Is there any work being done to make Bitcoin not consume all that energy?
It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource.
Are they trying to go proof of stake?
It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource.
Are they trying to go proof of stake?
At this point, that would be impossible. Making even minor changes to the Bitcoin protocol effectively requires the consent of miners, as they're responsible for minting blocks. There's no way that entrenched mining interests would agree to a protocol change that cut them out of the picture.
It might be technically possible to change the bitcoin protocol, but at this point the politics are insurmountable.
Bitcoin isn't like your average software where some party releases an update that magically downloads from some app store. It's a protocol where everyone has to mutually agree to update.
The best example of an "update" is Bitcoin cash, where the creator just gave all bitcoin owners free btc.
Ultimately, the real problem is that most people involved either don't understand economics, or are preying on people who don't understand economics. Until there's real commerce with a cryprocurrency, they have no value. Thus anyone hoarding them is basically gambling in a zero sum game.
All the energy consumed by bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The only way to defeat the immutability of the bitcoin blockchain and do naughty things would be to expend _more_ energy than is currently being used (or create a more effecient miner, mass produce it, set up mining farms, all without anybody finding out).
And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the currency?
How can it possibly become anything like widely used if it's so pricey?
(Come to think of it, one way is the lightning network. Which doesn't use the blockchain for almost everything: https://lightning.network/)
A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want.
You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.
And I expect the transactions per person of the global banking system is orders of magnitude higher.
Energy use per transaction for Bitcoin seems much, much higher, but I don't have numbers obviously.
But hopefully lightning helps.
The peak energy cost is limited by the price of bitcoin though.