SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
According to a press release carried by Eurekalert
In the first rigorously peer-reviewed article quantifying Bitcoin's energy requirements, a Commentary appearing May 16 in the journal Joule, financial economist and blockchain specialist Alex de Vries uses a new methodology to pinpoint where Bitcoin's electric energy consumption is headed and how soon it might get there.
The abstract of the article says
The Bitcoin network can be estimated to consume at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity currently, and potentially 7.67 gigawatts in the future, making it comparable with countries such as Ireland (3.1 gigawatts) and Austria (8.2 gigawatts). [...]
The author offers a caveat:
[...] all of the methods discussed assume rational agents. There may be various reasons for an agent to mine even when this isn't profitable, and in some cases costs may not play a role at all when machines and/or electricity are stolen or abused.
[Other] reasons for an agent to mine Bitcoin at a loss might include [...] being able to obtain Bitcoin completely anonymously, libertarian ideology [...] or speculative reasons.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @09:34PM
Proof of work is some self fulfilling prophesy as far as cost vs value... Whatever mining "costs" is about what miners will be willing to mine (or transactors are willing to transact, if you will) for the built-in reward of doing the operation. I read somewhere (terribly reliable, I'm sure) that BTC miners "produced" $8B in BTC over some 12 month period, and spent ~$3.5B in electrical power costs to do so. This entirely neglects the cost of mining hardware, housing for said mining hardware, labor to install and maintain, internet connection costs, etc. So... the "free" market demonstrates its power of balance at scale yet again: as long as (speculative idiot) investors are paying $10K/BTC, mining will ramp up to grab that cash - nearly to the breakeven point. And, due to the scaling difficulty feature of the BTC algorithm, there's no end to how much power can be brought online, as long as "investors" are paying for it.
If we manage to scale back the cost per transaction down to the 1-2% of transaction value range, what have we won? The ability to tell Visa, MasterCard and Amex to F-off? Not really, not for a long time. Sure, you can create blockchain systems that peg the value of a "coin" to a dollar, or euro, or whatever - but that brings the big central figures back into the picture, not to mention regulation and overhead to ensure that the backing funds are appropriately administered, etc. Until that semblance of stability is present, no 16 store supermarket chain is going to accept a "currency" with wild hour-to-hour fluctuations in value vs the products they buy and sell.
I agree, there is a future where widely held cryptographic trust systems replace a lot of what "money" does today, but I do not agree that proof of work (mass hashing of nonces to regulate publication speed) is part of that future. Even if watt/MIP and $/MIP fall through the floor, that will just drive the POW complexity requirements upwards - it's peoples' behavior that's driving the cost of proof of work, not the cost-complexity of the work itself.
🌻🌻 [google.com]