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US warns cryptominers must cut power use to avoid busting US carbon goals

• docmechanic 4y ago
  "Lost energy usage data aside, the report also concluded that Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit card transactions used less than 1 percent of the total energy that Bitcoin and Ethereum have consumed over the course of a year "despite [card issuers] processing many times the number of on-chain transactions."
  • bob1029 4y ago
    Last I checked, it takes somewhere around 700-2000 kilowatt-hours to settle a bitcoin transaction. This is a lot of energy. Instead of doing that, you could have ran a top-spec IBM Z-series mainframe for at least a day (30kW consumption). Imagine how many credit card transactions you could process in 24 hours on such a machine. (hint: it's all of them) BTC is like 7-8 orders of magnitude worse than big finance when it comes to energy/carbon footprint.
    • docmechanic 4y ago
      +1
    • ashwagary 4y ago
      Those numbers are long outdated thanks to the lightning network and tap root. What seems to be a single onchain BTC transaction could easily actually be a batch of 1+ million transactions being settled in one tx.
• docmechanic 4y ago
  "... crypto asset mining in the US uses the same amount of energy as all home computers or residential lighting."
• polski-g 4y ago
  If you want less of something to be used, then charge more for it.
  • chrispeel 4y ago
    Yes. Rather than singling out a specific industry, just implement a damn carbon tax.