Well, each transaction (that is, each donation) has to be put into a new block, which takes only a limited number of transactions. To mine this block, the miner wastes energy. You even pay the miner for this waste with your transaction fee.
Apart, we are helping Bitcoin becoming more useful => the price for 1 BTC rises => more miners will mine BTC.
I am in favor of removing Bitcoin donation buttons.
@hocuri, Licaron’s point is moot and so basically your point is a kind of strawman argument, that has found a weak argument to attack. Have you read any of the studies, including the Cambridge University study above, that illustrate that Bitcoin is surprisingly efficient.
Based on this new knowledge from the Cambridge study, I have been able to get an organic farmer who was previously anti-bitcoin, to seriously consider bitcoin. They asked me a bunch of follow-up questions yesterday that indicates to me that they are on the right path now.
I anticipate that with this new knowledge, I’ll be able to onboard a few other entities.
The bitcoin train has left the station. You are right that it will only increase in value as more people realise the benefits of hard-money. Fiat can only go down in history as a dangerous 100-year experiment, a blight that almost (almost, if we are lucky) lead us to an extinction event.
Monetary policy really is that important.
…Or teach kids today that credit card debt is good and money has a negative value. : D
Smaragdus, I thought he was a troll/drone at first also but it’s pretty obvious he isn’t when he tried to learn the global energy market using the internet.
Lets not go overboard now. The last thing we need is this post being taken down because of ad-hominums.
Wow! Banks are way more ecological problems in the world. How about removing them too?
You can also expand it to the governments and states!
@webDev But currently there are a lot more people boiling water than people using Bitcoin. If more people started using bitcoin, then more energy will be used.
According to How Much of All Money Is in Bitcoin? about 1/2000 of all money in the world is Bitcoin (83000B/41B is about 2000). Now, we can estimate that if all money was Bitcoin, Bitcoin would need about 2000 times more energy than today.
Accoding to the Cambridge study you linked to, Bitcoin currently needs 0.36 of our electricity consumption, which is about 1/300. This means that if Bitcoin only needs 300 times the energy it needs today, the global electricity consumption will double.
Hi @Hocuri ,
Point one:
Bitcoin is about 0.5 to 1% of the global cash supply. Bitcoin market is worth about 500 billion and the global cash totals around 80 trillion, not counting the money currently being printed and injected into the banking cartel every day until Oct 10 like constant hit of cocaine for an addiict, or Oprah giving “free” stuff to her audience. Even worse, everyone who doesn’t get first dibs on the injected cash are being robbed by this action. Inflating the money supply and giving it to yourself and your mates is theft from everyone else. You/We are being punished because of the mistakes of bankers. This cannot be stressed enough. The Cantillon Effect explains how those closest to the newly printed cash inflate the prices for everyone else and squirrel the money away into assets, depriving real, everyday people of needed funds.
I don’t know anything about Investopedia, but it’s a dot com so it’s probably trying to sell something (I actually cbf visiting their site because it’s forbidden on Tor Privacy Browser. Bugger 'em).
That aside Bitcoin’s energy consumption will not scale in a linear way.
Because Bitcoin challenges very powerful, well-resourced vested interest groups, who get first dibs on free newly-printed money, Bitcoin is currently under attack, and will likely continue to be under attack until the old system ends. This means the bitcoin network needs to use more energy than is needed at this time to secure the network.
This is a temporary problem typical of any kind of transition period. There are always vested interests who resist democratic progress. How many people were killed in protests in the 1900’s to get decent work conditions? The last century was brutal for labour groups. By comparison, Bitcoin is an extremely peaceful form of protest, especially if you are concerned about the two greatest threats of our time; inequality and climate emergency.
Third and final point, and it’s one that is never mentioned in mainstream media. The Bitcoin protocol is designed to get easier and use less energy, as energy become less available, so in a world where we have stopped using fossil fuels and only rely on renewable sources, the Bitcoin “puzzles” will get easier. So instead of needing to get a Hash (a difficult to generate number) below 50 for example, miners will only need to get a Hash below, say, 200.
Although Bitcoin is 10 years old, there is still a lot of general ignorance out there. I was ignorant for so many years, I was so busy on other projects that I neglected Bitcoin until recently, Most people don’t realise the actual real purpose of Bitcoin, why it needs to work the way it does, nor do they understand that they didn’t get burnt buying Bitcoin in 2017/2018. The vast majority likely got burnt buying scam coins, glorified database products, and repackaged and re-hypothecated financial products that have almost nothing to do with Bitcoin and everything to do with pyramid schemes. I know because I tried to politely warn people about the dodgy products, when they tried to recruit or inform me on them. I’d say the vast majority did not know the difference between Bitcoin and re-packaged bitcoin-styled products.
So what I’m saying is there’s a lot of general ignorance about it and it’s going to take time to repair Bitcoin’s reputation, despite the fact that those who got burnt likely never actually bought bitcoins at all!
The scams are a natural part of the transition process, and general attack surface. Entities will always try to capitalise on ignorance, when a new technology pops up. Many nefarious actors will try to get-in-on-the-action or try to make quick money. Of course this has a negative and positive impact. The positive is that everyone knows that there’s a new technology called blockchain and bitcoin, and another positive is that people are going to be more cautious to the warning signs of Get Rich schemes, and Pyramid Schemes. The negative part is people get confused by all the different tokens and may give up, and the media’s exaggeration of a “bubble” and “energy use” creates a general fear of all things Bitcoin.
The sooner the transition happens the better off I think we will be, but I think it will take a while for the majority to understand the technology well enough to not make similar mistakes to 2017.
There’s a quote that I think is suitable to Bitcoin.
At first they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fear you,
Then you win. : )
In that case, it’s 1/200 or 1/100 (what is your source, btw?). This will still mean that if everyone uses BTC, the global electricity consumption will get remarkably more (like, increase by 30% in a time when we should remarkably reduce it).
Source? AFAIK only “new” BTC are “created”, no new “classical” money.
Miners are mainly mining for money, not to secure the network, and I do not know why this main reason should get less important.
Miners will only stop mining if it is not worth it anymore, in this case because electricity gets more expensive. And politicians will try to change to sustainable energy without an increase of price because general acceptance for higher prices is rather low.
Hi @Hocuri,
It’s surprisingly easy to know the value of the Bitcoin protocol. You multiply the number of coins in the market (which is publicly known because it’s a public distributed ledger) by the market value of the bitcoin. That’s how the industry has gotten evalutions at around half a trillion.
As I’ve said bitcoin’s energy consumption will not scale up in a linear fashion, it may not scale up much at all! It could even go down over time. Especially after people accept hard-money as a neccessity.
What financial news have you been following since the GFC? Fiat money is being printed. You may have heard of “bailouts” because the bankers are “Too Big To Fail”. Fiat has been printed for banks that engaged in what analysts have called criminal and fraudulent conduct. When fiat money is printed, bankers call it Quantitative Easing (QE). Its a fancy way of saying “money printing”.
In case you have any doubts about the purpose of bitcoin. The first block in the bitcoin blockchain in 2009 quotes a newspaper headline, “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” 
New BTC is issued only after a miner secures the network by successfully creating the new block in the blockchain. That actually requires work and thus the new bitcoin is a reward for solving a difficult problem (generating the tiny Hash I talked about earlier). In contrast the current fiat system reward new money to banks that are simply “Too Big to Fail” and acting very, very badly… many say criminally.
Both. By securing the network they get the reward of new Bitcoin as stated previously. The amount of new bitcoin that gets given to miners will slowly go down until no new bitcoin will be issued, after that time the miner will only be rewarded by the transaction fees on the block that they successfully secure.
I think that you would benefit greatly by reading the FAQ and content on the official bitcoin website. The site and digital wallet is built by a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community similar to F-Droid.
True. In Australia we have extremely high energy costs that have been growing steadily. We are not particularly happy about it but on the whole I think we have accepted that we need to consume less. We have responded by using less energy. Since 2003, households have reduced electricity consumption by 40%!! This is great news, but instead of taking these energy efficiency gains and lowering our overall carbon footprint our government have chosen to import more consumers into the country, thus we are actually still increasing our footprint despite lower per household energy consumption.
: (
When we use fiat, we are fueling extreme growth in the money supply, and thus, extreme inequality and over-consumption. Bitcoin as a limited currency is well positioned to help us stop the extreme growth in the consumption of resources and energy. If you are worried about the climate emergency then look at the population problem. Wherever you are in the world, encourage your leaders to ensure that women to have equal access to education and job opportunities. Globally we need to have free, easy access to contraception and family planning services. When these things are available people do take advantage of them and fertility does go down. We need to reverse population growth.
I would like to start a war on tea and kettles!!! Blasted things. You don’t even need to boil the water, in fact boiling water is bad for tea, grrrrrr. Start a campaign with me @TryingTo.
Feel free to encourage people not to overfill kettles and to buy eco kettles. Studies are showing that most appliances are improving except kettles
The UK is 1% of earth’s population, so if everyone on earth had equal access to kettles, the population of earth would spend about 6 times more energy boiling water for their tea than securing the entire money supply and banking system.
How much energy consumption do you think you need to secure the entire money supply and banking system ?
What are you comparing ? The energy consumption of all the population having kettles to the 10 million people using Bitcoin now ?
Now imagine, if everyone used Bitcoins …
Remember that bitcoin is being enhanced with Layer 2 tech that is making it quicker and cheaper, and with lower fees.
Okay, that’s interesting … But how much will decrease consumption ? And also, when will it be enhanced ?
The Bitcoin protocol is designed to get easier and use less energy, as energy become less available, so in a world where we have stopped using fossil fuels and only rely on renewable sources, the Bitcoin “puzzles” will get easier. So instead of needing to get a Hash (a difficult to generate number) below 50 for example, miners will only need to get a Hash below, say, 200.
(If there is still a world …)
It’s still really hypothetical, first of all how many years before we attain this ?
The scams are a natural part of the transition process, and general attack surface. Entities will always try to capitalise on ignorance, when a new technology pops up.
Aren’t you afraid that bitcoins will also be mis-used ?
We can already see how some “bad” people are using bitcoins. ( darkweb, crypto-jacking, ransoms). How can you be sure bitcoins will bring better things?
As I’ve said bitcoin’s energy consumption will not scale up in a linear fashion, it may not scale up much at all! It could even go down over time. Especially after people accept hard-money as a neccessity.
So in how many years ? Will people ever accept this ?
The amount of new bitcoin that gets given to miners will slowly go down until no new bitcoin will be issued, after that time the miner will only be rewarded by the transaction fees on the block that they successfully secure.
Which again , will be in how many years ?
And could it really support the amount of visa transations for example for less energy use ?
When we use fiat, we are fueling extreme growth in the money supply, and thus, extreme inequality and over-consumption. Bitcoin as a limited currency is well positioned to help us stop the extreme growth in the consumption of resources and energy
In theory, maybe. I’m not sure in practice it does, and for now it doesn’t .
All good responses and good questions @TryingTo .
Apparently sandwich presses and toasters are pretty bad but it wouldn’t surprise me that kettles are generally overfilled and difficult to make energy efficiency gains with. I remember from my physics studies that heating water is generally energy intensive, yes.
Yes I do because I do think that the early adopters know that these are precarious times and that they are securing the network as aggressively as they would for 10-20 times the number of users. Time will tell. In reality it might be that the Bitcoin network will consume about as much as everyone global boiling a small kettle.
Layer 2 is in a state of adoption, I believe. I understand that many Layer 2 services are out there already but because its a fairly new the adoption and efficiency gains are only marginally realised. I understand that the tech will be able to amalgamate more transactions into one, the more transactions that it gets. So it may require a critical mass to be using it before we see the real efficiency gains. For example businesses in a local council may wish to use the local council’s Lightning Node. Or a local bank’s Lightening node. Yes there may still be banks in a bitcoin universe but they will operate very differently.
I came across something pretty interesting today, UNICEF will now be accepting donations in bitcoin and etherium!
UNICEF for example are quite big, so they can probably setup their own Lightening Node. Say they get 2000 microtransactions a day, instead of adding each transaction to the blockchain individually they can do it all at once, when they need/want to, for example at a threshold when donations reach 1 bitcoin.
So as an example, UNICEF would pay the single fee to the blockchain for all the transactions. The transaction will be a larger than a single transaction and will attract a larger fee, but a lot smaller than if all the transactions were added to the blockchain individually. Does that make sense?
Agree on your sentiments here. I think we need to get a lot better at choosing who leads our respective countries. I actually think our media (especially in Australia) are too easily corrupted by real estate interests. If you trace back into the origins of the real estate bubbles, you will see that they are joined at the hip to the current financial system.
See 1970
EDIT: I lie, I think there was a real estate bubble based on printed paper money in France after property was taken from the Catholic Church. Sounds like a similar story to today, probably with different costumes, though.
EDIT 2: In terms of other bubbles, such as 1929, countries were coming on and of the gold standard, printing money to pay for war etc. Not great examples of governments being in control of the money supply, it seems. Whether there’s a link to the stock markets bubble, Europe and the newly created Fed Reserve, I haven’t looked into that. I know that today, the laws put in place post-1929 have since been repealed. The most notable being the Glass-Steagel Act repealed by Bill Clinton, which many attribute led to the GFC. The issue was revived in 2016 as one of the reasons to reject Hillary.
Bitcoin will likely force manufacturer’s to build impeccable, resilient systems, and whistleblowers will ensure that. Part of me thinks that future generations will 3D print their smart devices from open-source code and recycled materials, although it may be a distant future. The human element will always exist though, that means porn, drugs, crime, mistakes, nefarious actors. Keeping backups of all things digital is so important, it always has been important.
I remember stats that showed the vast majority of crime is done with fiat currency.
Good q’s. Difficult to predict. The only thing more difficult to predict is the current financial system because it’s so artificial. I think bitcoin is not stopping, it’s coming, and we should start learning how to work it into our lifestyles in ways that suit us. For me, instead of doing micropayments I give the vendor a largish sum, and then they keep a tab and also write my remaining balance on the back of the receipt they give me. We know that it’s a temporary solution, but it’s surprisingly simple and a bit fun.
In practice I think the current system is extremely wasteful. It has proven that it is unstable, creates extreme inequality, environmental disasters, and can destroy good markets - a general ‘Avoid’. A 45-year global human experiment that has fallen flat and will fail.
I apologise for my eariler concerns about you possibly being a shill, it’s pretty obvious to me that you are not a shill and I have enjoyed discussing these topics with you, and look forward to further dialogue on this and other topics on F-Droid forums.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.