Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption

misk@sopuli.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 977 points –
Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption
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Whoever Satoshi was, I wonder how he's responding to the thought that he's personally contributed more to global warming than the average billionaire.

Satoshi is estimated to have wallets totaling as much as 1.1 million btc. That would make them the 26th richest person in the world.

If, Satoshi and the wallets actually still exist. Most of those wallets have been completely idle since they were mined

I imagine that “Satoshi’s Wallet” is the stuff of legends among cryptographic security researchers.

It's a bit more than just an estimate. If you want to know more, have a look here: https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/
The keys to the addresses exist. Whether someone is in control of them is unclear. It can't be proven that they've been lost.

Ok I was kind of dumbing it down when I said “if the wallet exists”, but yeah, obviously a wallet and key “exist”, but whether or not anyone actually has them is unknown.

Really sucks for Satoshi, too. If the keys are still in someone’s position, they can’t use it, because people are watching those wallets like hawks and if they move, that means there’s a new billionaire. For a brief moment. Until Bitcoin takes a massive nosedive from which it’ll never recover.

That must be some special kind of hell. To be an actual billionaire (and truly of their own making, which is even more rare) but not able to spend a cent of it. Spending it instantly reduces its value and likely kills the very thing that created it. Man, that’s like a Monkeys Paw billionaire.

Probably not thinking about it on his yacht that he doesn’t pilot or maintain, having built the most successful grifter scheme of all time

I feel like calling bitcoin a grifter scheme is kind of like calling fiat currency (edit: in general) a grifter scheme. Which I guess isn't entirely untrue...

Oh not this again.

Crypto is also fiat. It's backed by nothing except the trust that it exists, therefore it's fiat.

That's my point. Sorry, I should have said "fiat in general".

no, the US dollar is backed by the fact that you can use it to pay your taxes to the US government, and interact with the US government in general, quite literally backed by more than crypto.

and I hate to break it to you, but all currency, ever, is fiat.

all that gold standard stuff? you just abstracted the fiat nature from the money to the metal, there was never any actual basis for the value of gold outside its value, and there are plenty of more sparse metals that people don't value as highly

It's a drop in the ocean compared to how much energy the banking industry uses.

Watch out! Lemmy is full of Fudd that are not part of the cult. You need actual data to convince them and not even just the comparison of 2 numbers but something that takes into account the comparative size of both industries.

Don't worry, you will be able to laugh at them after your gambling addiction pays up.

(Jk you might not even be a line goes up guy but you do seem to have a lot of the crypto bible memorized)

I can't tell if these crypto people (comparing the energy use of banking to Bitcoin) are dumb, or if they think everyone else is.

Banks use negligible electricity lmao

Yeah. 600k Branches, 1 million atms, data centers..

yup, tho they also serve more people than crypto bros, about 100,000 times as many

Including everything, about a million times less energy per transaction than crypto.

the banking industry

Might want to brush up on that reading comprehension.

I think this is the most forced 'lmao' I have ever read

The banking industry uses at least 50x more, right?

Lets talk about the bank branchs, data centers, and energy consumption vs crypto.

"Research has found that bitcoin miners alone consume approximately between 60 to 125 TWh of energy annually, which is equivalent to around 0.6% of global electricity

"Traditional banks' total annual energy consumption of traditional banks is around 26 TWh on running servers, 26 TWh on ATMs, and 87 TWh from an estimate of 600k+ branches worldwide. Totaling 139 TWh."

Not to mention banks impact on people's lives. Limited purchasing power of the poor and soon to join them middle class.. to purchase disposable products. Like the old tale of buying a expensive boot vs a cheap one.

I'm all for less power usage .. but seems like a witch hunt compared to what banking gets away w. It's the the first time banks can point the finger at someone other then themselves.

https://www.iyops.org/post/energy-consumption-cryptocurrency-vs-traditional-banks

A system used by everybody, and a system still used by a tiny fraction of the population are using a comparable amount of energy?

hey, most of the crypto fans are all temporarily embarrassed billionaire libertarians anyway, so the bottom 99.5% can all eat shit and die

So it's okay for crypto to consume more energy than banks because... Banks somehow limit the purchasing power of the poor?

I don't think I'm understanding your argument.