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Energy cost of mining crypto more than the cost of mining precious metals

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wraith808:
BitCoin is notoriously inefficient to "mine" and this is by design.
-Shades (November 06, 2018, 07:46 AM)
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And this is understood.  But if the cost to mine in terms of planetary resources puts more strain on the rest of the planet, doesn't that have to be considered?  Especially if it's by design?

IainB:
@mouser:
insanity
-mouser (November 05, 2018, 09:40 PM)
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Is that a relatively new realisation or had you previously (a year or so back, say) not already arrived at that conclusion?

Stoic Joker:
A system that gives you a reasonable shot at gaining new BitCoin is going to cost you.
-Shades (November 06, 2018, 07:46 AM)
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Bitcoin mining is SHA256/ASIC only. And the current 14.5TH ASIC miners are running $400-600US at Bitmain.com.

Now granted at the current difficulty/USD price they're only good enough for about $3 a day … But the intent was for the transaction payments to increase as the BTC production dropped off. However the transaction payments (e.g. cost...) part has turned into a rather total shit show that nobody is happy about.

Also, IIUC the BTC difficulty can be adjusted, if enough of the right people agree to it. BCH difficulty is dynamically adjustable based on hashing power available.

Deozaan:
There's a difference between the amount of energy "required" to mine Bitcoin and the amount of energy being spent to mine Bitcoin.

There's currently a "gold rush" in Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) where there is a lot of energy being spent in the hopes of striking it rich.

As Stoic Joker mentioned, it is relatively inexpensive to get starting mining Bitcoin, so the economics of it naturally results in a fairly balanced system where costs to mine nearly equal profits earned. When it becomes more profitable, then more people start doing it. When it becomes less profitable, some people shut down their miners. It's simple supply and demand, with relatively little cost of entry or exit.

There is nothing in Bitcoin that requires energy consumption mining it to be so high. That is just a natural side effect of the current (or prospective) profitability, fueled by the greed inherent to human nature.

Technically speaking, one could mine Bitcoin on a Raspberry Pi. The proof of that is the fact that when it first began, it was just a few people running the software on their old laptops nearly 10 years ago. And indeed, under the right circumstances, the network could easily survive on a network of hundreds of RPis (or less) instead of the huge multi-million dollar ASIC operations we currently have.

A system that gives you a reasonable shot at gaining new BitCoin is going to cost you. You still need many GPUs, preferably a motherboard with enough PCI lanes to properly support these GPUs, a processor that can support those lanes as well, a power supply that can support this setup, a case that allows for all this equipment to be mounted in and you will be needing an airconditioned room to put this contraption in. Several thousands of USD such a system will cost you. Still nothing compared with actual mining equipment.-Shades (November 06, 2018, 07:46 AM)
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This is a few years out of date. It's senseless trying to mine bitcoin with GPUs (just as it is senseless to try mining bitcoin with a RPi). The Bitcoin world has moved on to ASIC mining.

tomos:
But the intent was for the transaction payments to increase as the BTC production dropped off. However the transaction payments (e.g. cost...) part has turned into a rather total shit show that nobody is happy about.
-Stoic Joker (November 06, 2018, 03:59 PM)
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I thought the promise was low-cost (and fast) transactions ... maybe that's why nobody's happy about it.

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