[maebert]

Yes , proof-of-work crypto is a terrible idea for the environment.

But also, this article gets so many things wrong I don't even know where to start. For one, it confuses a "transaction" with "mining a block". A single block can facilitate around 500 transactions on the bitcoin chain, so if an end user wants to "send a bitcoin" as the article states, divide that monstrous energy usage by 500, and suddenly the graphs are not quite as emotionally charged anymore.

The other part is that not all energy is created equal. A third of the time, the world has a surplus of energy that can't be efficiently used or stored (daylight for solar, wet season for hydro...) — miners have taken advantage of that years ago and most mining is done when and where energy is cheap because it's a surplus. Doesn't mean that this nullifies the impact, but any comparisons of bitcoin energy use to that of a physically constrained country are incredibly misleading.

[SebRollen]

No, the calculation is done per transaction, not per block. You can calculate the per-block consumption pretty easily based on the stat that there are about 150[1] blocks mined daily and the total TWh used per year for the network is 200[2]. 200 TWh per year / (365 days * 150 blocks) = 3.6MWh per block. The amount of transactions per block is around 2,000[3], so if you divide that number by 2,000 you get around 1,800 kWh per transaction

[1] https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/blocks-daily/ [2] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [3] https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transactions_...