Yesterday an article came out on Gizmodo about the energy consumption of Bitcoin, calling it “grossly inefficient, completely unsustainable, and an environmental menace“. Reading this article, only strengthens my belief that BURST, with it’s Proof of Capacity model, is a much better alternative for the future.
The article claims that the per transaction kWh cost for Bitcoin is at least 300 kWh and could exceed 900 kWh by the end of 2018 as new miners come online and the block rewards decrease. It also states that the estimated energy needs of 7.67 gigawatts (predicted later this year) will surpass that of Ireland (3.1 gigawatts) and approach the usage of Austria (8.2 gigawatts). THAT IS INSANE!
I can’t speak for the hopefully well educated folks reading this article, but I spend a good amount of time learning about energy usage, energy alternatives and solutions to the energy problems around the globe. With a population of 7.6 BILLION people on the planet and growing our energy usage only goes up, while our renewable sources struggle to keep pace. While the estimate is for Bitcoin to use somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 percent of the global electricity supply, it’s still important that we look to cut usage where possible.
Did your parents get on your case about turning the lights off when you were growing up? Are you a parent now and on your kid’s case about it? Mining Bitcoin is like leaving seven 60W lamps on in a room that nobody ever uses… all day… all night… whhyyyy?
Burst – The Low Energy Solution
Here’s where BURST really shines (pun intended?). Mining Burst takes about 50Wh (watts, not kilowatts) for an ordinary transaction. Once the Dymaxion hard fork fork is in effect, it’s estimated that a transaction within the new multi-out methods will be between 0.66 and 1.33 Wh. That’s in the vicinity of 300,000 times (or even 1.3M by the end of the year) more efficient than Bitcoin!
With these types of numbers, it’s a little disconcerting that the article doesn’t mention Proof of Capacity at all! It only mentions Proof of Stake and Proof of Research. PoS is definitely the leading “solution” to the PoW power consumption problem as far as I can tell, mainly due to Ethereum switching over, but the PoS model goes against one of the fundamentals of block chain technology. The block chain should be as decentralized as possible.
So, all this taken into account… Burst is still the clear winner.
On with the mining!
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