Golden Observation | Does BTC really consume so much energy?

This translation has been authorized by VeradiVerdict. On May 31, 1999, just as the Internet economy was starting to take off, Forbes magazine published an article claiming that "it is entirely reasonable to predict that within the next 10 years, half of the electricity will be used to drive the digital Internet economy." The article accused Internet companies, especially hardware companies, have led to the use of a large amount of fossil fuels, making the world's energy use more and more harmful. The energy crisis broke out in California in 2000, which triggered a national discussion on energy use, and this topic also entered the mainstream view. Dozens of other prominent publications have cited the Mills report claiming that internet companies are eating up the nation's energy supply. The figures were also cited in internal reports by JPMorgan, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank, as there was little indication that the reported figures were in dispute. The level of consensus for such an inflammatory statement is astounding. But the problem is that this is the wrong prediction. The calculations in the report are full of errors, and the estimated Internet power consumption data are at least 8 times inflated. Today, 20 years after that Forbes article was published, the data clearly show that these were pessimistic predictions that were dead wrong. Even according to today's most aggressive forecasts, the Internet industry will consume only 20% of electricity by 2025, and many tech giants are fully switching to renewable energy. In other words, the industry's early energy forecasts became popular despite relying on outrageous assumptions and wildly inaccurate results. It seems to me that there is also a debate around BTC's energy usage today, which bears a striking resemblance, if anything, to early Internet critiques. Despite high-profile headlines, including Tesla's recent statement, quickly citing cryptocurrencies as contributing to climate change, this is a deep, nuanced issue that many people share. misunderstanding. Achieving a sustainable future is an existential issue for humanity. So anyone who accuses governments, companies, or technology of undermining our ability to fight climate change should be taken seriously. But we should not point fingers at will. If we make the kind of rhetoric that we did in the early 21st century, it can have serious consequences, diverting attention from the real obstacles to long-term sustainable development and slowing down the process of overcoming them. Nor can this article be exhaustive, nor is it intended to be definitive on the topic. However, as a cryptocurrency proponent and someone deeply concerned about climate change, this article outlines my framework for thinking about the issue of BTC's energy consumption. Jinse Finance mining data broadcast: BTC’s network computing power fell by 0.85% today: Jinse Finance reported that according to the data of Spider Mining Pool: BTC’s total network computing power is 149.206 EH/s, mining difficulty is 25.05T, and the current block height is 686728. The theoretical income is 0.00000620/T/day. The computing power of ETH is 619.066 TH/s, the mining difficulty is 8121.54T, the current block height is 12591189, and the theoretical income is 0.00255979/100MH/day. The computing power of BSV network is 0.740EH/s, the mining difficulty is 0.10T, the current block height is 690692, and the theoretical income is 0.00121543/T/day. The computing power of the BCH network is 2.357 EH/s, the mining difficulty is 0.35T, the current block height is 691284, and the theoretical income is 0.00038178/T/day. [2021/6/8 23:20:12] Reasons for BTC’s Energy Consumption While digital currencies existed before BTC, they encountered some technical issues that forced them to remain centralized, limiting their potential. Most notably, Satoshi Nakamoto solved the most intractable double spending problem. This problem would lead to infinite duplication of previous digital abstraction values, just like copy-pasting an image. In short, BTC is the first decentralized digital currency with scarcity. In order for the blockchain to remain secure, transaction verification requires a consensus algorithm. When Satoshi Nakamoto designed the system, he could have simply established a majority voting algorithm. In other words, each node can vote once, and if the majority of network participants, that is, greater than 50%, confirm that the transaction is valid, then the transaction is confirmed. But the problem is that malicious actors may create countless nodes, so that the number of votes exceeds that of honest nodes, because there is no cost to create an additional node, so there is an incentive to create Sybil nodes. This is called a Sybil attack. The great thing about Satoshi Nakamoto is that if there is a cost to running a node, the blockchain is Sybil resistant. Based on this idea, BTC uses a consensus algorithm called "proof of work". BTC miners, that is, validating transaction nodes, must solve difficult math problems through calculations, which usually require specialized hardware. Since this process consumes energy, and the energy consumption is very large, it is difficult for an attacker to exceed the computing power of the entire network. Importantly, energy is not "wasted" as the popular media sometimes portrays it. Once you understand why Proof of Work was chosen, it becomes clear that BTC consumes energy as a feature, not a bug. Well-known cryptocurrencies such as BTC, Litecoin, and Monero are also using proof-of-work, but new consensus algorithms are being applied that consume less energy. For example, Ethereum is currently transitioning to Proof of Stake PoS, an algorithm that does not need to consume as much energy as the PoW mechanism. As a result, the debate over energy consumption is more narrowly defined than many imagine. This is not a broadly anti-cryptocurrency or decentralized topic, sometimes specific issues. It is actually a criticism of a specific type of consensus algorithm, Proof of Work. Hong Rui, Co-Founder of Golden Computing Cloud: In the Web 3.0 Era, Users Will Master Data Ownership Decentralized Storage Is an Essential Infrastructure: Golden Finance Live Report, November 27th, Hosted by Golden Finance, The 58th session of the Golden Salon co-hosted by Golden Computing Cloud, co-organized by IPFS100, ZMQ, Pulse Technology, and Times Blockchain was held in Shenzhen. Hong Rui, the co-founder of Golden Computing Cloud, said that users in the era of Web 3.0 will master the data ownership. Hong Rui pointed out that in the embryonic stage of the Internet, all content-zce is generated by the operator, and users can only accept it passively, and the operator has no way of knowing what the user has browsed or done, and the information is transmitted in one direction. With the rise of Weibo and Wechat Douyin, we have entered the field of Web2.0. At this stage, the relationship between operators and users is a two-way interaction. Both sides can generate content. It can be said that Web2.0 has brought us into a splendid in the picture. We can create our ideas and our creativity in this shared space, but this space belongs to the technology giants. Web3.0 is the next generation of the Internet. At this time, the data will no longer belong to the technology giants, but to ourselves. To achieve this, decentralized storage is an essential infrastructure. [2020/11/27 22:20:14] It is not difficult to quantify the energy consumption and emissions of BTC to calculate the energy consumption of BTC. You only need to check the public statistical data such as hash power, network difficulty and mining equipment efficiency. An estimate with high confidence can be obtained. However, energy consumption and carbon emissions are two different things. While they may be linked, emissions are determined by the type of energy used, not the amount. Since we lack important information about BTC miners, such as the hardware and energy used, it is extremely difficult to confidently make a statement on BTC energy emissions. Despite the difficulties, some academics have attempted to quantify BTC's carbon footprint. Camilo Mora et al at the University of Hawaii published a paper on this topic, and they came up with the following harrowing prediction: This report estimates the energy usage of BTC if it compares to the usage rate of other mainstream technologies. Likewise, the resulting carbon dioxide emissions alone could push global warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius in less than 30 years. Although one of the most exaggerated predictions, Camilo Mora's paper is arguably the most influential study on the proof-of-work debate. After careful investigation, media coverage of BTC’s energy use can often be traced back to figures in Camilo Mora’s paper. And the report's eye-catching title, "BTC energy emissions alone could push global warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius," has become a deeply ingrained assumption, albeit a false one. Given the importance of Camilo Mora's report, BTC's energy emissions deserve further in-depth research. Jinse Finance Mining Earnings Broadcast丨BTC’s total network computing power is about 93.75EH/s: Jinse Finance reported that according to OKEx mining pool data, today’s BTC network’s computing power is about 93.75EH/s, and the difficulty of the whole network is about 15.14T. Block height 631252. The computing power of the entire network continued to drop by 0.32% today, and the current BTC income (PPS): 0.00000831 BTC/T/day. It is predicted that the next difficulty will be 13.75T (-9.16%), and there are still 14 days left before the adjustment. [2020/5/22] The measurement method applied in this report is relatively simple. The researchers estimated the efficiency of mining equipment, using the average carbon emissions of the relevant locations, combined with BTC growth projections, to estimate future emissions. However, several recent papers have directly challenged Mora's findings, pointing to a series of errors that have led to a gross overestimation of BTC emissions. The objections raised by these papers are briefly summarized below. Mora's research does not take into account advances in energy technology Mora's research assumes that the efficiency of mining machines and the carbon intensity of the grid will remain the same over the next century. In other words, the report assumes that miner and grid emissions will remain constant over the next 100 years. This is a very implausible assumption. Some critics pointed out: "This assumption ignores the dynamic characteristics of power grid technology and violates the widely followed practice, that is, for the assessment of future energy technology, technological changes should be taken into account." Mora's research estimated the unprecedented BTC Usage rate In order to predict the usage rate of BTC, the report uses the growth rate of the use of technological products such as phones, computers, and vacuum cleaners over the past 40 years. While this approach seems plausible, the resulting usage forecasts are wildly unreasonable: Specifically, Mora et al. argue that in 2017, BTC transactions reached 104 million, accounting for 0.03% of global cashless transactions. Rapid growth, in 2019, this number will suddenly increase to 78 billion, an increase of 750 times in two years, and then by 2020, if the growth rate is at the median, the transaction volume will reach 11 billion, an increase of 108 times, if The speed will slow down, and it will reach 8 billion by 2023, an increase of 76 times. All three growth scenarios are based on steep logarithmic growth trajectories, clearly at odds with historical trends, and mathematically leading to large increases in emissions only in the short term. Based on such a high growth rate, researchers such as Mora estimated inflated energy emissions. However, if they compare the growth rate of BTC with other hedge assets, they will come up with a more reasonable forecast, because the growth rate of these assets is lower. Golden Morning | List of important overnight events on January 3: 21:00-7:00 Keywords: EU, Anti-Money Laundering Law, Ripple, TRON, USDT 1. The fifth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive is expected to be released on January 10 Implemented in the UK, it will affect the crypto industry. 2. Economic Daily: Be wary of the resurgence of virtual currency transactions. 390 million XRP have all been locked into Ripple escrow accounts. 4. Over 30,000 companies across the country contain the word "blockchain" in their names, business scope or product information. 5. Former Barclays tech chief to launch UK regulated crypto bank in 2020. 6. The TRON network has issued more than 900 million USDT, accounting for nearly 22% of the total supply. 7. Bitcoin computing power reached 119 EH/s on January 1, a record high. 8. BTC is currently quoted at US$6,984, down 3.08% in 24 hours, with a market value of US$126.676 billion. [2020/1/3] Mora's research combined transaction volume with energy consumption. In addition to predicting the future transaction volume of BTC, Mora's research also simply multiplied the future transaction volume by the current emission in order to estimate the "total emission" value. This has a core bug in that the energy consumption is determined by the block difficulty, not the number of transactions. In fact, over the past three years since Mora’s study, miners’ energy consumption has remained relatively flat despite new peaks in transaction volume. Even if Mora's transaction predictions are correct, there is no evidence that transaction volume will cause a proportional increase in energy consumption. In fact, most experts believe that BTC’s energy consumption will decrease over time because there will be fewer coins minted. Based on the inadequacy of Mora's research above, Masanet, et al. gave the following sharp conclusion: the results show that even if Mora's report avoids the above key mistakes, the research design will produce very different future BTC carbon emission predictions, Doesn't cause that much concern. In other words, we found that the research design itself has many flaws, such as using transaction volume as the basis, comparing 40 irrelevant technology products, ignoring the iteration of mining machines, and even if it is corrected, the report uses incorrect research methods. On this basis, we argue that the Mora et al. study design is fundamentally flawed and should not be taken seriously by researchers, policymakers, or the public. Had Mora's study not been affected by these errors, the predicted emission levels would have been more gradual. If one compares Mora's original projections (Panel A) with those corrected for the study's erroneous assumptions (Panel D), the opposite conclusion can be drawn, namely that emissions look relatively flat over the next few decades , hardly cause panic. Golden Finance reports Melnikoff on the spot: Blockchain technology can become a bridge between government and private institutions: At the GBLS Global Sleepless Blockchain Leaders Summit, Dr. Steve Melnikoff, who works in physics at Stanford University and MIT, said: It is very interesting to use blockchain technology on a large scale. Blockchain itself is a new technology. It is very interesting to apply blockchain technology in new technologies, because if it can be used on a large scale in different industries, It will be able to realize the final landing of blockchain technology.

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