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Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 9 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Ok fine lets look closer at those numbers, I don't think they mean what you think they mean....

On their own these numbers are completely useless, we need to compare something that exists in both crypto and in traditional banking.

I found this page: https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-mining-statistics/

One Bitcoin transaction can spend up to 1,200 kWh of energy, which is equivalent to almost 100,000 VISA transactions.

I suspect that is on the extreme end of the scale, so let's be kind and slash 50% off of it, even then the energy consumption would be 600kWh per bitcoint transaction, and if we use the same data for VISA transactions, this is the equivalent of 50 000 VISA transactions, if these numbers are correct, crypto is insanely energy inefficient.

So I kept looking and found this page:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/

This page claims that one Bitcoin transaction used about 700kWh in 2023, and 100 000 VISA transactions used about 150kWh in total at the same time.

So we have two sources showing that Bitcoin is an absolute disaster for energy use and therefore the environment.

So I kept looking, and found some data about Etherium, which claims that one etherium transaction consumes 0 kWh, which I naturally doubt...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/

I will make no secret that I dislike crypto, but I did try and find objective data and summarize it objectively, I will also note that while I dislike crypto, I am not blind to the issues with traditional banking, they absolutely needs to clean up their act, environmentally and otherwise.

[–] orrk@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

nah the power use numbers you gave are not on an extreme scale, the point of how the bitcoin and most cryptos work is designed to keep using more and more power

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

I suspcted as much, but I wanted to show that even cut in half the power use of a single Bitcoin transaction consume an absurd ammount of energy, this to try and stop people arguing that I was being unfair against crypto

[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't make any sense unless it's the only transaction in a block

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

If you have other data, please post it