the dark power of Bitcoin
the whole bitcoin network uses more power than the whole country of Ecuador.
In the back of my mind I realized that Bitcoin mining was really energy consuming but when I stumbled across this fact it really hit home and I read up a bit on the topic.
First of all all the numbers are estimates because it is impossible to know who pays what for electricity and what the efficiency of their equipment is but there are enough facts out there to draw an accurate average
this would mean that at the present rate according to these statistics bitcoin could power a bit over 2 million american households. Now lets assume that these numbers are greatly exaggerated and half it down you could still provide electricity to about 1 million households (rougly 3 per houshold?) thats 3 million people.
for the electricity to confirm 1 transaction on the blockchain you can charge a Tesla model S more then 2 times and
There are 7 confirmations per second, so I guess we could charge all electric cars with the power the bitcoin miners are using
There must be a better way right?
there is: STEEM is a perfect example
delegated proof of stake: 21 witnesses confirming all transactions voted by the user-base
or even normal proof of stake like NEO, BITBEAN (soon to be BEAN CASH), etc...
For the moment Ethereum is also one of these power hungry beasts but it is planning to move to proof of stake as well...
Will Bitcoin ever move away from this wasteful way? Hard to tell, the miners seem to be holding a lot of "power" over what happens with the Bitcoin blockchain and since its in their best interest not to switch... Bitcoin is indeed decentralized in its use but its more and more becoming centralized in the big mining centers.
Will this be sustainable in the long run? The demand for bigger hashing power will not stop and if it stays profitable then miners will keep adding machines and the power usage will rise.
Hopefully more and more will start using green power if it becomes cheaper.
There is an abundance of articles written on this topic but a lot of information was centralised here https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Good article. I noticed mining on smart phones too are becoming popular and CPU mining. Most people I spoke to hook up a solar panel to their laptops and mine.
yes there are some options to mine monero and such on smartphones (except iphones sadly) and you need a lot of sun or a lot of panels if you want to do that and then only during the day
On the flip side the cryptocurrency industry is causing expansion in the markets of solar, hydroelectric, and even now geothermal electric production. I just saw H2O coin somewhere and it made me think about what you seem to be voicing here. I feel that Bitcoin seizing the reigns of power, as it is, might put a better group of minds in front of the much-needed paradigm shift.
my point in this is that there are better ways to approach the whole thing but that I guess the money/profitability will drive the changes
Unless there is nothing left to change. I look at the downside too, but prefer not to concentrate on it. If you wanted to buy Steem for example, would you use BTC or LTC? Hopefully those of us that used BTC last year see similar things going on. Also, because I resteemed, I was wondering about the single transaction using a week's electricity. I have seen that before but my electric is about 50USD a week and I can make a lot of BTC transactions for that! Does it refer to the creation on blocks? The average electricity used in the transactions of Satoshis equal to one BTC?
well, check out this article, it explains the full calculation
https://securitygladiators.com/bitcoin-uses-energy-a-lot/
GLobal Ha$Hrate PeR SeC0Nd....interesting. Thanx!
Good article. I noticed mining on smart phones too are becoming popular and CPU mining. Most people I spoke to hook up a solar panel to their laptops and mine.