Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy by 2020

Put a question mark on "easily transactable" (you have to wait a period of time for a transaction to be "confirmed", i.e. 99.9[...]% certain of not being reversed (archive.is/Ng0vb) and a giant transaction fee (about $20 last I checked) for a miner to run the algorithms that confirm a transaction) and "durable" (if the bitcoin network is abandoned then BTC is not very durable).
Otherwise the main value is that there's no central bank devaluing it, i.e. your money is exponentially (but unstably) increasing in value instead of stably decreasing year after year.

Bitch, hold onto ya horses! YA AINT SEEN NOTHING YET!

>want to make digital currency
>can't because people will copy and paste it
>enter blockchain technology
>instead of a file that can be counterfeited, bitcoin is a number linked to an address on the blockchain
>the blockchain is a ledger that records every BTC transaction and calculates how much BTC you have by looking at all the transactions associated with your address
>e.g. if you've received 5 BTC and spent 3 BTC, blockchain will calculate that you have 2 BTC
>this prevents double-spending
>Miners supply computing power needed to run the blockchain, and receive already-existing BTC from transaction fees and occasionally gain newly-mined BTC (bitcoin is capped so only 21 million BTC can ever exist -- there are already 16 million, so there are diminishing returns here)

That's some non-sensical table you got yourself there.

Gold is easily transactable and more decentralized than cash in many instances. With current day tech it is easier to identify counterfeit gold than to authenticate a single bitcoin transaction.

Also, "smart." That variable is looser than OPs mom.

Crypto has value but the bandwagon is fueled by lies.

I know you didn't make that chart, but that reading for "sovereign" makes no sense to me at all. A currency has sovereign value if it is NOT subject to the whims of an authority. It is gold and bitcoin that are sovereign currencies, and the dollar that is not.

Good post.

And Veeky Forums, get your shit together. Bitcoin really is the 8th wonder of the world.

You have to takie into consideration that 1 btc is over 10x more valueable than oz of gold

It's a hit-piece. They're trying to trigger a devaluation of bitcoin so they can short it. Or maybe someone at Newsweek or a friend of theirs is already shorting bitcoin, and now they're trying all they can to trigger the fall in value.

Your image is bullocks. Bitcoin is not highly durable, and gold is not moderately durable. Gold can last for tens of billions of years without contamination. How many years is the infrastructure needed to maintain bitcoin going to last? Several orders of magnitude less.

>implying energy isn't the ultimate form of currency
>implying removal of the effects of entropy isn't the ultimate form of energy

If miners paid for their electricity, the cost of energy used would always end up below the value of block rewards+transaction fees, capping electricity use. So since block rewards currently dwarf transaction fees electricity use should go up proportional to the price and halve with every halving. The fact that a lot of miners steal electricity changes this but if crypto gets really big I expect this will be cracked down on more.

>users/transactions
Those don't requier mining

>but where is the value coming from
Why do you accept a piece of paper as being worth $100 ?

user, gold exists as a physical object in the universe. You can lose it or it can be stolen

Bitcoins exist inside a distributed, decentralized, self-verifying data storage system. Your bitcoins are not in your wallet, they are in the blockchain

You can generate a cold-wallet on an encrypted air-gapped system, memorize the seed phrase, send bitcoins to one of its addresses, delete the wallet and wipe the hard drive, then make sure you remember the seed phrase forever

If you do this, your wealth can literally never be stolen from you under any circumstances except torture to extract your wallet seed. It is the most durable thing, for the purposes of humans keeping wealth, that exists, because it doesn't exist as just some physical object that can be lost or stolen, it exists in the distributed blockchain, inside millions of copies of the blockchain (which is itself verifiable to be 100% legitimate through checking that the hashes of each block in the chain match up correctly), only accessible through your private keys which you can memorize your seed phrase so

It's the most secure system of wealth ever devised, by a large margin, the greatest technological invention for the purposes of bringing us towards a unified global society since the internet, by a large margin

Ignore the hype around current implementations, this is truly revolutionary technology that will cause major political revolutions in the coming decades. Don't forget that, and don't underestimate how serious it is.

It is permission-less and gives everyone the same right to access the global financial market as anyone else. Note that right now, most people in the world have no access to banks, and instead only have access to their country's inflationary fiat currencies. This puts them, poor people, at a huge disadvantage. Ethically neutral, permission-less, decentralized, global cryptocurrencies will be the greatest catalyst of worldwide financial equality that we have ever seen

Wouldn't the more logical consequence be that due to excessive power consumption everyone's electric bill goes up fucking over both the poor and middle class.

Please tell me you're shitposting. No one should be this dumb.

user if I'm wrong I would love to know why, because I don't like being wrong. So if you could explain why I'm wrong in detail that would be great. Otherwise I'm going to just assume it's you who is dumb and does not understand the significance of Satoshi's genius invention.

Meaningless comparison

Amazing post. Well explained.

Sorry but you're the brainlet around here.

No user, you have a very good understanding of the concepts and you are also able to articulate them very clearly. Keep it up.

Thank god this will enable all of the poor people who don't have access to the internet to have their rights and freedoms back. Oh and education too.
You people are fucking deluded.

While I am optimistic towards he prospects of cryptocurrencies as a concept, I think Bitcoin and most of its direct copies (bitcoin cash/litecoin/doge etc) are deeply flawed as currency.

Bitcoin is not a currency anymore, as it is becoming less and less practical too pay reasonable sums with it because of transaction costs (just now you pay 10% on top of a 200 dollar payment) so it will not be a currency for regular folks. You will not be able to enter a random store and spend bitcoins on goods and services. If you want to spend bitcoin, you have to find someone who will buy them from you for regular dollars, pounds, euros etc. And that means that you are subject to the whims of financial markets, speculators and the collective paranoia that infests regular currency.

What bitcoin currently is, is a store of "value". The cryptography and energy expended on it make it physically hard to copy, which creates a high degree of trust in people, that their capital won't evaporate. As with something like gold, it is possible to settle debts using bitcoin, but there is a floor beneath which it is not advantageous to use bitcoin anymore.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to bitcoin in the next crisis. I expect people to flock to it initially, because they fear their savings being destroyed by banks going bankrupt (2008 is still fresh in everyones minds), which results in soaring prices followed by a big dip when people realise they can't easily get their money back.

To get back to OPs question, yes the energy expenditure will eventually cook the planet. If this is going to be a long-term thing we will have to move to proof-of-stake systems, although those remain largely theoretical atm.

>internet
(mostly) rational use of resources
>memecoins
millions of computers compete to calculate a transaction's signature. the ones who didn't get it right effectively just burn the resources.
the same as other bubbles
51%

>extremely secure method of information transfer
What about those people who got their bitcoin hacked?

It's not the point. The point is the utility it brings benefits more than the cost of energy for the blockchain.

To quote Satoshi himself:

"Gold mining is a waste, but that waste is far less than the utility of having gold available as a medium of exchange. I think the case will be the same for Bitcoin. The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used. Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be the net waste."

Cause they got their private key stolen. You wouldn't call your car unsecure because someone stole your key and unlocked it. The blockchain itself is untamperable.

>utility of having gold available as a medium of exchange
We don't use gold anymore for good reason.
>Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used.
Artificial scarcity and demand fueled by dumb investors.

We might as well use baby beanies as a currency.

You have a lacking understanding. Read more.

Brainlet, enjoy being poor/dead because you were too stupid/lazy to follow the world changing around you.

Enjoy your bubble while you stay on the thinning shell surrounding hot air before the inevitable burst.

I always knew it would end like this.
I regret nothing.

...

MINISTER YOU, SATOSHI

>tfw the next meme war is between quantum computing and bitcoin

Proof-of-work is easily ported to quantum computers, and provides the same relativr safety.

I thought blockchain was dependant on rsa encryption

Kekekekeke.
user, this is Veeky Forums you are talking to.
We can tamper with the very fabric of reality. A mere encryption code is but a small hurdle in a sea of stepping stones to us.

Mate, if you're going to criticise at least point to where I'm wrong. I'm open to learn more about crypto, but you're not doing a good job of convincing me.

Atomic batteries are about to hit the scene.

Don't worry... we'll get the last coin soon.

This is it.
The singularity catalyst.

I was told the singularity doesn't exist but...there are many "singularities" and I didn't specify....ooops.

On a side note...I know how to build the atomic battery...it's just also other things too and it's too soon for me.

Man is ready. I am not. Me time, ya feel me?

The Normie Singularity Catalyst.

bitcoin has little value on its own
people want real money for their coin instead
banks have real money
trade bitcoin to banks
banks control bitcoin

the "decentralized" meme is retarded and outright false.

the problem is, the cost of mining them will eventually become greater than their value, and all mining will cease until this is no longer the case

>Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy by 2020
There's a limited quantity of mine-able coins in the world. I think we'll have mined 100% of the coins before 2020.

where is the value in little scraps of paper?

It is digital meme currency where who ever has the most computing power will be the richest. Meaning if China wants to be all powerful, they just need to setup server farms and control the entire thing. That's the biggest flaw of the system.

the blockchain has a record of every transaction. when mining, you grab all the most recent transactions that haven't been recorded in the blockchain, and you throw in a transaction that gives you a little bit of coin for free, and you also toss a random number onto the record.

then, you perform an expensive hash calculation and look at the hash of the new set of data. if the first N digits (N determined by current difficulty) are zero, then your package is accepted into the blockchain as official. if they aren't zero, then you have to start over.

blockchain mining is a giant guessing game where everyone is racing to find just the right combination of random number and personal payment that hashes to an acceptable value.

where do you grab the most recent transactions from?

there's a network of computers called bitcoin nodes - they store the entire blockchain and act as a decentralized storage for all the bitcoin transaction information. each node has a pool of unconfirmed bitcoin transactions called mempool. when you perform a transaction, it gets sent to a node and then shared with all the other nodes.

when someone wants to mine, they contact the nodes to get unverified transactions from mempool

Just goes to show that ALL extrapolations break down eventually.
Increasing fraction of the population are programmers. (Obviously. In 1900 there WERE no programmers.) Clearly, some time in the future, every man, woman, and child will be a programmer.

Newsweek article just clickbait.

Interesting how even on Veeky Forums 99% of posters don't understand how bitcoin works.

Then we will quickly have more bitcoin users then people on the earth.

so that tells you certain growth revolving around bitcoin will slow down.

Veeky Forums are 99% broscience cucks who think they know better than everyone. That spirit and way of thought will ensure that most end up poor as fuck after the flippening.

Precisely. Money -- ALL forms of money -- are ultimately backed by the faith people have that they can exchange it for tangible things, like food and clothing.

See "The John Jones Dollar" gutenberg.org/files/26867/26867-h/26867-h.htm
as a satire on what happens when that assumption is stretched past credulity.

what's the value in a brick of gold or in a diamond?

>Bitcoin was created by a malicious AI to trick us into giving it more processing power
>It's working
Screen cap this

Or just read about the south seas trading company.

>even on Veeky Forums
What did you expect?