Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

[Babbylonian]

Waste not want not. 1 ounce of Gold reportedly requires 8.3 Terajoules of energy to mine. As of now that's $1,841 USD worth of Gold.

Let's convert 8.3 Terajoules into Kilowatt Hours:
Where 1 Terajoule is equal to 277,778 KWH,
8.3 Terajoules = 2,305,557 KWH

2,305,557 KWH to mine $1,841 USD worth of Gold. (Two million three hundred five thousand five hundred fifty-seven KWH.)


How many KWH to mine 1 Bitcoin? Reportedly it takes an average of 143,000 KWH to mine 1 Bitcoin. (One hundred and forty-three thousand KWH.)

Citation: https://minerdaily.com/2021/how-much-power-does-it-take-to-mine-a-bitcoin/

Bitcoin is at this moment is valued at $17,820 USD per Bitcoin.

What's worse for the environment mining Gold or mining Bitcoin? If one Bitcoin is worth approximately 10 ounces of Gold, let do the math.

10 ounces of Gold at 2,305,557 KWH per ounce to mine = 23,055,570 KWH (Twenty-three million, fifty-five thousand, five hundred seventy KWH.)

Gold requires 23,055,570 KWH and approximately the same value amount in Bitcoin requires 143,000 KWH.

Gold is MUCH worse for the environment as it requires exponentially more energy to produce than Bitcoin. Let's get rid of that nasty Environment killing Gold.

Even accepting all your numbers (I'm sure someone with an interest can verify or refute them), gold has actual physical, non-ornamental uses. Bitcoin is nothing and represents only the power wasted in its "production."

 

[marting]

Even accepting all your numbers (I'm sure someone with an interest can verify or refute them), gold has actual physical, non-ornamental uses. Bitcoin is nothing and represents only the power wasted in its "production."

While gold has actual uses. industrial and jewelry, the amount extant is far more that those consume. So it is used as a sort of store of value. And, of course, is widely held in many countries central banks which is a big reason why there is so much of it beyond it's normal uses. Gold's disadvantage (or advantage in a sense) is that it isn't as easily transferred. Especially across borders as bitcoin.

Bitcoin, otoh, has no base value. It's worth what someone else will buy it for. There is no intrinsic limit, up or down to that. It's difference from gold is low friction for buying/selling and the ability to transfer it easily globally. No real barriers across borders.

 

[Samson]

Another way to look at it is what would you pack to dine at the restaurant at the end of the universe.
10 oz of gold or a bitcoin?

 

[Solitaire]

1 ounce of Gold reportedly requires 8.3 Terajoules of energy to mine.

Hold it.
I think you're off by a factor of a thousand.
That's 77,000 dollars worth of cheep renewable energy at 3 cents per kWh.
$77 seems much more likely.

P. S. Visual Capitalist has an interesting graph.

 

[a_unique_person]

Mining gold takes a hell of a lot of energy. But I'm not a gold bug either.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Hold it.
I think you're off by a factor of a thousand.
That's 77,000 dollars worth of cheep renewable energy at 3 cents per kWh.
$77 seems much more likely.

P. S. Visual Capitalist has an interesting graph.

Google: "How much energy does it take to mine 1 ounce of gold?
The answer is 8.3 Terajoules of energy required to mine one ounce of gold.

Convert 1 terajoule to kilowatt hours 1 terajoule of energy = 277777.7777777778 KWH

Let's shorten that to a 2 and five 7's and not worry about the right side of the decimal.

8.3 X 277777 = 2,305,549 KWH

Keep in mind most of the energy actually used to mine gold would come from diesel fueled equipment and not KWH of electricity, but the converted energy required to do so is correct at well over 2 Million KWH per ounce mined. Gold is more damaging to the environment as well. I still like it though.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

2,305,557 KWH to mine $1,841 USD worth of Gold. (Two million three hundred five thousand five hundred fifty-seven KWH.)

How many KWH to mine 1 Bitcoin? Reportedly it takes an average of 143,000 KWH to mine 1 Bitcoin. (One hundred and forty-three thousand KWH.)

Citation: https://minerdaily.com/2021/how-much-power-does-it-take-to-mine-a-bitcoin/

Bitcoin is at this moment is valued at $17,820 USD per Bitcoin.

What's worse for the environment mining Gold or mining Bitcoin? If one Bitcoin is worth approximately 10 ounces of Gold, let do the math.

So the cheaper Bitcoin gets, the better it is than gold!

Problem is Bitcoin - if it is to do what was intended - will have to become much more expensive, whereas gold normally maintains a relatively stable price. Over 90% of gold consumed is recycled, so the actual impact of mining is not that great. If we consider only industrial needs then we could stop all gold mining today and not require any more for hundreds of years, whereas Bitcoin has ongoing mining costs that keep going up exponentially - by design.

The truly appalling thing about Bitcoin is that it was designed to get less efficient over time, to benefit early adopters at everyone else's expense. Their is no technical reason for it being so expensive to 'mine', in fact it should be cheaper now that mining rigs are so powerful. Fees fluctuate wildly, reaching ridiculous levels of up to $60 per transaction in bubbles. The instability of Bitcoin's value and transaction fess makes it risky to do business in - which translates to higher prices.

Being unregulated means you have no protections. Exchanges can (and do) lose people's coins with no compensation. Many times governments have restricted or threatened to ban it. Just a pity they didn't all ban it from the start - but then we would never hear the end of it from libertarians.

Bitcoin was touted as the answer to 'worthless' fiat currencies, but in reality it is more like shares in a publicly traded company - without the rules. And what does this company make? Why more shares Bitcoins of course! And where do they get the energy to make these shares Bitcoins?

Cryptocurrency's Dirty Secret: Energy Consumption

Until recently, about 75% of all Bitcoin mining took place in China, which offered access to both cheap electricity and hardware. But, citing concerns about fraud, economic instability, and meeting its climate goals, China’s government abruptly pulled the plug on decentralized digital currencies in 2021. Mining companies raced to find suitable locations with more lenient policies. Today, the lion’s share of Bitcoin mining takes place in the United States, where 35% of Bitcoin’s hashrate — the total computational power used to mine and process transactions — is now located...

“When it comes to Bitcoin’s energy use, it’s currently something of a ‘wildcatter’ market. The Texas grid operator ERCOT estimates that crypto miners may increase energy demand by up to 6 gigawatts by mid-2023, roughly the equivalent of adding another Houston to the grid.”...

Oh great, just when we needed more electricity for electric cars (to combat high gas prices and global warming), this happens.

And it's getting dirtier:-

Unfortunately, China’s crackdown on digital currencies appears to have made crypto mining even dirtier. Some mining operations in China had reduced their carbon emissions by taking advantage of cheap and abundant hydropower — a renewable energy source — during the rainy season. But after China’s crackdown, the share of natural gas used in Bitcoin’s electricity mix doubled to 31%. And Kazakhstan, now the world’s second largest Bitcoin hub, gets about 50% of its energy from high-emissions coal-powered plants.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Another way to look at it is what would you pack to dine at the restaurant at the end of the universe.
10 oz of gold or a bitcoin?

What would it take to get you there? Well let's see...

Heart of Gold

The unique thing about the Heart of Gold is that it is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, a small golden box at the heart of the ship — hence its name. This is, of course, powered by an infinite improbability generator. As soon as the ship's drive reaches infinite improbability, it passes through every point in the Universe, thus allowing the ship to go anywhere without all of that mucking about with hyperspace and what not.

Real Gold, that durable metal created by nuclear fusion in stars, or fake money 'created' by twiddling bits in a computer? I know which one I would pack...

 

[Samson]

Meanwhile we have nearly completed the second "bitcoin halving event" chortle chortle.

69k to 34.5k
34.5k to 17.25k....

 

[carlitos]

Another way to look at it is that they are preventing the people to whom you would otherwise sell the cryptocurrency from being scammed. Just because you got scammed doesn't give you the right to scam other people to make your losses good.

It’s a zero-sum game. Those that got in early can’t get real money out unless retail buyers come in with actual currency. That’s why we saw all of the Super bowl ads, NFTs and affinity marketing. That’s why all of the venture capitalists’ projects had tokens attached to them pre-release so they could dump them on “investors” when the project went public.

Meanwhile, 2 exchanges, a couple of hedge funds and a handful of “stablecoins” have crashed in the last few weeks. When Tetber goes, it’s a downward spiral for bitcoin and everything else.

Bitcoin is slightly outperforming most of the other non-stable cryptos year-to-date (see far right #).
[IMGw=600]https://i.imgur.com/Lga4c4i.jpg[/IMGw]

Bitcoin still underperforming for a week now. “Mining” is about to become unprofitable even in Texas and Alberta. Will be uglier soon.

 

[jeremyp]

Thank goodness for volatility! Fingers crossed for $10K Bitcoin! Probably for different reasons though.

Unlucky, it's back up to over 19k.

 

[jeremyp]

Google: "How much energy does it take to mine 1 ounce of gold?
The answer is 8.3 Terajoules of energy required to mine one ounce of gold.

Convert 1 terajoule to kilowatt hours 1 terajoule of energy = 277777.7777777778 KWH

Let's shorten that to a 2 and five 7's and not worry about the right side of the decimal.

8.3 X 277777 = 2,305,549 KWH

Keep in mind most of the energy actually used to mine gold would come from diesel fueled equipment and not KWH of electricity, but the converted energy required to do so is correct at well over 2 Million KWH per ounce mined. Gold is more damaging to the environment as well. I still like it though.

Did that and found this article https://www.goldmoney.com/research/...vol-2-the-energy-side-of-the-equation-part-ii

Look at the total line on table 1. It says 8.4, so I assume that is where you got your number from. However, the column is labelled as "Energy intensity GJ per ozt". i.e. giga joules per troy ounce

Your figure is out by a factor of 1,000.

I can see where your mistake was made. The first three energy columns are in TJ. It would be easy to overlook the units for the energy/mass column.

Another pointer to the fact that there was a mistake in the calculation is the cost of all that energy. If it was even close to Solitaire's $77k per ounce, it would be impossible to mine gold at a profit.

Another point you have overlooked is that, even if they mined no more gold at all, you could still trade it as a commodity and the energy costs would be no more than those of any other financial transaction. This is not the case for Bitcoin where the energy requirement comes from adding blocks to the blockchain, not creating new coins.

 

[jeremyp]

Bitcoin was touted as the answer to 'worthless' fiat currencies, but in reality it is more like shares in a publicly traded company - without the rules.

No, it's nothing like the shares in a publicly traded company. If you buy shares in a publicly traded company, you literally own a small piece of that company. That means you own a share of their assets and you are entitled to dividends as and when the company chooses to pay them.

With Bitcoin, all you are buying is the hope that somebody else will come along later and give you more money than you gave to the person who gave you the Bitcoins.

 

[Andy_Ross]

If mining becomes unprofitable and it all collapses, will we see cheaper graphics card?

 

[Babbylonian]

If mining becomes unprofitable and it all collapses, will we see cheaper graphics card?

That is already happening in both the used and new markets.

 

[psionl0]

Neither is it in the same category as alcohol or drugs.

It is in that fools think that they can stop its use by making it illegal.

We have good reasons for banning crypto currencies. They are good for nothing legal and they have a terrible impact on the environment.

Those are spurious reason for banning cryptos especially since banning won't work. I have addressed the energy consumption many times. It won't be an issue once proof of stake supplants proof of work.

 

[Dr.Sid]

It is in that fools think that they can stop its use by making it illegal.

Stop ? No. Making it completely irrelevant as an investment ? Certainly yes.

 

[jeremyp]

It is in that fools think that they can stop its use by making it illegal.

Evidence that this is the case please.

Those are spurious reason for banning cryptos

No they aren't.

especially since banning won't work.

Really? how do you know that? We've never tried to ban cryptocurrencies before.

I have addressed the energy consumption many times. It won't be an issue once proof of stake supplants proof of work.

People have been saying "it won't be an issue once proof of stake supplants proof of work" for ******* years. It hasn't happened yet and there's no evidence that it's going to happen.

If it ever does happen (and I'd like to see how you are going to move the most popular cryptocurrency - BTC - to proof of stake), it will bring its own problems. Wikipedia says

Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency.

In proportion to the quantity of holdings? That looks remarkably like "the rich people will get to **** on the poor people". You can argue that it already happens with fiat currency but even so, I have to ask "how is it going to be better?"

Bitcoin mining is destroying the environment now. We need to stop it now. Of course we won't, but we need to.

 

[gnome]

That is already happening in both the used and new markets.

Nvidia marketed the RTX 3060Ti with the idea that it was impractical for mining without significantly sacrificing its performance as a graphics card. Has that proven true? I actually got one myself but now I'm curious.

 

[gnome]

It is in that fools think that they can stop its use by making it illegal.


Those are spurious reason for banning cryptos especially since banning won't work.

The question of whether to ban something is separate from the question of whether there is a way to. At least, questions of what the consequence would be to existing investors, which seems to presume a reliable method.

I have addressed the energy consumption many times. It won't be an issue once proof of stake supplants proof of work.

I've heard that promise. How will that occur, and can we count on it happening? I don't mean how technologically it's possible to do. I mean how the existing market transitions to that method? Who has to cooperate with the idea for it to occur, and do they have sufficient incentive to?