<story><title>Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power</title><url>https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptomining/just-137-crypto-miners-use-23-of-total-us-power-government-now-requiring-commercial-miners-to-report-energy-consumption</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Symbiote</author><text>Visa used 189GWh in 2017, worldwide, of which around half was data centres [1]. That handled 111.2 billion transactions, so about 1.7Wh per transaction (half for datacentres).&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin used 844670Wh per transaction [2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;dam&amp;#x2F;VCOM&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;corporate-responsibility&amp;#x2F;visa-2017-corporate-responsibility-report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;dam&amp;#x2F;VCOM&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;corporate-responsibil...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;digiconomist.net&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;digiconomist.net&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>digging</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment.&lt;p&gt;(edit: while I still can, I&amp;#x27;m going to jump in and repeat that I&amp;#x27;m criticizing this as a bad article which isn&amp;#x27;t saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author&amp;#x27;s work for them and gathering more data. I won&amp;#x27;t be upset if it&amp;#x27;s proven that crypto is intrinsically bad for everything I love - except insofar as I believe it can&amp;#x27;t be stopped.)&lt;p&gt;1. There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a &lt;i&gt;particularly&lt;/i&gt; energy-efficient industry.&lt;p&gt;2. The title of the article is itself editorializing the content of the article and is &lt;i&gt;speculative&lt;/i&gt; according to their own words. From TFA: &amp;quot;[The EIA] released a study suggesting that cryptocurrency mining represents up to 2.3% of U.S. power demand.&amp;quot; It could be less, much less, or &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; less, although I haven&amp;#x27;t read the actual report yet (I&amp;#x27;m criticizing this article only), because &amp;quot;suggesting&amp;quot; could be doing a lot of heavy lifting&lt;p&gt;3. &amp;quot;Just 137&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t meaningful AFAIK. Who cares if it&amp;#x27;s 100 or 10 or 10,000 miners? The point is the &lt;i&gt;amount of crypto&lt;/i&gt; being mined. (The number of miners will always be in flux by design anyway.) And the answer to that, from TFA: &amp;quot;The EIA found that the global share of Bitcoin mining that takes place in the U.S. grew from 3.4% in 2020 to a whopping 37.8% in 2022.&amp;quot; So roughly ~2% of US power is generating over 1&amp;#x2F;3 of the world&amp;#x27;s Bitcoin. This is only &lt;i&gt;obviously bad&lt;/i&gt; if you believe Bitcoin is a &lt;i&gt;total waste&lt;/i&gt; of energy, which I don&amp;#x27;t, but I understand that some do.&lt;p&gt;4. Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist. Fossil fuel consumption is. From TFA: &amp;quot;We intend to ... quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.&amp;quot; Meaning this has not been done, and publishing scary warnings is premature. If Bitcoin mining ends up using a higher proportion of renewable energy than, say, traditional banking, it could be seen as a net good for crypto use to rise.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tgv</author><text>I imagine much of Visa&amp;#x27;s data centre capacity goes to serving web pages and all that. I know of a bank that would run millions of transactions per day in a couple of hours on an IBM mainframe (at night, after closing). While they are power hungry machines, I can&amp;#x27;t imagine them using 1MW. So I think 1.7Wh per transaction is at least an order of magnitude too high.</text></comment>
<story><title>Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power</title><url>https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptomining/just-137-crypto-miners-use-23-of-total-us-power-government-now-requiring-commercial-miners-to-report-energy-consumption</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Symbiote</author><text>Visa used 189GWh in 2017, worldwide, of which around half was data centres [1]. That handled 111.2 billion transactions, so about 1.7Wh per transaction (half for datacentres).&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin used 844670Wh per transaction [2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;dam&amp;#x2F;VCOM&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;corporate-responsibility&amp;#x2F;visa-2017-corporate-responsibility-report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;usa.visa.com&amp;#x2F;dam&amp;#x2F;VCOM&amp;#x2F;download&amp;#x2F;corporate-responsibil...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;digiconomist.net&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;digiconomist.net&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>digging</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment.&lt;p&gt;(edit: while I still can, I&amp;#x27;m going to jump in and repeat that I&amp;#x27;m criticizing this as a bad article which isn&amp;#x27;t saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author&amp;#x27;s work for them and gathering more data. I won&amp;#x27;t be upset if it&amp;#x27;s proven that crypto is intrinsically bad for everything I love - except insofar as I believe it can&amp;#x27;t be stopped.)&lt;p&gt;1. There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a &lt;i&gt;particularly&lt;/i&gt; energy-efficient industry.&lt;p&gt;2. The title of the article is itself editorializing the content of the article and is &lt;i&gt;speculative&lt;/i&gt; according to their own words. From TFA: &amp;quot;[The EIA] released a study suggesting that cryptocurrency mining represents up to 2.3% of U.S. power demand.&amp;quot; It could be less, much less, or &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; less, although I haven&amp;#x27;t read the actual report yet (I&amp;#x27;m criticizing this article only), because &amp;quot;suggesting&amp;quot; could be doing a lot of heavy lifting&lt;p&gt;3. &amp;quot;Just 137&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t meaningful AFAIK. Who cares if it&amp;#x27;s 100 or 10 or 10,000 miners? The point is the &lt;i&gt;amount of crypto&lt;/i&gt; being mined. (The number of miners will always be in flux by design anyway.) And the answer to that, from TFA: &amp;quot;The EIA found that the global share of Bitcoin mining that takes place in the U.S. grew from 3.4% in 2020 to a whopping 37.8% in 2022.&amp;quot; So roughly ~2% of US power is generating over 1&amp;#x2F;3 of the world&amp;#x27;s Bitcoin. This is only &lt;i&gt;obviously bad&lt;/i&gt; if you believe Bitcoin is a &lt;i&gt;total waste&lt;/i&gt; of energy, which I don&amp;#x27;t, but I understand that some do.&lt;p&gt;4. Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist. Fossil fuel consumption is. From TFA: &amp;quot;We intend to ... quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.&amp;quot; Meaning this has not been done, and publishing scary warnings is premature. If Bitcoin mining ends up using a higher proportion of renewable energy than, say, traditional banking, it could be seen as a net good for crypto use to rise.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qqqwerty</author><text>That is bonkers if true. To put some context around that, our EV can drive around 4000 miles on that amount of energy. Meanwhile, I am not sure you could even unlock the car on 1.7Wh.</text></comment>