Re:Why gold and Bitcoin are popular
by kragen on Sunday June 13, 2021 @11:51PM
(#27499121)
> Bitcoin uses a lot of energy because that's its security model. Trucks use a lot of energy because they are huge.
I agree about cleaning the inputs, but I think the parallelism implicit in your phrasing is misleading.
Bitcoin uses about 12 GW. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/transportation.pdf says freight trucks use 23% of global transportation energy use, which seems to be about 110 quads/year (figure 8-2), so that's 25 quads/year or about 850 GW. (And all of that is fossil fuel, while most Bitcoin energy consumption is from renewables.)
You could say that an 850-kg rhinoceros has a lot of weight and so does a lot of damage when it runs into things, and a 12-kg poodle also has a lot of weight, but there is a noticeable difference when they accidentally crash into your garage door.
I agree about cleaning the inputs, but I think the parallelism implicit in your phrasing is misleading.
Bitcoin uses about 12 GW. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/transportation.pdf says freight trucks use 23% of global transportation energy use, which seems to be about 110 quads/year (figure 8-2), so that's 25 quads/year or about 850 GW. (And all of that is fossil fuel, while most Bitcoin energy consumption is from renewables.)
You could say that an 850-kg rhinoceros has a lot of weight and so does a lot of damage when it runs into things, and a 12-kg poodle also has a lot of weight, but there is a noticeable difference when they accidentally crash into your garage door.