Less than bitcoin, while providing actual value? According to Netflix's 2020 ESG report [1], their hardware infrastructure used just under 95 GWh in 2020 (not including data transmission or your TV). All of which was from renewable sources, btw. Including transmission and the end-user's viewing devices, watching Netflix is estimated to use 77W of power [2], for a total estimate of around 1.2 TWh per year. Bitcoin is estimated at 140 TWh per year [3], or 1500 times Netflix's data centre power usage, or a 120 times the likely total energy consumption of watching Netflix.

Going further, all data centres in the world use an estimated 200 TWh per year, and data transmission networks are estimated at 250 TWh per year [4], for a total of 3.2 times Bitcoin's energy use. Maybe it's just me, but the value provided by the internet is more than 3.2 times higher than that of Bitcoin.

[1] https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_downloads/2021/03/...

[2] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-str...

[3] https://cbeci.org/

[4] https://www.iea.org/reports/data-centres-and-data-transmissi...

Netflix and Youtube serve good purposes. What purpose does Bitcoin serve? Helping people hide money, evade taxes, speculate without creating any value, buy drugs, make ransomware viable? Or as some proponents imagine, subvert financial institutions and national governments? No need to answer.

Bitcoin mining is defense spending. The only fair comparison is to compare it to the US army energy consumption and when you consider that the protection granted by the US army spans multiple countries and partially protects Bitcoin it is entirely stacked against Bitcoin.