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How do you explain a Grandpa why BTC consume so much energy?
858 sats \ 36 comments \ @Bitcoiner1 20 Aug bitcoin_beginners
Just asking for some tips.
I've a relative who doesn't understand anything about BTC and he is stock with the same old argument about all the electricity is needed for mining BTC.
What would be your approach on this situation?
Do you have an article (non technical) about this topic?
Cheers
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134 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 21 Aug
Money is stored in vaults because it takes a lot of energy to break into them. Fort Knox for example took a lot of energy to build and requires a lot of energy to maintain, and it would take tremendous amounts of energy for anyone to break in and take all the gold (if there is any). Only an extremely well armed military force capable of going toe-to-toe with the USA could pull it off - very unlikely but possible.
Bitcoin consumes so much energy because it is also like a vault, but unlike Fort Knox, any one can use it (not just the US government), including you! And unlike Fort Knox, nobody can break into this vault. No army or government in the world including the USA can expend enough energy to unlock a private key and steal the bitcoin it protects. And because of the energy bitcoin consumes, it is almost impossible to censor transactions by rewriting the blockchain.
When you read in the news "bitcoin consumes more energy than such and such country" this means that even if that country devoted 100% of it's energy output to attacking bitcoin it will fail. What could possibly be a safer way to store the hard-earned value you've accumulated throughout your life? All of this is thanks to the enormous amounts of energy bitcoin consumes. Bitcoin is not going away, so it's only wasted if you don't use it. So why not use it?
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229 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 20 Aug
First, no one gets to determine what is or isn't a good use of energy. Is it good use of energy to broadcast cat videos? Skibidi toilet videos?
Therefore, bitcoin can only be compared to other industries on a per kwh basis. And my understanding is that bitcoin miners use a much higher share of clean energy sources than the typical kwh used by society at large. And this is because Bitcoin incentivizes miners to seek out cheap, renewable, and otherwise stranded energy sources.
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18 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 21 Aug
"W-w-wait! We don't wanna hear common sense and logical arguments, we only wanna state our uneducated opinion!!1!1!"
  • Buttcoiners and the average Joe.
You're absolutely right, though.
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142 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCMiner 21 Aug
Proof-of-work (PoW) mining is what permits bitcoin to be resistant against centralized control.
Mining exists to cement the ordering of transactions.
That's it. That's the entire reason that Bitcoin mining exists.
That means neither any government, nor any mining pools or mining cartels with less than 50% of the hashrate have the ability to change the ordering of the transactions.
In over a dozen years, there has never been a transaction ordering issue outside of a single incident in 2013 when a new release of the software changed the behavior and a chain split occurred (and one person used that opportunity to change the ordering of his transaction such that an exchange got cheated on a confirmed (six confirmations) deposit transaction that no longer existed when the chain split got resolved (i.e., the ordering of the transactions was changed).
While there are shitcoins with PoW mining as well, those are not as resistant, or are unresistant -- due to them requiring a significantly smaller set of resources in order to pull off the double spend attack. Even a determined attacker (e.g., the U.S. gov't) would not be able to pull off a mining attack against bitcoin (at least, not one that would be a surprise when it was executed).
As far as an article on it ... the following explains the double spend problem. But it mentions "mining" exactly zero times: https://www.babypips.com/crypto/learn/what-problems-did-bitcoin-solve
But try to find a way to solve the double spend problem without PoW mining and you end up with crap like proof-of-stake (e.g., Etherium) which doesn't actually solve the "multi-dimensional problem of decentralised consensus that Bitcoin and its Proof-of-Work-based consensus mechanism solved".
Grandpa probably can't or won't do the research to truly understand why bitcoin mining must exist, but maybe he can understand that if there was a way for bitcoin to work without bitcoin mining and be just as resistant to centralized control, that would have occurred by now. And thus, we embrace bitcoin the way it is -- because there is no alternative.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitcoiner1 OP 21 Aug
Great reply!, thanks
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12 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 21 Aug
Grandpas ain't asking about energy use! 🤣🤣🤣
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60 sats \ 3 replies \ @ChrisS 20 Aug
The more energy humans use the better off they are. And I cant think of using energy for many better causes than for a sound money that can’t be censored, confiscated, debased, has no border and is open for anybody to use.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @jp305 20 Aug
Good answer, although I doubt they will buy the first part without more explanation. They think that bitcoin is useless and thus, wasted energy.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @ChrisS 21 Aug
Modern conveniences like living in air conditioned houses and traveling new places by cars and planes as opposed to horses, refrigerators, washing machines, the list goes on. None of these are possible without using fare more energy today than we did 100 years ago. More energy means better quality of life. It’s no surprise that using energy in the real world (prove of work) would allow for a much better monetary system to come to life as opposed to the one we’ve lived in over the past 50 or so years where money can be created for free.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Aug
Graph nations by income or wealth on one axis and energy consumption on the other axis. What you NOT see is rick nations that are lower energy consumption or usage.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate 21 Aug
I would send him to the Yzer app! It does a really good job explaining Bitcoin mining - in not too technical of a way.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @JesseJames 21 Aug
Time square illuminations, why they are there? they kinda useless and they use tons of energy too.... use that analogy :-) At least with Bitcoin you have something to keep and save ...
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ken 21 Aug
Listen up Grandpa, I’ll make this quick Satoshi’s scheme ain’t your average schtick Fiat’s just digits, no printing required, ...but Bitcoin needs energy to make it tick.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Enemy_of_the_state 21 Aug
Anyone over the age of 60, is probably never going to grasp bitcoin, unless they have a computer science or engineering background.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Aug
the key is being open minded because I have met 'technical' folks who hate bitcoin like Hacker News
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 21 Aug
It doesn’t relative to many other industries. It doesn’t if you compare it to the entire banking system.
And even if it does using energy is good. Every increase in human standard of living has come with increased energy demand.
If you want someone who can present the argument better I would suggest Daniel Batten. https://x.com/dsbatten/status/1523167671990521856?s=46&t=opFMGEQXdk09WvPsXf4z6g
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsMoro 20 Aug
no different than any server running 24/7. is he against server computing in general ( doubt it)? is btc less deseved of energy than garbage netflix or pornhub being available everywhere 24/7?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @allmightyrandom 20 Aug
Ask him about gold mining and the end of bretton woods. People with life experience do not want to be told. He will figure it out.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @chairman_pretense 20 Aug
Good money isn't free
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Wumbo 21 Aug
Hey Grandpa, how much electricity does the current system use?
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7538/15642112578_b658eb93f3_o.jpg
Looks like a lot to me.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @jurraca 21 Aug
"Electricity is the thickness of the fortress walls on our digital Fort Knox."
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mdominicorobin24 22 Aug
Granda, It consumes so much energy to heat our homes for an eternity of Winter Season. Unlike the last time Grandpa. WINTER IS COMING for real.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Silent_Hodler 21 Aug
You'll find some great articles here: https://endthefud.org/
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 21 Aug
"Much safety".
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hugomofn 21 Aug
High level: Pretty much all modern technologies require energy at their foundation to work. Invite them to sleep on that first.
Secondly, for money in particular, over thousands of years of intense selection pressure, we've learned a few characteristics of what typically makes money. One of those characteristics is "unforgeable costliness" (https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/). That is, for a thing to be a good money candidate, it must be costly to make, to the extent that it is extremely difficult to make forgeries of.
Then give the concrete example of gold. Ask them why they think vastly different cultures in different eras all converged on using gold as money? (Fiat was an anomaly). Given their age, they probably have a decent understanding of gold themselves and/or they've seen first hand how people flocked to gold in times of uncertainty, such as in wars, recessions, etc.
Answer: The energy to create gold atoms is unfathomably large (collision of neutron stars). It is impossible for humans to forge gold (even with today's technology). This is precisely why gold was able to become good money. Again, this probably will resonate with them given their age and their familiarity with gold.
Bitcoin actually "copies" this characteristic of gold. Bitcoin mining consumes energy in order to ensure that each bitcoin minted (and the Bitcoin ledger in general) is exceedingly difficult to make forgeries of. If you compare the energy required to synthesize gold, to the energy required to create and maintain Bitcoin, Bitcoin is actually orders of magnitude more efficient than gold. It also inherits all properties of digital things and be able to support (almost) instant, borderless transfers, something gold can't do.
So the general approach here is to give them an anchor (gold), then explain Bitcoin from that perspective.
(FWIW, I also wrote the below article a few years back on the Anatomy of Proof-of-Work. Perhaps a bit too technical for grandpas though.) https://medium.com/bitcoin-tech-talk/the-anatomy-of-proof-of-work-98c85b6f6667
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sagars209 21 Aug
Just ask your grandpa, if he can explain why a house was costing 30/40k USD when he was young and why it costs 10x more? if can explain this then you can go into details of explaining why bitcoin's energy consumption is not that bad, it eventually will lead to energy abundance. if there's a true capital market anywhere in the world its bitcoin mining
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @billiam 21 Aug
Jack Mallers talk at BTCPrague24 is great for this.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 21 Aug
There's no such thing as a wealthy country that doesn't use a lot of energy.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sangekrypto 21 Aug
I have a relative who doesn't understand anything about BTC and he has the same old argument about all the electricity it takes to mine BTC.
It is recommended that your electricity needs be solar powered, so that you are not burdened with paying for electricity every month. The initial risk of purchasing mining equipment is that it requires relatively high costs.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 20 Aug
Heavy machine bunch of graphic card, high computing power
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 20 Aug
Just like you have to work in a field to bring crops out of the ground. It takes time to verify btc.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 20 Aug
Mining was 'easier' pre-2013
More miners competing for block rewards means more energy 'utlized' which is not the same as 'consumed' because miners use 'stranded' energy to minimize cost
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCLNAT 22 Aug freebie
In reality, the energy consumed in Bitcoin mining may, today, be that consumed for the generation of other values. But miners are already looking for sustainable solutions from an economic and ecological point of view. Even the energy in the form of heat released is used for beneficial purposes for people who are near mining complexes.
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Warrior 21 Aug outlawed
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Octopus 20 Aug outlawed
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.