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Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#21

Post by saalweachter »

robbick wrote: post #8

Fixing this is not going to fix the energy crisis but as uses of fossil fuels go it is among the most egregious

It's a "stop shooting yourself in the foot" win-win.

Like, the last time I did a back-of-the-envelope, physical spam mail was also a surprisingly large (but still tiny) fraction of US CO2 emissions. We could just stop sending spam mail, and save like a quarter percent of the US CO2. Not big, but you're also not losing anything of value.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#22

Post by Hash-Basher »

gipp wrote: post #12
Y_Y wrote: post #3

Look how many company are using most of the crude oil. They're allowed to buy this commodity and they profit from using it, what did you expect would happen?

Yeah those companies generally use that energy to produce things of value to people

A global, decentralized, censorship-resistant monetary asset is not of value to people?

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#24

Post by jacquesm »

spankalee wrote: post #14
hugryhoop wrote: post #6

How much energy do the data-centers of the 4 hyperscalers use?

Those data centers generally do useful things though.

To be fair, the bulk of what they do could probably be missed without anybody noticing other than that there would be a large collective sigh of relief. There is so much junk produced that I would not be at all surprised if that dwarfed the crypto computers, but it is much harder to identify.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#26

Post by sspiff »

throw0101d wrote: post #11

Keep going back to: >> Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet. > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604... Edit: per /u/tgamblin (of Spack fame), this was originally from @Theophite.

Except you're not idling your car, you're effectively redlining it 24/7.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#27

Post by tgamblin »

throw0101d wrote: post #11

Keep going back to: >> Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet. > It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. * https://twitter.com/VessOnSecurity/status/113524359527398604... Edit: per /u/tgamblin (of Spack fame), this was originally from @Theophite.

This is stolen from @Theophite, sadly now banned: https://images.app.goo.gl/Rv5SK1qqWXZVNSZ56

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#28

Post by 015a »

The crypto industry financed a 2.3% expansion of the US's power generating capacity.

I don't care what we're spending energy on. Being stingy about it just makes all of us poorer. There's a quadrillion-cubic-kilometer flaming ball of plasma in the sky. We have the ability to generate literally infinite electricity; and quite literally the only way we get to that is by increasing the amount of electricity we're using, and thus need to generate.

Everything gets cheaper when electricity gets cheaper.

Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

#29

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

ck2 wrote: post #17

I don't follow crypto news but I am curious how the "proof of work" alternative is working out? or not?

Ethereum, the second biggest coin by market cap and the network that allows for NFTs, completed their transition to proof of stake in 2022. Ethereum’s energy usage is now almost completely negligible.

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...

Since Bitcoin is completely decentralized, there’s no way to change the protocol without everyone just stopping using it, which miners don’t want to do.

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