Friday, July 7th 2017
Cryptocurrency Mining Consumes More Power Than 17M Population Country
So, yes, the headline is accurate. We all know that cryptocurrency mining has now reached an all time high, which has affected availability and pricing of most graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA. Who doesn't want to make a quick buck here and there? So long as it's profitable, right?
Well, that kind of thinking has already brought the global mining power consumption to unprecedented levels (some might also say demented.) The two top cryptocurrencies right now (by market-cap), Bitcoin and Ethereum, are each responsible for 14.54 TWh and 4.69 TWh power consumption figures. As of now, Ethereum consumes almost as much power as the 120th most power-consuming country, Moldova, which has a population of around 3 million. Bitcoin, on the other hand, stands at 81st on the list, in-between Mozambique and Turkmenistan, the latter of which has a population estimated at 5.17 million people. Combined, Ethereum and Bitcoin consume more power than Syria, which had an estimated 2014 population above 17 million.
Ethereum mining consumes more than 8x the power it takes to run the entire VISA network, while Bitcoin consumes almost 27x as much (this shows how much more efficient centralized systems are. This is the cost of transparency and doing away with the trusted third party.) Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology in general have come to stay, and they will change the world (I am a staunch believer in that myself.) However, this goes to show that the current Proof of Work (PoW) design is unfeasible in the long-run - especially if blockchain technology does want to achieve a global scale. Proof of Stake anyone?
Sources:
Digiconomist, ETeknix, Moldova Wiki, Turkmenistan Wiki
Well, that kind of thinking has already brought the global mining power consumption to unprecedented levels (some might also say demented.) The two top cryptocurrencies right now (by market-cap), Bitcoin and Ethereum, are each responsible for 14.54 TWh and 4.69 TWh power consumption figures. As of now, Ethereum consumes almost as much power as the 120th most power-consuming country, Moldova, which has a population of around 3 million. Bitcoin, on the other hand, stands at 81st on the list, in-between Mozambique and Turkmenistan, the latter of which has a population estimated at 5.17 million people. Combined, Ethereum and Bitcoin consume more power than Syria, which had an estimated 2014 population above 17 million.
101 Comments on Cryptocurrency Mining Consumes More Power Than 17M Population Country
They aren't any better than digital mobile wallets IMO & you simply cannot justify the associated (power) costs, they're also highly speculative in nature (google ETH flash crash) & as such will not replace any real currency anytime soon.
Alright joke aside. I dont mine, but others deffently do and some with mine park that has 7-8 GPU´s or more and if there milions of miners out there letting a bunch of GPU´s running at full throttle 24/7 i am not shocked by these numbers al throw they are very high.
And another problem coming from miners besides its hard to find a desent GPU. Every of the most popular GPU´s are sold out that includes GTX 1060/1070/1080 while GTX 1080 TI dosent seems to be effected so much and its the same story with AMD cards. Prices are as you all know also climed up and that is in my country to point where a GTX 1080 is chokingly close to a GTX 1080 TI from the same producent and brand even.
Mining hurts gamers, it also hurts the environment.
Very nice.
I see only one proper use of mining: warming the house/flat in cold winter :).
www.iea.org/statistics/statisticssearch/report/?country=SUDAN&product=electricityandheat&year=Select
Actually, looking at these figures, Bitcoin and Etherum's total is roughly double our consumption! Lol!
@FordGT90Concept, I have done some thinking on our discussion, and I think you had some points. More coming in an editorial later today.It's attitudes like this that are going to get us regulated out the wazoo, and have your holdings become worthless. My guess is you MIGHT care then.
Of course these conclusions can only be based on broad estimates looking at what hardware is most popular and how most miners power it. I don't see a range on their estimates but my guess is it is pretty broad. As I surmised in the post in the other thread, we also don't know if they're weighing in the addition AC load in the northern hemisphere (summer).
Point is: it is a LOT of electricity.
Might want to look at the first source cited, provided here for convenience:
digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption
Sadly, it doesn't cite any sources (other than IEA's energy consumption by country) or methodology.
Edit: Without citing sources and methodology, I have little faith this is remotely accurate. This is certainly not a scientific study.
Honestly I really dont care about how much power I use. This world is already dead and dying, the only way for planet Earth to get better and bring down all of the CO2 exhaust is to delete the human race. This comes from a person who drivers a 2012 Prius getting 51mpg. I dont drive that car to reduce my CO2 consumption or save the environment blah blah. I drive it because it was cheap at the time I bought it, 5 months ago and it saves my business lots of money on business expenses, I driver about 35k miles per year. That car replaced a 2005 Prius with 392k miles on it.
You can't. Not easily or worth it anyways. And people won't because significant holders now exist everywhere who would stand to lose a ton.
You can regulate. That's all you can hope for at this point.That's REALLY questionable.
Are we talking ASICs direct mining bitcoin? GPUs direct mining? GPUs mining another coin and exchanging it for bitcoin? All are mining bitcoin, all at VERY different energy levels. One of these I just listed takes almost 100X as much as the rest.
Attack on the software itself? There's too many ways to go about this to list here.
Deceit? Already happened repeatedly and it's not going to stop happening. Worst part is that honest people have no means to recover what they lost.
Direct network attacks? It's not difficult for network routers to pick up on cryptocurrency protocols and redirect/destroy the traffic. If peers can't communicate, the system is effectively shut down. Securing the network requires centralization (authentication servers) which defeats the purpose of it existing in the first place.
Read the article. They put the price of Bitcoin at $0.05/kwH and Ethereum at $0.12/kwH. Ethereum costs signicantly more because it is "ASIC-resistant." It stands to reason that the only reason why people do cryptocurrency is for profit so the bulk of those participating will be doing it using the most efficient means available. They at least took ASIC vs GPU into consideration.
Crypto users tend to be security minded. Ransomware originated in their community to target mining rigs, actually. It didn't gain much traction.I don't dispute that it's expensive, but I do dispute that they can detect the end coin the user is going for.
Nearly everyone mining on this forum is mining bitcoin. No one however, is mining it directly and thus is being counted in this survey.
If anything Ford, the numbers are higher and more disturbing.