Bitcoin

HansOndabush

[Deleted User] said:

HansOndabush said:

Sebo027 said:

HansOndabush said:

Bitcoin is surely doomed due to the obscene amount of energy it consumes to keep it running; more than used by Chile or the Czech republic for instance. And what do you get for all that waste of energy? Just some numbers.

Is it more or less than energy required to run the banking system?

I've seen an estimate that bitcoin consumes about 1/4 the energy of the banking system. But the banking system does a much more useful job serving the entire world compared to the nebulous benefits of bitcoin serving relatively few people. Add on the increasing power required for each transaction as the blockchain increases in length and it doesn't look sustainable in the long term. Sure there are other cryptos that are more efficient but doesn't that mean they will usurp bitcoin sending it back down to zero?

HansOndabush said:

Sebo027 said:

HansOndabush said:

Bitcoin is surely doomed due to the obscene amount of energy it consumes to keep it running; more than used by Chile or the Czech republic for instance. And what do you get for all that waste of energy? Just some numbers.

Is it more or less than energy required to run the banking system?

I've seen an estimate that bitcoin consumes about 1/4 the energy of the banking system. But the banking system does a much more useful job serving the entire world compared to the nebulous benefits of bitcoin serving relatively few people. Add on the increasing power required for each transaction as the blockchain increases in length and it doesn't look sustainable in the long term. Sure there are other cryptos that are more efficient but doesn't that mean they will usurp bitcoin sending it back down to zero?

Whole Bitcoin blockchain ledger can be stored on 500GB hard drive. That's £5. After 10 years of operation.

Don't buy into "ever increasing blockchain ledger, storage costs, blah blah", while in reality it's nothing. I'm not talking about mining, though, just this one fact.

Come on blockchain is not stored on a single hard drive; there are millions of computers around the world running it.

From Investopedia:

"

Technology Cost

Although blockchain can save users money on transaction fees, the technology is far from free. The “proof of work” system that bitcoin uses to validate transactions, for example, consumes vast amounts of computational power. In the real world, the power from the millions of computers on the bitcoin network is close to what Denmark consumes annually."

[Deleted User]

Come on blockchain is not stored on a single hard drive; there are millions of computers around the world running it.

No, that's not correct, again.

From Investopedia:

Although blockchain can save users money on transaction fees, the technology is far from free. The “proof of work” system that bitcoin uses to validate transactions, for example, consumes vast amounts of computational power. In the real world, the power from the millions of computers on the bitcoin network is close to what Denmark consumes annually."

I wasn't even talking about mining.

There are 9932 Bitcoin full nodes around the world at the moment. Not "millions". Wallet on your phone doesn't store any ledger data. There will be stealth nodes, in Tor network, or in listening only mode, so let's make it 20k nodes even.
Some of them will be pruned, means they don't store old data, only new data. Default pruning setting is to store 1.5 GB of most recent data. 500GB or 1.5GB - this is already on people's computers. They already have that hard drive installed, and if they don't they can buy it for £5.
Quick search says, there is 2 billion of computers around the world. And 10-20k of them are also running Bitcoin software while idling or doing something else for their users.
There is no additional environmental footprint of Bitcoin existence apart from mining.

HansOndabush

But the servers supporting the transactions are the ones doing the mining, Yes? The Bitcoin they mine cover the costs of supporting the transactions, otherwise they wouldn't bother running the transaction side.

[Deleted User]

HansOndabush said:

But the servers supporting the transactions are the ones doing the mining, Yes? The Bitcoin they mine cover the costs of supporting the transactions, otherwise they wouldn't bother running the transaction side.

Nodes store all transactions, relay and exchange all blocks and transactions between themselves 24/7/365. They burn no additional electricity apart from PC being turned on. Nodes are not mining. People running nodes are doing this service for free, to strengthen decentralisation. I own Bitcoins, so I also run one node in my home, on PC which is turned on 24/7 as home/media server anyway. It cost me nothing to run Bitcoin full node.

Miners do all hard work and burn all this power. They solve blocks, which nodes validate and propagate through network. Validating is free from computing time standpoint. Miners, in blocks they found, add one transaction for themselves, which nodes agree to. That's how miners get paid (nodes don't get paid).

HansOndabush

OK let me try to convince you from a different angle. I bitcoin transaction uses 741 Kw hours of electricity which is nearly 500,000 times more than a visa transaction. That is neither progress nor helping to save the planet from global warming.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/

Also please provide sources to backup your statements as I do.

fwor

[Deleted User] said:It cost me nothing to run Bitcoin full node.

I'm sorry, but that obviously cannot be true. If you were to say that you don't know how much it costs to run your node, but you don't think it's very much, that would be believable. But a statement that it costs nothing is not.

In case you're not aware, a CPU that is doing computational work does actually consume more energy than a CPU that is idling. The costs of each clock cycle may be extremely small, but if there are a lot of them, it adds up.

MoneyMan01

This may be way off but I wanted to check something.

It is saying Bitcoin has increased around 7% overnight.

Does that mean, if you were to of purchased £50,000 worth of Bitcoin yesterday on a crypo finance app, then sold all of what you had today, you would of had a 7% return on your investment in 1 day? (So a £3,500 profit in 1 day?)

Is that correct?

lozzy1965

TheDarkKnight93 said:

This may be way off but I wanted to check something.

It is saying Bitcoin has increased around 7% overnight.

Does that mean, if you were to of purchased £50,000 worth of Bitcoin yesterday on a crypo finance app, then sold all of what you had today, you would of had a 7% return on your investment in 1 day? (So a £3,500 profit in 1 day?)

Is that correct?

Yes.  That is a 7% profit and that is how much you would have made.  Less any costs involved.  Crypto is what is known as 'volatile'.  It might have gone down 7% overnight too.  Though the obvious trend is up since its inception.

HansOndabush

lozzy1965 said:

TheDarkKnight93 said:

This may be way off but I wanted to check something.

It is saying Bitcoin has increased around 7% overnight.

Does that mean, if you were to of purchased £50,000 worth of Bitcoin yesterday on a crypo finance app, then sold all of what you had today, you would of had a 7% return on your investment in 1 day? (So a £3,500 profit in 1 day?)

Is that correct?

 Though the obvious trend is up since its inception.

lozzy1965 said:

TheDarkKnight93 said:

This may be way off but I wanted to check something.

It is saying Bitcoin has increased around 7% overnight.

Does that mean, if you were to of purchased £50,000 worth of Bitcoin yesterday on a crypo finance app, then sold all of what you had today, you would of had a 7% return on your investment in 1 day? (So a £3,500 profit in 1 day?)

Is that correct?

Though the obvious trend is up since its inception.

That is true for most asset classes.

RolandFlagg

People overthink Bitcoin. It's just an alternative way to invest money. Like Tesla it's cool for the kids to invest in, not a boring Wells Fargo. Chamath Palihapitiya back in 2013 said everyone should throw a bit of pocket money into Bitcoin because either it's going to fail or be very big. He was right. A lot of things don't make sense these days. Bitcoin may never make sense to most people, but it doesn't have to. There is nothing else like it.