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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 maxwell demon on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:06AM (3 children)
DRM means that any time you play something protected with it, you have to do an otherwise unnecessary decryption step. You do so whenever you view a DVD or BluRay, whenever you watch a Netflix or Amazon Prime stream etc. That certainly consumes extra energy.
It doesn't matter for energy consumption whether it is secure or not; all that matters is that extra computations have to be done.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 22 2018, @11:56AM (2 children)
Compare the extra energy of a BluRay decryption to a BTC hashing node... the hashing node is 99.9+% burning energy for POW nonce computation - the BluRay might burn 0.1% of its total energy on decryption. Multiplied by a few hundred million BluRay players in operation it is significant, but it's not the core operation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 22 2018, @07:02PM (1 child)
It doesn't matter if it is the core operation. What matters is what difference it makes in absolute terms.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 22 2018, @07:10PM
In absolute terms, the production, promotion and distribution of the media that is DRM protected is much larger, in absolute terms, than the sham of a crypto algorithm that is used. What is the fuel cost of a single live U2 concert? Not just for the band and stage crew to arrive, but for the concertgoers, the fractional costs of construction and maintenance costs of the stadium and supporting infrastructure including airports, aircraft, roads, vehicles, hotels, restaurants, etc.?
🌻🌻 [google.com]