just for them to end up in the ocean and dumps within a year? How much electricity is consumed by the centralized servers for google and Amazon. Bitcoin looks bad on paper when its compared vs an entire planet rather than vs other large industries. Also, why does this have to be a bad thing? Humans have been advancing technology at an accelerated rate for the last 150 years. Our economies and way of life will keep changing with us.
Austin Lewis
Never claimed to be. But if you are, then feel free to add to the topic discussion.
Liam Long
Total energy consumption increases faster than bitcoin’s energy consumption. Energy consumption of miners only gets more efficient. How much energy do you think is being used to push around digital fiat? Lastly, let us examine the popular video game fortnite. >40 mil log in to play per month >assume they each play an avg of 10 hour per month (very conservative) >200 W for an avg pc (not even a gaming pc) >that’s 96 GWh per year from gamers >typical server can support around 5000 players >typical server uses at least 5MWh per year >400GWh per year to run servers That’s already half of btc consumption using gross underestimates, and not even accounting for streamers, for just one video game. So your comparison is ridiculous. A distributed global currency system should consume 1% of the world’s power, why not. Get fucked.
Grayson Smith
i second this
Leo Gray
why should energy consumption rise linearly to the price? elaborate.
Christopher Sanders
It has to rise linearly with price. If BTC's price is 80k, but it only costs 20k to mine, guess what happens - alot of people start mining it, which will increase the difficulty and therefore increase the cost of mining. I'll add this extra for you: Higher cost of mining = higher energy consumption.
Ayden Davis
>A distributed global currency system should >consume 1% of the world’s power, why not.
Because it's useless and and it provides virtually no benefits to essentially most of the population of the earth while being a massive consumer of resources for very little or no real economic gain. If you want to compare to other industries, fine. But keep in mind that those industries produce things that are worth actual money and contribute measurably to GDP. What does bitcoin do except waste power and add another useless layer onto an already functional global financial system?
Wyatt Martinez
price increase does not dictate electricity consumption you silly newfag >it's supply and demand divided by risk is what drives price of anything on this planet
Colton Martin
ITT there people unironically retarded enough to defend this, cause they think it makes them rich.
Alexander Parker
If you think video games and memes are worth more than decentralized remittance then you are in the 1%. Enjoy your blissful ignorance. The rest of the world doesn’t have the luxury of financial infrastructure they can trust.
Angel Thompson
>other industries produce things of value Just because you dont believe btc has value doesnt make it so. It has had value since 2011 and that value continues to rise whether you agree or not.
Nolan Wood
>already functional global financial system This r*ddit söycuck, Jesus.
Jayden Morales
Yes it does, you brainlet. BTC price and mining cost will always be closely correlated. If BTC's price drops to 2k but it costs 6k to mine, a lof of miners will stop mining, then the difficulty decreases, so the mining cost will decrease. If BTC's price rises to 20k, but it costs 6k to mine, a lot of miners will start mining, then the difficulty increase, so the mining cost will increase.
David Reed
I third this
Chase Gomez
Pretty much this. And Bitcoin can't change its PoW because it will lose its hash power. And the miners won't stop. Gfg
Colton Evans
>people want to mine BTC >they create a demand for ASIC miners >ASIC miners consume electricity which creates a demand for power companies to invest in the infrastructure and electricity generation >faggot OP is mad at miners and wants to police electricity use cases
Dumbass. Yes it takes more energy per bitcoin, but that doesn’t mean miners will be consuming more energy. Higher difficulty just means they get less mining rewards. You think machines can just start consuming more power? Miners would need to invest in more machines, and that isn’t directly correlated to price like you say it is. PoW has to do with computation time, not computation power. Power consumption only gets more efficient.
Zachary Garcia
IDIOT FAGGOT MOTHERFUCKER NIGGER WITH AIDS POW IS (NOT ALONE) WHAT GIVES VALUE TO BTC
Liam Gutierrez
>you are not smart
Mason White
Neck yourself
Jordan Sullivan
>10541478 Do you even understand the concepts and benefits of decentralization? Look what the cloud has done to tech. Bitcoin is decentralized currency, transferable immediately to anywhere in the world, without having to transfer between fiat currencies or require a third party for the transfer. It is not controlled by a central or federal banking system either. There is no physical creation or transference of physical metal or paper to complete a transfer of the currency.
How can you not see the benefits in this? You are a fucking normalfag who doesn't know shit about the tech and just want to believe that its just a ponzi because that's what other normalfags, who are also totally ignorant to the tech and uses, say.
KYS
Colton Rodriguez
Fuck your global financial system. It aint even close to beeing global if 4 billion people have very limited access to banking and 2 billion which dont have access to a bank. Somewhere in the shitfuck of nowhere in ugande there is a cell phone antenna with a solar panel. One phone, one wallet.
Josiah Ramirez
one more thing: CORRUPTION
Robert Clark
This is why the halvenings occur, also BTC is fucked long term because without a fee market developing (which can't because of the 1mb blocksize), transaction rewards are going to stay the same and the block reward will reduce until miners literally go bankrupt.
BTC is fucked short term and long term. Bitcoin Cash on the other hand will reduce electricity requirements as the block halves and winning the block for the transaction fees is what becomes extremely important, and because fees are extremely low, so is electricity total electricity usage.
TLDR: BTC 1mb blocksize is literally killing it and resulting in huge increases in electricity BCH will inevitably take dominance of the entire market.
Dylan Anderson
Your maths is terrible fortnight uses a pittance compared to Cryptocurrency
Carson Sanchez
No PoW coin will do it long term. At one point, some PoS coin will dethrone bitcoin.
Chase Ross
You're fucking retarded, having a financial system that doesn't depend on the politics of a single country is priceless and the IMF has been clear about that since fucking Bretton Woods.
Tyler Bailey
Deluded cashie. Who the fuck needs your obsolete shitfork except for Jihan and Roger Ver when there are already alts capable of 1000+ TPS?
I only fucked up the last step. I meant half a TWh, not half of btc consumption. Still I underestimated heavily and my point still stands.
Noah Cruz
I see most people here defending POW, but even if you're a die hard BTC maximalist, you just have to admit that it would be great *IF* there is a way for proof of stake to be as secure and decentralized as proof of work.
Levi Sullivan
kk go buy your alts with 1000+ TPS corecuck. I bet you can't find one that delivers transactions on-chain with the exception of Bitcoin Cash.
If they're not on-chain transactions, they're not crypto. Dumbcunt.
Leo Mitchell
someone photoshop the year to 2014 pls
Justin Barnes
fpbp delusional >and because fees are extremely low, so is electricity total electricity usage he actually thinks he has any clue what he's talking about. fucking cashies you are actually retarded aren't you...
Landon Bennett
"Proof of work will start an arms race in energy production...."
The worldwide energy production is still about 70% from burning fossil fuels. We are literally going to collapse in the next decades if we keep burning at these rates. 2016 was the hottest year since climate recordings began, oh no wait 2017 was the hottest now, oh nevermind now 2018 was the hottest year in 150 of climate records.
But sure, lets have a proof of work arms race and burn millions of tons of coal for out meme internet money. Its going to be proof of stake or bust.
Gavin Morris
WTF are you smoking, cashie? NEO, EOS, NANO, BTS all do on-chain transactions.
Literally none of these shitcoins are worth a cent
Nolan Rodriguez
you're thinking like a status quo brainlet who thinks that wealth cannot be created and that human economies are a zero-sum game stop thinking like that, and start thinking along the lines of scalable, fail-safe nuclear reactors—or even the next best thing beyond such a means of producing energy—that proof-of-work coins will always provide a direct financial incentive to create, even if one is thinking of only using it for their own mining company's private use
Noah Gutierrez
I'm all in on tezos, i will make it fren.
Aaron Flores
Nuclear reactors are a very expensive way of producing electricity, what we need to do is have more hydroelectric plants fed by the melting glaciers of the himalayas
Dominic Taylor
Mine with hydro, wind or solar bruh. Easy,
Asher Young
this will unironically save the planet look at all the new energy efficient models being developed specifically for bitcoin mining it's like how nasa brought up water filters that about that nigger
Hudson Cruz
Jesus Christ. POW gives tangibile value to the network you idiot. Why are you even alive?
Aiden Kelly
kek
kike scams are the worst by far goy
Andrew Young
First, the reward halves every 4 years. Second, this is more of a race of building efficient miners which will have to be paid off. Third, you're a brainlet faggot. Forth, a lot miners are located at places where there's a surplus of electricity.
William Walker
Here's my thoughts. Your brain's energy consumption is too low. Try upping it.
Matthew Peterson
Its a huge problem. Eventually though the protocol in theory can be changed instantaneously.
The protocol will have to be changed, thats all there is to it. Governments have no stake in it. they can pull the plug (metaphorically)
Isaiah Scott
BCash is literally a chink scam started by Bitmain to sell more ASICs.
Carson Young
This is one of the reasons why BTC is the first crypto, but maybe not the one that makes it to true mainstream adoption. It's not digital gold. It's like the cryptocurrency version of an old Datapoint 2200. Better ones, like Holo (and I don't feel like Holo is the final form of crypto, either), will come along that work more efficiently and receive true adoption.
Andrew Young
>Thoughts? Basically fuck Bitcoin. Everything you said is common sense. We all know this eventually will happen but people here are in denial. Devs will HAVE to change the consensus algorithm one way or another.
