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I do admit that the comparison is not a strong one. It wasn't intended to be, honestly, it was just an easy example. My point was more that the data presented i

I do admit that the comparison is not a strong one. It wasn't intended to be, honestly, it was just an easy example. My point was more that the data presented in the article aren't very useful on their own. Again, if you think all cryptocurrency has 0 value, then all usage is obviously bad. But the reality is that it has some value, and much of that value is in the form of scams (most types of coins, by number, are scams), and much of the value is just speculative investment, but it is a real thing that people spend real money on. Focusing on miners makes it seem like all the value of crypto comes directly from energy - but nobody would spend energy mining it if others wouldn't buy it.

dmoy 3y ago
> My point was more that the data presented in the article aren't very useful on their own. Yea this is a constant issue in almost all journalism. Numbers are provided mostly without context. E g. "$100k of drugs seized in bust". But was that a single day's re-up? Does it meaningfully impact the local drug supply at all? --- In this case we can dig into numbers somewhat. Bitcoin.com claims the traditional banking sector uses about 2x as much energy. But cryptocurrency handles a tiny, tiny fraction of worldwide banking stuff, so if it was operating at the scale of e.g. 20,000 qps of credit card transactions, for example, it might have substantially higher energy use compared to now.