[dboat]

Many industries do a lot of harm to the environment for profits. On the spectrum of those, where do cryptos fall?

I don't know and personally hold only a little bit, nothing I would be very pained to lose, but it would certainly cause a lot of economic harm to a lot of people to do what you propose. The idea cannot be taken seriously without first answering my question.

[chrischattin]

Youtube alone uses 2x the amout of energy as the entire Bitcoin network, for perspective.

[dtech]

Youtube provides entertainment for literally billions of people

Bitcoin provides... idk a way for some people to make a lot of money and some others to lose it?...

Even if we say that BTC provides some value by transferring money etc. the amount of value per Watt is so slanted its ridiculous to even make that argument.

[chrischattin]

Bitcoin is an independent financial network. It opens up economic access to literally billions of people currently shut out of the traditional financial system. I'd say that's quite valuable to the human race.

[selfhoster11]

Because entertainment is so useful? What's your utility function to decide which one is more worthy of using electricity? Why should we use your utility function in particular?

[rapnie]

..to deliver quality video services to a billion people, instead of handling a handful of transactions for some greedy financial speculators.

[artifact_44]

But.. I pay my YouTube subscription with my Bitcoin. :(

[mytherin]

Source?

[chrischattin]

Youtube uses 243.6 TWh - https://thefactsource.com/how-much-electricity-does-youtube-...

Bitcoin uses ~118 TWh - https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Youtube souce is from 2019, Bitcoin one is current.

[mytherin]

The first source does not seem particularly reliable, it makes some back of the envelope calculations based on extrapolated stats that are not even sourced.

Other sources put Google’s total energy usage (including youtube) at around 12 TWh [1]. Total datacenter usage is estimated to be around 205 TWh [2].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/788540/energy-consumptio...

[2] https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...

[pavlov]

That's just not true.

[artifact_44]

..they said authoritatively, and without evidence.