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

Electricity is too cheap for these uses.

They don't produce anything except some numbers. A total waste of energy. I had to laugh when this guy I know who is very "progressive" and environmentally concerned got pissy when I pointed out how much energy was wasted on bitcoin mining just because he was into it.

fuck crypto shit ffs

JFC how long do we have to wait for a carbon tax

There is no good reason why this isn't illegal.

Crypto is the digital coal of our times.

Whoever Satoshi was, I wonder how he's responding to the thought that he's personally contributed more to global warming than the average billionaire.

Modern day gold rush.

Digging up more and more dirt for diminishing returns while destroying the environment.

Bitcoin using more and more power for essentially the same.

You'd think with all of the money they're pulling in, they'd invest in solar panels or something to lower their overhead.

Or am I making the mistake of approaching the situation with common sense?

Misleading title - the problem is not "crypto", it's pretty much all Bitcoin and the people against the change in the consensus mechanism. Out of the top 10 9 coins in market cap, Bitcoin is the only one using proof of work, which demands such high energy requirements.

Ultimately, mining should be banned from the surface of Earth. Let miners build orbital solar panel infrastructure close to the Sun where power is plentiful. See Bitcoin developer Peter Todd's 2017-09-10 presentation on the subject (transcript).

Edit: Fixed URL. Edit2; Add transcript link.

Just a PSA that the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap (ETH) is no longer proof of work, and in the process, reduced their power consumption by ~98%.

That's why I prefer Cardano, it has a good PoS (unlike Ethereum) and uses thousands of time less energy than Bitcoin.

Satoshi is estimated to have wallets totaling as much as 1.1 million btc. That would make him the 26th richest person in the world.

And father.

"Research has found that bitcoin miners alone consume approximately between 60 to 125 TWh of energy annually, which is equivalent to around 0.6% of global electricity"

"Traditional banks' total annual energy consumption of traditional banks is around 26 TWh on running servers, 26 TWh on ATMs, and 87 TWh from an estimate of 600k+ branches worldwide. Totaling 139 TWh."

Not to mention banks impact on people's lives. Limited purchasing power of the poor and soon to join them middle class.. to purchase disposable products

https://www.iyops.org/post/energy-consumption-cryptocurrency-vs-traditional-banks

Elon Musk's private jet uses energy equivalent to 980 average American households a year. What's your point?

I've always found this argument against crypto to be a bad one. The headline will say something like "Crypto mining uses XYZ total energy" and we're supposed to infer that this means crypto is polluting a lot. But it doesn't say how much pollution there actually was. For economic reasons, these miners often use cheap excess energy that would have been produced anyway or green tech. Not all of it obviously, but that level of nuance is missing.

Also, we don't make the same moral arguments against other energy uses. Air conditioners use more energy than Bitcoin mining does, but we don't go around saying the government should ban people from using AC.

There are legitimate problems with crypto, but this one never convinced me

The miners are taking power from the same grid as everyone else. Miners don’t emit carbon. Electricity generation from fossil fuels does.

The focus should be on moving to a renewable and abundant energy grid. Then let people use it for whatever the fuck they want.