Comment on This scammer pretending to be Greenpeace
Magnetic_dud@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks agoIt’s a conservative estimate, it’s even higher than that
Crypto-biased source: coindesk.com/…/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-use/ (you would expect they downplay the number)
You can just take a calculator and do by yourself the math from publicly available stats bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/
In the past 24 hours a block contains in average only 3500 transactions. Then that block needs to be validated by many other nodes in following calculations.
This is why it’s the most inefficient payment method, very slow (3500 transactions in only ten minutes), expensive for the user (transfer fees are high) and power hungry
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You have no idea what you’re talking about, or else you’re intentionally misleading people. Transferring Bitcoin in a single transaction takes nowhere near as much power as mining it. Yes, BTC is stupid and terrible for the environment, but you don’t need to lie about the stats.
hitwright@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
forbes.com/…/bitcoins-energy-usage-explained/
I mean by somewhat more up to date news it seems like he is correct. Bitcoin is wildly inefficient and basically non scaling.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
He is wildly incorrect because he phrased it in an intentionally deceitful manner. It does not require 700 kilowatt hours of energy to transfer one Bitcoin one time. The verbiage quote “single transaction”, is the entire problem with OPs post.
hitwright@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I understand lightning network exists to somewhat reduce intermediate transactions. But the actual transaction to be written into the blockchain a lot of energy must be used to calculate the hash. Still difficult to follow you on how the number is wrong, mate.
Magnetic_dud@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
please explain how to transfer bitcoin without mining a block, since the transactions are contained there.
You need to take the energy required to mine a block and validate it (a lot, could power a small town), then divide for the few transactions that could be included in just 1 mb.
They impose a size limit on the transactions that can be included, so even if tomorrow the transactions increase 10x, each block could contain the same limited number. Of course, if you only count the electricity used by your machine to send the transaction, it’s just a few milliwatts. The problem is all the garbage calculations that need to be done to actually validate it.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You’re arguing in bad faith and I’m not going to put up with your stupid straw man. Your statement was that it requires 700 kilowatt hours for a single transaction and that is blatantly false. You seem to ignore the obvious fact that Bitcoin can be transferred unlimited number of times and you do not have to re-mine the Bitcoin every single time you transfer it. As I said earlier, I already agree with you that Bitcoin sucks and you’re wasting your time arguing with me over semantics.
Magnetic_dud@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
Can you do a transfer without mining a block?
No, it needs to be included in any freshly mined block.
Can you include an unlimited amount of transactions in a block to minimize the wasted energy?
No, it’s hardcoded to around 1 mb and since the average is 300 bytes, that translates to ~3000
Can you mine a Bitcoin without wasting an immense amount of energy?
No.
So, by math, you take that immense amount of energy and divide by ~3000 transactions.
You can’t just take in consideration the 3 watts used by your computer in the 300 milliseconds used to submit the transfer, need to consider the whole network
I would be happy to learn if it’s possible to transfer them without including the transaction in a block, that would be groundbreaking and then the electricity used would be 10000x less