According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (https://cbeci.org/), it actually wastes about 115 TWh annually now. They even have a comparison page where you can see that the network sits between United Arab Emirates (113 TWh) and Argentina (121 TWh) in annual energy use.
Meanwhile space exploration and life extension struggle to attract funding.
Humans are merely clever, not intelligent. If we were actually intelligent we would understand the systems in which we embed ourselves instead of being at the mercy of them.
You could probably have founded and fully endowed dozens of top tier universities for what we have wasted on this.
Another good thing to look at for perspective: how many startups could we have seeded and venture funded for the money literally burned by cryptocurrency?
Cancer. Pure cancer.
I also remember Satoshi saying in the white paper that people in temperate climates might would be the miners because the excess heat could be used to heat homes in the winter. Again I don't see the sort of environmental responsibility currently.
When I saw such comparisons, I always countered with two points:
- One, energy expenditure on Bitcoin network grows superlinearly;
- Two, all the expenditure for trucks, vaults, presses, etc. and management for it is considered upkeep. It takes money from the pockets of people who would prefer to keep it. So these costs are ruthlessly optimized down to minimum. If printing or transporting bills could be made free, financial institutions would jump at it. Meanwhile, in Bitcoin, burning energy is a core part of securing the network, and it's being periodically adjusted towards more waste. If mining could be made free, the network would collapse.
These points paint a quite different trajectory over time for Bitcoin's energy use vs. fiat energy use. And it seems to pan out.
fixed that for ya.
The good thing about heating your home in the winter with excess thermal energy caused by cryptomining is that in summer you can either stuff all that heat into bags and save it for winter, sell it in town to people who have a sauna at home, or send it to the opposite hemisphere where people are freezing. /s
Also what do you mean by "exchanges having less and less bitcoin" and what are you basing that on? Most people unfortunately don't transfer what they have out of exchanges in the first place, even less so with transaction costs being enormous.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...