Apparently, some critics are learning that bitcoin transactions require power to produce and use, which is exciting progress considering they used to think they were just made up out of thin air.
Christopher Malmo, states, "energy-conscious people looking to use an alternative currency for the masses should probably look somewhere other than Bitcoin". He wrote this on a computer, and posted to the internet, on a website called Motherboard. See the irony here?
Perhaps energy-conscious people should not be playing around on the internet either. The internet represents 10% of the global energy consumption all by itself. Not only would that make them feel better and get them out of other people's hair, they wouldn't be snooping around for a scrap of anything to complain about either. Hell, they wouldn't even know about the energy consuming of emerging technology and we wouldn't have to read this crap. Which by the way is consuming energy as well, but there's an easy way to fix that.
He states, according to his calculation:
"a single Bitcoin transaction uses roughly enough electricity to power 1.57 American households for a day.” and that "bitcoin is unsustainable".
I guess he hasn't heard about the technology battle of the companies that produce the mining equipment, because that is the entire point of their business model. TO REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY it takes a miner to produce a bitcoin.
This individual is not only preaching to the choir, and these folks (the choir) are not so much energy conscious as they are empty wallet conscious, he fails to look at the track record. If you take a look at the last three Antminer's Bitmain has produced, the power efficiency has drastically improved.
The AntMiner S5 delivers 1.15 TH at 590W, compared to an S4 which delivered 2TH at a 1380W pull. At that consumption rate, the S5 would run 2 TH at 1022W, which is a commendable 358W improvement over the S4, and that was achieved in less than 6 months of time. A little over a year ago the S2 pulled 1000W delivering 1TH, the S5 has almost doubled that in efficiency.
Comparison
AntMiner S4
|
AntMiner S5
|
AntMiner S4+
| |
Chip
|
160x BM1382
|
60x BM1384
|
204x BM1382
|
Hashrate
|
2000GH/s
|
1155GH/s
|
2570GH/s
|
Power Draw
|
1380W
|
590W
|
1500W
|
Power Efficiency
|
0.69J/GH
|
0.51J/GH
|
0.58J/GH
|
Dimensions(mm)
|
432*442*133
|
298*137*155
|
432*442*133
|
Weight (boxed)
|
16.2kg
|
3.5kg
|
14.4kg
|
Of course the difficulty rises requiring more hash to create a Bitcoin, so the demand for more efficient machines is ongoing, but so is everything surrounding it, but that's not the point, the point it that the efficiency per TH continues to increase dramatically, and there's a method to the madness.
Incentive Fees
The author also corrected himself with an update, after first mentioning that miners will likely stop mining when Bitcoin have been mined, because "there's no reason for them to mine". Again critics haven't figured it all out yet, but that's fine, that's why we're here to explain shit to them.
The fees paid to miners continue to increase over time just as the blocks continue to halve over time. The more people that use the Blockchain, the more the "incentives" are paid to miners in transaction revenue. and less in blocks. Then there are levels of urgency as well, big Banks that adopt Blockchain technology may be a generous fee to have their transactions expedited. This is all already built into the Blockchain.
Basically the mining industry will slowly be weened off of incentive blocks, replaced by revenue generated by it's use.
It took the big block incentives to build the Blockchain, that's not what is will take to maintain it, and just as this evolves, so will the power consumption and difficulty and everything else around the technology.
In theory of course, the entire planet might decide they don't like the idea tomorrow, and the entire thing goes down. At least we know one author would be happy about that.
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