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To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12[3] Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. Even more interesting is the comparison to the US dolla

To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12[3] Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. Even more interesting is the comparison to the US dollar which ostensibly is backed by all US Energy consumption less maybe residential consumption which was 2.86e13[2] kwh less residential at ~21% = 2.28e13. Now let's compare the USD energy consumption to bitcoin which was 1.29e11[1] kwh in 2021 which would make Bitcoin ~200x more efficient than the USD in terms of energy required to secure. [1]: Bitcoin Energy usage 2021 - https://rmi.org/cryptocurrencys-energy-consumption-problem/#:~:text=Bitcoin%20alone%20is%20estimated%20to,fuel%20used%20by%20US%20railroads https://rmi.org/cryptocurrencys-energy-consumption-problem/#.... [2]: US energy usage 2021 - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ [3]: US Manufacturing energy usage 2021 - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.php#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20industrial%20sector,of%20total%20U.S.%20energy%20consumption https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.p....

whydoineedthis 3y ago
any data sources? or just wishful thinking?
woodruffw 3y ago
The other half of that perspective is that US manufacturing is a critical, productive part of our economy. The US dollar is backed by a complex of factors, including our willingness to invade or otherwise bring to heel countries that threaten the US dollar. Trying to do math on the "efficiency" of bitcoin versus the US dollar is a category error.
- AustinDev 3y ago
  It very well could be a category error to claim bitcoin is 200x more efficient than the USD. I did the comparison for my own purposes to try to bring some sort of perspective to the number 50 billion kwh because it's so large it doesn't mean much to me without meaningful comparisons. It's also worth noting that most mining power consumption happens where & when energy is cheap. Bitcoin as a whole uses more renewable energy than the US economy by a factor of 2x @ 58.9%[1] vs Total US usage from renewables @ 23%[2] [1]: https://www.globalxetfs.com/bitcoin-mining-is-set-to-turn-greener/#:~:text=The%20Bitcoin%20Mining%20Council%20(BMC,36.8%25%20estimated%20in%20Q1%202021 https://www.globalxetfs.com/bitcoin-mining-is-set-to-turn-gr.... [2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/01/clean-energy-hits-record-us-2023-sustainable-energy-factbook/11324041002/#:~:text=Energy%20from%20renewable%20sources%20produced,23%25%20of%20U.S.%20electricity%20in%202022 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/01/clean-energy-....
  - peteradio 3y ago
    > Bitcoin as a whole uses more renewable energy than the US economy by a factor of 2 You say that like its a good thing.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    The "unit" of value backing the US dollar has dimensions that you can't factor into a meaningful comparison here; any comparison you do make is going to result in nonsense answers, regardless of your opinion of Bitcoin's value. Bitcoin does indeed use power where it's cheap[1]. The argument that justifies Bitcoin's use of renewables needs to account for Bitcoin's concurrent prolongment of nonreneweables. [1]: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-1-spring/notes-here-there/crypto-throws-coal-industry-lifeline https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-1-spring/notes-here-t...
Verdex 3y ago
> To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12 Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. The perspective being that crypto is so small because it's 1/100th of manufacturing? Or the perspective being that crypto is so big because it's 1/100th of manufacturing? The way I see it is that US manufacturing produces a massive amount of highly complicated and sophisticated goods which make a complete nontrivial difference in the quality of life for a massive amount of people. Whereas (as I see it) crypto does nothing but provide a way for a small number of people to be scammed out of money by a smaller number of people.
CrazyStat 3y ago
> Even more interesting is the comparison to the US dollar which ostensibly is backed by all US Energy consumption less maybe residential consumption which was 2.86e13[2] kwh less residential at ~21% = 2.28e13. Now let's compare the USD energy consumption to bitcoin which was 1.29e11[1] kwh in 2021 which would make Bitcoin ~200x more efficient than the USD in terms of energy required to secure. If you can find a way to also provide all the goods and services that were provided with that energy while using your energy to mine bitcoin, then I will accept your comparison. Otherwise this comparison is complete bullshit.
- Verdex 3y ago
  To be fair to AustinDev's comparison, I knew that crypto was massively wasteful. However, hearing that it's 1/100th of US manufacturing does put things into perspective. I once toured an automotive plant. The idea that crypto could possibly be 1/100th of just that one plant would have been terrifying. The idea that crypto has reached 1/100th of ALL US manufacturing ... EDIT: It sounds like automotive plants measure their output in something like thousands of cars per week. Imagine the energy required to move just a single car through a factory. And all of the work that goes into assembling it. And lighting and hvac for the factory. Then multiply it by 10000, then by 50 (~weeks in year), then by total number of automotive factories in US, then do the same for all of the other manufacturing industries in the US. Finally divide all that by 100. Yeah ... I consider myself not to have an environmentalist bone in my body, but I'm suddenly not feeling so well.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    All of food, metals, minerals, and paper are each single-digit percentage consumers of energy (all US food manufacturing is 6%). The largest US manufacturing subsector, chemicals, is just ~35%. 1% of manufacturing is an enormous number.
  - akomtu 3y ago
    What's wrong with using bitcoin miners as home heaters? All the electricity they use becomes heat, so a miner is just a furnace with a gpu.
reaperducer 3y ago
To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12[3] Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. Can you explain what perspective that adds? I don't see how the two are related. It's like commenting on an article about U.S. milk production by saying, "To put this into perspective, U.S. orange juice consumption was x."
hristov 3y ago
First US manufacturing actually results in making a lot of stuff. Second, your US dollar comparison is flat out wrong. If you want to compare the energy usage of the dollar to bitcoin, you should calculate the energy it takes to manufacture new banknotes and coins, the energy it takes banks and financial institutions to run the databases where they store people's accounts, the energy it takes to run credit card transactions etc. It will be tricky calculation but it is far less energy than the total energy consumption of the US and I am sure it is far less than the bitcoin energy consumption.
- AustinDev 3y ago
  I would be interested to see this calculation but, I'd argue that you'd also have to include the energy usage of the federal government, federal reserve and US military. The military is an easy one to calculate and they use about 0.75 quadrillion btu's per year in fuel alone according the 2021 federal budget. Which is about 219.5 billion kwh to compare to crypto's 50 billion which is surprisingly close. At the end of the day, it is impossible to quantify the amount of energy required to keep the USD as the global reserve currency and preserve its value.
  - Verdex 3y ago
    Reading this thread, I'm really not sure which side you're trying to take. > Crypto uses 1/4th the energy of the most powerful military ever. See, I read that and suddenly I feel like I need to sign some petitions and call my congress representatives and ask for anti-crypto legislation.
  - qqqwerty 3y ago
    You are thinking about this entirely wrong. And quite frankly you seem to be doing everything you can to make crypto look favorable in this comparison. The only "fair" comparison, would be to estimate how much energy bitcoin/crypto would consume if it replaced the US dollar. In that scenario, the government would still exist, the military would still exist, most of our existing financial infrastructure would still exist (crypto has done nothing to squash financialization, if anything it encourages it). In the above scenario, the only thing that would probably disappear is the federal mint. Crypto mining already uses way more energy than that. And crypto mining would almost certainly increase exponentially if it was adopted globally as miners are incentivized to mine right up to the edge of probability, and the value of tokens in the above scenario would increase dramatically (because most tokens are deflationary) thus resulting in a massive surge in mining. At the end of the day, there is just no way to rationalize away the absurd waste of energy that is crypto mining. They are increasing the cost of energy for everybody and they are increasing global energy demand when we desperately need to be reducing consumption to save the climate. Proof of stake exists, any crypto currency that does not use it should be outlawed in my opinion.
mjburgess 3y ago
Cryptocurrencies have a trivial number of users and process a trivial number of transaction/s (c. 5 for btc, c. 20 for eth). This is a profoundly manipulative comment pushing snake oil.
maxerickson 3y ago
To compare efficiency you probably need to include some factor that scales the 2 against each other. Like now you are saying that securing 1 Bitcoin blockchain is 200x more efficient than securing 1 US economy. But I expect if you ask, most people, if forced to choose only 1, would select the US economy. With a scale factor, you could do something like say you would choose 10% more blockchain over whatever the equivalent amount of US economic activity would be.
btilly 3y ago
Where to begin? You can't talk about efficiency without talking about the productive output. If I spend 200x as much to get 200x as much value, the efficiency is the same. The productive output of the USA includes keeping about 330 million people alive with a decently high standard of living. The productive output of bitcoin is enabling speculation, money laundering, and crimes such as ransomware. There is no rational world where the two levels of output are even remotely in the same ballpark. So let's try to compare them properly. What is secured by US manufacturing is NOT the USD, but the US economy. Which according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Unit... has a net worth of over $120 trillion. What is secured by bitcoin mining is the existence of bitcoin. Which currently has a market cap of a bit under $600 billion. This values the US economy at 200x bitcoin. So if the US economy takes 200x the energy, that's THE SAME level of efficiency. But it gets worse. As others have noted, it is widely believed that bitcoin is a speculative bubble which rounds to "the largest Ponzi scheme in history". To get bitcoin mining to be equal in efficiency to US manufacturing, you have to accept an almost certainly fake valuation for bitcoin at face value. If you don't accept the paper valuation as being real, then bitcoin's efficiency drops dramatically.

whydoineedthis 3y ago

any data sources? or just wishful thinking?

woodruffw 3y ago

The other half of that perspective is that US manufacturing is a critical, productive part of our economy. The US dollar is backed by a complex of factors, including our willingness to invade or otherwise bring to heel countries that threaten the US dollar. Trying to do math on the "efficiency" of bitcoin versus the US dollar is a category error.

AustinDev 3y ago
It very well could be a category error to claim bitcoin is 200x more efficient than the USD. I did the comparison for my own purposes to try to bring some sort of perspective to the number 50 billion kwh because it's so large it doesn't mean much to me without meaningful comparisons. It's also worth noting that most mining power consumption happens where & when energy is cheap. Bitcoin as a whole uses more renewable energy than the US economy by a factor of 2x @ 58.9%[1] vs Total US usage from renewables @ 23%[2] [1]: https://www.globalxetfs.com/bitcoin-mining-is-set-to-turn-greener/#:~:text=The%20Bitcoin%20Mining%20Council%20(BMC,36.8%25%20estimated%20in%20Q1%202021 https://www.globalxetfs.com/bitcoin-mining-is-set-to-turn-gr.... [2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/01/clean-energy-hits-record-us-2023-sustainable-energy-factbook/11324041002/#:~:text=Energy%20from%20renewable%20sources%20produced,23%25%20of%20U.S.%20electricity%20in%202022 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/03/01/clean-energy-....
- peteradio 3y ago
  > Bitcoin as a whole uses more renewable energy than the US economy by a factor of 2 You say that like its a good thing.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  The "unit" of value backing the US dollar has dimensions that you can't factor into a meaningful comparison here; any comparison you do make is going to result in nonsense answers, regardless of your opinion of Bitcoin's value. Bitcoin does indeed use power where it's cheap[1]. The argument that justifies Bitcoin's use of renewables needs to account for Bitcoin's concurrent prolongment of nonreneweables. [1]: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-1-spring/notes-here-there/crypto-throws-coal-industry-lifeline https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-1-spring/notes-here-t...

Verdex 3y ago

> To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12 Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. The perspective being that crypto is so small because it's 1/100th of manufacturing? Or the perspective being that crypto is so big because it's 1/100th of manufacturing? The way I see it is that US manufacturing produces a massive amount of highly complicated and sophisticated goods which make a complete nontrivial difference in the quality of life for a massive amount of people. Whereas (as I see it) crypto does nothing but provide a way for a small number of people to be scammed out of money by a smaller number of people.

CrazyStat 3y ago

> Even more interesting is the comparison to the US dollar which ostensibly is backed by all US Energy consumption less maybe residential consumption which was 2.86e13[2] kwh less residential at ~21% = 2.28e13. Now let's compare the USD energy consumption to bitcoin which was 1.29e11[1] kwh in 2021 which would make Bitcoin ~200x more efficient than the USD in terms of energy required to secure. If you can find a way to also provide all the goods and services that were provided with that energy while using your energy to mine bitcoin, then I will accept your comparison. Otherwise this comparison is complete bullshit.

Verdex 3y ago
To be fair to AustinDev's comparison, I knew that crypto was massively wasteful. However, hearing that it's 1/100th of US manufacturing does put things into perspective. I once toured an automotive plant. The idea that crypto could possibly be 1/100th of just that one plant would have been terrifying. The idea that crypto has reached 1/100th of ALL US manufacturing ... EDIT: It sounds like automotive plants measure their output in something like thousands of cars per week. Imagine the energy required to move just a single car through a factory. And all of the work that goes into assembling it. And lighting and hvac for the factory. Then multiply it by 10000, then by 50 (~weeks in year), then by total number of automotive factories in US, then do the same for all of the other manufacturing industries in the US. Finally divide all that by 100. Yeah ... I consider myself not to have an environmentalist bone in my body, but I'm suddenly not feeling so well.
- tptacek 3y ago
  All of food, metals, minerals, and paper are each single-digit percentage consumers of energy (all US food manufacturing is 6%). The largest US manufacturing subsector, chemicals, is just ~35%. 1% of manufacturing is an enormous number.
- akomtu 3y ago
  What's wrong with using bitcoin miners as home heaters? All the electricity they use becomes heat, so a miner is just a furnace with a gpu.

reaperducer 3y ago

To put this into perspective US manufacturing used 4.69e12[3] Kwh where crypto mining used 0.05e12 Kwh. Can you explain what perspective that adds? I don't see how the two are related. It's like commenting on an article about U.S. milk production by saying, "To put this into perspective, U.S. orange juice consumption was x."

hristov 3y ago

First US manufacturing actually results in making a lot of stuff. Second, your US dollar comparison is flat out wrong. If you want to compare the energy usage of the dollar to bitcoin, you should calculate the energy it takes to manufacture new banknotes and coins, the energy it takes banks and financial institutions to run the databases where they store people's accounts, the energy it takes to run credit card transactions etc. It will be tricky calculation but it is far less energy than the total energy consumption of the US and I am sure it is far less than the bitcoin energy consumption.

AustinDev 3y ago
I would be interested to see this calculation but, I'd argue that you'd also have to include the energy usage of the federal government, federal reserve and US military. The military is an easy one to calculate and they use about 0.75 quadrillion btu's per year in fuel alone according the 2021 federal budget. Which is about 219.5 billion kwh to compare to crypto's 50 billion which is surprisingly close. At the end of the day, it is impossible to quantify the amount of energy required to keep the USD as the global reserve currency and preserve its value.
- Verdex 3y ago
  Reading this thread, I'm really not sure which side you're trying to take. > Crypto uses 1/4th the energy of the most powerful military ever. See, I read that and suddenly I feel like I need to sign some petitions and call my congress representatives and ask for anti-crypto legislation.
- qqqwerty 3y ago
  You are thinking about this entirely wrong. And quite frankly you seem to be doing everything you can to make crypto look favorable in this comparison. The only "fair" comparison, would be to estimate how much energy bitcoin/crypto would consume if it replaced the US dollar. In that scenario, the government would still exist, the military would still exist, most of our existing financial infrastructure would still exist (crypto has done nothing to squash financialization, if anything it encourages it). In the above scenario, the only thing that would probably disappear is the federal mint. Crypto mining already uses way more energy than that. And crypto mining would almost certainly increase exponentially if it was adopted globally as miners are incentivized to mine right up to the edge of probability, and the value of tokens in the above scenario would increase dramatically (because most tokens are deflationary) thus resulting in a massive surge in mining. At the end of the day, there is just no way to rationalize away the absurd waste of energy that is crypto mining. They are increasing the cost of energy for everybody and they are increasing global energy demand when we desperately need to be reducing consumption to save the climate. Proof of stake exists, any crypto currency that does not use it should be outlawed in my opinion.

mjburgess 3y ago

Cryptocurrencies have a trivial number of users and process a trivial number of transaction/s (c. 5 for btc, c. 20 for eth). This is a profoundly manipulative comment pushing snake oil.

maxerickson 3y ago

To compare efficiency you probably need to include some factor that scales the 2 against each other. Like now you are saying that securing 1 Bitcoin blockchain is 200x more efficient than securing 1 US economy. But I expect if you ask, most people, if forced to choose only 1, would select the US economy. With a scale factor, you could do something like say you would choose 10% more blockchain over whatever the equivalent amount of US economic activity would be.

btilly 3y ago

Where to begin? You can't talk about efficiency without talking about the productive output. If I spend 200x as much to get 200x as much value, the efficiency is the same. The productive output of the USA includes keeping about 330 million people alive with a decently high standard of living. The productive output of bitcoin is enabling speculation, money laundering, and crimes such as ransomware. There is no rational world where the two levels of output are even remotely in the same ballpark. So let's try to compare them properly. What is secured by US manufacturing is NOT the USD, but the US economy. Which according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Unit... has a net worth of over $120 trillion. What is secured by bitcoin mining is the existence of bitcoin. Which currently has a market cap of a bit under $600 billion. This values the US economy at 200x bitcoin. So if the US economy takes 200x the energy, that's THE SAME level of efficiency. But it gets worse. As others have noted, it is widely believed that bitcoin is a speculative bubble which rounds to "the largest Ponzi scheme in history". To get bitcoin mining to be equal in efficiency to US manufacturing, you have to accept an almost certainly fake valuation for bitcoin at face value. If you don't accept the paper valuation as being real, then bitcoin's efficiency drops dramatically.