Enough to power 6000 homes? That’s crazy.
Probably a silly question. Does solving the complex mathematical problems provide any long term benefit? Breaking encryption or other uses?
Probably a silly question. Does solving the complex mathematical problems provide any long term benefit? Breaking encryption or other uses?
PoW is valued by the network and its participants.
What needs to be accounted for are the carbon and other negative externalities dumped into our singular shared environment. This is a massive global problem that you do a disservice by focusing on PoW.
The solution to the puzzle itself is irrelevant - it's an operation that would be extremely simple but that's made very, very hard on purpose. And the sole purpose is to align incentives by using lots of energy.
Beyond that, no, there's no _additional_ value.
If you can start from the position of assuming Bitcoin is a thing worth existing (which may be asking a lot, but bear with me), then this security, and the power usage that enables it, is a required element of the overall thing.
ie. if it's worth Bitcoin existing, then it's worth the power usage to secure it so it can continue existing.
Having said all of that, and I've said this before, I think Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work as security is what will bring it down in the long term. Ethereum, the next biggest cryptocurrency, is moving (glacially, but right now we're the closest we've ever been...) towards Proof-of-Stake, which radically sheds a massive percentage of the power requirements to secure the network. There are other potential drawbacks to PoS, but that's a whole separate loaded discussion that I'm not across well enough to engage in.
I believe Bitcoin will have to move to some less power intensive security method in the not-too-distant future in order to remain viable. This has been accelerated by the fact that COVID is messing with supply chains and semi-conductor availability, meaning the value of Bitcoin mining equipment is increasing (from a supply / demand standpoint if nothing else).