When people think about Bitcoin, they often think about the proof-of-work, which is often shortened to PoW. Bitcoin PoW has been called many things, and one of the things that it is commonly called is wasteful. For those who are saying that Bitcoin PoW is wasteful and expensive, these terms are relative. The amount of energy that the Bitcoin PoW spends has to be compared to other systems. After all, everything is energy, including money, and energy is subjective.
The idea of people doing work has been conceptualized for centuries. A long time ago, the word that was done in the economy was entirely done by the human hand. These human hands created food. Then, humans discovered fire, and they were able to use the energy in a fire to increase the yield. This fire was not only able to keep people warm but could also add energy to improve people’s standards of living. Later, the energy was increased further when humans were able to domesticate animals. These domesticated animals were able to provide energy that humans could use to improve tasks, provide more food, and increase people’s standard of living even further. At the same time, these animals still required food and this food has to be provided to meet the energy demand supplied by the animals.
Finally, humans were able to develop machines. These machines produced work using sources ranging from water and wind to coal and gas. Now, people even use nuclear energy to help them do work, provide energy, and improve people’s lives. Now, the economy might be based on money; however, it is truly based on energy and work. Everything in life is closely tied to the price of energy. Nearly everyone can name the prices of gas near them to within a few cents. Transporting food takes energy. Transporting people takes energy. Running the internet also takes energy. Energy is everything.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the energy consumption of the world has been on the rise during the past few years. While money might be the representation of goods and services, it can also be viewed as something called stored energy. There have been great minds in the past, including Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, who have been interested in taking the gold standard and replacing it with energy instead. This was called units of energy or the energy dollar. While this concept did gain some traction, the idea was flawed because it could not be stored or transmitted easily. As a result, the economy today still uses coins and paper even though many people have taken to studying energy as a form of currency at its base.
Now, Bitcoin came to the scene back in 2008. The PoW was initially invented as a way to guard against spam email, which everyone finds annoying. It was only later that the creator of Bitcoin took PoW and adapted it to the world of digital cash. While PoW mining worked well on its surface, the goal of Bitcoin PoW mining was to bring electricity and turn it into bitcoins. This is the block reward system with which many people are familiar. Bitcoin mining hardware performs hash operations routinely until it finds a way to solve the puzzle. This solution to the puzzle proves that the miner spent the required amount of electricity to make the block. This is the Bitcoin PoW concept.
When the Bitcoin PoW first arrived on the scene, the goal was to change how the consensus operated among humans. This is one of the fairest ways possible for the physical world and digital worlds to validate each other. While many people think that the Bitcoin PoW is about computers and coding, the reality is that it is about physics. Anyone willing to invest the energy and work into creating new Bitcoin PoW mining blocks can reap the rewards. In a sense, the Bitcoin PoW system has been designed to transmute electricity into money. In this manner, Bitcoin PoW turns electricity into digital gold. If this sounds like alchemy, its because it’s not far off.
Now, back to the original question. Some people are saying that the Bitcoin PoW is wasteful. Bitcoin PoW is not going to destroy the world by taking up all of its energy. It is also important to note that more transactions do not necessarily mean more energy. The economic density of a transaction on the Bitcoin PoW system is always increasing. In essence, the more people mine Bitcoin, the more energy it is going to take. This will eventually reach maturity and stabilize when it finds its equilibrium and when mining commoditizes mores. Finally, the metric of “average cost per transaction” isn’t useful for measuring the efficiency of the Bitcoin PoW system. The energy spend secures the share of Bitcoin. This percentage is going down as the inflation of the Bitcoin PoW system continues to drop.
In the end, the Bitcoin PoW is not wasteful, and it does not consume any more energy than any other extensive system. There are built-in measures in place to keep the Bitcoin PoW system in check. D-Central has also produced several other articles on the subject, covering the issue from several perspectives. We were also among the first in space to make hash rate-based overall consumption estimates, such as the CBECI popularized by Cambridge.
Disclaimer: The information provided on this blog is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as any form of advice.
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