BTC transaction uses the same energy as driving 2,500 miles in Tesla S Model(old.reddit.com)
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BTC transaction uses the same energy as driving 2,500 miles in Tesla S Model
https://old.reddit.com/r/nanotrade/comments/lfeblw/1_btc_transaction_uses_the_same_energy_as_driving/
8 comments
Kind of misleading, as each transaction doesn't cost much energy. The energy usage is a product of the price of Bitcoin, not the number of transactions.
No, it's quite accurate.
Bitcoin is estimated to use somewhere between 5 to 10 GW of power continuously, in total. It produces ~4 transactions per second average. Run the numbers. 7,500,000 kW * (1hours/60minutes) * (minute/60s) * (1s/4transations) = 520 kWh per transactions.
So yes, it is ~500kWh per transactions. Not quite 2500mi- highest efficiency Teslas can do 400mi on a 100kWh pack- but pretty close. Another figure of merit, the average US house uses ~800 kWh a month. A bitcoin transaction takes an entire household for a month's power.
At it's absolute peak, bitcoin processed 500k transactions in a single day. Mid December 2017. 5.7 transactions per second. Hash rate was accelerating at a madcap pace, blocks minted was the highest-by-far per-day. Difficulty rate adjusted & transactions per day fell way off, immediately. Efficiency that day was a bit higher. But still a colossal waste. Probably never to be repeated.
What you say has no basis in fact. Sure, if bitcoin was uninteresting and the hash rate were tiny, it would use a lot less energy. It would/could mint near to the same number of transactions: bitcoin is designed to auto-regulate to the same number of bitcoins a day, it's difficulty goes up, so there's supposed to always be a block every 10 minutes. Which will hold about the same number of transactions, a bit over ~2000 per coin mined, tops. Hypothetically yes, "energy usage is a product of the price of bitcoin", yes, energy usage could be lower, hypothetically. But only if we all agreed not to use it. To stop mining. And honestly, we probably should all agree to not use it. Because every transactions that does happen is a cardinal sin, an egregious lighting on fire a chunk of the planet, a throwing away of capacity that could be going to good, that instead, is waste, for nothing.
Bitcoin is estimated to use somewhere between 5 to 10 GW of power continuously, in total. It produces ~4 transactions per second average. Run the numbers. 7,500,000 kW * (1hours/60minutes) * (minute/60s) * (1s/4transations) = 520 kWh per transactions.
So yes, it is ~500kWh per transactions. Not quite 2500mi- highest efficiency Teslas can do 400mi on a 100kWh pack- but pretty close. Another figure of merit, the average US house uses ~800 kWh a month. A bitcoin transaction takes an entire household for a month's power.
At it's absolute peak, bitcoin processed 500k transactions in a single day. Mid December 2017. 5.7 transactions per second. Hash rate was accelerating at a madcap pace, blocks minted was the highest-by-far per-day. Difficulty rate adjusted & transactions per day fell way off, immediately. Efficiency that day was a bit higher. But still a colossal waste. Probably never to be repeated.
What you say has no basis in fact. Sure, if bitcoin was uninteresting and the hash rate were tiny, it would use a lot less energy. It would/could mint near to the same number of transactions: bitcoin is designed to auto-regulate to the same number of bitcoins a day, it's difficulty goes up, so there's supposed to always be a block every 10 minutes. Which will hold about the same number of transactions, a bit over ~2000 per coin mined, tops. Hypothetically yes, "energy usage is a product of the price of bitcoin", yes, energy usage could be lower, hypothetically. But only if we all agreed not to use it. To stop mining. And honestly, we probably should all agree to not use it. Because every transactions that does happen is a cardinal sin, an egregious lighting on fire a chunk of the planet, a throwing away of capacity that could be going to good, that instead, is waste, for nothing.
So by your logic, we need to simply increase the number of transactions per minute and that will lower the cost of energy per transaction in kind.
That requires making a coin which is not bitcoin, i.e. a fork. They haven't historically gone well (see bitcoin cash).
fundamentally Bitcoin is a means of wastefully burning energy to get other people to give you cash. energy to cash conversion, by producing waste. that is immoral. at this level of inefficiency it is particularly vulgar but the premise is demonic, at any scale.
A very accurate and well stated response. Saying it’s being used for “nothing” is, in my opinion, like saying building a spaceship is for nothing. I know people who say that. Not only is it a step on the road to something much grander, but purely by its existence it produces artifacts that add value in other areas. Decentralized exchanges, flash loans, all the ideas and technologies that have arisen from this space and will eventually evolve into amazing tools for finance and civilization. I get what you mean - it sure looks wasteful. But to me it’s not so cut and dry.
The issue with bitcoin is that the amount of energy needed to secure the network isn't actually necessarily well matched with the amount of energy people are incentivised to put into it. The amount people put into it depends on the mining rate (which decays as a slow exponential over time), the price of bitcoin, and the price of energy and mining hardware. The amount needed to put into it to secure the network depends on the price of energy/hardware and the amount of money you could make from a 51% attack (which is functionally a double-spend: not only do you need a substantial amount of bitcoin to pull this off, you need to be able to get the cash out somehow. Or you can try shorting it and assume the market will panic when it happens). At the moment the price is high and the mining rate is also quite high, while energy is frequently available below-cost (certainly below environmental cost) due to a combination of factors including corruption and freeloading on subsidies intended for other purposes. At the moment I think the energy use of bitcoin is far higher than is necessary for the network to be safe from a 51% attack, but also in the long run (because the transaction rate is so low and the mining rate dropping over the next few decades), I think mining will not be enough to secure the network, and either it fails due to a 51% attack or the transaction fees become truly ludicrous.
I think cryptocurrencies are a good innovation as a whole and it's likely something like them will be used to provide great value in the future, but bitcoin is most definitely not that, and it's position as the first, most valuable, while also the slowest and least efficient makes it not only harmful to the crypto sector by strangling others but also just bad for humanity as a whole. The sooner we can move on from it the better (etherium might be a good option in the longer run: moving to proof of stake removes the big energy waste and they actually have some scope to evolve the system, unlike bitcoin which basically got fossilised in a half-complete state).
I think cryptocurrencies are a good innovation as a whole and it's likely something like them will be used to provide great value in the future, but bitcoin is most definitely not that, and it's position as the first, most valuable, while also the slowest and least efficient makes it not only harmful to the crypto sector by strangling others but also just bad for humanity as a whole. The sooner we can move on from it the better (etherium might be a good option in the longer run: moving to proof of stake removes the big energy waste and they actually have some scope to evolve the system, unlike bitcoin which basically got fossilised in a half-complete state).