Hacker News Reader

I'd like to point you to this Vice article titled "One Bitcoin Transaction Consumes As Much Energy As Your House Uses in a Week". Meanwhile swiping a credit card uses slightly more electricity than a google query.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-ele...

View on HN

So the first article doesn't mention Ethereum and another article doesn't mention Hydro. This is why journalism has a bad wrap.

https://news.bitcoin.com/how-big-hydro-power-partners-with-b...

China’s southwestern Sichuan province, a mountainous region that is estimated to have over 50% of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-rainstorms...

The amount of hydro electricity that can be produced is fairly static, so increasing hydro consumption means that other energy sources (mostly coal) are needed to pick up the rest of the demand.

Does it not seem strange to you that if a BTC transaction costs $1 to $5 in fees, yet supposedly uses $50 or more in “actual” electricity costs, there must be a disconnect there?

There is energy in certain places (underground, hydro) that cannot be transported to wherever journalists are writing their papers as they spitball electricity calculations.

Miners don't just receive the fees. They also receive the mined bitcoins.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com