News Each Bitcoin transaction consumes 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

[USAFRet]

Cool with mineral oil... solved?

No.

 

[salgado18]

I see this as another evidence that crypto should be entirely switched to environmentally friendly sollutions, and the others abandoned altogether. If you say "yeah, look how many resources are wasted in tweets and stuff", and I'll tell you that they too should work on reducing their resouce usage. The latest weather catastrophes have shown that this is not a subject to dismiss like it's not our problem, because it is already happening. Servers should be more efficient, waste should be kept to a minimum and all that is not just lame people talk. I liked that China banned crypto, and I think more countries should follow.

 

[bit_user]

I see this as another evidence that crypto should be entirely switched to environmentally friendly sollutions, and the others abandoned altogether. If you say "yeah, look how many resources are wasted in tweets and stuff", and I'll tell you that they too should work on reducing their resouce usage. The latest weather catastrophes have shown that this is not a subject to dismiss like it's not our problem, because it is already happening.

If energy and water were priced more in line with their external costs (see externality), and privacy were better protected, then you'd naturally see not only less crypto, but also online services would adapt to limit usage (or else simply die off).

The main problem with that scheme is that taxing stuff is unpopular. We seem to be able to tax things that are widely regarded as harmful, such as nicotine, alcohol, etc. I guess the key question is how bad excessive energy & water usage by datacenters (and other heavy users) has to get, before there's enough public support to tax it appropriately.

 

[scottslayer]

Water is cool but actual power usage comparisons are even cooler and more useful.
A bitcoin farm a few hours away from me got closed down last year because it was using as much or more power as the five closest cities combined.

 

[Co BIY]

If energy and water were priced more in line with their external costs (see externality), and privacy were better protected, then you'd naturally see not only less crypto, but also online services would adapt to limit usage (or else simply die off).

In most cases where water is used extremely freely and priced low there is no externality because water is superabundant and much excess is likely flowing to the sea.

In other localities with water scarcity I doubt the crypto miners are wasting it because it will be priced and regulated accordingly.

The main cause of for the high water consumption per transaction is probably the complete lack of transactions because Bitcoin is a not an effective currency.

I oppose out-lawing bitcoin because the true believers will still dream that this non-sense could work if allowed. (Like the true communism never tried crowd). Let it fail from it's own obvious flaws.

 

[Co BIY]

Lastly, water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. Even more so than CO2. I'm not saying evaporative cooling is a significant contributor to global temperature rise, but it seems plausible. Would be interesting to have some data on that.

But condensed water vapor in the atmosphere (clouds) are super effective at cooling the surface of the earth and reflecting sunlight back to space . It is much more likely that greater atmospheric water vapor would have a cooling effect.

Cloud studies are unpopular for this reason. I suspect they are also just hard to study (I always get distracted by the shapes).

 

[digitalgriffin]

Cryptobros: You can't stop us! It's the future!

AI Bros: let it die and AI boom take over!

Sierra club and Greenpeace: Our leaders had an aneurysm

Govt leaders: How is this different from email?

 

[Co BIY]

The main problem with that scheme is that taxing stuff is unpopular. We seem to be able to tax things that are widely regarded as harmful, such as nicotine, alcohol, etc. I guess the key question is how bad excessive energy & water usage by datacenters (and other heavy users) has to get, before there's enough public support to tax it appropriately.

Taxing Energy use is extremely destructive because it is the exact opposite of a harmful good.

It is probably the most basic of factor of production outside of human attention. It is a key input in every productive activity in the economy. The people who want to tax energy often want to tax everything and that's why they lay the tax on the energy. It is so essential that the tax cannot be avoided.

 

[Co BIY]

Cryptobros: You can't stop us! It's the future!

AI Bros: let it die and AI boom take over!

Sierra club and Greenpeace: Our leaders had an aneurysm

Govt leaders: How is this different from email?

Me : If it's money, how come no one takes it for payment ?

Bitcoin : Only ~ 500,000 transactions a day. McDonald's alone does 7.5 million hamburger transactions a day. (They probably do use some water too!)

 

[bit_user]

In most cases where water is used extremely freely and priced low there is no externality because water is superabundant and much excess is likely flowing to the sea.

If this were true, we shouldn't expect to see fossil fuel or probably even nuclear plants built anywhere with water scarcity, yet that doesn't seem to match reality. I think they attribute most of the water use to power-generation - not cooling.

The main cause of for the high water consumption per transaction is probably the complete lack of transactions because Bitcoin is a not an effective currency.

You seem to be suggesting that the energy cost of bitcoin transactions is inversely-proportional to volume. This is not so. The energy cost is roughly fixed, in the short term. In the long term, it increases as the currency becomes increasingly fragmented and the size of the blockchain grows.

I oppose out-lawing bitcoin because the true believers will still dream that this non-sense could work if allowed.

Agreed. Banning something only drives it underground/offshore, where it's even harder to monitor or regulate. Because the US allows bitcoin, the exchanges can be subject to the same standards as similar financial institutions. This cuts down on money laundering and other illicit use.

But condensed water vapor in the atmosphere (clouds) are super effective at cooling the surface of the earth and reflecting sunlight back to space . It is much more likely that greater atmospheric water vapor would have a cooling effect.

Not gonna debate the climate science, here. I suggest people not try to go by thought experiments and intuition, because the climate is a dynamic system and without good data you can't properly weight all the factors and feedbacks.

Taxing Energy use is extremely destructive because it is the exact opposite of a harmful good.

The externalities need to be priced in, because failing to do so puts those costs on somebody else. That's neither fair nor good for society.

I agree that it shouldn't be taxed beyond that, because any added cost does ripple through the chain of production. However, costs drive efficiencies and direct market participants to seek less resource-intensive sources. It harnesses the power of the market to do what it does best: optimization.

Me : If it's money, how come no one takes it for payment ?

The transaction overheads have gotten too high.

Bitcoin : Only ~ 500,000 transactions a day. McDonald's alone does 7.5 million hamburger transactions a day.

Exactly - it doesn't scale. See above.

 

[Bikki]

Does my 500w graphic card that use water pump at the speed of 5 galons per hour consume 5 galons of water per hour? NO.
The whole topic is invalid, because water cooling for server does not make water unsuable, it only heats it up.

And no, there is no water vaporing, everything must be is in close loop or you risk destroying the electronic you try to cool due to humidity.

 

[CalifLove]

We'll see if it turns out as big as many speculate but water usage???? Do some research on how much water a small chip plant requires.

 

[gg83]

Seems someone that dislikes bitcoin wants to write another study of why it is bad. This is really just a variation of the bitcoin wastes electricity argument. The miner machines themselves do not directly use water almost all the so called usages is related to evaporation that happens during the power generation.

You really could write a study for any computer related activity you disagree with. Look at how much power youtube or tik tok uses all for the greedy advertisers to make their money. You could easily come up with a chart that shows how much water was used per ad shown.

I do not use crypto but it irritates me when people try to use environment as a argument against anything they disagree with.

I wonder how much water is wasted by certain authors at certain universities in Amsterdam writing article after article about why bitcoin is bad.

The writer pointed out ways to mitigate "fresh water usage". They didn't say altcoins were bad. I don't think this article is anti crypto at all.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Crypto"currencies" are dumb, especially since they're just commodities to bypass regulations for currencies.

That out of the way, it's absolutely nuts that they use still that much power, but given that they chose the brute-force method for distributed proofs, it kind of makes sense.

Not only is the concept unsustainable from a planetary concern, it's also financially unsustainable entirely, I'm not sure why there's whackos here mad about their tulips on a ledger.

 

[forlines78]

And you don't have a condensation unit recycling all that water or some way of collecting it? With all that technology and you can't collect evaporated water?! Plant grass or ivy on your rooftop and around your vents and keep it all shaded geniuses. Or use a distiller duh... I think whoever wrote this needs to lose their water... These stories like this make me want to find the person who wrote it and give them a bath. They have been stirring so much <Mod Edit> the smell will probably be permanent on them.

 

[bit_user]

And you don't have a condensation unit recycling all that water or some way of collecting it?

A condensation unit is essentially an air conditioner. That would take more energy than what datacenters use evaporative cooling to dissipate. In other words, it'd be worse than self-defeating.

And if we're talking about power plants that use steam turbines, it's super-heated steam that would take more energy to condense than the power plant is generating.

With all that technology and you can't collect evaporated water?!

Physics.

Plant grass or ivy on your rooftop and around your vents and keep it all shaded geniuses. Or use a distiller duh...

You're lacking a sense of scale, here.

If you're so much smarter than the engineers who design this infrastructure, why don't you crack a textbook open and run the numbers yourself?

 

[George³]

Today, or almost today energy prices for complete one new bitcoin transaction...

 

[palladin9479]

Yeah ... this article is BS, evaporation does not "use up" fresh water.
Every day the sun evaporates a trillion tons (1,000,000,000,000) of water across the globe. This comes out to be about something like 1,400 cubic kilometers worth of water or 1.4 x 10^15 liters. This water does not simple disappear, it goes into the atmosphere where it forms clouds, those clouds drift around on winds where they eventually dump that water back onto the surface in the form of rain.

The numbers used by server farms is laughable in the greater picture.

 

[dark_lord69]

From the report:
"...power demand, spatial distribution of Bitcoin mining, and electricity mix, which are used to generate daily estimates of the network’s carbon footprint.
To calculate the water footprint instead of the carbon footprint, these inputs are combined with data on the water intensity of electricity generation on a specific grid."

SO... You take the amount of electricity it takes for Bitcoin mining. Then you figure out how much water it takes to generate that electricity.

That's your water "usage".

 

[CrazedJEW]

Total BS. No one is humidifier their miners. Water isn't consumed for cooling except maybe to fill the coolant lines once. And they're not on constantly. At the large facilities they switch off in times of heavy power consumption. Bitcoin fud. Who paid for this story?

 

[Bluoper]

Rather silly that this red flag is thrown about "wasting" water while mining and yet so many people think transitioning off to electric vehicles on this same power grid is only going to save the planet...

The goal is to reduce energy usage across the board, ev's are more energy efficient than internal combustion but they do still use energy and use resources. Crypto is just seen as a complete waste of resources unlike an ev that has a practical use in everyday life.

 

[palladin9479]

The goal is to reduce energy usage across the board, ev's are more energy efficient than internal combustion but they do still use energy and use resources. Crypto is just seen as a complete waste of resources unlike an ev that has a practical use in everyday life.

That ... depends. ICE's convert chemical energy stored in H-C bonds into thermal energy that is then converted into kinetic energy. Electric motors convert electricity into kinetic energy, but that electricity has to come from somewhere first. In the case of the USA (can't speak for the world), most electricity is generated from the chemical energy stored in H-C bonds (Coal / Oil / Natural Gas), then transmitted over a long distance to the local distribution point where it's stepped down for local distribution. Total losses are 6~15% depending on how far and quality of lines. Then when it hits your home it's 10~30% depending on the quality of the devices. That "warmth" you feel near electronics, yeah that's electricity that's been turned into waste thermal energy instead of doing something productive. I believe Tesla Model 3 home chargers were tested to be 89~91% efficient, which is pretty good for a home 240v device.

Energy storage losses / degradation is a whole other issue, lets just say Li-Ion technology was never intended to last long, there are some very real physics involved here.

Electric motors are great, they drive trains, heavy construction machinery and even aircraft carriers. Power generation, transmission, distribution and storage are entirely different subjects.

 

[George³]

ev's are more energy efficient

No isn't it at all. Only in best cause scenario if electricity for them appearing straight from the fifth dimension right into the copper windings of the electric motor.

 

[Bluoper]

No isn't it at all. Only in best cause scenario if electricity for them appearing straight from the fifth dimension right into the copper windings of the electric motor.

It takes far more energy to pump out the oil required to run internal combustion compared to the relatively small amount of energy it takes to mine uranium for a nuclear power plant.

 

[George³]

It takes far more energy to pump out the oil required to run internal combustion compared to the relatively small amount of energy it takes to mine uranium for a nuclear power plant.

If the bill was that much better when the cost line was drawn, there would probably be 5,000 nuclear reactors on the planet by now and abandon any other way of doing electricity.