[dijit]

Nothing happened to them, they're still around; just consolidated into industrial operations.

The "twist" is they rot as e-waste every 18 months when newer models arrive, generating roughly 30,000 metric tonnes of eWaste annually[0] with no recycling programmes from manufacturers (like Bitmain)... which is comparable to the entire country of the Netherlands.

Turns out the decentralised currency for the people is also an environmental disaster built on planned obsolescence. Who knew.

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...

[SJC_Hacker]

> urns out the decentralised currency for the people is also an environmental disaster built on planned obsolescence. Who knew.

Only proof of work systems, such as Bitcoin. Proof of stake such as Ethereum is a lot less energy intensive

[dijit]

ethereum has a similar ewaste problem

[SJC_Hacker]

> ethereum has a similar ewaste problem

Is it any worse now than say, the NYSE ?

This reference says energy usage was 0.0026 TWh (2.6 GWh, or 2600 MWh) in a year

https://ethereum.org/energy-consumption

If the power was used over the whole year (and not just one hour)

(2600 MWh / year) / (24 * 365 h/year) = 0.29 MWh = 296 kWh. Thats like hair dryer levels of power consumption (if the hair dryver was left on all the time)

[dijit]

Why are you even trying to argue energy consumption when the topic is eWaste due to bitcoin ASICs?

Even if we continue down this route, its something like 15% of global stock transactions going through NYSE, per transaction its extremely efficient when compared to Ethereum; but thats not the argument anyway- its that the hardware used for mining is barely useful outside of that use-case, and the shelf-life is very low to boot.

If there was a use-case, we’d have found it by now, since 30,000 Tonnes a year of it ends up in landfills, surely someone would dig it out or buy it if it had utility.