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Ask HN: Which wastes more power, Bitcoin mining or inefficient JavaScript libs?
- nabaraz 5y agoThe answer is Bitcoin and it's not even close even when compared to all internet capable devices in the world. Here is a napkin math- Bitcoin mining consumes around 91 TWH of electricity each year. [1] There are 20B internet capable devices out there. Let's assume a conservative estimate of 2 KWh/day (taken from my computer which is on almost 24/7) for a device. 2x20x365 = 14TWH Bitcoin consumes 6.5x more electricity than all the internet capable devices in the world. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...
- timdaub 5y agoNot sure napkin math has the expressiveness to cover that topic. Also: The question was centered around "wasting power", so we'd first have to define what we consider wasteful.