I agree that Bitcoin's energy costs risk becoming ridiculously high, but general IT energy expenditures are currently 10% of the world's total, eclipsing aviati

I agree that Bitcoin's energy costs risk becoming ridiculously high, but general IT energy expenditures are currently 10% of the world's total, eclipsing aviation [1]. Bearing this in mind, using things like PHP, Python and Ruby to build massive web services also seems massively wasteful to me. I'm quite sure that compared to a lower level language like Go or C++, those languages use up an order of magnitude more energy. The energy difference between those two language groups almost certainly exceeds Bitcoin's total energy usage right now, and I don't see people moaning about this. I mean, build your prototype using one of those languages, but once you starting building a significant audience, switch over to C++, Go, or Rust, and use a fraction of the energy you use with Python or Ruby. 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/16/it_electricity_use_worse_than_you_thought/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/16/it_electricity_use_w...