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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

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.

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.