Discussing Bitcoin ENERGY CONSUMPTION - How much Energy, What Type of Energy - Is it justifiable?

Why does Bitcoin need so much energy, what type of energy does it use and how does it compare to other consumers? Is the energy consumption justified - and why it doesn't make any sense to look at per-transaction energy consumption.

Sources & further reading material
Nic Carter, What Bloomberg Gets Wrong About Bitcoin’s Climate Footprint
Nic Carter, The Last Word on Bitcoin's Energy Consumption
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
Dan Held, PoW is efficient
3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study (University of Cambridge)
CoinShares December 2019 Mining Network Report
CoinShares, Beware of Lazy Bitcoin Research
Luke Martin & Marty Bent on flaring
Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin Q&A: Energy Consumption

[tillmusshoff]

This will probably be the last time I will address the Bitcoin energy consumption. The question I ask in the end is what really matters and there are individual answers to it. I hope you took something out of the video and that its somewhat thought provoking. Here is the list of sources I used:

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study (University of Cambridge)
CoinShares December 2019 Mining Network Report
Nic Carter, What Bloomberg Gets Wrong About Bitcoin’s Climate Footprint
Nic Carter, The Last Word on Bitcoin's Energy Consumption
Dan Held, PoW is efficient
CoinShares, Beware of Lazy Bitcoin Research
Luke Martin & Marty Bent on flaring

[JS-bdpn]

Great video! My go to argument is asking the person who says this, "Should we shut down the internet? It uses 10% of global energy." In the end valuable things require energy to sustain. The more energy bitcoin has the more value it has as a secure transparent ledger (also directly correlated with price).

More energy = more holders, more liquidity, more stability, more security.

[jerrymiller]

If your YouTube channel was a stock, I would definitely invest. 100k subscribers in the end of the year.

[carlocarnevali]

Dayum your videos are of the highest quality! You certainly cleared any doubts that I had about bitcoin

[SavingGreen]

Excellent analysis. I made a few videos on crypto algorithms as well with an angle towards sustainability. My takeaway is that today, as hashrate complexity continues to increase with price, the mining demand may not justify the energy footprint - despite a shift towards renewables as you noted. Particularly for the fundamental reason that as price increases, so does security, and thus there seems to only be a positive feedback system in place. Yes, eventually as mining rewards shrink this could reverse course, but that's pretty speculative and many, many, decades away. I think alternative protocols like proof of stake may provide viable solutions in the short term, but as you concluded, BTC/PoW is the gold standard for now.

[stevenearthman]

👍 Brilliant! To the point! Educating!Convincing! Important! Valuable, just like Bitcoin (the network!) ! Thanks. Danke.

[clintsquires]

I can see this channel at 100K subscribers by the end of 2021. Great work Till #Bitcoin

[ixtacomproduction]

So qualitativer Kontent. echt krass dass du noch keine 10K voll hast.. Deine Video haben einen echt hohen standard. weiter so

[stefaniaglisa]

They will use anything to spread fud. Doesn't matter if it's misinformed or not as long as it affects the market. Thanks for bringing light on this matter with proper evidence!

[ronniebarkan]

hey Till, thank you for that one! i keep sending Andreas' clips and will certainly be sharing your in depth analysis which is extremely valuable and useful to educate and de-brainwash people.

[GottfriedKollmann]

What also should be mentioned, is the inclusive nature of PoW.
Presumably, Satoshi didn't have to sell a single Bitcoin to spread his network, since you could mine with a PC back then.
Today, PoW ensures that states cannot be excluded from the network.
Even if individual states were excluded from regulated trading, North Korea, Iran, and Russia could still participate in the network as miners and convert energy into BTC.
I consider that a big plus.
For fun, some speculative thoughts (a phantasy, if you will...) on the waste-heat use of PoW from a central-european perspective:
Virtually 100% of the electrical energy fed to an ant-miner is converted to heat....
I think 60ºC is the temperature of the waste-heat airflow.
That should be economically feasible to use.
Some suggestions:
•heating water (industrial laundry, private households...)
•drying laundry (again industrial laundry)
•drying wood chips (forestry, sawmills...)
In the course of the energy transition (=Energiewende), there will (occasionally) be green surplus-electricity in the german power grid from April to September.
In other words, at the electricity-market-exchange, the price of electricity is already occasionally negative in the bright half of the year.
The more the energy transition (=Energiewende) progresses in the future, the more often there will be negative electricity-prices.
Large customers will probably get paid for using this surplus electricity from the power grid.
In other words:
In the coming years, one perhaps could get paid as a large customer by the electricity provider for converting temporary surplus electricity into BTC and hot water (or dry laundry, or dry wood ships...)
(You know what's better than free energy? - Getting payed to use it!...LOL)
electricity
Energy transition and PoW... that could become a wonderful friendship.
How realistic is that?
Does anyone else have ideas for waste-heat utilization?

[alexjohnward]

Bitcoin also allows stranded energy to remain stranded, excess Chinese Hydro would be better utilised if it was better grid connected and helping put coal power plants out of favour. Bitcoin mining from natural gas also liberates a lot of oil that cannot otherwise be extracted due to environmental regulations that ban flaring. Lastly, Bitcoin security depends on the energy spend, so if it wants to remain secure, it need to keep spending a lot of value on energy, that makes it vulnerable to cheaper competition from next gen cryptocurrencies that have no fees or energy spend.