[poontang1]

Bitcoin uses about .1% of the worlds power currently. 10x less than you have suggested: https://nydig.com/research/report-bitcoin-net-zero

The bitcoin reward also halves every 4 year, so even if price continues to appreciate, the effect is evened out by the fact that less is created every block over time.

Lastly, bitcoin mining to could sustained solely by using stranded energy, which would otherwise be unused. Flared gas in texas, for instance, could provide more power than the network currently uses. There is no reason bitcoin mining has to take power from anyone, and it will trend this way over time because the economics are in favor of finding the cheapest power source.

[wcoenen]

> Bitcoin uses about .1% of the worlds power currently. 10x less than you have suggested

Your source says 0.2% on page 18, not 0.1%.

The New York Times says 0.5%. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...

Add to that the rapid growth we've seen in the past, and I believe it is reasonable to say that we're rapidly approaching 1%.

[vanusa]

Your source says 0.2% on page 18, not 0.1%.

The raw figure it uses for gross power consumption (62 Twh) is also unsourced.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance puts the figure at around twice that - 110 Twh.

Not that we had any reason to grant credence to what a bitcoin "investment" company says about the matter, anyway.

[mschuster91]

> Flared gas in texas, for instance, could provide more power than the network currently uses.

While the amount of gas that is flared off is immense (25-30% of the actual consumption of the US and Europe), the problem is that it is only flared off because there are no pipelines to transport the gas away and the amount that the small oil wells produce is too low to justify the cost.

If it were for me I'd force oil well operators to either build a small secondary pipeline for flare gas alongside oil pipelines or place a small power generator to contribute to the electric grid, but unfortunately "regulation" of any kind is seen as a bad thing in wide parts of the US.

[gruez]

>[...] and the amount that the small oil wells produce is too low to justify the cost.

>If it were for me I'd force oil well operators to [....]

Maybe it's too costly for a reason? Building power lines or pipelines to the middle of nowhere has economic and environmental costs as well, so top down legislation forcing every single well to do it might result in worse overall outcomes. For instance, the resources it takes to construct a pipeline/power line to the nearest town might be more than the electricity/methane that can be generated from the well.

[mschuster91]

> For instance, the resources it takes to construct a pipeline/power line to the nearest town might be more than the electricity/methane that can be generated from the well.

Well, there already is a pipeline for the oil product (so the additional overhead for a small gas pipe isn't that huge) and an electric grid hookup for the pump. That can be used even for a small-scale electrical generator.

[gruez]

>Well, there already is a pipeline for the oil product

not every oil well is hooked up to a pipeline. Some (many? most? not sure) are only serviced by trucks, presumably because they're too remote to profitably operate a pipeline for.

[mastax]

If you put the miners in a shack next to the well, you don't need a pipeline. Still need a generator and other infrastructure though.

[claytongulick]

> the amount that the small oil wells produce is too low to justify the cost.

> but unfortunately "regulation" of any kind is seen as a bad thing in wide parts of the US.

So you would have them be regulated out of business? Most of us in the U.S. do indeed see that as a bad thing.

[radu_floricica]

Yeah, but this exposes the issue with "bitcoin takes X percent of the energy production, therefore it's evil".

If you want you can build a generator near those wells. It's just cheaper to get the energy from somewhere else, because energy is fungible. A watt is not good or evil, it's the same as any other watt. Which means crypto energy consumption can be offset just like anything else, and is exactly as evil as any other convenience - driers, for instance, or flood lights, or inefficient heating, or anything else.

Focusing on crypto in particular says more about the author than anything else.

[gruez]

>because energy is fungible

no it's not. A watt that's in the middle of south dakota, with no power lines in sight, is worth much less than a watt in southern california and is connected to the power grid.

[JoshTko]

Carbon tax would solve this waste.

[Aunche]

>Lastly, bitcoin mining to could sustained solely by using stranded energy, which would otherwise be unused.

You can make that argument about any sort of waste of electricity, like blasting your A/C with the windows open. The problem is you can't guarantee that people are only using wasted energy. People don't mine Bitcoin to generously find a use for surplus energy. They do so for a profit. Also, people will require mining for Bitcoin transactions regardless of whether there happens to be surplus energy.

[boublepop]

You cannot have PoW running on burning a free or cheap resource, the entire point of PoW is that the resource you are burning is costly, which pushes up the amount burned to close to the break-even point.

The amount of energy consumed now is not at its current level because of some fixed power requirement of the network. It’s there due to competition. If power was cheaper miners would run their ops using more power and the only thing that would change would be more energy would be wasted.

[waltbosz]

> ... stranded energy, which would otherwise be unused. Flared gas in Texas, for instance, could provide more power than the network currently uses.

I do like the idea of using energy that would have otherwise gone to waste. Or the concept of putting mining hardware in remote areas where there is energy to be tapped, but no customers for it. I wonder about all the steam that emits from a nuclear plant's cooling tower. It seems like such a waste to let all that energy just go up into the air.

One thing that troubles me is the various reports of theft associated with mining. I occasionally see various stories of energy and CPU-time theft. Plus there was that truck full of GPUs that was recently stolen.

I wonder what parallels could be drawn to the California gold rush. Theft was probably rampant then too.